With The Old World bringing back two of my white whales from my childhood in the form of Bretonnians and Dwarfs I’ve had a lot of fun projects this year. I wanted to do a slightly different Dwarf scheme than the old green and gold I remember seeing in White Dwarf as a kid and settled on the old Zhufbar livery of white and light blue. It makes for a striking force on the table top and is relatively speedy to paint up as detailed below!

N.B: If I don’t specify a brand I’m using Citadel paints. You can swap for similar Citadel colours although I do highly recommend the Army Painter tones as they work out of the pot and are used in the Marine Juice recipe.

Setting yourself up for success

As mentioned in my previous painting guide I do a Zenithal+ undercoat as so:

1. Black undercoat.

2. Heavy zenithal drybrush* of Mechanicus Standard Grey.

3. Lighter zenithal drybrush of Administratum Grey.

4. A lighter still drybrush of Corax White.

5. Final highlight of Pro Acryl Bold Titanium White.

This should leave you with some nice shadows and strong highlights over which to apply your washes and contrast paints:

*I used Artis Opus drybushes if you are interested...

How To

1. Paint all the metal parts with base colours:

   • Darkstar Platinum for the chainmail

   • Darkstar Tarnished Steel for the weapon parts

   • Runelord Brass for the helmet metallics as well as some details to add variety

   • Pro Acryl Rich Gold for the gold details

2. Wash the silver metallics with Army Painter Dark Tone

3. Wash the gold and brass with Army Painter Strong Tone

4. Paint the blue trim with Lothern Blue

5. Paint the cloth with Ulthuan Grey

6. Use Gagrak’s Sewer contrast on the helmet and leathers

7. Use Gulliman Flesh contrast on the skin

8. Use Black Templar contrast on the boots

9. Use Skeleton Horde on the horns

10. Paint the beard with a basecoat:

    • Thinned down black for a black beard

    • Balor Brown for blonde

    • Rhinox Hide for dark brown

    • Dawnstone for grey

    • Doombull Brown for reddish brown

11. Wash all the non-metallic areas with Sonic Sledgehammer’s Marine Juice

12. Highlight silver metallics with Runefang Steel

13. Highlight gold and brass with Canoptek Alloy

14. Highlight the blue with a 50:50 mix of Lothern Blue and Ulthuan Grey

15. Highlight the cloth with watered down Pro Acryl Bold Titanium White

16. Highlight the beards as so:

    • Mix in some bone colour to make a higlight of the brown/blonde beards

    • Highlight the grey beards with white

    • Highlight the black beards with a light grey

17. Highlight the flesh with Bugman’s Glow

18. Paint the eyes with a small brush using an off white

19. Dot the eyes with black

20. Paint the base rims with Dawnstone

21. Use a suitable basing material such as Geek Gaming Scenic’s Base Ready Mountain Pass

The scheme is relatively quick to get down with most of the shading done using Marine Juice and simple highlights. You could always do more blending to improve the highlights but for painting an army I think this gets the balance about right between speed and quality.

I’m really happy with how these turned out:

If you enjoyed this make sure to check out my painting Instagram, painting Twitter and painting Mastodon accounts and feel free to use the Element Games Affiliate link below to get discounted minis and send some money my way too!

Tom Out!

Inspiration

1. Zhufbar - Respect Your Ancestors. Never Trust An Elf. And Always Hold A Grudge.

I have been sat on a fully constructed Battle of Pelennor Fields box for just about a year after purchasing it as a Christmas present to myself at the tail end of 2021. Having signed up to a few "slay the grey" style challenges in the New Year I thought it was time to start with a nice easy paint job.

N.B: I'm using undiluted paint unless specified. With lots of drybrushing in this guide we aren't watering things down. The colours are Citadel Colours unless specified.

Setting yourself up for success

Most of the painting guides I've seen (inspirations are linked at the bottom) use contrast paints or washes over a white or grey basecoat. Having been enjoying all the various slap chop variants since I got back into the hobby I wanted a method that keeps the brightness of some of my inspirations while also boosting the overall contrast. So here's my undercoat recipe

1. Black undercoat (I used Army Painter Matt Black).

2. Heavy zenithal drybrush* of Mechanicus Standard Grey.

3. Lighter zenithal drybrush of Administratum Grey.

4. A lighter still drybrush of Corax White.

5. Final highlight of Pro Acryl Bold Titanium White.

This should leave you with some nice shadows and strong highlights over which to apply your washes and contrast paints:

I also tried to glaze some old Boltgun Metal on the armour and weapons but I think this stage is unnecessary, you'll see an easier solution for making the metals stand out below....

*I used Artis Opus drybushes if you are interested...

How To

1. Wash the entire mini with Nihilakh Oxide. This will give some of the base colour but also give some interesting texture across the mini.

2. Mix 4 parts Ulthuan Grey to 1 part Warpstone Glow on your palette and do a medium strength zenithal drybush over the mini. At this stage you have a pretty decent statue effect that could be used for scenery.

3. Wash any weapons and armour with Drakenhof Nightshade.

4. Wash the hair and beards with either Seraphim Sepia or Cassandora Yellow (mix it up to give some variety to the minis).

5. Use a 50:50 mix of Contrast Medium and Hexwraith Flame all over the mini.†

6. Once everything has dried use your favoured basing materials (I used Base Ready Fields of New Zealand) and paint the base rim (I used some old Bestial Brown to match my existing MESBG forces).

7. Once everything is dry come back with a small drybrush and a 4:1 mix of Pro Acryl Bold Titanium White to Hexwraith Flame and try to catch the tufts and basing material as if the light has been cast from the miniature.

Games Workshop Army of the Dead miniature washed with Nihilakh Oxide technical paint

Games Workshop Army of the Dead miniature drybrushed with a mix of Ulthuan Grey and Warpstone Glow

Games Workshop Army of the Dead miniature washed with thinned Hexwraith Flame contrast paint

Games Workshop Army of the Dead miniature with weapons washed with Drakenhof Nightshade wash

†Tweak this mix slightly to boost or reduce the green glow effect. I did 10 of my minis with a 50:50 mix and 10 with about a 70:30 mix of Hexwraith to Contrast Medium.

I didn't want these minis to end up too washed out nor too saturated and cartoony. I'm quite happy that I managed to get that sepulchral glow in a way I feel is in keeping with my existing MESBG minis. That being said I feel that the Army of the Dead will always stand out a bit on the tabletop and that's part of the appeal of them. All that is needed now is a quick cinematic photoshoot:

If you enjoyed this make sure to check out my painting Instagram, painting Twitter and painting Mastodon accounts and feel free to use the Element Games Affiliate link below to get discounted minis and send some money my way too!

