Fancy Mixer!

It is a week before Christmas, and the cake is finally completed!

Before we get to that, however, let me point out a cunning way of seeing all of the "cake related" posts in one place; I tagged them as "Christmas Cake 2010" and this is a link to all of those posts.

Anyway, on to the topic of this post. As I reported back in August, my grandfather recently passed away. The estate recently cleared probate or whatever it does in England (I have been away so long I have forgotten how such things are conducted, if indeed I ever knew, and tend to view everything through an Americanocentric lens) and my grandfather's estate (won by hard graft at the drafting table with a slide rule and in the windtunnels dedicated to winning the Cold War. Give thanks to my forebear, any of you who do not live in a Communist dystopia!) passed to my father and his brother.

My father, generous to a fault, passed some of the estate to myself and Liza. He said he thought Grandad would want us to have some of it. I don't know if he would - I suspect he never thought about such things - but I am certain he would not begrudge us it, nor would he have a problem with my father disposing of (now) his wealth as he chose.

So, Liza and I decided - rather than spend the entire amount on the sensible, fiscally responsible thing of lowering our debts etc. etc. - we would spend some of it on some fun, joyful things. Or, at least, practical things with an element of joy in them.

So, we bought a Kitchenaid Mixer.

A brief explanation - not about the Kitchenaid Mixer, which really needs no explanation. It is a mixer - it is the best of the generally available brands, I believe. They are very nicely made and they come with a load of attachments. It is very much like the Kenwood device my parents had and my father and I had such fun messing around with while we made sausages.

No, the explanation is about Facebook and the Lowe's page thereon. Liza "liked" this thing (along with half a million other people) when it became clear Lowe's were posting links to a page where one could register and (if you were one of the first 100 people) get a coupon for a 90% discount of some kind of domestic appliance.

Let that sink in for a moment. Facebook. Half a million people. Regular offers to get many different sorts of domestic appliance for a tenth the cost. Current American economy.

Result : Chaos.

Seriously; read the comments if you have a mind. They are full of people begging Lowe's to post the next item, because right now they are on tenterhooks, waiting for the item, waiting to register. Babies are unfed, diapers unchanged, dishes unwashed, dogs pawing at the bowl expecting Winalot and getting nothing but the uncaring sound of their masters frantically clicking the "refresh" button.

It is crazy. Liza was part of it for a while, until I said "Enough! Let us go, even now, unto Lowes and just buy the wretched Kitchenaid!"

And so that is what we did. It was, ironically enough, the last one in the store. It is quite fancy, although it does not have all the hundreds of attachments. I want to get them, as I am a man and thus think attachments are totally awesome.

Sorry, this blog post has been more about my family than the cake. Let us rectify that.

There is the mixer, ready to mix the first batch of anything it has ever mixed! The previous batches of royal icing have been mixed by hand, but this time I wanted to test the mixer. It seemed excessive, but there wasn't anything else to test it with. Kaitlin & Tim are going to make cookies on Thursday with it, but I wanted to try it out before then.

In the bowl; three cups of icing sugar (which the internet tells me is 375g icing sugar, or about three quarters of a pound of the white powdery stuff).

It mixes! I've added the egg white and lemon juice and, hot-diggity, it mixes! I was so excited during this portion of the process, I can't tell you. Tremendous fun. Worth any amount of money.

The final result - a very smooth, very nice royal icing. Liza said (and I agree) it actually gave a better result than mixing it by hand, which was not what I was expecting. I was expecting it to be easier and quicker (maybe) but not give a better result. This just looked better than doing it by hand, which made it easier to justify the expense.

Not that I needed much of an excuse, you understand.

Here is me applying what will be the final layer of icing sugar to the cake. I calculated - I applied the icing in four batches, two of 1.5 cups each, one of 2 cups and one of 3 cups. So, that is a total of 8 cups, which is about 2lbs of icing. That is a pretty substantial amount of icing right there. Just so we know.

And there is the cake in all its final glory! I did the traditional "spiking" on the top of the cake because, well, it's traditional and tradition is important to people other than rooftop-dwelling Jewish violinists, you know. It now has a week for the icing to set and dry, and then it can be eaten!

We are going to get Wensleydale cheese, of course.

Marzipan WIN!

So, the marzipan recipe was a complete failure, and we ended up with something which was like oatmeal. Tim Ferguson, canon lawyer for the Archdiocese of Detroit, suggested it could be used as unicorn feed.

Lacking a unicorn, however, there wasn't much use for it. So, it languished in the fridge while we went hunting for marzipan.

