50 before I’m 50 – Learn to smoke meat

As part of my birthday present earlier this year, Fern got me a half day cooking course for Outdoor Dirty Cooking and smoking workshop from Howl Bushcraft, which took place a couple of Sundays ago. As part of the workshop, we learned to smoke fish, venison, and cook over an open fire using leaves to add flavour, and make cuts in meat, build vegetable and leaf wraps, and how to skewer effectively to ensure even cooking.

It was a delicious way to eat food. I think my favourite things were the smoked fish, the seabass and learning to make bannock bread, but it was all delicious. What was great was the ingredients were all largely supermarket bought – the flavour was added from the open plan cooking. Couple that with a beautiful surrounding of the Yorkshire countryside (the camp was located in the grounds of Harewood Estate), I had a fabulous time and would recommend it.

So another of my 50 before I’m 50 has been ticked off the list! I think from the above, definitely can do the leaf wraps on the barbecue (although I don’t trust myself to pick hedge garlic and burdock leaves you can replace with wilted cabbage) and I may try and build a rudimentary smoker, as the smoked haddock was incredible.

A Whinge

Sorry for the radio silence, for I’ve experienced a lot of first world problems.

I’ve had some ups and downs the last few weeks, it’s fair to say. I think I shared the majority of them on the Now page, but the main one was that my laptop had experienced a battery failure, meaning I had to transfer over to my Windows machine (which was slooooooow – seriously I think the only thing that made it slow was Dropbox, but it crippled my machine). Having to spend Friday evening at the Trafford Centre was probably the second most stressful experience in the last few weeks….

The Apple Store in Manchester Trafford Centre

…only broken by an experience of picking up the laptop from The Trafford Centre on the Saturday afternoon of Bank Holiday weekend. Spending a sizeable amount of time driving around to find a car parking space was not how I envisioned to spend the start of the weekend, but I suppose I should count my lucky stars that Apple said it was ready to pick up whilst on the way to Manchester Airport, though it meant we had to swing past The Trafford Centre on the way home – meaning guest’s first experience of the UK was Saturday afternoon in the busiest shopping centre in the North. But it got done.

There’ve been other pesky things – having to ring HMRC as they’ve estimated my income next year to be really high1, a cancellation, potential clients ghosting2 – but having to work without my main laptop was probably the most stressful, meaning I had a slow week, and I needed to catch up – quite how that is manifesting itself in a blog post like this I’m not sure, but it is.

Couple that with the rise of the far right and the fact I lost my Wordle streak this morning means I’ve been in a better place.

There have been highlights mind. I discovered I quite liked Minecraft, I’ve booked tickets to the Manic Street Preachers, I also went to Liverpool and my next post features me ticking off a 50 before I’m 50!

Normal service should resume, soon.

  1. It’s not ↩︎
  2. Seriously, if anybody has a better way than The Magic Email, then I’m happy to hear it ↩︎

Thoughts on “The amazing mail sent to a video game publisher”

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This article did the rounds on my socials and on Bubbles, on how the publisher Panic receives mail by asking for it at the end of their games.

It’s something I was aware of, I finished one of their games (Thank Goodness You’re Here!) and sent them a postcard – I think it was a picture of the high street of the town I live in. So there’s every chance my mail is in the photo in that article.

It’s nothing too high tech, but when you finish you’re encouraged to visit a link mentioned in the credits. In it, it explains to send the developers a note, and if you put a self address envelope back in it, you could receive something back. No guarantees though. It was simple, and I think there was a bit of friction (it wasn’t just emailing them) and a bit of vulnerability (you were sharing your address with them), meant I wanted to do it.

I did message them, and I did get something back. I got this patch.

The article talks about how Activision in the 1980s inspired them, and it wasn’t just them. I have in my collection an “Elite” pin badge you got when you emailed the publishers of the BBC Micro game with a word that appears in the ending.

Sending snail mail related to computer software was rife in the shareware days (the amount of home addresses that appear in magazines and printed in software is ridiculous), but it’s effectively dead now. Which is sad. I did when I was more active on Twitch send my regulars Christmas cards, and I did send Dan Q a postcard as part of his “Postcards from the Internet” series when he asked for them. I’d like to think it gave a bit of joy in folks lives.

I am not going to lie, I’m thinking of adding something similar to my next game.

It’d be nice.

The Primate Experience at the Welsh Mountain Zoo

I’ve talked far too much about AI and how the world is going to shit on my blog over the last week and a bit. Let’s have a blog cleanse.

I mentioned this on my Now page, but over the Easter weekend I treated my mum for a big birthday to the Primate Experience at the Welsh Mountain Zoo, and I wanted to share the gallery here:-

I would recommend the experience! It saw us feed four of the primates (the lemurs, red-faced spider monkey, cotton top tamarins & goeldi’s monkey), and the keeper (Shaun) was excellent and knowledgeable and incredibly generous with his time. You do feed the animals live bugs – one found it’s way into my shoe – but it’s wonderful to get up close to these animals.

I did enjoy the lemurs!

Featured in “Cloudflare made a WordPress for AI agents” on The Verge

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So this is interesting, I was on The Verge last week, as part of the wider discussion on EmDash, I posted a blog post on my thoughts on EmDash, which was cited a bit. I should add – there’s some paywalling on The Verge, so if you can’t see it, sorry.

I remember when the story broke on April Fools Day (seriously), and by the morning of the second I saw a lot of takes on LinkedIn that – considering it was my mum’s milestone birthday – were a bit depressing. I took a step away, wrote something the Monday after, publishing on the Tuesday, with very little social media output, lead to actual decent traction, without the walled garden on LinkedIn (I’m this close to sodding it off now). A few days later I was contacted by the writer with a few more questions and clarifications, and boom, mainstream media coverage.

Moral of the story? Write the best stuff on your own blog, folks. WordPress can always help with that 😉.