Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Fernanda's LiveJournal:

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Friday, July 17th, 2009
2:32 am	BLIT Many of you will probably have seen it before, but this is one creepy short story. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
1:53 am	Today's xkcd is one that made me wonder if Randall has seekritly looked up my browsing history. Those are the EXACT two sites that I get stuck on for hours. Fans of Tinycat will be pleased to know that I spotted her happily lazing around on a pleasantly lukewarm tin roof this afternoon. It appears that the diet of leftover Yugoslavian Grilled Food, and rodents tempted by the smell of Yugoslavian Grilled Food, seems to suit her. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
12:16 am	GODDAMN FUCKING SON-OF-A-BITCH COMPUTER Sending the machine to the shop for 2 weeks and $80 worth of servicing, and being told that the problem was a blown capacitor, did not fix the mysterious crashes. On the upside, the first post-servicing crash was a blue screen of death as opposed to a black one, and I was able to jot down the problem file. Unfortunately, googling "ati2dvag" produced a lot of results along the lines of "the dreaded ati2dvag bug" and "after a year, I still haven't been able to fix the ati2dvag issue" and "this is a REALLY annoying problem that does not have a sure solution or cure". Reinstalling the ATI driver failed, so far deleting the ATI driver seems to have worked. After all, it's not like we really play games on the stupid thing anyway. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 3rd, 2009
3:52 pm	This won't interest ANYONE but I think it's nifty. Last week I got back into origami and for some reason I've been making lots of Sonobe units. Today I learnt that you can't make a 3-colour stella octangula and have every vertex comprise all three colours, but you can make one with every vertex having 3 colours or 1 colour, and this looks really cool because it has these nifty triskelions on it. Now experimenting to see if I can make a <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_dodecahedron">great dodecahedron</a> by turning the Sonobes inside-out. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
4:40 pm	I wonder what Elizabeth David would have thought of crockpots? Today in the Guardian there was a nice little article about cookbooks that Elizabeth David owned and annotated. The one that amused me most was "The kind of pretentious rubbish that has brought French cooking into disrepute as a snobs preserve", but in Ulster Fare, published in 1945 by the Belfast Women's Institute Club, she writes "Italian salad p50. Sounds just about the most revolting dish ever devised." *** Italian salad 1 pint cold cooked macaroni ½ pint cooked or tinned pears ½ pint grated raw carrot French dressing to moisten 2 heaped tablespoons minced onion ½ pint cooked or minced string beans Mix the chopped macaroni and vegetables; moisten with French dressing, flavouring with garlic if liked. Serve on a dish lined with lettuce leaves. Decorate with mayonnaise and minced pimento or chives. *** The sad thing is that I read the recipe for "the most revolting dish ever devised" and immediately though "you mean that's IT?" Seriously, where's the cup of sugar in the dressing? Why is it only decorated with mayonnaise rather than using a pint of the stuff? And where in the world is the cream of mushroom soup? The internet has really raised my hideous-recipe standards. (22 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
4:53 pm	I used to love making paper models. Especially those mathematical ones from Tarquin Publications. I stopped doing it because while they're great fun to make, you end up with a very elaborate and beautifully-constructed dust collector. And then I see things like these Japanese models and I really start wanting to get into it again. I think maybe I'll get some origami paper from the Japanese shop. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
12:49 am	Fail@Girl Today I learnt that there are many different types of split end. I had no idea. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009
11:25 am	Kitten Thought for the Day I have decided that if I ever have a pair of kittens, I will call them Shuka and Ding, after the noises of shaking a bag of dry catfood, and banging a tin of wet catfood with a spoon. I think it's the only way to have cats that actually answer to their names. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
5:15 pm	Cherry Nation: a frozen moment The market in Havelska is, of course, not what it was. Year on year the fruit-and-vegetable stalls seem to dwindle, and the tourist-kitsch stalls take their place. It is not helped by the fact that this is Central Europe, and for much of the year the local produce is, shall we say, less than thrilling. But June really is busting out all over. Bundles of baby beets scream sweet colour, punnets of strawberries are proudly emblazoned CESKY JAHODY (don't waste your money on insipid strawberries; they're only worth buying if you can smell them walking past the stall), and even the tomatoes look as if they might just taste of something. I don't buy them though. Burned too many times on tomatoes. The man with the beets also has cherries. Not the bouncing beauties from Spain and America. These are smaller, less crisp, they don't last a day after