Now: Go Home

Since the latest software upgrade on my gorgeous Sony Xperia T, I have been treated to Google Now each time I use the search bar.
It’s a fairly amazing feature – it detects where I am, what’s around me and uses information I have searched for previously to work out what information might help me… well… now. It then displays that information on little ‘cards’ before I’ve even asked for it.
Now is wow.

Thus, I am treated to weather information, local restaurant reviews, even local news. It keeps me up to date with the latest on Sheffield United. It reads my next calendar appointment and offers directions. If I book a flight, it’ll keep me informed of delays, gate numbers, seat numbers and issue a digital boarding card. If I’m at a train station, details of the next trains to pass through will be displayed.

But I’m not often at train stations, so mainly, it just tells me how long it’s going to take for me to get home.

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Yep. Wherever I go, once I have been stationary for about 5 minutes, Now thinks I’ve probably had enough already and tells me how long it’s going to take me to get home. Tap that little blue arrowhead and it’ll even talk me through it turn by turn. Right now, in the middle of the day, things are looking pretty cool for a quick trip back to Chez 6000. Sadly, I have plenty more to do here before I set off.

This could be seen as all somewhat sinister since I’ve never actually told my phone where I live. It has worked that out for itself. It also now knows where I work and warns me of traffic issues along the way as soon as I set off from home each morning. Again, I’ve never actually told it where I work either. The Sheffield United thing was also a bit of a surprise when it first popped up. It’s ever so clever.

The more paranoid among you will now be wailing and gnashing your teeth over privacy concerns, and if I was a secret agent then I too would be wailing and gnashing (quietly though, so as not to attract attention). But I’m not.

And it’s actually rather comforting to constantly know how long it’s going to take me to get home.

It’s Gone

I know I’ve mentioned the weather more than once recently, but this evening, with another cold front approaching, we finally surrendered and acknowledged that Summer Moved On:

 

Alex and I switched the pool heating off and cut down the pump hours as the realisation that we weren’t going to be needing it any more hit home. It’s always a sad day – the equivalent of turning your central heating on in October (or earlier) in the UK.

But this time summer really has moved on.

At least until the weekend anyway.

Gannet

This isn’t the first time we’ve featured a photo by Chris Wormwell on 6000 miles... That’s because this was the first time we featured a photo by Chris Wormwell on 6000 miles...

But this is beautiful:

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This is a fine example of a Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus), off the coast of the Isle of Man. Chris describes this as “pretty much just a bread and butter shot”, so I look forward to seeing some of his “fine dining” work at some point.

You may see close relatives of this fellow (the bird, not Chris) off the Cape coast too. But those, like just every other bird found around here, take the title ‘Cape’ – Cape Gannet (Morus capensis). And whereas there are loads of Northern Gannets to go around, our local species is classed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, so don’t go poaching them, ok?

There are some pretty cool facts about gannets. They are cleverly adapted (Evolution FTW!) to be able to dive from a great height to catch fish. Because they can hit the water at up to 100kph, special air-sacs within their skull protect them from the massive impact, like biological bubble wrap. Additionally, their nostrils are inside their mouths, preventing that awkward unintentional nasal lavage that can all too often ruin a good dive.
It must make things pretty nasty when they get a cold though. Eww.

Photo credit: Many thanks to Chris for his permission to use his photo.

Next Sunday’s Breakfast

On a whim (and with whatever spare ingredients I could find at the time: bread, eggs, bacon), I made some Baked Eggs in Bacon Wraps for breakfast this morning. The culinary experience that followed was such that I feel safe in advising you to try the same next weekend.

I got my recipe from food.com. Seriously, when you’re looking for some information about food, who else would you choose to trust that the people who own the food.com domain? They must know their onions. Literally. The people at onions.com say so.

Here is that recipe, reproduced with my hints and tips for your delectation:

    1. Preheat oven 375 degrees. That’s 190 degrees Celsius, Gas Mark 5.
    2. In medium frying pan fry bacon to soft transparent stage. See through bacon FTW!
    3. Drain on paper towels.
    4. Line each slice around the side of each muffin cup. Ends may overlap.
    5. Break egg directly in the center of each muffin cup. 12 cup muffin pan. Do you know the muffin man?
    6. Lightly salt and pepper. Kids don’t like pepper. “Too burny!”
    7. Cook 15 to 20 minutes. 13 was enough for mine.
    8. Watch for whites and yolks to begin to set. Unexciting. 
    9. Take out with small spatula on a serving plate. The serving plate got in the way of my small spatula, so I took my small spatula off the serving plate and just used it as a solo small spatula.
    10. Serve with fork and knife. Or go wild and include a spoon.
    11. If you want the tops to be basted,after ten minutes of cooking, baste each egg once with 1/2 teaspoon of water. I don’t like bastard eggs.
    12. You can fry bacon the night before and drain and refrigerate for morning. Don’t do this. You will eat the bacon the night before. Rookie error. 

I have no idea why WordPress has decided to add letters instead of numbers. Here on the back end that list is in numbers. Click ‘Preview’ and suddenly it’s all CAPITAL LETTERS. I don’t like it when computers decided to do things like that. It’s like they think they know best. And they don’t.

yes we do.

Right. That does it. Try and stop me hitting ‘Publish’, you electronic git.

(Obviously, If you’re reading this, I won.)

Last Of The Summer Braaiin’?

That is a legendary title for a post. And yes, I recognise that I announced the onset of winter a couple of weeks ago, but after that dreadful day, apparently summer sobered up, had a bit of a sit down,  realised it missed us all and popped back to prolong itself a bit.
That’s why last week we had this:

While today we were treated to an absolute cracker, with cloudless blue skies, not a breath of wind and temperatures of 30°C.

Perfection.

Mindful that these meteorological conditions have other places to be and can’t stick around forever, we used the time wisely to get in a nice early evening braai:

And while, to the untrained observer, it may appear that there is some sort of breeze blowing, this is Cape Town: our smoke is so used to being moved rapidly in a northwesterly direction that even in flat calm conditions it just comes out of the stack and heads that way automatically.
It is Pavlovian smoke, but you don’t even have to ring a bell to influence its behaviour. This is good because I don’t actually own a bell.

With dwindling supplies of braai wood, now comes a tricky seasonal decision. One must balance the amount of wood one owns, because while on the one hand, you don’t want stacks of wood getting wet and being useless during the winter month, on the other, there will be days when you just need to braai and you just need to have the requisite materials to hand.

It’s a fine line, generally best trodden, I find, by sticking two bags of rooikrans in your garage and having some briquettes on standby.

I shall arrange this tomorrow.