Marzipan is easier to find than unicorns, although the first place we tried didn't have any. Nor did the third. The second didn't have it either (if it did, why would we have looked in the third place?) but when we asked a person there if they stocked marzipan she asked, "What's marzipan?"

So, I guess you don't carry it, huh?

The fourth place we looked at was Holiday Market, which carries all kinds of cooking and bakery items. We found the marzipan! Our hunt was successful!

Behind me is the Annoyed Woman. She is annoyed. She is annoyed because I was taking a picture of myself, with the marzipan. She had to wait to buy her bakery item. Meh, whatever, right?

Well, no. I only just learned, from Liza (who was there), that said Annoyed Woman (who is annoyed) was buying a 2 lb bag of baking soda.

To be frank, that kind of scares me. Can't you build a bomb big enough to kill God with baking soda and other household chemicals?

So, once we had escaped the Annoyed Woman, who is annoyed, we returned home and removed the cake from the pan, turning it upsidedown as we did so (I say we, but Liza was asleep at this point, because Liza was tired). The above image shows the cake sitting on the platter we used for it.

The recipe for the cake suggests you use marzipan to fill any gaps at the new-bottom of the cake. Now, I didn't want to use the marzipan we had bought because we only had a bit, and it was expensive, and if we go back to get more the Annoyed Woman might be there and be annoyed.

So, I used the unicorn-feed to fill in the gaps, using it like spackle and smoothing it all out. It seemed to work pretty well, although we'll have to see how it tastes.

I then busted out one of the two tins of marzipan and rolled it out into a circle. I had to pieces-part it together because it wouldn't roll properly, and I didn't have enough to roll out a big sheet and cut the circle out of that. I was having to roll it pretty thin, because Annoyed Woman (who is annoyed) stopped me from getting more (also, expensive - but Annoyed Woman is a better excuse).

Marzipan isn't that sticky - especially when you have rolled it out with icing sugar so it does not stick! So, you have to use some kind of warm jam as glue. Traditionally, it is apricot jam, but we didn't have any. So, we used Irish Kiss marmalade, from The Old Rectory, Stratford ON which we bought when we were on vacation there during the holiday we didn't blog about because we were too tired. Anyway, fine marmalade from great people. In the microwave, heat it up, use it as glue.

That is the top circle stuck on, all pieces-parted together. I wasn't too concerned about it, as it was going to be covered in the royal icing.

Here is the cake, fully covered in marzipan. Not much to say, really. In fact, a lot of these pictures are like that, I suppose.

Royal icing - one and half cups of icing sugar, and one egg white. All very simple and easy, although you initially think there is not enough liquid and you want to add more. Here is a hint; don't.

Here is the cake with the royal icing applied. Now, there is really not enough icing here to actually cover the cake - it needs more layers, most definitely. However, this is the first layer and it covers the cake quite evenly. It is all exciting and fun. It seems to be drying pretty quickly and I think I will be able to add another layer tomorrow!

Tremendous excitement, I am sure you will agree. And, if you don't, well then you are annoyed. Like the Annoyed Woman.

Chanelling Allie

I have done very little today other than write the previous blog post and read the entirety of Hyperbole and Half. I am the world's finest procrastinator. Or maybe I will be tomorrow.


So, I am going to write a blog post. And, as all I have done today is read Allie Brosh, this post might reflect her writing style. Whatever. You should totally read her blog, as it is awesome funny. Also, she totally reminds me of a girl I used to date. Which probably sounds totally creepy and stalkery, but isn't.


What I did do today was (as I said in the previous blogpost) was make marzipan. We decided that marzipan is hellish expensive (this is true) and that it is easy to make.


This is not true.


First, you have to have 4 cups of ground almonds, which is something you can't just find at a regular store. It is not just chopped almonds, it needs to be like almond flour or something like that. I am reminded of my statement one Christmas that (in my precocious "I am winning the science prize, hippies" manner) a brazil nut contained enough energy to blow your right arm off (I dunno if it really did; I might have made that up). My sister, ever clever, said "What about your left arm?" I am also reminded (when placed together, these two things make some kind of sense) of the dangers inherrent in flour mills. Particulate-stuff (flour, powdered sugar) burns in an explosive manner when scattered through the air.


No, seriously. For real. Custard-powder bombs are very real.


(Dash it all, I totally promised myself I was not going to post some reference to cooking meth, or making explosives, or something else I could use to say "there are some recipes on the internet which are awesome and work and some which do not. Like this one for marzipan." And now lookit.)


Alright, I get ahead of myself.


Liza bought 2 lbs of raw almonds and we ground them up in a food processor and then a coffee grinder, and made 4 cups of almond dust. This is not only an explosion risk, but if you have some kind of allergy to nuts, you really shouldn't breathe the same air as me or come into my house.


