BeedyG

Innocent, the people who make those lovely smoothies have branched out into veg pots. My favourite one is the Mexican Sweet Potato Chilli which is very very nice, so nice in fact that I decided to make it myself!

Here’s the recipe I used exactly although the addition of a small potato might help thicken up the sauce.

What you need:
(Makes enough for 4 (large) servings)

• 1 Sweet Potato
• 4 medium Carrots
• 1 small Onion
• 1 Cob of Sweetcorn (frozen will do)
• 1 tin of Beans in Chilli
• 1 tinned Tomatoes
• 1/4 jar of Jalepenos

Serve with:

• Brown Rice

Instructions:

1. Fry the diced onion in a large saucepan (that has a lid)
2. Dice the Sweet Potato and Carrots
3. Once the onions have softened add the sweet potato and carrots
4. Fry for 5 minutes then just cover with water, bring to a boil and then turn down to simmer for 15 minutes (now is a good time to put on the brown rice)
5. Add the Tinned Tomatoes and Beans in Chilli and cover the saucepan, simmer for 15 more minutes
6. If the sweetcorn is on the cob then remove with a knife
7. If uncooked then add to the pot for the last 5 minutes
8. Chop the Jalepenos
9. Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the Jalepenos (and sweetcorn if cooked)

Enjoy with the Brown Rice!

I am a bit conflicted about this post: personally I can’t stand fund raising events, my view being that if you want to donate money to charity then you should do so and do so quietly and privately. I think this view comes from my Catholic upbringing, I remember being told, “the left hand should not know what the right hand giveth”, in other words don’t crow about what a good person you are, giving should be it’s own reward and other people knowing about it shouldn’t be your motive.
Unfortunately the economics of successful fund-raising seem to contradict this, the best way of raising money seems to be to create a big hoo-ha involving celebrities and give businesses a way of proving how community orientated they are by donating money and showing off about it. I suppose that’s the way human nature works; we copy our cultural figureheads.
Before I bore the pants off you with caveats, suffice to say I’m taking part in the London to Brighton bike ride this year (TBH I didn’t even realise it was for Charity) and it seems to be the done thing to raise money for the organising charity which is the British Heart Foundation. So I’ve set up a Justgiving page for donations so please donate if you want to.

As you may have noticed here I was in Japan - well I’ve made it back in one piece!

Japan is a fantastic Country- had a brilliant time,

there’s some photos up here and when I get a moment I’ll be converting the videos and uploading to YouTube (yes they are mostly of snow monkeys!)

Off to Ireland for Dairmuid & Aine’s wedding now (4 flights in one week, is it too much?)

Last month several months’ of work finally came to fruition and the Rentokil deBugged Blog finally launched.

It’s been an interesting experience getting a blog set up for a large corporation, from educating the team from scratch to getting round technical issues. I can’t take the credit for the final design (that was Leyton Jay, whose design was much better than my prototypes) and the content has been written by various staff members especially Danusia but it does feel a little like my baby.

It’s going well so far, still early days but so far so good; there’s some good content up there and the feedback is positive. I won’t go so far as to match the tongue in cheek claims on Tom from Distilled’s take on the Rentokil deBugged launch (great graph Tom!) but it looks good.

Danusia has written a great article about her experience which contains useful insights both for ordinary bloggers and companies thinking of joining the Blogosphere (if we’re still allowed to call it that these days) which you can find here: 9 lessons I learnt putting together a new blog.

Hi - as you might have noticed Im in Japan!
Havent quite worked out the japanese keyboard, every time i try and do a bit of punctuation it all goes a bit wrong!
For updates you can follow me on twitter (http://twitter.com/beedyg)
After 2 hour stopover in Helsinki we arrived in Osaka 10am local time to be greeted by Aya holding a welcome card, shes looked after us fantastically, booking the hotel in Osaka and taking us there on the train. We re in a \n area of Osaka called Minami its the posh part of town Area of Big Brand Name Shops (thats the name given to the area by our map!).
Its amazing clean here and super efficient and modern (it does feel a little like stepping into the future!)

