Everytime I need to do this I go into at least five minutes of Googling for a decent solution. The problem is that a lot of people don’t have access to the commandline, so the solutions all reference PHPMyAdmin which is, you know, OK, but I don’t use it or want to install it just to export some quick reports. Other solutions are similarly indirect.
A Spanish tasting evening
We went to a Spanish food and wine evening last night at Love Saves the Day. Very interesting, with food writer Clarissa Hyman (who’s currently promoting her book The Spanish Kitchen) and Ed Cross from Boutinot. Spanish food is apparently on the up and up again, what Clarissa described as the “second food revolution that the Spanish have led” (the first brought us chillis, chocolate and potatoes).
I, for one, welcome…
While procrastinating this morning, I finally looked up the source of the saying “I, for one, welcome our new [fill in blank] overlords”. From The Simpsons episode “Deep Space Homer“:
Staggering onwards is not good
For animals, pain is a signal that something is wrong and it needs fixing. If pain didn’t exist we’d all be accidentally leaving our hand on the burning gas hob, or on the electric bar fire and wondering about the burning smell long after we’d been injured. We want to know when something isn’t right, and we want to know as quickly and “loudly” as possible.
Writing (programming) a web application is similar. Continue reading “Staggering onwards is not good”
Disappearing Photoshop cursors
I’ve had a problem for some time now: my cursors in Photoshop CS3 on OS X are invisible. I’ve no idea why, or how it happened, but it’s really awkward when you can’t see where your mask is going to start, or where you text cursor is going to blink into being.
The solution
After a lot of Googling I came across another person (maybe called Mark, from detective work in his Flickr stream) with a similar problem, which started me off to find a solution. So far the only way I’ve found of solving this is (and this is OS X specific):
- Quit Photoshop
- In Finder, Go to Folder: ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CS3 Settings/
- Delete, or move to another folder temporarily, this file:Adobe Photoshop CS3 Prefs.psp
- Restart Photoshop and (hopefully) breathe a sigh of relief…
There must be a better way of doing it, and I still don’t know what triggered the problem, but at least the cursors are back. Cursors! I kiss you!
Directories
Just put up an article over at Startershop on getting your business listed online and off. I hope it’s useful.
Contractors and tradespeople
We’ve just had our house done up, and some of the lessons we’ve learned and problems we’ve hit may be useful to others.
Spiced sweet butternut squash soup
An improvised soup, based on a combination of what was in the cupboard and “Spiced Sweet Potato & Red Onion Soup” from Soup Kitchen; this version is pure butternut squash. That’s the wife’s lunches sorted then.
A Moroccan-ish Casserole
An improvised casserole, based on what was in the cupboard, with a Moroccan twist. Next time I’d like to try preserved lemons, which seem to be preferred over fresh for Moroccan style cooking. Staying with the MiL at the moment, so I was able to take advantage of her terracotta casserole dish which seemed appropriate (although it was Schlemmertopf, not a tangine.)
Continue reading “A Moroccan-ish Casserole”
Free downloadable UK maps from Ordnance Survey
Well lorday, how generous: Ordnance Survey is now providing a selection of free, downloadable, basic small-scale maps of Great Britain.