You know, I have cats too. And nuts. And eggs and maybe fish. You know what? If you have allergies, you probably shouldn't know me. I am like Dr. Mengele only without the cool uniform and knowledge of anatomy.


Too soon?


Then we made the recipe - this required initially to basically make toffee. Sugar and water and boil 'em until they are at the "soft ball" stage. I did this. You then cool down the toffee so it goes thick and creamy and then mix in the ground almonds and egg white. And then you stir and heat it until it gets thicker.


At this point, the "marzipan" looked like oatmeal. Utterly like oatmeal. I still had faith in the internet, because when has it ever lied to me before? Other than all those times, of course.


What you do with this oatmeal mess is pour it on a flat surface and knead until it resembles marzipan.


Let me tell you what does happen if you try this. The oatmeal mess flops everywhere and you have to scoop up boiling sugar-and-nut mixture and put it back in the pan while swearing all the while. This recipe just does not work.


The resulting concoction does not even taste like marzipan. It tastes like oatmeal with a faint tinge of almonds. I put it in the freezer, where it has kind of set into, well, solidified oatmeal. It is grainy and solid and utterly unlike any kind of marzipan I have ever seen.


There are a number of possible uses for this substance;

1. Building material
2. Exfoliating face scrub (Liza actually agreed this was a good idea)
3. Putting it in a pie crust and baking it.

Everything is better in a pie crust. Except maybe more pie crust. Some kind of infinite pie. That might not be good. It would be like a Chinese puzzlebox filled with more puzzleboxes.

So, marzipan making = fail. I feel I may have redeemed myself with the turkey meatballs made from spare, however.

We will bite the bullet and buy actual marzipan, not some kind of exfoliating building material puzzlebox center.

Deep-Fried Candy Bars and Additional CAKETIME!

Alright people, as promised - updates on the cake! I am really just procrastinating here; I should be working or writing people's Christmas presents, but I am not. So, go figure.

Anyway - we took the cake out of the oven and let it cook down in the tin. I then removed it from the tin and had a gander at it. It looks like a cake. Behold;

That is the cake after I took it out of the tin and wrapped it in greaseproof paper and foil like it said. But then Liza reminded me that when we did it before, we did not take it out of the tin - we just left it in there and fed it there. So, I put it back in the tin.

BUT! Before you see that, here is the cake from last time (the Groom's Cake from the wedding); just so you know everything is proceeding in the usual manner.

It looks very similar (the difference being in lighting and also the fact you are looking at the top of this cake, and the bottom of the new one).

So, I put the cake back in the tin (right way up) and started poking holes in it and drizzling the remains of the brandy on it. You "feed" the cake like this morning and evening until you run out of brandy, basically, making sure it is in an airtight tin while you do this. We slapped on a saucepan lid which fits the tin perfectly and scrunched some foil around it - basically, all you are trying to do is make sure the alcohol does not boil off and the cake dry out.

I just (literally, just before I started typing this post) used up the last of the brandy on the cake. It makes the top of the cake go all spongy and doughy as it soaks in, so I think it's going to need a couple of says to stabilize and so forth. I put the lid back on and wrapped it in plastic wrap to keep the brandy inside. And we are just going to leave that for a couple of days before we start on the next part of the cake.

Oh, yes - there is more.

You have to ice this thing - which is kind of like frosting, but not the same. Frosting is generally soft and all squishy, but that is not the point of this. The idea is very simple - you cover it is a layer of marzipan and then multiple layers of royal icing. You can just slap on the marzipan and slather on a great thick layer of icing, but it doesn't dry right and you get this slightly soft, chewy icing.

You can do this. And you can also pierce your own nipples with a hammer and a rusty nail. It works but no-one is impressed and you wonder why you bothered.

No, what you do is this. You get the marizpan (which is fiendishly expensive in the USA, so we are going to make our own) and glue it to the cake using some kind of melted jam (traditionally, you use apricot, but I have had excellent results using marmalade). You then let this dry for a day or two, and put on multiple thin layers of royal icing, each of which has time to dry properly and fully before you put on the next one.

Anyway, all that is in the future - which is the future-future's past!

Let us speak of our past, which is also the future's past, and indeed everyone's past, except the past-past, of which the past is the future!

Deep fried candy bars.

I'm sorry. I couldn't hear the cry of awed amazement from here. Let's try this again.

I said, Deep Fried Candy Bars.

Yeah, hippies.

Alright, here is now it went down. The Boss was out of town (in Chicago, no less) and there was fear he would be trapped in the Windy City by the massive snowstorm blowing up (in the end, he wasn't - storm hit later). But, armed with this fear, we decided to offer to cook dinner for Housecat who is staying with the Boss. I offered to make proper, genuine, English fish and chips - so we did this.