Tom Out!

Inspiration

1. FauxHammer: How to Paint Warriors of the Dead

2. Lord of the Rings – Army of the Dead

3. Showcase: Lord of the Rings The Three Hunters & Warriors of the Dead

After successfully turning my hand to vegan Christmas cake I thought it was high time I adapted my old Christmas pudding recipe to be vegan too.

A few notes on the vegan changes in advance:

• For all the alcohol I used Barnivore to check if things were vegan (unless it specified on the bottle).

• I swapped out the eggs for two tablespoons of aquafaba per egg in the original recipe.

• I used vegetable suet which is easy to source in the UK. An alternative if it is hard to find is extra virgin coconut oil.

Ingredients

Makes enough for 3 pints (1.5 litres) worth of puddings. I made a small (1 pint pudding) and a big (2 pint pudding). The recipe scales easily based on the number of puddings you need to make.

• 75 g plain flour

• Pinch of salt

• 3 teaspoons mixed spice

• 150 g currants

• 150 g sultanas

• 150 g raisins

• 150 g mixed peel

• 150 g shredded vegetable suet

• 150 g soft brown sugar

• 150 g fine white breadcrumbs

• 75 g chopped blanched almonds*

• Grated rind of 1 lemon

• 90 ml (6 tablespoons) of aquafaba

• 45 ml (3 tablespoons) black treacle

• 15 ml (1 tablespoon) brandy†

• A little stout or almond milk for mixing‡

To make this recipe gluten free you would need to:

• Use gluten free flour.

• Replace the suet with coconut oil.

• Swap the breadcrumbs for gluten free breadcrumbs/almond flour.

*Removing the nuts would make the recipe nut free but I enjoy the extra texture.

†You will also need extra brandy if you wish to soak your fruit.

‡I change the stout every year, this year I went for Guinness Extra Stout as it was easy to confirm its vegan-ness.

How-To

1. A day ahead of baking, put the dried fruit in a mixing bowl and add a few tablespoons of brandy to the fruit. Leave overnight in a covered bowl.

2. Sieve together the flour, salt and spice and add to the fruit.

3. Add the suet, sugar, breadcrumbs, lemon rind and nuts then mix well.

4. Add aquafaba, brandy and treacle then stir. Slowly add stout/almond milk to make a soft clinging mixture.

5. Divide between 2 greased (vegetable oil/vegan spread works here) basins, leaving about 1 cm headspace.

6. Cover with a double thickness of greaseproof paper or tinfoil.

7. Put basins in a slow cooker and pour 2 pints (around a litre) of hot water around them (my slow cooker can only cook one pudding at a time so I put the other pudding in the fridge while I waited).

8. Heat on high for 1 hour then on low for 12 hours or alternatively on high for 7 hours.

9. To reheat: heat on high for 3 hours in 2 pints of hot water.

Now a Christmas pudding takes a little while to mature but this paragraph will be replaced with photos of the finished product when it is consumed in December 😋.

Tom Out!

I have recently made a Discord bot that searches for online versions of board games to help people find games to play remotely. This link will add it to your server.

Discord embeds have a colour bar down the side that can be manually set. I thought it would be cool to have this display the 'average' (i.e. dominant) colour of the board game box and decided to investigate the best way to do it.

For this post I've used these images as examples:

N.B: The Altiplano image has a lower resolution so it is quicker to get the clusters on that image.

TL;DR

The average (mean) of most images is usually brown. That's generally not that useful and when people search for "the average colour of an image" they likely want the average (mode) of an image. We can quickly get the dominant color using k-means clustering. See my code on GitHub that does a comparison of a few methods.

sklearn

The first method I stumbled across was in a Medium post.[1] It leverages sklearn to do this and works pretty well. This is my version based off of that post:

import numpy as np
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
from skimage import io

def sklearn_dominant_colour(img_url, colours=5):
    '''
    Dominant Colour method using sklearn, based on:
    https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/colour-separation-in-an-image-using-kmeans-clustering-using-python-f994fa398454
    '''
    img = io.imread(img_url)
    img = img.reshape((-1, 3))

    cluster = KMeans(n_clusters=colours)
    cluster.fit(img)
    labels = cluster.labels_
    labels = list(labels)
    centroid = cluster.cluster_centers_

    percent = []
    for i in range(len(centroid)):
        j = labels.count(i)
        j = j/(len(labels))
        percent.append(j)    

    indices = np.argsort(percent)[::-1]
    dominant = centroid[indices[0]]

    return dominant, labels, centroid

The version on GitHub also has timing info for each section.

And the results for 5 clusters on our example images:

The issue with this is that even for 5 clusters it takes 21 seconds to run on the 6 Nimmt! image. For a nice to have, frivolous, feature of my bot I can't increase the time taken for an embed to be returned by that much. So I needed to look for other methods.

OpenCV

The second method I found was in a Stack Overflow answer.[2] This method definitely works and has a really nice example with a set of LEGO bricks in the answer.

My version of this is as so:

import numpy as np
from cv2 import cv2
from skimage import io

def cv2_dominant_colour(img_url, colours=5):

    '''
    Dominant Colour method using open cv, based on
    https://stackoverflow.com/a/43111221/2523885
    '''
    img = io.imread(img_url)
    pixels = np.float32(img.reshape(-1, 3))
    n_colours = colours

    criteria = (cv2.TERM_CRITERIA_EPS + cv2.TERM_CRITERIA_MAX_ITER, 200, .1)
    flags = cv2.KMEANS_RANDOM_CENTERS
    _, labels, centroid = cv2.kmeans(pixels, n_colours, None, criteria, 10, flags)
    labels = labels.flatten().tolist()
    _, counts = np.unique(labels, return_counts=True)
    dominant = centroid[np.argmax(counts)]

    return dominant, labels, centroid

The version on GitHub also has timing info for each section.

And the results for 5 clusters on our example images:

Faster, yes! But still a few seconds per image is probably too long for my bot that I want to be fairly responsive.

Speeding it Up

I really wanted to get this down to, at most, a second per image. That seemed like a reasonable goal if I could improve the efficiency of the algorithm.

