5 November 2008

Climbing, rocking, glowing

Posted by qwandor under photos, thoughts | Tags: , , , |
No Comments 

Last Monday for flat night, those of us who were present went up to the Botanic Gardens and climbed a truly awesome tree. It is a great round tree, flat on top with a big hole in the middle where you can come up. There is plenty of room for people to stand, sit or even lie down comfortably, and the view is nice too. I have posted some photos to Flickr, though they do not really capture the awesomeness of this tree. It was also a bit dark, so I took a few more photos this morning in the sunlight.

Once it got too dark, we went down to the playground and enjoyed the flying fox and rocktopus, before heading back a different way and seeing a few glowworms. All in all, apart from the missing people, I think that it was a good evening.

 

20 October 2008

Concert

Posted by qwandor under outings | Tags: , , , |
No Comments 

A number of us (Janice, Elaine, Peter, Josiah and I) went down last night to see Magnify play a free concert with Rapture Ruckus at Elim. It was mostly good, though shorter than I expected (just over an hour for the actual concert, though we hung around for a bit afterwards). It is nice to have a bit of free time for such things. Thanks to Josh for letting me know that the concert was on. Perhaps I will find time to hear more live music this summer.

This was the Facebook event, for completeness.

 

8 June 2008

Self-saucing chocolate pudding, as requested

Posted by qwandor under recipes
[2] Comments 

Kelp hosted the third and final part of the VUWCU progressive dinner on Thursday 29th May 2008, and I made a self-saucing chocolate pudding for dessert. There were a few requests for the recipe, so here it is. Choose your preferred format:
Krecipes
RecipeML
PDF

It should serve 30-40, depending on how much people eat. I suggest serving it with vanilla or chocolate icecream. Sorry this took so long to get online.

 

21 May 2008

Pizza, and a successful new dessert

Posted by qwandor under recipes | Tags: , , |
No Comments 

Tonight I was assigned to cook dinner for the flat, and I decided to cook pizza. I cooked four more or less normal pizzas (two with wholemeal flour in the bases, for variety). For dessert, however, I and Jordan invented and made another less ordinary pizza. I made a pizza base as usual (a scone dough made from, with 2 cups plain flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 pinch salt, 25 mL oil and around 100 mL milk), and on this we put (at Jordan’s suggestion) some custard. I then layered 2 apples (unpeeled, but cored and thinly sliced) on this, and sprinkled a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon and mixed spice on top. This was then cooked in the oven like a pizza (200°C or higher until lightly browned).

We each but James had a piece, and it turned out to be nice. To quote The Surrealist’s eBay feedback generator, ‘Quality of item was resplendent! Would buy from again. Distinguished service. A++’.

 

15 March 2008

π day

Posted by qwandor under photos | Tags: , , |
1 Comment 

Yesterday was π day, and tonight (thanks to Jordan) we ate pie. It was good:
Pies

 

5 March 2008

Networking

Posted by qwandor under technical | Tags: , , |
[3] Comments 

We finally got an Internet connection installed on Monday 25th February, and for a while had Ethernet cables running through the hallway (covered by left-over carpet in the doorways to prevent against tripping to some extent). On Sunday 2nd March, however, we installed some proper network cabling. We now have cables running from wall jacks in Josiah’s room (where the cable modem and router is) to similar jacks in Jordan’s and my room. It took longer than I expected, mostly due to difficulty drilling a hole through the wall beside my wardrobe door.

It ended up being quite a flat affair, as you can see in these photos:
Jordan and Peter trying to make a hole past my wardrobe doorJosiah and Elaine spectatingRuth was happyJanice in her usual pose

The end result (at my end):
An ethernet jack with a cable plugged into it

 

20 February 2008

Deep-fried signal

Posted by qwandor under photos, technical | Tags: , , |
[2] Comments 

It is taking us a while to get a proper Internet connection here at the flat (though hopefully we will get TelstraClear cable installed on Monday), but in the meantime I have been using a USB WiFi adaptor in the middle of a dish I constructed a while ago from Chinese parabolic cookware based on these instructions. This lets me connect to the VUW wireless network (well, sometimes at least), and from there I can use the SWANS VPN to get to the Internet. The dish sits in my window frame, carefully aimed up at the university, as you can see in these pictures:
The dish in contextA close-up of the dish