The point of this story is NOT the consumption of 3 lbs of fried cod and about 6 lbs of fried potato together with batter by six people. Plus a custard tart. No, that's not the point (nor do I have pictures, although I really should have done because fish and chips is totally awesome and you just can't get it here unless you make it. Seriously and for reals, people - utterly impossible to get hold of decent fish and chips here. No-one has the first idea how to make it).

No, the point of the story is that - when I said "I will make fried fish and chips" Housecat expressed interest in deep-fried candy bars. And so some of these were bought. And, when the 3 lbs of fish and 6 lbs of chips had been eaten, fresh batter was made and the oil was skimmed of large bits of floating scraps and . . .

One does not simply fry a WHOLE candy bar (one does also not simply walk into Mordor). The idea is simply insane. So, I cut them into thirds. The basic idea is that, if you eat something in three bites rather than one, you can stave off Type II Diabetes for a day or so.

This is me dipping the pieces of candy (they are Milky Way candies, which are different from UK Milky Way candies, and are closer to Mars Bars) on cocktail sticks into the batter. The batter is made of flour, sugar, beer and cinnamon (for our American friends; everything here has cinnamon in it).

You use the little stick to dip the battered candy into the hot oil (you can see how hot it was on the temperature gauge - don't get your hand in it! It hurts!) What you have to do it hold it there for a few moments while the batter puffs up and the candy starts to float, pulling away from you.

Me continuing to hold the candy, waiting for the moment when . . .

It starts to float! You can see the first candy floating while I dip the second; the candy floats with the little stick above the surface of the oil, making it easy to pull out of the fryer.

When these things are done, they look ugly. They are round and brown and generally look kind of unappetizing. However, when you eat them all that changes. The chocolate and the nougat melts and gets all gooey and warm, and you have the crispy cinnamon batter.

So, yeah. Deep fried candy bars. We are thinking of doing them as a made-to-order desert for the party on Boxing Day. They make the perfect appetizer - they already have the stick in them.

Later today, I might make marzipan.

CAKETIME!

As previously reported in a couple of blog posts last year, we (that is, the Us) do quite a bit for Christmas. It is an important feast (in both senses of the word) in the calendar. This year, we are sticking with the Stick It To The Jews theme and will continuing to feast upon the meat of a pig. To wit, roasted pork with crackling and some kind of roasted potatoes. Down with the Levitican dietary laws!

In addition to this, we shall be feasting upon a cake containing raisins (although this is NOT some reference to the idiocy of the Temperance Movement and their idiotic translation of the Wedding at Cana - we are just having a cake, which contains raisins). To wit, a traditional fruit cake, made from this recipe. We are, of course, changing the recipe to incorporate the Michigan cherries, miss out the candied peel and so forth - but the central thrust of the cake is the same as Auntie's old standby. And that is merely the first of many sexual inuendos we intended to make (and did make) while whipping up a nice stiff batter.

Fnar-fnar.

Alright, what are you looking at? The first stage in the making of the cake is to gather the dried fruit. We stood in the fruit aisle of the local supermarket and searched for the various kinds of fruit we needed, but were hampered by the Americaness of the locale and the presence of glace cherries and candied peel in the recipe. Seriously, people - those things look like someone ate a Faberge egg in a drunken stupor and threw it up. Let's not go there. Also, those cherries? Make honey red. Not good.

So, what we did was work out how much fruit we needed (about 3lbs) and then just buy roughly the right kinds of fruit up to that weight. We chopped the big fruit up small and threw it all into a large glass bowl and then covered it liberally in brandy.

Alright; for those of you unaware of this - in an effort to control binge drinking, public intoxication, the USA (the fine nation that brought you Prohibition) sets minimum prices on liquor. Yeah, weird, huh? So, what you see as you drive around are large signs reading "LIQUOR STORE - LOWEST PRICES ALLOWED BY STATE LAW". It's awesome - "Get drunk for cheap, you wino!" is the central message here, I feel.

Anyway, we went to one of those placed and purchased brandy. Now, I wanted (so the wino image would be complete) to get brandy in a plastic bottle, but alas! It was not to be. The only brandies which were in plastic bottles were the flavored ones, and those (we felt) would make the cake suck serious amounts of ass. So, instead, we purchased brandy in a glass bottle. Fear not, this is still perhaps the worst brandy Liza has ever tasted. It is a filthy, raw spirit most suitable for degreasing engines. Still, we used it to soak the fruit.