Fast Method

So this was my first attempt at speeding up the algorithm by playing around with tolerances. Turns out the CV2 method was pretty well optimised so actually I ended up speeding up the sklearn version:

import numpy as np
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
from skimage import io

def fast_dominant_colour(img_url, colours=5):
    '''
    Faster method for web use that speeds up the sklearn variant.
    '''
    img = io.imread(img_url)
    img = img.reshape((-1, 3))

    cluster = KMeans(n_clusters=colours, n_init=3, max_iter=10, tol=0.001)
    cluster.fit(img)
    labels = cluster.labels_
    centroid = cluster.cluster_centers_

    percent = []
    _, counts = np.unique(labels, return_counts=True)
    for i in range(len(centroid)):
        j = counts[i]
        j = j/(len(labels))
        percent.append(j)

    indices = np.argsort(percent)[::-1]
    dominant = centroid[indices[0]]

    return dominant, labels, centroid

This allows us to improve it further still:

Altiplano is matching CV2 now but this method is otherwise faster (also faster with more clusters, see the gallery below).

Faster Method

Now we can go a step further and reduce the number of pixels we have to process by resampling the image before we get our clusters. Scaling the image to 1/10th the size we get:

import numpy as np
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
from skimage import io
from skimage.transform import rescale

def fast_dominant_colour(img_url, colours=5, scale=0.1):
    '''
    Faster method for web use that speeds up the sklearn variant.
    Also can use a scaling factor to improve the speed at cost of
    accuracy
    '''
    img = io.imread(img_url)
    if scale != 1.0:
        img = rescale(img, scale, multichannel=True)
        img = img * 255
    img = img.reshape((-1, 3))

    cluster = KMeans(n_clusters=colours, n_init=3, max_iter=10, tol=0.001)
    cluster.fit(img)
    labels = cluster.labels_
    centroid = cluster.cluster_centers_

    percent = []
    _, counts = np.unique(labels, return_counts=True)
    for i in range(len(centroid)):
        j = counts[i]
        j = j/(len(labels))
        percent.append(j)

    indices = np.argsort(percent)[::-1]
    dominant = centroid[indices[0]]

    return dominant, labels, centroid

Now this certainly introduces more errors. You can see that in the examples below. For a larger image with one main colour like 6 Nimmt we still get the correct dominant colour but in Altiplano it does not match the other methods.

The fast method is therefore probably the best option but scaling can still be useful...

Running On a Web Server

I have a fairly simple Linux webserver I use to host my bots and a website. This falls over due to a very large numpy array if you have a high def image so I added a very simple check into my bot code to use the fastest method if the image is larger than 1080p:

if shape[0] > 1920 and shape[1] > 1080:
    img = rescale(img, 0.1, multichannel=True)
    img = img * 255
    if debug:
        print(f'x0.10 Scaled shape: {np.shape(img)}')

And now my bot can add a snazzy coloured embed, here are some examples:

So I hope you find that helpful if you want to (relatively quickly) extract the dominant colour from an image. The git repo showing the comparisons above is a place to start if you want to use these functions.

Tom Out!

References

1. Color Separation in an Image using KMeans Clustering using Python

2. How to find the average colour of an image in Python with OpenCV?

So it may just be because it is 2020 or perhaps I'm just a bit lazy but I’ve found that I often start holiday breaks with a list of things I’d like to do and by the end of the trip* I’ve not achieved most of them. Whether it’s odd jobs or relaxing activities I wanted to get through I just accidental sit around and don’t do them. This holiday season I decided I needed a to do list and though I’d try out the new Todoist Boards feature.

*Or, let’s be real this year: sitting on the sofa at home.

Todoist

I have long used Kanban boards at work but my personal tracking has been through Todoist for over 5 years now to track personal tasks, errands and pretty much anything else I don’t want to keep in my mental RAM. Until recently Todoist just offered a fairly basic to do list format with projects and sub projects. This is more than enough for my normal productivity method of lists of things with timed reminders (or if I’m feeling fancy: location based reminders).

For things that are less time critical (or not at all location dependent) a Kanban board makes more sense. Especially when they are vaguer topics like “Read this book” or “Play this video game". Perfect for my holiday list!

The Holiday Do List

The principle behind this list is quite simple and a bit reminiscent of Getting Things Done. In the run up to your holiday:

• Capture your ideas on the list (The Ideas column)

• (Optionally) Categorise them with tags/labels etc

Then on holiday you just follow the standard Kanban system:

• A To Do column, for pulling things out of the ideas list, these are things you plan to do in the next few days

• A Doing column, for things that are in progress

• A Done column, for when things are finished

The one annoyance at the moment is it doesn’t seem possible to setup the “Done” column to automatically mark a task dragged into as done. It’s not hard to click it done and you can make completed tasks visible if you like.

You can of course use any section headings that help you from the specific to the more general. I’ve just found this has been a better way of encouraging me to make use of my time so that when I look back over my break I don’t feel like I’ve done nothing with it.†

TL;DR: I find this tool helps me keep abreast of things I wanted to get done over my longer breaks and not get swamped by side projects/books/other things I want to do with my time off. It has less complexity than planning timeslots to do each of the tasks which tends to take away from the holiday aspect a bit too much (for me anyway).

†This is not in any way a judgement on people who choose to take a complete break over their holidays. I just like to structure my holidays somewhat; it is a personal choice.

Tom Out!

References

[1] Todoist: Kanban

Remote interviews are a fact of life for every podcaster, and in today’s era of social distancing, more so than ever. Since you rarely get the chance at an interview do-over, nailing down your remote recording workflow is essential. We’ll show you how to prepare for and record a remote interview, so you get it right the first time — with some additional tips along the way to make sure all your bases are covered. 

Choose the right remote recording setup for your podcast

The first step is to determine the remote recording setup that best suits the format and content of your podcast and your production and editing workflow.

In most cases, your best solution will involve recording remote interviews on Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts, or a similar online conferencing service. This low-friction setup makes it easy for guests or co-hosts to contribute, but you’ll need to make sure you have the right software to record these interviews.

It’s also wise to make sure you can record phone calls. Phone interviews don’t offer great audio fidelity, but they make a great backup option in case of technical problems or schedule changes. Phone interviews probably won’t be your first choice, but it’s a good idea to be able to record a phone call just in case you need to. 

If you’re recording with the same remote co-host on each episode of your podcast, consider a double-ender setup, in which you and your co-host record your own audio tracks locally and combine them in post-production. For most podcasters, this isn’t the most convenient solution, but it does translate into the highest audio fidelity for you and your co-host.

The best way to record an interview is to prepare for it

When it comes to interviewing — especially remote interviewing — a little preparation goes a long way.

