whatleydude

Five things of note from this past week. Not as exciting as I’d hoped (I’ve had a week off and, surprisingly, haven’t spend much of it online) but here we go -

1. Troll Hunter! I arrived home yesterday to discover that someone had sent me both the newly-released Blu-Ray of  Troll Hunter as well as a rather funky matching t-shirt. Which in turn meant that last night I finally got to watch a film that I’ve been busting to watch for AGES. You’ll be pleased to hear I was not disappointed and – freebies aside – I’d genuinely recommend seeking it out for its pure scandinavian bonkersness alone.
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2. Rubbish QR Codes. I spotted this ridiculous QR code placement on the tube earlier this week and popped it up on Flickr without thinking about it. Jonathan Waddingham spotted it and, before we knew it, a whole new QRFail blog had been set up. I love Twitter for this kind of stuff. Good work, friends.
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3. #CommsChat. The engagement currency post from Jan 11th got a fair bit of pick up [Huzzah!] and as such, Communicate Magazine asked me to host their weekly Twitter chat with my blog post as the theme. Cracking stuff, with some really nice banter too. Worth a look.
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4. The Marketing Academy opened up nominations for their third year of scholars this past week and – having been a part of the successful first year of entrants – I honestly cannot recommend this enough.
   If you know of a high-potential, rising star in the field of advertising, communications or marketing, why not nominate them today?
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5. Beef Welly! I love cooking. But last week I had guests over and one particular guest insisted on putting together a Beef Wellington with not only the best damn piece of beef I’ve ever laid eyes on (thank you Ginger Pig) but also the finest homemade meal finesse I ever did see.
   It was my first and it was superb. Try it.

Recently, I was kicking off about the lack of ‘sequence mode’ on the new Nokia N8. Sequence mode, for the uninitiated, is basically a way to set the device to snap every ten, twenty or thirty seconds (depending on your preferred setting), basically allowing you to create awesome timelapse videos direct from your mobile phone.

It’s quite a fun feature that’s been present in leading Nokia handsets for several years. Alas, it is lacking in the N8.

However, to my rescue, here comes super-talented coder, Iain Wallace. Shortly after I tweeted about the disappearance of one of my favourite modes of Nokias gone by, Iain reached out and asked if I’d be a tester for an app that would do just that. I said yes (obviously) and have been messing around with ‘Lapsed’ for most of the afternoon.

This is my first take, it’s not brilliant but, expect more in the future…

The app itself isn’t open for public beta (yet) and isn’t available to download (yet). Iain’s still very much in alpha creation mode (many new dev libraries required etc) BUT, eventually, we might see something like this on the Ovi Store… Maybe.

First, watch this -

That’s right, it’s an advert FOR CHIPS.

Such a great ad, wasted on completely the wrong brand/product.

John Lewis?
Maybe.

McCain?
Definitely not.

That is all.

This is today’s navlopomo, I know I have a couple of days MIA from the weekend, but I’ll get round to fixing that sooner or later. I have the videos, I just haven’t published them yet. I’ll be sure to link back to them when they’re backdated and up.

Much love…

How do you feel about Marmite?

Me, I love it. In fact I could eat it with a SPOON.
Obviously, some people hate it. I mean REALLY hate it.

But what if, just imagine, you’d gone through your whole life without ever trying it. Ever.

Well, one morning, out in the middle of Damaraland, that’s exactly what we discovered Manzoor had done.

Something which, of course, we had to rectify…

It wouldn’t be a NaVloPoMo post without tipping you off about someone else’s efforts…
So why not go give one of Benny Crime’s videos a whirl.

You’ll never feel the same again…

Following on from yesterday’s Chocolate Chilli post, I thought I’d share this video that I created using images that I took with my Nokia N82 (set to ‘sequence mode’).

So this is me making chilli and blogging the recipe at the same time.

Enjoy!

And if you’re wondering what the hell ‘sequence mode’ is, don’t worry,
I’ve blogged that too

Doing things in ‘sequence’ – the hidden Nokia feature

Have a great Easter folks!

Cooking, believe it or not, is a big passion of mine.
I’m surprised I don’t blog about it more often actually, maybe I should change that.
The fact of the matter is: I love it.

About a week ago I made this dark chocolate chilli con carne and tonight, I’m doing it again.
This time round, I’m going to share the recipe

So, you will need:

Main Ingredients

• 900g of good quality braising beef
• 1 large white onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 red chillies
• Olive oil (for frying)

Seasonings

• 1 tsp hot chilli powder
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 pinch of dried oregano

Cupboardy Stuff

• 2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes
• 2 tbsp tomato purée
• 20g dark chocolate
• Salt & black pepper
• 2 x 400g red kidney beans
• Beef/Vegetable Stock

So first get yourself large oven proof pan of some kind; I used a massive metal saucepan. It needs to be biggish with a tight-fitting lid. Got that? Good.
Next, preheat the oven to 150C/130C with a fan/300F/Gas 2.

Cut the beef into 1cm-2cm chunks. Peel and chop your onion and garlic; deseed and chop the chillies.
In the pan, brown off your beef on the hob in a little olive oil in batches of for 2-3minutes and put it to one side. Add a little more oil to the pan and then gently cook the onion, garlic and chillies for a few minutes, then stir in your chilli powder and cook for a couple of minutes more.

Remember your beef? You should do, you only put it down five minutes ago. Put that back in the pan and coat with the rest of your seasonings. Stir in both tins of chopped tomatoes and your two tablespoons of tomato purée and then heat through. At this point, we come to the part you’ve been waiting for:

Now stir in your chocolate :)

Season to taste; salt, pepper etc, put the lid on your pan and place in the oven for 1 hour. Yep. ONE HOUR.
Hungry yet? I know I am. Right, while that’s cooking nicely, rinse and drain your kidney beans. You need to stir these into your pan after the hour is up (adding stock if you think the consistency is too dry).
Whack it all back into the over for a further hour, yes – another hour – or until the beef is tender.

Once finished, serve on a bed of rice and enjoy!