Witness the first significant departure from the recipe as written here. The recipe suggests about 150ml of brandy, which is diddle. It also suggests letting is soak overnight, which is gay as chips, okay? We used about two thirds of a bottle and let it soak for a couple of days. What this does is plump the fruit up really nicely and give it a good flava. If you don't do this (and use too little and not long enough - fnar-fnar) you end up with little hard nubs (fnar-fnar) of fruit (fnar-fnar) in your moist cake (you get the idea - this is kind of deliberate).

So, fruit is left to soak. We go to the Vorisopolis and watch ID4 and Megashark vs Giant Octopus with Housecat while eating chicken and chilli (two days, there - not one day of gluttony and sci-fi B-movies).

A couple of days later, once we have recovered from chilli and Debbie Gibson, we undertake to actually bake this thing. Now, as all men of learning know, you can't just slam cake in a pan in the oven and expect it to work. What you have to do is prepare the pan.

Above you see a 10 inch cake pan lined with a double thickness of greaseproof paper on the bottom and the sides. This is a crazy level of preparation for a cake - most cakes just use a non-stick pan or a single layer of paper. Not this cake. Lest we forget, there is 3 lbs of fruit in here and most of a bottle of brandy. Serious preparations are required. AND! The papery-prep ain't done yet - this is just stage one. I did this arts-and-crafts bit while Liza . . .

Liza gets on with the actual cooking. The cake batter begins life in the "creamed butter and sugar" family. So, she heated the butter (which was frozen, oops!) in the microwave and weighed out the sugar. The recipe calls for that soft, sticky, dark brown muscavado (isn't that a duck?) sugar but we didn't have any of that. Meh, whatevs. We slapped down some regular brown sugar (hey, Father Paul!) and put in a generous dollop of molasses in there. Job done.

Now Liza uses the electric whisk (thank you, Mr Edison) to whisk (does what it says on the tin) the sugar and butter together. Liza does this while hiding from the camera because, well, she is Liza and she does that. I don't question her. I just take photographs while she is not looking.

While she is doing that, I bust out the newspaper and the butcher's string. Yeah, I know. Is this a cake of a papier mache model of a pig? Could be either, I guess. Anyway, the instruction say to wrap the outside of the tin in a folded layer of newspaper and put a pad of newspaper under the tin on top of a baking sheet. I suppose this is to provide some sort of insulation so the outside of the cake does not burn? With a cake this size, there is a very real danger of the edges burning before the inside is done.

Whatever the reason, I deem it worthwhile to follow this step. I muck about with some newspaper (back when this recipe was written, I am certain newsprint was very different and did not have all these color supplements with their glossy paper etc. in - I had to shift through all that and pull it out) and string and eventually manage to get all this together. It's harder than it looks, to do this with only two hands and a wife who is creaming butter and eggs. I managed to get it done with the assistance of some paperclips (non plastic coated, because that would be really bad in a hot oven).

Stage whatever we are up to now. We have creamed sugar and fat, and the eggs get beaten into it. Then, the fruit is added. This is a LOT of fruit, and Liza is quite feeb and pune. So, it's hard on her shoulders. Still, she insists on going this part while I man the camera. Note that no flour has gone in yet - crazy, no, for a cake? So we basically have a very sweet fruit omelette batter here. I resist the temptation to bust out the skillet (or "frying pan" as the Brits call it) and make me some breakfast.

Seriously; the Yanks would totally eat a sweetened fruit omelette for breakfast. Probably with maple sausage and whipped cream. And then they would have coffee and make the world safe for democracy.

You see why I came here? It's badass awesome.

Alright, we are just festive as all Hell. Just look at that. What is in the bowl is the batter mix with about a quarter of the flour sprinkled on top. You have to mix the flour in at this point in the recipe, and that is kind of hard to do. You can't just dump it all in because the batter is, frankly, like some kind of construction material right about now. It's like cement and weighs about as much.

So, what I did (Liza had given up on stiring the batter by this point) was just sprinkle the top of the batter with flour and fold it in. And doesn't it look festive? It looks like some kind of snowy landscape. Seriously - here is a close up of the batter in the bowl.

That looks totally like some kind of Christmas landscape.

Here I am doing the mixing of the flour into the batter so as to make a cake of some kind. This was the second or third load of flour, I think - there was very little flour for a cake of this size (which, lest we forget, is freaking huge).

Alright, the batter is fully mixed and here is me putting it into the pan. What is not shown is me sliding the bowl of batter off the countertop to take it over to the pan and nearly dropping it because it weighs a ton and a half. Seriously, this is one heavy cake and I was really not expecting it.

