No Nose Smiley :)

Recently I've been really seeking out Almond Croissants.  It started with an almond croissant at Sonoma Cafe in Alexandria.  They had one in the glass cabinet and it was calling my name.  I don't think I have had one prior to that for years.  It was ah-mahzing!  Flakey, a bit gooey and with lots of almond flake goodness. Since then I've sought it out and had a mix of good and bad ones.  But then I had a thought to make it myself.  And so the internet uncovered a number of great looking recipes but I landed on one called  Almond Croissants Recipe (French Bakery Style) .  It was on Natasha's Kitchen's website (link to the actual recipe here  http://natashaskitchen.com/2013/11/01/almond-croissants-french-bakery-style/ ).  It's not a site I had frequented.  I don't tend to follow food bloggers but do recognise when I've been to a site after a few times. Whenever I follow a recipe I never follow it to a tee.  I tend to ...

Yep after 3 days of ownership, I had to return the HP Pavilion X360 to JB Hifi.  After praising the machine, somehow the speaker or audio hardware failed.  It would disappear from being available and I even got dreaded BSODs with the error message of APC Index Mismatch.  The BSODs are a lot prettier these days but just as unwelcome. Note the HP Support help I received was superb.  I had remote help from someone at the other end and they jumped in and helped to try and diagnose.  But in the end after doing a full factory reset the speakers were only sometimes activated and had awful crackly noises.  This morning it went all back into the original packaging and at lunch time I took it to JB Hifi (after doing a full reset and taking a few of my files off the machine). In store I compared the HP Spectre X360 and the Lenovo Yoga 900.  They were exactly the same price at $1613.  But side by side with a bit of music made the Yoga the choice.  Al...

UPDATE: Laptop was returned to the shop today (3 days after purchase) due to faulty hardware - something wrong with the speakers/audio drivers.  I ended up upgrading to a different machine and brand. It was time for a new laptop.  My Sony Vaio was losing keys and the Wifi was stuffed.  I also wanted something less flimsy although generally it worked well. The things I wanted to improve on this time was: Not having keys that will fall off so easily A laptop that wasn't that flimsy (ie could use it as a 'lap' top rather than a portable notebook when typing A hinge that would let me increase the angle more... A less noisy fan That's about it.  Everything else was working pretty well really. So I looked at a couple at JB Hifi.  My price range was 'up to $2000' and I was planning to salary sacrifice it.  After looking at the Lenovo Yoga 710 14" and the HP Pavilion X360 13.3" I ended up with the HP. It wasn't just the price.  Ac...

Curious if the Cake in a Cup from White Wings is all it's cracked up to be?  A while back I bought a pack of the Salted Caramel and Chocolate Chip version of the cake mix whilst it was on an introductory special from a local Woolworths.  Each box has 4 satchels. I thought I'd pop up a few photos and my review of the process and taste in case you want to know a bit before you go and buy your own. This is my 3rd satchel.  I've made it pretty much to spec/ Step 1: Empty pack into mug.  Use a decent size mug but it doesn't need to be huge.  Just bigger than a teacup. Step 2: Add 40mL of milk.  (Two tablespoons).  And stir. Step 3: pop it into the microwave Step 4: Put in microwave for 1 minute.  I put in a little bit more thinking I could use the convection part of the oven (grill in this case) to give it a bit more of an oven feel).  But found that I had to buzz it for another 30 seconds to make it work because I did that...

How many times have you tested two items to find out your preference?  I do it all the time.  From trying to find out which tea is better to evaluating two priorities.  As an exercise for my coding learning I want to create a web app or app that does the simple A/B test in real life. I've bought a domain for it - preferlab.com - and could even potentially monetise it in a number of ways. But first I want to build an MVP version.  Myself.  Somehow! Mainly for my own purposes to track things I test. Like for Cookies and Cream ice cream.  Blue Ribbon was a bit disappointing.  Woolworths Select is better.  So in the model for my simple site it would be: Cookies and Cream Ice Cream A. Blue Ribbon Cookies and Cream B. Woolworths Select B wins. But I'm sure Bulla is a bit better.  The Aldi one is pretty good too.  But I'll have to wait till I can do a direct comparison before I add it to my list! Will did a test the other day ...

I'm writing this post after an interesting problem which I'm sure many of us have.  Trying to connect people digitally when they don't understand digital. With the proliferation of devices and the 'consumerisation' of tech it's easy now to give someone an iPad or iPod touch or even an Android tablet as a gift.  But then there is the whole support of it.  And the set up of Wifi and explaining how much things cost and how it works.  And it made me think if there was a network for this or some sort of service.  Would people pay for such? Makes me think I should probably write this up better and post it on Medium rather than on my lonely old blog which is really just a dumping ground for my thinking.... ok later I'll do it later! But it doesn't matter so much as to the money but how to solve the problem. The backstory is that we gave my Chinese mother-in-law (MIL) an iPad as a gift last year.  It's been great.  Her daughter who lives in Melbourne...

I have an Evernote category called "Business Ideas" and often I will throw a few things in there or file things in there (although I really am not the best filer in the world.  Even my email now there is only 3 folders.  Inbox, "Archived" - thanks Gmail for that tip! and Trash/Spam.) But in the recent few days (this last week really), I've been deluged with ideas.  Good ideas.  Ideas that may be worth pursuing.  I wonder if it's because I've been to a few startup type events in the last week?  Probably. So what are the ideas? There are 3 of them.  One which will still be stealth mode as I'm not sure if I'll be eligible to do anything with it. The others... well let's just get on with it. 1. Stealth There is an innovation challenge at work (Transport for NSW) which is going to be open for submissions soon for the Learners Log book.  Something I was pooh poohing as lacking innovation but it occurred to me (as I often hear the ideas that ...