Two questions for the world at large

1) Why does wbloggar keep giving me an HTTP error when it’s posting with no problems?
2) Why have six of the archive pages had their entry numbers mangled so that Google thinks that they’re five entries adrift from where they really are?

Currently drinking…

…a bottle of 2003 Merlot from Origin. 2 for £8 in Threshers. Rather good.

Goose poo

Living next to the river, getting rid of stale bread has never been a problem.

The resident population of greylag geese that live on the Ouse get fed so often that they’re practically tame - if you don’t mind the risk of a swift peck, they’ll take the bread right out of your hands.

The downside of feeding semi-tame geese is that they’re quite happy to wander up to you and coat your shoes in goose excrement - and nasty, slimy, green, smelly, gunky stuff it is too…

The difference that a week or so makes…

This was taken just over a week ago, when the River Ouse has reached its highest point for about four years.

This, on the other hand, was taken this morning. By my reckoning, that’s a difference of about 15 feet…

Orkut

I’m falling dreadfully behind the zeitgeist, not having typed so much as a letter about Orkut, but then noone’s invited me. I’d like to think it’s because my friends aren’t the kind of people who would send me invitatations to a social networking site. Or it could be that I haven’t got any friends.

Mind you, I could always buy an invitation, or console myself with the chance to win an iPod, or even learn how to develop into a real he-man blogger…

Why You Should Always Have A Backup Of Your MT Index Templates

Speaking of eye-rolling, foam-flecked rants - let the past two hours be a lesson to myself not to mess about with an MT stylesheet without first making damn sure - and I mean damn sure - that there’s a working backup knocking around somewhere.

The net effect of this evening’s hackery is that my permlinks are shot to hell - tempalinks, in fact. So if you’ve arrived here from Google expecting to find your search results, sorry - but I hear their cache is quite reliable…

Bookbinding 101

A fantastic illustrated guide on how to bind hardbacked book covers.

(Via dannygregory.com)

Perfect bread

I might have stumbled across the best way of making bread in one of these here breadmakers - the last loaf has turned out rather well (so well in fact that it didn’t actually get cold before being completely devoured.) Unfortunately the search was a bit less than scientifically-rigorous, because I tweaked several variables ingredients simultaneously, but here goes:

The basic principles are don’t under any circumstances use margarine instead of butter - it turns out with a nasty oily tinge to the texture; do add some olive oil to the mix - a splash was what it got, so that’s probably worth 50 of your English millilitres; and don’t use the fast-bake setting, because it’ll end up too soggy in the middle. I also threw in a spoonful of black treacle. The end result is incredibly moist without being gooey, sweet without being overpowering, and the crust is crisp wihout shattering into shards when you cut it. Perfect with some goat’s cheese…

(Bits of) York underwater

If you’ve arrived here from Google looking for Dell iPods, click here
- but it really isn’t worth it…

According to the local gossip, the River Ouse was supposed to reach it’s highest point at about 14:00 this afternoon - which looked something like this:

As a contrast, this is what things looked like back in October:

York underwater (nearly)

The snow that fell earlier on in the week has melted, and the result looks like this:

That was taken about two hours ago - as we walked over Ouse Bridge about an hour and a half later, the water level had risen by about another four inches. It’ll be a while before we have to worry about the car park underneath here getting flooded, but the footpaths are going to under water before very much longer.