The batter is so dense and heavy and sticky you can't really pour it in, and if you shove it around it dislodges the greaseproof paper. So, I had to just drop lumps of it into the tin and let them find their own level under their own, enormous, weight. Eventually, there was enough in there to hold the greaseproof paper in place and I could smooth it out.

I don't have pictures of the next stage, which was to put it in the over at 300 degrees F and wait for three hours. It is a really long, slow cooking process but - at the end of it - the cake was perfectly done (cocktail stick stuck in it came out clean) and an incredibly dense, solid mass. Following the instructions, I left it to cool in the pan overnight - but not before poking a few holes in the top and pouring some brandy onto it. This heated and and vaporized almost immediately, but some soaked in.

The next morning (today!) I took it out of the pan and examined it - it is totally badass. Again, no pictures at the moment because I was hurrying. Will get some tonight when I unwrap it from the greaseproof paper and foil it is wrapped in and "feed" it more brandy. I poked some holes in it this morning and drizzled a bit of brandy onto it, and will be repeating this process until either a) the cake disolves into a sticky mess or b) there is no brandy left.

Yay! Christmas!

My Grandfather Died This Morning

He was an old man - his death certainly occurred long after the average (however that is calculated) age for his demographic, generation and gender. He smoked for years, did not exercise and ate a relatively unhealthy diet for much of it - yet he died in what I am told is a peaceful manner. He had chest pains on Friday and passed away Monday morning, in his sleep.


A comfortable death, I suppose. A late one, certainly. He had his independence to the end (he used to drive around "the old women" who no longer had their mobility; these women were, almost universally, young enough to be his daughter!)


I don't know if, given the choice, I would die like he did - but I suppose if I did I would have no reason to complain.


I won't be able to make the funeral - I am swamped with work, and I simply cannot justify the time off right now. It is the way of my family to be like this, I suppose; and the man my grandfather was would not want me to stop doing something I considered important and vital and worthy simply to stand in a black suit for a few hours. I will say my prayers and offer my Masses for him.

I have an odd approach to grief and loss; my rules to live by include the first, which runs Always be prepared for your own death. There is an adjunct rule to it also; Always be prepared for the deaths of others. I walk the talk, I have been prepared for this death for a very long time, at least since his heart attack which must have been fifteen years ago at the least.

I always recognised grief was selfish - in any situation, it has to be. Either the person is dead and gone and beyond anything (pain, pleasure, whatever) or the person has achieved an eternal reward or punishment. In any case, the emotional reaction is selfish - it is to feel sorry for oneself because you miss the person.

I do miss him. I've missed him for a long time, since I went to America, before that even.

But I am not built to feel sorry for myself. I won't even say grief is the price we pay for love, because that makes it too poetic. I will simply say that people die.

What sits most heavily with me is the fact my grandfather probably died alone - or, at least, without his family around him. He had been alone for a long time - his parents died when he was young, his wife died at least twenty years ago, he was an only child. He told me he had been alone for a long time, and he was used to it. I daresay he was so used to it it became comfortable, even welcome.

I know I would not mind dying alone. Maybe he and I were alike - I like to think we were. Maybe he would have enjoyed it, the peacefulness of not having people fuss over you and worry and project their own petty, human emotion onto an inevitable transition.

But I don't know - and that does make me a little sad.

I wasn't there, because I went to America and pursued . . . something. I am not sure what drew me here - it wasn't simply a selfish desire, but it was not just duty and my obligation to Christian love and family. My parents retired to Scotland. I don't know about my grandfather's other son - he and I have not spoken in years.

My family is not close. Never has been. The death notice from my father was the first communication he and I have had in months.

As I said, I cannot be at the funeral. But, I am always prepared for deaths of others - even yours, if I know you. I am ready for you to die. And so I have a eulogy. Here it is, in brief;

My grandfather was many things - but what will remain with me always was that he was the designer of the Buccaneer Bomber, a deadly engine of war which saw action only years after it was designed. He was head of aerodynamics at British Aerospace.

Ultimately, he made aeroplanes. That is what he did.

When man first crawled out from the forests of Africa, or walked from the Garden of Eden, or was formed in whatever manner your beliefs tell you he was, one of the first things he did - had to be! - was look up at the birds above him, soaring effortlessly. For centuries, we sought to learn to fly, to leave the earth and do something we could only dream of doing. We represented flight in our art, our literature, our legends. Icarus, Wayland Smith, angels and more.

The granting of flight to humanity was a long process, and one my grandfather did not really have a huge influence on. He was not a Montgolfier, he was not a Wright.

But, and this is most important, his work built planes. It made engines which could soar through the air.

No matter what else his work did - defending his country by building war machines, and fighting in the Second World War itself (we don't know what he did, he was tight lipped on it) - that I think will the thing I remember him for.

