Category: Uncategorized

  • Viral

    I woke up this morning and had a look at Twitter (as you do). To my surprise, I saw this:

    @web_goddess bahh! @neilhimself posted a link to your Dahl site (measles piece)! lol! 🙂

    – miftik (@miftik) February 2, 2015

    Wait, what? Neil Gaiman tweeted a link to my site? I went in search.

    Heartbreaking and wise Roald Dahl letter to his readers about measles and his daughter Olivia. http://t.co/MdgLiLAMlb (via @timminchin)

    – Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) February 1, 2015

    Wow. He really did! Turns out he got it from Tim Minchin. (Tim, of course, wrote the music for “Matilda”.)

    So here’s the very sad #oliviadahl letter again: http://t.co/viSDnWgpWU And now I’m off to have hot chocolate with my vaccinated kids.

    – Tim Minchin (@timminchin) February 1, 2015

    I discovered pretty quickly that a LOT of other people had picked up the story. They were all linking to this letter from Roald Dahl about why you should immunise your children. His daughter Olivia died from measles encephalitis. I posted that letter on the site about two years ago and then completely forgot about it. I’ve actually been following the story of the recent Disneyland measles outbreak with fascination (don’t even get me started on those stupid, stupid “anti-vaxxers”) and never remembered there was a big tie-in to Dahl. But somehow over the past three days it blew up in a really big way.

    Traffic

    See? I’m still not sure who actually started it. People have been tweeting links to the page off and on for the past two years, but the most recent one that could have started the avalanche was from Charles Simmins. On the 30th someone wrote about the issue on Daily Kos. Was that where it picked up steam? Kottke tweeted about it, but it didn’t really go nuts until Tim Minchin and Neil Gaiman picked up on it. It spread to Facebook where it’s still trending. At some point the folks at the official site got wind of it and started emailing and tweeting sites, suggesting they instead link to the page on their site instead. (Fair enough. They contacted my site too so I happily put a note on the page.) Right now lots of sites are still writing about it but most are just reproducing the text themselves. So while my site did get a really big spike – about 10x its normal traffic – I suspect it’s not as big as it could have been. In the end most of my traffic was from Twitter and Facebook, where folks mostly don’t bother to go back and change links to things. And I’m still getting some clicks from sites like Get Off My Internets, Refinery29, Reddit, and even Metafilter.

    So there’s my 15 minutes of Internet fame for 2015, I guess!

  • Whut.

    Bagna Cauda (Anchovy-Garlic) Popcorn | Serious Eats : Recipes – When this recipe came up in my RSS reader today, I just stared at it dumbfounded for ten seconds. And then I started to drool.

  • Spiralize ALL THE THINGS!

    SpiralizerMy friend Heather from college recently posted on FB about her spiralizer, and it was like my brain exploded. Why don’t I have one of those? I’ve done a few paleo “mock” pastas by cutting zucchini ribbons with a peeler, but it’s time-consuming and awkward. I WANT TO CRANK. So I started looking around. I found several of the “pencil sharpener” variety, but they seemed very limited. (Let’s be honest: a spiralizer is already pushing into unitasker territory. At the very least I wanted one that’s as versatile as possible.) The 3-blade crank model definitely seemed like the preferred model by experts*. Amazon had it, but to my surprise I actually found it cheaper locally at Victoria’s Basement. (They have a sale on now, so be quick if you want one.) I picked one up on Wednesday and then put it to use last night on some Zucchini Ribbon “Pasta” with Fried Egg. Obviously I went with spirals instead of the ribbons though! The machine worked great and wasn’t too awkward to rinse down afterwards. WHAT SHALL I SPIRALIZE NEXT?!

    * I discovered to my utter amazement and delight that there is an entire food blog dedicated to spiralized vegetables. I’m not even kidding. I’m going to have to read all of it.

  • Whole30: Wrap-up

    As you may have surmised, I didn’t quite make it the full 30 days for the Whole30. I made it 25 and then got a bit derailed by Australia Day. I had bircher muesli with yogurt that morning at breakfast, and then over the course of a long dinner party had a lot of alcohol and some chocolates too. I definitely paid the price the next day. (“SNOOKUMS HALP I HAVE POISONED MYSELF WAAAAAAAAHHHH!”) I finished out the week eating clean with the exceptions of a gummy worm Thursday (during an 8-hour work meeting, so really just eating one qualifies as superhuman restraint) and some drinks last night to celebrate our mortgage refinance. I’m feeling pretty good about transitioning to more of an 80/20 approach, which should allow for a bit more spontaneity and the occasional meal out as well.

    Overall weight loss in January 2015: 5.3kg. Woot!

  • Spoiler: Exactly as depressing as you expect

    What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women – Breakfast for me is served with a side of rage today. Quotes that resonated:

    • “Researchers interviewed 350 female entrepreneurs, and most cited “lack of available advisers” at the top of their list.”
    • “…venture capitalists talk about the need to get 10-year-old girls into science in order to bring up the numbers of women they will fund, but don’t fund the ones already in the industry”
    • “But the problem for women in the workforce is that there are many more mentees than mentors. Also, the tech industry is changing so fast that women even five or 10 years older may have very little of practical use to share with younger workers.”
    • “Wadhwa often talks about the importance of “pattern recognition” among VCs. The male bankers simply have an idea of what a successful startup founder looks like, and young women like Carey and Mosenthal simply don’t fit.”

    That said, there was a silver lining from this article: I signed up for Glassbreakers. I’m not sure they’ll approve someone from Australia yet, but I figured it’s worth a shot. It’s a great initiative. I’ve met less than a handful of women here that I thought would be suitable mentors for me, but I didn’t want to ask them for fear they’re already swamped with requests. It would be nice to think the next generation won’t have that problem to the same degree.

  • Whole30: Day 25

    Brunch: Three eggs scrambled in ghee; pork chipolatas; salsa
    Snack: Nuts
    Dinner: Meat loaf muffins and cauliflower slaw

  • TWOP One Pager

    I’m trialling the new Australian streaming service Stan, so the Snook and I have finally started watching Deadwood. I was getting a little lost in the stylised dialogue for the first few episodes so I googled to see if I could find any recaps. To my surprise, TWOP came up. I thought it closed down last year! Instead, the fan outrage seems to have convinced NBC to keep the archives up. I happily started reading the first recap and then ran into trouble when subsequent pages kept timing out or getting stuck in a redirect loop. I guess that while NBC kept the site up, they sure as hell aren’t doing any maintenance on the servers. Just as I was starting to get really, really frustrated, I found the answer: TWOP One Pager. That awesome little online tool allows you to paste in a TWOP recap link, and it will then fetch all the pages and combine them into a single document. It works great, even on the crappy archives. Highly recommended!

    Also highly recommended: Deadwood. Damn. Although the more I watch, the more the, uh, colourful vernacular threatens to impinge on my own vocabulary. I almost called the cat a c**ksucking hooplehead this morning.

  • Whole30: Day 24

    Breakfast: Coffee with coconut cream
    Lunch: Green salad with tuna, bacon, and baby beetroot
    Snack: Apple
    Dinner: Carrot and cardamom soup with some sauteed prawns

  • Whole30: Day 23

    Breakfast: Apple and a couple handfuls of almonds; black coffee
    Lunch: Leftover Paleo Tex Mex casserole
    Dinner: Apple Dijon Burgers (no bun of course!) and oven-baked sweet potato fries