It was bound to happen one day

Worf is so badass he takes him down, at distance, *with his eyes closed*
(Fri 3rd Feb 2012, 15:10, More)

I used 14, but close enough for my sanity

(Sun 22nd Jan 2012, 13:17, More)

Eating disorders were inevitable

Delurking - surprised there haven't been more anims in this compo, although this took way too long.

Edit: was missing the last 4 frames (223 now!), now loops properly. Thanks for all the kind words and clicks!
(Tue 14th Apr 2009, 15:32, More)

» Travel

I went to Australia for a few weeks holiday
and never came back - been 8 years now, it's a terrific place!

tl;dr I'm an immigrant
(Fri 19th Apr 2013, 1:12, More)

» The Emergency Services

Ambulance Accident
My neighbours son is a paramedic - someone else drives the ambulance while he's in the back keeping the patient alive. Unfortunately while racing to the hospital the driver rolled the ambulance - the paramedic is now facing spinal surgery due to his injuries.

Can't imagine any practical way he could have been protected and still able to do his job, short of all-encompassing air bags ala "Demolition Man".

No idea if the patient was conscious or not (or survived), would have been a nightmare for them considering they were already in bad enough shape to require speedy transport to hospital.
(Thu 16th May 2013, 13:52, More)

» The B3ta Cookbook

fucking good risotto, feeds two
I'm disturbed at how many of the recipes so far are "simple" and "shit". Here's a bloody awesome recipe that isn't actually hard but certainly takes some preparation. Is it worth it? I think so, but then I don't see "quick and simple" as inherently worthy goals when cooking.

Before you can start making your risotto, you have to cook and eat an entirely different meal a day or more before:

Roast a Chicken for the pair of you, have roast spuds, plenty of veggies - just cook it yourself, don't buy an already cooked chicken. Make sure you buy a chicken large enough that you'll only consume half of it.

Put your vegetable peelings in a large saucepan (3 litre capactity). Before you wash up, scrape all the meat and fat juices into the saucepan too.

Take the chicken carcass and remove all the chicken flesh (and only the flesh) into a bowl or container, and refrigerate. Into the large saucepan of peelings etc goes all the bones, skin, internal organs.

Boil up 1.7 litres of water in your kettle, pour into saucepan with bones etc. Bring saucepan to a vigorous boil, take down to a bare simmer and simmer for at least 2 hours, checking every now and then to make sure the heat is okay and to turn over the contents.

Once the water level has dropped a few inches, pour the contents of the saucepan through a colander into another saucepan. Throw the bones and crap away, leaving you with about a litre of beautiful golden chicken stock, entirely unlike the shit liquid you buy in a carton or dried brown flavoured salt you buy as a cube.

Let this cool, put it into a suitable container and refrigerate.

Next day, or day after, it's time to make some awesome chicken risotto.

Other than your 1 litre of beautiful stock and chicken meat (torn into small strips), you will need:

1 cup of risotto rice (about 180 grams).
1 cup of white wine (what about 180 grams of uncooked rice looks like) make it a good enough wine to serve the rest with dinner.
1 large onion
1 handful of mushrooms
trimmed green beans
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
fistful of fresh parsley - finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic
30 grams of butter
olive oil
salt
ground black pepper

1. Pour your stock into a small saucepan, warm it up and keep it warm (do not boil). Put in a few pinches of salt.
1. Chop up your onion and garlic.
2. Heat the butter and a decent glug of olive oil into a 3 litre saucepan. Once the butter has melted, chuck in the onion and garlic and cook for 3 minutes on a medium heat.
3. Stir in your risotto rice and cook for a further 5 minutes, stirring frequently (it'll get a bit sticky) until the rice has begun to colour.
4. Turn the heat down a bit. Ladle in 1 cup of your warm stock. This will bubble magnificently and quickly be absorbed/boil off.
5. Put in 1 cup of white wine, no more. This should not bubble magnificently, but still absorb fairly quickly - otherwise adjust your heat. Stir occasionally until the liquid is almost gone (the risotto will become stiffer and harder to stir - don't let it bubble too much or burn).
6. Once this has absorbed, chuck in your mushrooms and 1 cup of stock. Stir occasionally while the stock is absorbed.
7. As each cup of liquid is absorbed, put in another cup, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, in a seperate saucepan, cook your green beans.
8. When you are down to your last cup of stock, try some of the rice: it should not be gritty*. Put your chicken and final cup of stock in, and stir. Once this has begun to absorb, put in your parsley, grind in some black pepper.
9. Once the stock is absorbed, take the saucepan off the heat and stir in the parmesan cheese.
10. Serve, with green beans on the side.

*if your rice is still a bit gritty and you're almost out of stock, you're going to have to use your last cup of stock now. Unless you have a stash of beatuiful home-made stock in the freezer you can quickly defrost in a suacepan/microwave, any further liquid required will have to be plain boiled water 1 cup at a time. Do not use a stock cube with it. If you had 1 litre of stock to begin with and cooked 1 cup of risotto rice, this should not occur.

Tips: never, at any stage, be tempted to put more white wine in - it will totally dominate and ruin the flavour. If you don't see the point in parsley, try it anyway - it makes all the difference in this dish. Always use risotto rice. If when making your stock you forgot about it and the liquid almost simmered away, just boil a kettle and top it up again to 1 litre. Let it simmer for about 5/10 minutes and it should be absolutely fine.
(Sun 1st Jul 2012, 16:52, More)

» The Apocalypse

we had an Earthquake last week
in Australia, about 9.30 at night so already total darkness and the toddler asleep in bed. 4.4 magnitude with ourselves just 25km from the epicentre, but it occured 17kms underground so no property damage. Still, I'd never been in one before (unlike my wife) so had no idea what was going on during the first tremor.

It was as if a giant had oh-so-carefully cupped the house in his hands so as not to alert us, then savagely jolted it to one side. We both froze - WTF was that - and it quickly happened again. I popped my head outside to check there wasn't some gigantic juggernaut pissing around our rural backstreet (which now seems rather dumb), the only noise outside was hundreds of gallahs circling and squawking waiting for it all to be over so they can find somewhere to land again for the night.

Back inside the wife reported more minor movement, when WHAM a massive jolt hit again. We quickly got a bag of food and water, a bag of warm clothes (it may be Australia but it still gets down to zero at night), a first aid kit and chucked them in the car. Then waited to see if it got any worse, but nothing more came of it, and the toddler didn't even wake up.

The last earthquake in the area was the late 60's but I'm probably going to keep some sort of Earthquake/Bushfire Kit ready in the car or garage - you don't want to be pissing around grabbing essentials if the house is going to collapse.

The savage jolting wasn't so much the house moving as the Earth moving (obviously), so the house suffered no apparent damage at all - but the sensation was incredible.
(Fri 15th Jun 2012, 0:52, More)

» Relief

cancer
Thought I had testicular cancer... didn't.

Obviously a huge relief, and not having cancer is the best result - but the actual sensation of "relief" did me no good.

In the period when I feared I had cancer, I became the most motivated man alive: every minute of every day counted, I'd bound out of bed and attack the day early every morning. As soon as I had the all-clear, I lost all motivation again. I had all the time in the world to live life in now, so of course I proceeded to fritter it away with no sense of loss or urgency. Absolutely bloody stupid of me.

Sometimes I wish the Doctor had lied and told me I had an inoperable cancer with no way of telling how long it would be until it flared up and killed me.
(Thu 20th Dec 2012, 22:18, More)