For centuries, men looked at the skies and said "I want to be able to fly." And for centuries, scientists had to say, "I'm sorry, you can't."

My grandfather made planes. He made men fly.

What did YOU do with your life?

An Open Letter to a Particular PC Manufacturer

The following is an open letter to a particular PC manufacturer; those who know me know which one, but I feel the piece stands with a generic expy name in there - so that the company itself is not embarassed.


Dear CompuLectaSoft,

I am writing to you in reference to some matters orbiting the subject of computer design philosophy. As a long-time user of IBM-compatible personal computers, often of the so-called “Wintel” architecture (popularly but imprecisely known as “PCs”) I have some small insight which I feel would be beneficial if shared with all parties involved.

There are many design philosophies informing technical and aesthetic choices made in the Wintel domestic and prosumer market. The technical innovations of the decades since the creation of the first PCs have allowed for smaller, more powerful computers available at an increasingly inexpensive price (Moore's Law does, indeed, appear to be being obeyed with an accuracy which marks its formulator as prescient). Additionally, the design aesthetic of the Macintosh brand of computers produced by Apple have influenced both hardware and software design within the Wintel field (witness the recent expressions of the classic MS graphical metaphors in Windows Vista and 7; these are close graphically to modern Macintosh OS). Computers have become sleeker, smaller and with less intrusive and more intuitive interfaces.

While not universally welcoming such design choices, I recognize these are popular among a broad demographic and – thanks to the excellent and robust capitalist system provided by our liberal, free-market democracy – such appeal is what drives innovation and choice. I am, in general, pleased with the direction PC architecture (and, in particular, Wintel architecture) is taking.

That said, I have some specific suggestions concerning your products and innovations, design choice implementations and directional changes which (I believe) would be beneficial for you to incorporate into your ongoing R&D program.

Specifically, have you thought about making your products not suck quite so much ass?

I realize this is a (perhaps overly) broad suggestion, but it is possible to arrive at some advice which is more granular. Have you thought about creating a domestic PC which boots up in under five minutes and does not load enough software to generate a convincing facsimile of The Matrix as found in the eponymous movies by the Wachowski brothers? I would not complain but, to belabor the metaphor, once your engines of pain have loaded this glut of software, we find that they render the vile little bug things which worm their way into Keanu Reeves' navel perfectly – but make the character of Persephone (played by Monica Bellucci) look like Rosie O'Donnell.

Why, precisely, is it necessary to pre-load your PCs with a horde of software which performs functions the average user has no desire to engage with? And why is this software quite so greedy when it comes to system resources, even when not running actively? One begins to wonder if your company is not thinking it can extend its market share by emulating the country's largest employer (the Federal Government) by taking resources to do nothing but employ individuals (in your case, software programs waiting for a user to use them – a foolish prospect at best) who sit around doing nothing. Ooo. Burn.

Speaking of which, why are there not one, but two additional CD burning programs installed on the PC I have had the misfortune to attempt to nurse back to some kind of health? This is, of course, in addition to the program internal to the Windows OS which allows for the burning of CDs. And why is there a DVD burning facility on a PC which has no DVD burner?

There is a gap of silicone and conductor this software can't bridge. There may also be a gap elsewhere, but I would have to X-ray your head to be sure.

I have had the misfortune to use (not, I hasten to add, for myself – I was using another individual's PC) one of your computers (a term I use under advisement, and without prejudice to the truth) which came “bundled” with your suite of media software. The verb “to bundle” is used here in much the same sense as it would be used in documentation written by the New York City Police Department when discussing the activities of the well-known businessman and philanthropist John “Don” Gotti in dealing with commercial rivals; to wit; “John Gotti bundled him in a burlap bag with a heavy weight and dropped him in the East River”. However, to return to your media software – something it appears users are forced to do. Your media suite (a program somewhat larger and more convoluted than “Lost”) appears to load its Brobdingnagian mass in its entirety at the slightest provocation, and usurp the traditional role held by Windows features such as the Media Player, Picture Viewer, and perhaps even the kernel. Time and time again I was forced to stare at a suddenly dimmed screen, wondering if a) there had been a power failure b) your infernal program had kicked in once again and was taking an interminable time to load or c) I had been struck blind by the wrath of the Lord and was being prepared for a role as the Apostle to the Gentiles (c/f the Apostle Paul). While a) was usually a possibility, c) was rejected out of hand as, although God can make good of all things, it is asking a lot even for Him to work with what you produce.