Do some research into your guest’s background, expertise, and projects. Who are they? Why is their work notable? What do you (and in turn, your audience) hope to learn from them?

Putting together a rough outline of the questions you’d like to ask will come in very handy. Write down a handful of specific questions and key points, but keep your outline broad and high-level. That’ll allow you to more easily adapt to the flow of conversation.

Maintaining that conversational flow remotely can be substantially trickier than doing so person-to-person. Prime yourself to listen more than you speak — in particular, try not to interrupt your guest. Editing out awkward silences between speakers is much easier than dealing with too much crosstalk!

When it’s time to record the interview, take a couple final preparatory steps to ensure a clean recording. Close all unnecessary software and set your computer to “Do Not Disturb” mode to make sure unwanted distractions don’t pop up (or worse: end up in the recording).

How to record a Skype call, Zoom interview, or Google Hangout

For most remote recording situations, Zoom, Skype, or Google Hangouts are your platforms of choice. All three are easy to set up, simple for guests to use, and feature audio fidelity good enough for most podcasts. 

Both Zoom and Skype offer built-in call recording functionality, but Google Hangouts currently limits this offering to enterprise users. There’s an additional caveat: the file format (.MP4 or .M4A) that each platform outputs may not be what you want, depending on your podcast production and editing workflow.

For maximum control over your final product, you’re better off using third-party apps to record computer system audio directly into the recording software of your choice rather than relying on their recording functionality.

If you’re on a Mac, BlackHole is a great open-source tool that allows you to route audio between apps, which means you can record the audio output from Zoom (or Skype, or Google Hangouts) directly into your preferred recording software. On Windows, Virtual Audio Cable offers similar functionality. 

If you’re already using Descript to record, you won’t need to use additional audio routing software. When recording audio into Descript, open the Record panel, choose Add a Track, select your input, and choose “Computer audio.” Click the Record button whenever you’re ready, and audio from Zoom, Skype, or Google Hangouts will be piped into Descript. 

No matter which remote recording setup you use, make sure you test it — and test it again — with a friend or colleague before you’re actually recording your podcast. Troubleshooting when you should be interviewing ranks near the top of everyone’s Least Favorite Things To Deal With, so make sure everything is in order before your guest is on the line.

How to record a phone interview with Google Voice

Social distancing means nearly everyone has gotten used to handling calls and meetings on Zoom, Skype, or Google Hangouts. But maybe your podcast guest is really old-school, or their computer is on the fritz, or maybe they’re simply only able to access a phone during your scheduled call time. It’s likely phone interviews will never be your first choice, but being able to record an old-fashioned phone call will come in handy.

Recording phone calls can be tricky, but using Google Voice to make an outgoing phone call from your computer means you can use the same remote recording setup detailed above to record the call.

Follow Google’s instructions to set up Google Voice and then learn how to make an outgoing call. Once everything’s set up, you’ll be able to record phone calls with Google Voice just like you’d record an interview on Zoom or Skype. 

Again, make sure to test with a friend and then test again before your interview. 

If lossless audio quality is a must, record a “double-ender”

For most remote recording situations, Zoom, Skype, or Google Hangouts are your platforms of choice. All three are easy to set up, simple for guests to use, and feature audio fidelity good enough for most podcasts. 

But if you have a remote co-host that regularly appears on your podcast, and you want to maximize the quality of your audio, a “double-ender” is the way to go: Each host or guest records themselves locally, and audio tracks are combined in post-production. For an additional cost, you can use third-party recording platforms that simulate double-enders without each speaker managing their own recording software.

A traditional double-ender sees each speaker recording their own audio track using their recording software of choice (Descript, Audacity, Quicktime, etc.), and then the host or editor combines each speaker’s recording into a finished product. Each speaker should have a decent microphone — if they’re using a laptop microphone to record, you probably won’t hear a substantial advantage with a double-ender over a Zoom, Skype, or Google Hangouts recording.

Alternatively, you can simulate a double-ender by using a platform like SquadCast, Zencastr, or Cleanfeed. These services record lossless audio from each speaker, upload each track to the cloud, and combine them automatically. These platforms cost money, but they’re a great alternative to a double-ender when guests or co-hosts don’t have the time or wherewithal to fiddle with recording themselves locally. Again, make sure each speaker has a decent microphone — otherwise you won’t reap the full benefits of lossless audio.

Make remote recording hassles a thing of the past

Recording your podcast remotely isn’t painless, but once you get the hang of it — and nail down your workflow — it’ll become second nature.

While You’re Here

Checkout my post on my podcasting setup: Podcasting Setup 2017

Permalink

]]>How to Record a Podcast Remotely And Get It Right The First TimeTinkerLinuxMATLABThomas WilkinsonTue, 23 Jun 2020 14:12:09 +0000https://tinkertailorsoldiersponge.com/blog/matlab-r2020a-on-fedora-3255801e15e4b00ddc71aed22b:5582d68ce4b0c39562640bcf:5ef20624dbdf867012b2ff0eIn which I need to slightly circumvent the normal installation…

For work purposes I’m currently dual booting into Linux. I will be making a post about the reasons why at some point soon. For this I opted to use the latest version of Fedora,

Fedora 32 is excellent but I have found some occasional issues where software I need to install doesn’t quite work out of the box. Mostly because software releases are a bit behind on the latest libraries. MATLAB was one such program so here’s how to get it working. Links to the posts that helped me work this out at the bottom of the page.

The Issue

MATLAB provides a Linux installer package but when trying to run the install script I got the following error:

$ terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::runtime_error'
$  what():  Unable to launch the MATLABWindow application
$ Aborted

The Fix

1. Under Fedora the installer won't launch in the standard GNOME enivronment so you will need to install XFCE4 and some requirements:

   $ sudo dnf install libxcrypt-compat libnsl
   $ sudo dnf groupinstall -y "Xfce Desktop"

2. Restart your computer and then ensure you log in to an XFCE session at the login prompt.
3. If you haven’t logged in to your Mathworks account and downloaded the Linux installer package do so here: https://mathworks.com/downloads/web_downloads/download_release?release=R2020a
4. Unzip the package.
5. Delete the old crypto library provided in the MATLAB installer:

   $ cd /home/YourUserName/Downloads/matlab_R2020a_glnxa64/bin/glnxa64
   $ rm libcrypto.so.1.1

6. Then run the installer as normal:

   $ sudo ./install

7. Continue with the installation as normal:

   1. Enter your Mathworks account details.

   2. Leave the destination folder as /usr/local/MATLAB/R2020a.

   3. Select the products you want.

   4. Wait for the installer to download all the files anf install them. This is quite a big download (mine was around 14 Gb). On a decent fibre connection though the whol process should take less than 10 minutes.

