One of the sessions I enjoyed at WordCamPDX last week was on “Tying your tubes” about funnelling all your internet activity into a “lifestream”, a list of your activity on various social sites like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Google Reader and the like. The main thrust of it was how to include it in the sidebar using a couple of plugins, but I reckon this blog has enough going on in the sidebar without any more clutter… so, if there’s nothing much to hold your interest on this page, try the brand new LifeStream link on the top right to see what I’ve been uploading/favouriting/sharing around the interwebs. There was all kinds of things to do with Twitter too, but I still can’t work up the energy to tweet regularly. It’s all I can be arsed to do to tell Facebook what my “status” is every few days.

Also, if you were thinking this blog is taking even longer to load these days, it might be because I added a weather widget to the left sidebar. So if you’re wondering how wet it is today in Portland, scroll down a bit and on your left you’ll wonder no more.

This morning we went to the Farmers Market on the PSU campus downtown. I think Mum and Dad were doing something similar in North Petherton. But I’ll bet there weren’t any monkey heads on sale there…

Does anyone know why Flickr has rolled out this page?

Seriously, anyone need a poster, bespoke powerpoint presentation, a logo, translation…anything dammit… huge discounts for friends. Since the answer to that question seems to be no (at the moment), I’ll keep perfecting my house-husband skillz.

I noticed George has published a photo of the banner I made t’other day, in action at the SF blues festival: (I’ll just link to the picture cos the site’s not live yet I think)

Yesterday seemed as good a day as any to make some bread. Drsita was out earning a living, Atticus was uncommonly mopey (he’s not big on low pressure fronts). So I downloaded a recipe, printed it out, decided it was wrong and thought to myself, well I can make pizza dough, I reckon bread’s probably the same with more yeast. So I nipped to New Seasons round the corner and assembled the ingredients. Flour and yeast, and some ‘erbs from the garden. A bit of mixing, kneading, prodding and one minor burn later…

Behold: Basic Portland, Oregano Bread…

Needs more salt, but it’s alright. The last time I cooked bread was probably in Kingston St Mary Primary School circa 1982. Now there’s someone whose site needs a makeover… even if it’s just replacing the MS Comic Sans with a real font…

It’s great seeing the photos on Flickr of Lake Chapala. Ten years ago the worry was it was going to dry up completely, but after a couple of years’ record rain, it’s back to the highest levels I’ve ever seen. Combine that with high winds and it takes on a whole new aspect. One of my Flickr friends, FerdeSanta has published a series of photos and also posted this video to YouTube:

Chapala Tus Olas- by FerdeSanta on YouTube

Posting direct from Flickr… Here’s Nostromoo’s 2nd batch of Welsh Cakes… and evidence of probably the first time anyone has printed my blog out on paper.

My kind of recipe

So Atticus didn’t win a prize on the LA Times contest… I don’t know what he’d have done with a Nikon D300 anyway. But the 170+ “Best” votes are reward enough, t’was a fun journey and thanks, once again, to everyone who voted

Yesterday I went to WordCamp Portland and it was a very useful day out. Normally when I go to a conference it’s to see family and friends doing Sociology presentations, or further back, about the finer points of managing a non-profit organisation, but this one yesterday was all about WordPress and blogging and I’ll probably write a techy what-I-learnt-thing post over at the business end of agaveweb.com when I get a moment. It’s definitely spurred me on to developing a couple of free themes from scratch and releasing them into the wild. Maybe a plugin too. It was cheap, cheerful, informative & well-organised. I am proudly wearing my free T-Shirt today. More conferences should have kegs of beer available from lunch time onwards too. Talking of which, I learnt about a Portland institution called Beer and Blog with weekly Friday meetups in PDX, so I might investigate that too. (actual group photo)

Despite my disparaging remarks about my allotment a few posts back, I was thinning out the radishes today and pulled up what, to all intents and purposes, look like actual, edible, undamaged radishes. And they taste okay too. Most of them ain’t ready (ripe?- do radishes ripen?) yet but this bodes well… Have a photo:

Also last night we barbecued, then finished off the last season of The Wire.

Today: heading out of the city to see if the leaves are looking properly autumnal yet.

Mum’s been making Welsh cakes for various civic occasions and passed on the recipe to me….

You’ll need:

UK	US version or what I actually managed to find
Milk, Semi-skimmed 1 x egg Raisins Sugar Marge Mixed spices Self-raising flour	Milk, 2% A splash of whatever the merry hell ReddiEgg in a carton is. Raisins Sugar Canola 0g Transfat Havest Margerine! Cinnamon Self-Rising Flour

1. Mix up flour and marge. *EDIT* 8ozs of marge to 16 ozs-1lb of flour…
2. Blend it.
3. Mix in 2 Tablespoons of sugar, mixed spice, cinnamon. (I reckon more is needed…)
4. Beat the egg and milk & mix it into the flour/marge/sugar stuff.
5. Add your raisins/ dried fruit.
6. If it’s too wet still, add more flour.
7. Roll it out to about 1/4 inch thick.Cut it with a shape cutter, or something round.
8. Heat an ungreased, non-stick frying pan up to around 3 (out of 10 on the dial)
9. Heat each side for about 3 minutes till golden brown…
10. Test them on the dog.
11. Wait 10 minutes. If the dog’s still okay. Try one yourself.

I’m wondering what’s going to be served up in the ads that accompany this post…