you take them home. But the taste. I can eat pounds of them at a time. And do. As I pack a flimsy plastic bag full, people surround me. Instinctively I check my satchel, keys-wallet-phone, an urban cowgirl quick on the draw. But it's only Japanese tourists. And they're thrilled by the cherries. They point at the fruit, at the bags, at the prices. Good fresh fruit costs a fortune in Japan, everyone knows that. They ask me something about the cherries, I don't really understand, but say "Sweet, good!" and they laugh. One of them's stocking up, the other pulls out a camera. I'm going to be in this shot, like it or not. I give a thumbs-up, the lady shows me the picture, we laugh some more. Cherry season is short. In a few weeks, all we'll have left is a photograph taken in a market, a handful of words. Sweet. Good. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 8th, 2009
4:19 pm	Especially for tansu Animal cookie cutters from Ikea! With a HEDGEHOG! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
2:56 pm	Important Homemaking Skills I Learned From My Mother Never drink red wine while doing the ironing, as the disaster potential is too high. Always drink gin and tonic while doing the ironing. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
6:02 pm	An inspirational poster I made this today, and it tickled me so much that I just had to share it. Urban Dictionary entry for "glass swan". (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
1:30 am	Minimal-effort cooking Strawberry & Rhubarb Crumble Preheat oven to 180 C, then take a couple of sticks of rhubarb, cut them up into bite-sized chunks, and strew them in a deep baking dish. Take a punnet of inexpensive strawberries, for example the slightly squashy ones reduced-to-clear because the market's closing and they'll have to be chucked out, trim them and put in the dish with the rhubarb. Add some white sugar, not too much because you can always add more after cooking, and a good sprinkling of vanilla, and mix up. Combine 1/2 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, a pinch of salt and 1/4 cup of butter, and rub in until crumbly. Mix in some flaked or rolled oats, and strew over the fruit. If there isn't enough to cover the fruit properly, make the same quantity again. Bake for half an hour, ensuring that the crumble does not burn. Take out of the oven, being extremely careful because hot fruit will burn you like a bastard, and allow to cool a little. Eat while still hot. The crumble is a British dish that apparently dates from the Second World War, and can be taxonomically classified together with half-a-dozen American fruity baked goods as "Can't-Be-Arsed Pie". (20 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
2:57 pm	His name was Angus Prune, and this was his tune What I always wonder when I hear this song is whether "1000 furry ferret feet trampling on the floor" equates to a ferret army of 500 or 250? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
12:40 am	Why Today Was Not A Wasted Day 1. I cooked a delicious pan of besan with lots of ginger and scallions and little red chillies. Those of you who don't or can't eat eggs but miss quiche should really try making this. It has a very quiche-like texture and you can put whatever flavours you want in it. 2. I dicked around with dumbbells and have a nice endorphin buzz going. 3. I found a video of a tiny adorable piglet and set it to the tune of Yakety Sax. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
2:29 am	A joke so dreadful that I may have to send it to Adam and Joe A man walks into a bar and orders a vegan protein shake. The barman says "Dude, no whey!" (5 Comments |Comment on this)
12:23 am	In Which I Descend Into Self-Parody "Hmmm, I need to check my gauge for this knitting project..." "Damn, I know for a FACT that none of the tape-measures are in my knitting basket, without even looking." "I bet there's a free ruler app for my iPod in the App Store." "Why yes there is! And I got gauge!" (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
11:58 am	Hitchcest = 3.14 terabingbobs As some of you may know, the SI unit for wrongness is the bingbob, as derived from this Medium Large cartoon. I think that I may have broken the terabingbob barrier with a thought that occurred to me this morning as I was drinking my tea and reviewing a very boring letter. Christopher Hitchens/Peter Hitchens slash fanfic. Something has to give way - either Rule 34 or my brain. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 4th, 2009
12:41 am	Mosquitoes There are people in the world who can look at mosquitoes and think "Isn't it good that there are mosquitoes in the world because they provide so much nourishment for all the nice birds and fish and frogs in this valuable wetland habitat." I am not one of those people. Beastly little bitey bitches. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
1:25 pm	One of those days Hazel: want to go home fed up me: You can withstand it. For you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!' Hazel: Or I could stab her with the scissors me: That too. I don't think Kipling did a verse about stabbing with scissors though. Hazel: drat he should have done me: If you can smile when all around are crabby And at the same time eye the perfect place To grab the scissors and go stabby stabby In motions that reflect your poise and grace Hazel: heee (5 Comments |Comment on this)