   5. Close the installer.

8. To run the program just run:

   $ /usr/local/MATLAB/R2020a/bin/matlab

And there you have it. There are some screenshots bleow.

Tom Out!

References

[1] Fedora 30 Matlab Not Installing available at https://mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/487256-fedora-30-matlab-not-installing [Accesed 23 June 2020]

[2] Error while installing MATLAB R2020a on Fedora 32 available at https://mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/514366-error-while-installing-matlab-r2020a-on-fedora-32 [Accessed 23 June 2020]

Generally I like to start a campaign with the world still in my head and get a feel for it before setting locations in stone. There comes a time, however, when your players need to leave their starting locations and you have to stop being wishy-washy about how long travel takes. That is when a map is called for. This is a guide on how to generate the kind of map I like using Photoshop and some select tools.

Tools

• Photoshop CS6 (or newer)

• Brush Sets:

  • Fantasy Cartography Brushes - Essentials By Joel Pigou*

  • Sea Creatures Volume 2

• Fonts:

  • JSL Ancient

* You can also get an extended set of these brushes for a mere $10. I'd recommend getting those too.

How-To

Generating A Map

You have a few choices here:

• If you are better at drawing than I am you can sketch out the large scale world map and scan the outline in as your base map.

• You can use an existing map generator to get an outline. Getting a decent quality map to download is usually a paid feature and you will need a high enough resolution that it stands up when you zoom in (for reference: my final map was 29765 by 21260 pixels).

• You can generate random land masses as per reference [1] which I will summarise below.

1. In a new layer: render some clouds Filters > Render > Clouds.
2. Create a threshold layer to leave you with just the shape Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Threshold.
3. In a new layer: Use a black brush to remove any unwanted land. You will probably need to do this with several sizes of brush as I found I had lots of small lakes that were unnecessary.
4. Copy a merged selection onto a new layer and fill with your land colour. I chose to use a mid-brown (#D6C9A9) to give my map an 'older' feel and compare to the light brown (#D7CCB8) of the oceans.

It should look something like this:

Concentric Rings

I wanted to recreate an effect that I have seen on some older maps where the land edges are repeated like ripples out into the sea.

1. Download ripples.zip from reference [2].
2. Unzip the countour files.

3. Select your land layer and add an outer glow effect with the following parameters:

   • Blending mode = Normal
   • Opacity = 100%
   • Colour to a contrasting colour (I used https://www.colorhexa.com/40200b)
   • Technique = Precise
   • Size to how far the ripples need to project into the sea
   • Anti-aliased = True

4. Load the contour file that gives the desired look for your ripples (I prefer the Waves file).

It should look something like this:

Populating Your World

This is by far the easiest part. Grab a brush you like and start clicking away. I'd recommend having layers by type, e.g.: terrain, settlements.

Just make sure you have the correct layer selected when you are adding the relevant brushes. This is particularly useful if you want to quickly hide a layer to modify something or for when your players request a specific view of the map†.

If you are struggling with ideas for your fantasy world I would recommend the huge Reading List on /r/WorldBuilding.

Here's part of the starting area for my campaign with some terrain and settlements thrown in:

The whole world is by no means finished and don't worry about perhaps adding something later on as the players discover new areas.

†Political map? Why not throw it in a layer and hide it when not needed?

Labelling Your World

1. Grab yourself a nice font and install it. I used JSL Ancient.
2. Add your labels using the Text Tool.
3. For labels over terrain apply an Outer Glow to the layer. I set the colour of the glow to be a slightly lighter shade than the land colour. This looks more in keeping than a white glow but still stands out over black terrain.

Your nicely labelled map should look like this:

Parchment Effects

A brief summary of [4]:

1. Make a new layer and render some Clouds like we did above.
2. Apply a spatter: Filters > Brush Strokes > Spatter and drag the sliders to maximum.
3. Set the blend mode to Overlay and pick an opacity that works for you.
4. Create another new layer full of Clouds.
5. Then apply a cutout: Filters > Artistic > Cutout and set the following options:
   • Number of Levels = 4
   • Edge Simplicity = 3
   • Edge Fidelity = 3
6. Overlay this layer and set the opacity appropriately.
7. Create another new layer and use the burn tool around the edges of the map to give a stained look to the document.
8. Finally I threw in some borders, sea monsters and a compass to complete the map look.

Here's the whole process to finalise the map:

Conclusion

And there you have it:

I'm still filling in locations as my players explore the world. There's still a fair way to go for the full map:

I recommend starting at a grander scale with the most important geographical features and large settlements. The more you can fill in ahead of time the better but sometimes it is just best to go with the flow and fill in ideas your players have on their travels. Fun as I find world and map generators, a world feels more like you and your players own it if you make a map like this while incorporating their ideas.

Tom Out!

P.S. You can read my occasional posts about RPGs I run/play over on my other website.

References

[1] How to Generate Random Terrain Using Photoshop

[2] How to make concentric coastal ripple effects with outer glow in Photoshop

[3] /r/Worldbuilding's Reading List

[4] Photoshop Old Paper Background Texture

The Year of Me

Fans of Cortex (a podcast from CGP Grey and Myke Hurley) will be aware of the concept of yearly themes. This year they were talking about the concept of the Year of Me* where you take stock and refocus on things that matter to you. Since this is my first year doing such a theme I feel that I will take this in its purest form: I'm approaching 30 so is my life headed in the direction I want?

*I know it sounds very self-centered but I didn't chose the naming scheme, be assured that I'm not planning on changing my personality. The theme is more of a guideline/goal to have in mind during the year to keep myself on track.

Job

I started a new job at my old company to coincide with the New Year. It's an opportunity for me to grow and also have more responsibilities. It's always hard to move away from something but I feel this was the correct decision for me. I've already had a lot of agency and feel I'm having a direct (and beneficial) effect on the running of the company. It's been a pretty busy first month but I've been introducing systems, chatting to our new PhD students and generally feel like the move back has been a good one.

Podcasting

Last year was a good year with some amazing guests on Hat of Many Things and decent listenership for Unparliametary Language. We've also (just if you count January) launched two other shows hosted by friends in the form of Astracast and Mish Mash Mayhem. The main thing that suffered was Dr Wilko's which is more of a passion project than the others. I will probably play with the format a bit this year and see what sticks. I have some ideas to tie it further into my reviews at Luxury London.

