2013 Blog

Dropping Like Flies

Why are so many good writers in such serious trouble? I must be getting old or something.

Terry Pratchett, fortunately, is doing better than expected, but Alzheimer's does not go away. At least not until the patient does.

Iain Banks is officially very poorly as he puts it. he has the kind of cancer you don't get better from.

Now Roman Dirge, creator of Lenore the cute little dead girl has proved that car trumps leg. This has, predictably enough crippled him for a good long time. No, you are not allowed to hope this means he'll spend more time drawing Lenore comics.

Seriously, what's one to do? Hurry up and live I guess, before one's own number comes up.

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Free Book

Who wants a free book? You do!

Lulu has let me release the full novel The Ranboen Contract in PDF format. This lets you read as much you want without risking 99 carefuly saved cents on a buying the thing.

You can of course still buy the novel in whatever eBook format you wish for under a dollar, or as a proper shiny paper thing you show off to your friends.

The Free PDF version is available from this link. get 'em while they're hot!

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Carrot Cake

I posted my recipe for Anzac Biscuits and Gingerbread, and now here's my recipe for Carrot Cake. It's nut-free, and everyone who's tried it says I make great carrot cake:

    Ingredients:
  • 1 cup Plain Flour
  • 3/4 cup Brown Sugar
  • 1 teaspoon Ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda (Baking Soda)
  • 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
  • 250 grams Grated Carrot
  • 1/2 cup Vegetable oil (I recommend light, extra virgin olive oil)
  • 2 eggs (if the eggs are large, use 1 or 2 tablespoons less oil to allow for it)
  • 100 grams icing sugar
  • 32 grams low-fat cream cheese (4/5 of a tiny tub of Philadelphia)
    Recipe:
  • Prepare a cake tray. A square one lined with baking paper is easy.
  • Mix the dry stuff (flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, bicarb and baking powder) together and then sift it at least twice.
  • In a seperate bowl, whisk the eggs and oil until they combine.
  • Heat the oven to 165C(329F). Wait for it! The next three steps should be done quickly.
  • Add the carrot to the dry stuff, and mix it until every strand of carrot is covered in powder.
  • Add the oil and egg mix, and stir it until there are no dry bits left.
  • Pour/scrape the mix into the cake tray, and smooth it until it's filled to an even depth.
  • Put it into the oven for 35-40 minutes.
  • When finished, upend the cake onto a plate, then again onto a cooling tray to let it cool.
  • Once cool, mix the icing sugar and cheese and smooth the resulting icing over the cake.

All done! (It will be easier to cut if you give the icing a little time to dry)

If you like thick icing, try 120 grams icing sugar and 40 grams cream cheese instead. If you find green carrot in the cake, don't panic! The pigment in the carrot is sensitive to the alkaline soda, so you either used too much or didn't sift enough. It's not toxic or anything.

If you like it, buy my book. It's good too. :)

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System Shock 2

The fan community has come a long way with Mods and patches for System Shock 2! Life is now much easier for those wishing to install and play the game, as well as those wishing to make it look halfway reasonable.

I've updated my System Shock 2 page accordingly. It's really quite simple now, and most of the fixes still out there on the web may be ignored.

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Thief 1 and 2

Well, I've purchased GOG's Thief Gold and Thief 2, and updated my Thief page accordingly.

In short, the GOG versions of the game install flawlessly, include fixes for graphics issues, codes for videos, and are generally pretty awesome.

There are still stability and audio/visual issues, but fortunately these issues are easier to fix these days with so many patches available in combined forms. I've removed some of the patches I used to offer as they are no longer necessary, and those wishing to play Thief on a modern computer should now find it much easier.

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