I could go on, and will so long as this remains vaguely amusing. When attempting to access the Task Manager (so that I might, you know, be able to manage the tasks your machina infernalis was running in an onanistic orgy of processor hogging) via the tried-and-tested “three fingered salute” of CTRL-ALT-DEL I was stunned, nay even unto silence, by the fact the machine did nothing for a prolonged period of time, dimmed its screen to black, made a noise with its fan not entirely unlike a Harrier Jump Jet getting ready for the off, and then proceeded to display a small dialogue box which informed me – in terse, unhelpful terms - there had been an error and the security dialog was unable to be displayed. This is, frankly, unacceptable – not that I imply by this statement anything about your technology is acceptable, excepting perhaps the use of the hardware as an object lesson or a hammer.

You may choose to blame the problems on the Windows Vista OS. This is, if you will forgive the analogy, like choosing to blame everything on the Jews; it's not true, it doesn't help solve the problem, and it is the purview of short Austrians with bad mustaches and drunken Australian hypocrites. I have used Vista on other machines and – while it remains a flawed OS – it only reaches its zenith of incompetence when installed on the hardware your company produces and ships to an unsuspecting world, in the manner of a bio-weapons' dealer exercising particularly poor quality control.

I must admit, however, a certain grudging respect for your company – if only for the chutzpah in continuing to sell these products. This reaches a level akin to a man who, having murdered both his parents, requests clemency from the court because he is an orphan. I have also defended your company (and not merely as an exercise in how long it is possible to attempt the impossible before someone calls you on it); there has been a risible question-and-response circulating the internet which runs (if not verbatim, in some similar form); “What is the difference between a CompuLectaSoft PC and a bucket of horse manure?” The generally-accepted form of the answer is “The bucket”.

This, I feel, is unfair, and I have objected to it. I have maintained, without exception, that the level of organization and rationale bestowed on digested hay and oats by the fecal process of a large equine is, in fact, superior to that found in your products.

In conclusion, it is my firm belief your method for designing computers would be considered unusually crude for a colony of cherrystone clams, and that there are tribes in the equatorial jungles of South America who – while yet untouched by civilization – would be capable of producing a superior analytical device from dates and tiger penises, even though neither of these items are indigenous to South America. Had Charles Babbage known what you were going to do, he would have immolated himself on a bonfire made from the manuscripts for his difference engine after writing a Luddite treatise against technology in all its forms.

Thank you for your time,

Yours,

Simon Rafe

It's a lot like steely, but without the carbon

Christmas Day! In your face, pagan scum!

The day dawns bright and early (and also rainy and cold, but meh) and we set off for the Vorisopolis where we already have the previously-mentioned Pot Of Death (TM) sitting on the stovetop, already full of coke.


(10 liters of Coke there, in a pot. Badass.)

So, I immediately turn the heat up on the pot o' coke and start the process of getting 10 liters of Coca Cola to the boil. This is not a small process, as I am sure you can imagine. It is, in fact, how castles were defended in the Middle Ages.

I then whip out my meat (fnar-fnar). As previously discussed, my meat is so large (fnar-fnar) it could not fit in anything less than a professional recepticle (fnar-fnar). If you remember, I had to use a garbage can to brine it and so - following on with this theme - I transported it from Chez Us to the Vorisopolis in a large garbage bag.



I then put my meat in the professional receptical filled with hot coke and added yet more Coca-Cola, because there was not enough in the pot already!



The lid is put on the pot and the whole thing left to boil. It comes to the boil around about an hour later. So; if you want to attack a Cadbury-Schweppes castle, do so quickly, before they have time to heat the boiling coke.



I am somewhat concerned about the sheer size of this thing - Nigella (May Her Name Ever Be Honored) says a 4.4lb ham will take about 2 to 2 and a half hours. She also says, "for smaller or larger hams, assume an hour per kilo". Well, that is just dandy, Nigella (Whose Eyes Are The Stars), but I suspect these things are not strictly linear. I mean, you can't say "It weighs an ounce, and so it will take one and a half minutes." Nor can you boil a blue whale for about a year and a half an expect it to be cooked through.

So, I went searching on the internet for some kind of guidance, searching for "boiling ham internal temperature" on the Oracle of Google. And lo, I find a website which details how to cook a ham by boiling it. A 12 lb ham (the same size as ours . . . yes, my earlier estimates were entirely too conservative) no less!

This website recommends boiling a 12 lb ham for 4 to 5 hours, which is about what I had estimated and worked out. But, more importantly, this website comes complete with a built-in get-out clause! It is the Baptist Courier, and this article is by someone who looks like she would call Roman Catholics "Cat-licks!" or "Pay-peests!" Awesome.

So, any failures can safely be blamed on this tambourine-shaking Baptist and her hatred of all things Vaticano. An excellent solution, and one without any drawbacks.