I also have some idea for modifying how I handle the back-end of the podcasts which I plan to tinker with in the near future. First I intend to move tawilkinson.com off of SquareSpace to reduce the cost of running it.

Volunteering

I want to be very clear that the "Year of Me" doesn't mean I'll stop my ongoing volunteering (Scouting and the Marathon mostly) but I won't be so fast to take up new things for a bit. It would be nice to have a few weekends at home where I do nothing.

Fitness

I have two fitness goals this year:

1. Run the London Marathon 2019 in under 5 hours.

2. Make decent progress towards by 20 Quality Mountain Days (QMDs) required for my Mountain Leader training.

The first is already in progress as I'm now only 11 weeks away from race day. I am running for the Teenage Cancer Trust and need to raise £2,000 at a minimum. Based on my most recent run I think over the next 3 months I can get to within my time goal.

The second goal needs some more planning but I hope I can get 5 solid weekends in over the summer. There are a lot of mountains I haven't had the opportunity to summit yet so hopefully there will be a chance to hike all over the country this year.

Social

This section is really just here to stress my footnote from above. Keeping my personal goals in mind isn't intended to reduce the amount of social activities I will go to. I might say yes to slightly fewer events if it would get in the way of other things but hopefully it won't be too many.

Gaming

I found more time to game last year but since the New Year I haven't really played anything at all. I have a ridiculous backlog (what's worse my video game or book backlog? I'm not sure) that needs work. A big issue I have is that I feel the need to sit down for several hours with a game and often I don't get long, uninterrupted blocks of time. The Switch is really helping with this as it is so easy to pause a game and pick up from where I left off. I need to get into a better routine with PC games though. Also I should probably stop buying games in every Steam sale...

I've also purchased some more RPGs I would like to try. I've been running a regular(ish) 5e game for about a year now and I'm playing in an occasional 5e game. I think I'm most likely to tryout my new purchases by running oneshots for friends who get less opportunity to play RPGs throughout the year.† There's also the Student Nationals that I will be DMing at for the first time this year that I'm looking forward to.

†All hail Friend Computer!

Tom Out!

I'm not going to cover how to install Plex on FreeNAS as it is very easy using the plugins system explained in the docs.[1]

Upgrading, however, is a different issue. While the plugin does get updates that will preserve your data they are often quite behind the release schedule of the Plex team. Also I have had issues with some of my Plex plugins (like Trakt.tv) after using this upgrade method. In the past I have tried a hodgepodge of different methods to acheive it but now the most reliable method is using the PMS Updater script.[2]

Tools

• A FreeNAS 11 server with the Plex plugin installed
• PMS Updater

How-To

1. Turn the plugin off.
2. ssh into your server and create a zfs snasphot using the warden: warden zfsmksnap <name of jail>.* [3]
3. Find the jail number using jls then sudo jexec <jail number> into the jail.
4. Download PMS Updater from Github: wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mstinaff/PMS_Updater/master/PMS_Updater.sh –no-check-certificate
5. Enable the script: chmod +x PMS_Updater.sh
6. Then run it: ./PMS_Updater.sh -v -a -u <Plex user> -p <Plex password>
7. This script will do the bulk of the work including a backup but it won't properly restart until you turn the plugin back on in the GUI.

*Probably plexmediasever_1 unless you have multiple.

Tom Out!

References

[1] Plugins, FreeNAS.org: https://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_plugins.html

[2] PMS Updater, mstinaff on Github: https://github.com/mstinaff/PMS_Updater/blob/master/README.md

[3] Jails. How should I do things?, FreeBSD forums: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/jails-how-should-i-do-things.41975/ 

If you listen to podcasts you won't be surprised to hear adverts for Squarespace's hosting platform. It's also what this website and my associated podcasts run on.[1][2][3] The inbuilt analytics are pretty decent but when it comes to RSS feeds for podcasts they suffer from all the limitations that tracking RSS has.[4]

Podtrac is a service that aims to fix this.[5] Unfortunately it used to be a massive faff to get it working with Squarespace.[6] Fortunately following the latest update to the platform it is now really easy.

How-to

• Add your audio block as normal to your podcast blog post.

• Edit the Audio block.

• Go to the "Podcasting" tab.
• Add https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/ as the "Podcast Analytics URL".

• When you publish the post you will notice your download link now look like this: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/static1.sqaurespace.com/static/<uniqueid>/<episode>.mp3.

• Enjoy your new podcast stats!

Tom Out!

References

[1] Wilkinson, T. A. and Lamb, M. (2018) Hat of Many Things. [online, Accessed: 24/04/18].

[2] Wilkinson, T. A. (2018) Dr Wilko's Campaign for Better Beverages. [online, Accessed: 24/04/18].

[3] Wilkinson, T. A. and Attwood, R. (2018) Unparliamentary Language. [online, Accessed: 24/04/18].

[4] Finn, K. (2014) Podcast Subscribers: These are not the statistics you’re looking for. [online, Accessed: 24/04/18].

[5] Podtrac (2018) Podtrac. [online, Accessed: 24/04/18].

[6] Shompole, L. (2018) Setting up Podtrac on Squarespace Podcasting . [online, Accessed: 24/04/18].

For many years I have been making a variation on Gordon Ramsay's scrambled eggs.[1]

Ingredients

• knob of butter
• 3 eggs
• dash of milk
• 1/2 tbsp mascarpone
• (optional) chives/smoked salmon
• (to serve) toast

Method

1. Put a knob of butter in a saucepan over a low to medium heat.
2. Once the butter starts melting break the eggs into the pan.
3. Scramble the eggs while trying to keep the yolks intact.
4. Remove from the heat and keep stirring while breaking the yolks.
5. Return to the heat while adding the milk.
6. Continue to scramble moving off the heat if they cook too quickly.
7. Add mascarpone and continue to scramble off the heat.
8. Add pepper and salt while continuing to stir.
9. (Optionally) add smoked salmon or chives.
10. Serve on toast.

1: Put a knob of butter in the pan.

2: Start to cook the eggs in the butter.

3: Begin to scramble on the heat.

4: Continue to scramble alternating on and off the heat.

5: Add mascarpone.

6: Season.

7: Mix together then serve.

Enjoy!

Tom Out!

References

[1] Gordon Ramsay's Scrambled Eggs

It's been a pretty exciting year for me. I've started two podcasts, changed jobs and started reviewing food and drink for Luxury London. Less travel in my new job means that I've been able to spend more of my spare time on my side projects. All in all that's lead to:

 25 podcast episodes, 11 food/drink reviews, 9 blog posts

And I'm hoping there will be many more in 2018.

This Blog

I've managed 14,500 page views this year which is down from previous years. I know that my most popular content is tech related and I do have plans to focus more on writing that kind of content this year. My most popular post is still Word 2010: How to Insert Numbered Equations Properly with over a quarter of my traffic. Now that I'm doing more day to day programming I'm hoping to write about that more.

Podcasts

Hat of Many Things

I started podcasting with my friend Mike in June. We cover a variety of topics drawn randomly from a hat. It's been a fun learning curve for me on the editing side of things and a few issues with OneDrive sync aside it's been fairly easy to keep on top of.

Starting with only 25 subscribers for our first episode we have now acheived around 1700 which I think is pretty good growth for two unknown podcasters. The randomness of the podcast probably acts against us in this regard but we feel as the core concept we can't get rid of that. Our subscriber count has definitely been helped by some of our guests as Magic Mark Adams shared our Masculinity episode with his followers and our excellent board game guests helped us make it onto the iTunes chart in France.

Dr Wilko's

A benefit of purchasing all the gear to start podcasting is that I had the time to make use of a domain name I purchased a few years ago and didn't have a particular use for. Making and drinking a cocktail on a (roughly) weekly basis has been a fun endeavour. Not only have my cocktail making skills improved but I've had the opportunity to host a cocktail evening with other food reviewers and I'm sure there will be more of them in the future.

A side benefit is that via my Facebook page I landed a gig reviewing food and drink for Luxury London.

Reviewing

Since September I've been reviewing for Luxury London. It's been a great experience so far and has helped introduce me to a lot of the dining and drinking options around London. This is particularly good as I'm now working in central London and feel like a true Londoner again for the first since I went off to uni. I'm really looking forward to expanding the rnage of things I get to review in the new year.

Conclusion

It's been a fun year and I'm really looking forward to having new and interesting conversations and trying excellent new cocktials in the New Year.

Tom Out!

Due to moving house and the festive period I've been a little less productive the last two months but here's the digest.

You can get the digest only RSS here: https://www.tinkertailorsoldiersponge.com/blog?format=rss&category=Digest

Podcasts

Dr Wilko's Campaign For Better Beverages

I only managed 2 episodes due to the move. I have recorded 1 more coming early January and started work on a long form audio review. I also managed to review a gin distillery and some mince pies.

Episodes

• 14: Mojito
• 15: Winter Warmers

Reviews

• Plymouth Gin Distillery
• London Coffee Shop Mince Pies 2017

Hat of Many Things

Another 2 full episodes out, again my house move got in the way a bit. We also recorded our festive episode that should be out shortly.

Episodes

• 9: That Guy Brought His Fists To A Knife Fight
• 10: Post Pop Punk Revival Hard Core Thrash Funk

Reviews

I have a few Luxury London reviews waiting to be published. Here are my most recent reviews:

• Manetta's Bar
• Lokhandawala
• 67 Pall Mall

Blogs

Thanks to some baking for my colleagues and a bit of free time to write I managed to get 3 blog posts out. One even got me a free t-shirt:

• Vegan Flapjacks
• Toggl: In Detail
• Christmas Cake: Vegan Edition

Tom Out!

I usually make a Christmas Cake around this time of year to take to work.[1] As I now have vegan colleagues I decided to look into making it safe for them to eat. Luckily this is quite easy to achieve with a stodgy cake like this one.

The Cake

Ingredients

• 450 g (1 lb) currants

• 175 g (6 oz) sultanas

• 175 g (6 oz) raisins

• 50 g (2 oz) glacé cherries, chopped

• 50 g (2 oz) mixed peel

• an amount of brandy* (check its vegan-ness first)

• 225 g (8 oz) plain flour

• ½ teaspoon salt

• ¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg†

• ½ teaspoon all spice†

• ½ teaspoon cinnamon

• 225 g (8 oz) vegan sunflower spread

• 225 g (8 oz) soft brown sugar

• 284 ml (1/2 pint) oat milk (or any other vegan milk substitute) [2]

• 1 dessertspoon black treacle

• rind of 1 lemon, grated

• rind of 1 orange, grated

• optional: 50 g (2 oz) almonds, chopped

*the recipe I followed said 3 tablespoons but more brandy is better. If doing the cake quickly with limited feeding time I would go for 6 tablespoons.

†Again I feel more spice is better.

Recipe

1. Mix all the fruit in a bowl and cover with brandy.

2. Leave to soak overnight.

3. Pre-heat the oven to 160°C (140°C fan).

4. Cream the spread and sugar in an other mixing bowl.

5. Whisk the oat milk.‡

6. Add them slowly to the creamed spread and sugar mixing thoroughly.

7. Fold in the flour and spices.

8. Mix in the fruit, peel, brandy, treacle (and nuts).

9. Put the mixture into the cake tin.

10. Tie brown paper (or tinfoil if you don't have any) around the tin and on top of the cake leaving a 2 cm hole in the middle of the top.

11. Bake the cake for 4¼-4¾ (don't open the oven for the first 4 hours).

12. Cool the cake before putting it in an airtight tin until icing.

13. Occasionally feed the cake with extra brandy up until icing.

1. Mix all the fruit together and soak in brandy.

2. Let it soak overnight.

3. Cream the spread and sugar together.

3. It will cream much faster than butter.

6. It will look a bit weird and curdled. Don't worry this is normal.

7. Use a sieve to mix the spice into the flour as you fold it in.

8. Add the fruit, treacle (and nuts).

8. Mix until combined.

‡Eggs normally provide the structure and help produce the foam structure of a sponge cake. Whisking the oat milk helps get some air into the cake. The benefit of a heavy fruit cake is that rising isn't a major concern.

The Icing

It is possible to make royal icing without eggs using one surprising ingredient: aquafaba.[3] Or as most people will know it: the brine in beans/legumes are stored in.

Ingredients

• 1 tin worth of aquafaba (I used a tin of chickpeas)

• 500g (1 lb 2 oz) icing sugar

• 500g (1 lb 2 oz) marzipan

• apricot jam

Method

1. Use a pastry brush to spread apricot jam over the cake.

2. Using rolling pin create a thin layer of marzipan and place it over the cake. 

3. Trim. 

4. Clarify the aquafaba over a low heat by reducing it to 80% of it's original volume. 

5. Remove the froth and any other fibre. 

6. Add the aquafaba to the icing sugar and mix with an electric whisk. 

7. Once the icing is glossy it is ready to use. 

8. Spread over the cake. 

9. Create a snowscene.

The cake after cooling.

1. Brush jam over the cake.

2. Put the rolled marzipan on the cake.

3. Trim the marzipan.

6. Whisk until stiff peaks start to to form and the icing appears glossy.

8. Spread the icing on the cake.

8. Smooth it off before making the snowscene.

9. Use a fork or knife to create small peaks for the snowscene.

Enjoy!

Tom Out!

References

[1] Smith, D., 1992. Delia’s Complete Cookery Course. London: Ebury Publishing.

[2] Suma, 2017. Vegan Christmas Cake Recipe. [online] Available at: http://www.suma.coop/archives/vegan-christmas-cake-recipe/ [Accessed 12 December 2017]

[3] Wallflower Kitchen, 2015. Eggless Royal Icing. [online] Available at: http://wallflowerkitchen.com/vegan-eggless-royal-icing/ [Accessed 13 December 2017]

N.B.: I've written this post a bit later than intended. I now have a new job as a developer and will post about that after about 6 months.

Following on from my last post I delve deeper into the types of work I was doing in my previous job and my side projects.

MR Solutions

Projects

Percentage Time Spent on Projects at MRS

Fig. 1 shows the percentage time I spent on different projects. I grouped anything related to customer sites (remote or on-site) into a single project as they are similar tasks. Nearly 2/3rds of my time was spent on these customer focused tasks.

In second place, I spent 16.79% of my time on administrative tasks. I'm not yet sure how much time I would expect to go on admin. I'll have to compare this to my new job to see if it has reduced. I know that a significant portion was waiting on emails when I was on support for the day. In general I would aim to reduce the amount of time wasted on emails. 

In third place, with 15.35%, was Pulse Sequences. Considering my job title was "Pulse Sequence Developer" this is a little disappointing but not surprising as I was often travelling to sites instead of writing and testing sequences. As it was a small company most people were working outside their original job description.

The 2.59% on training is probably an anomaly as I helped organise and run a week of distributor training during this period.

Tags

Fig. 2 is a tag cloud weighted by time spent on each tag. I'm going to ignore the OS ones as the majority of my work was on Windows due to the fact our software ran on Windows. Table 1 contains the percentage time spent by tag. N.B: These add up to more than 100% as you can use multiple tags per time tracking event.

Table 1: Percentage time spent on each tag. As multiple tags can be used per event the total is more than 100%.

So based on tags I spent more time on Pulse Sequences than on travel. This is because there was often Pulse Sequence related work for customers such as optimising parameters or training on how to use a new sequence. Therefore this tag covers more than the coding specific project mentioned above. 

The Travel tag covers any form of travel related activity such as train/plane/taxi/ferry or waiting at an airport. It wasn't applied to any customer activities when I was on site. You can see that I spent nearly a quarter of my time travelling. This is something I delved into a bit more in the previous post.

TeamViewer, Support and Remote tags are all similar in percentage (around 20%). A small amount of TeamViewer usage outside of direct support may explain the slight difference though I'm not ruling out the possibility that I mistagged a few support requests in my hurry to help the customer.

It's good to see that in my role as 'physicist for hire' I at least managed to clock up 18.45% of my time on physics related activities. This included sequence design and data analysis that made use of my knowledge of physics. This was generally the work I most enjoyed doing (alongside pure coding). At heart I love to solve a good problem.

Coding comes in at 11.36%. The disparity between this and the Pulse Sequence project is due to design and testing work that didn't involve direct coding. The fact that C, C++ and Python don't add up to this percentage is because I only started to track specific coding languages about halfway through this 20 week time period. There was also some SQL work related to our ticketing database that contributes another 1%.

The rest of the tags mostly pertain to admin work and maintaining customer installations.

Side Project: Podcasting

Percentage Time Spent on Podcasting Activities

Fig. 3 shows the breakdown of podcasting related activities. With podcasts the majority of my time is spent editing and that shouldn't come as much of a surprise. I think the most time I have spent editing a single episode was around 14 hours but that was due to specific issues with a lost recording*. The overall percentage of editing should come down over time as I pick up tricks and just get better at it overall. Though I still expect it will be longer than the recording time in future.

Again it isn't a surprise that the second largest chunk is recording the episodes. HOMT episodes are often 90-120 minute recordings and that can be extended if we have issues with our VOIP setup. Dr Wilko's episodes still take around 30 minutes to record despite only ending up in 4-5 minute episodes when the editing is done†.

Design work has taken up 5.12% of my time so far. I expect this will drop next time I analyse my tracking data as most of that was upfront work such as creating show logos.

Finally Writing takes up 2.19%. As I only write scripts for Dr Wilko's it isn't surprising this is such a small percentage. I also tend to write them in breaks when I have the time so it is possible there might be some under reporting there.

*Kudos to Will for spending a stupid amount of time re-recording his parts into the gaps we left.

†See below but the overhead of making a cocktail really adds to the recording time.

Pecentage Split Between Podcasts

Fig. 4 shows the percentage split between the 2 podcasts. Based on episode length you might not expect this even with the weekly release schedule of Dr Wilko's compared to the roughly fortnightly release of HOMT. Dr Wilko episodes have much more overhead though with script writing, recording as I make a cocktail (sometimes requiring multiple takes) and a more complex edit (most of the time).

Tom Out!

Several of my colleagues are vegan so what better excuse to modify a traditional recipe?

Ingredients

• 300 g (10 oz) oats

• 175 g (6 oz) brown sugar

• 175 ml (6 fl oz) vegetable oil

• 4 tbsp golden syrup

Method

1. Preheat oven to 190°C (170°C fan). 

2. Heat the golden syrup in a pan and then dissolve the sugar into it.

3. Add oil to the mixture and keep heating until well combined. 

4. Remove from the heat and stir the oats into the mixture.

5. Place in a greased square baking tin (I used a 24cm/10” tin).

6. Bake for 25-30 minutes.*

7. Remove from the oven and leave to cool before removing from the tin and cutting into squares or rectangles.

8. Enjoy the gooey goodness!

*In the non-vegan version of this recipe butter is used, which seems to aid in the setting of the flapjacks. You may want to keep cooking them until you see a crust starting to form.

Tom Out!