We:ve seen Osaka Castle (Osaka-jo) and spent a few days wandering around the town - i did hear Osaka described as the Birmingham of Japan but that:s unfair - it:s really bright and colourful, plebty to do!!

Off to tokyo tomorrow, but first theres the drinks reception from after Aya and Cellos wedding.

Oh and it is really hot and sunny and the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, weve conme at the perfect time!

With the G20 protests starting today I was reminded of the last time this happened back in 1999. I’ve had to look it up on wikipedia and it was the J18: Carnival Against Capitalism. I was working in the Financial Services industry back then, but we were based in Hammersmith so although people we dealt with on a daily basis were affected, we weren’t directly. I remember that our office was split down the middle; some dissapproved, but others, myself included, really wanted to take the day off and join the protests. That might sound strange, but our company reported on the perfomance of the industry rather than taking part directly.

This was a flash video I made a few years later in my final year at uni. We were given the song and told to make a video to accompany it. I don’t agree with all of the song, but the tone does resonate with me.

My NPWA Flash Video

The imagery at the end was taken from the protests at the G8 summit in Geneva 2001 - and I decided to dedicate it to Carol Giuliani who was killed during them.

Back in 1999 the greatest fear in the zeitgesit was that unfettered capitalism would turn into a monster. Naomi Klein’s No Logo (2001) explained how we were right to be worried - but just when it seemed that world governments would be forced to respond to the growing clamour for an ethical form of capitalism, 9/11 happened. Since late 2001 the “War on Terror” has had centre stage in our imaginations (something that probably won’t affect you, but would be terrible if it did, gets more mindshare than something that will definitely affect you, but probably in a subtle way - that’s just the way our brains deal with risk). But now that the recession is starting to affect people directly (myself included) the workings of the global economy are back in the spotlight. One thing that has changed in the intervening years is that our right to protest has been heavily eroded; the chances that police will use their new “terror” powers to discourage protest against the government seem pretty high.

My friend Benji is photographing the protests today so I’m hoping to be able to put up some links to them when he gets back.

I watched Slumdog Millionaire and I was very impressed. I don’t watch many films in the cinema (the cheapskate in me usually just files films I like the look of away in the “will rent from Lovefilm later” category) but I’m very glad I was convinced by my friends recommendations to go and watch this film.
From the TV adverts I’d the impression that this was some sort of rags to riches story using “Who want to be a Millionaire” as a Deus Ex machina, but instead it’s a very clever film that uses the TV show format to tell the life story of a young muslim man from the slums of Mumbai (Bombay in his early childhood). I haven’t seen the squalor of these slums conveyed with the same impact before - there are images, like the child wading through a rubbish choked river, that stick in your mind long after the film has ended. It really made me think about what the lives of people living in these conditions are like - so a little shaming and thought provoking. It also has a few scenes set from the other side of an indian call centre - which certainly made me question the way I’ve interacted with them in the past.
Although in some places harrowing, this is a great feel good film and I heavily recommend it - go and watch it now - you won’t regret it!

I’ve been doing a fair bit of stuff with wordpress at work but most of the plugins and themes I’ve written haven’t been releasable - this is my first plugin which is.

Multiple Comment Moderation

This is a simple plugin which allows you to set a number of moderated posts a subscriber to your Blog needs before their comments do not need to be pre-moderated before appearing.

It’s pretty basic at the moment, but I’ll add an options screen (so you can define the number of moderated comments needed - which at the moment is hardcoded to 3) and when I’m happy with it see if I can get it hosted at wordpress.org, which would be nice.

download v0.2 here

This actually works now - before it affected everybody, admin the post author etc now it works as supposed to (and is smaller to boot) next step to add the admin panel

Last Friday I had one of those Brighton evenings. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of living in our fair town you’ll know what I mean; an evening where the high rents, freezing weather and constant feeling you’re too old or uncool pay off and you remember why you put put up with them, an evening where you make the most of the great pubs and brilliant night life and have fabulous eveing you could only have in Brighton. I went to see The Two Wrongies Christmas Special at the the basement, a lovely establishment where I’m pretty sure I saw a Jamie Hewlitt exhibition a couple of years ago.

It was a show in a barely renovated basement of an old warehouse. The place was clean and the bar stocked with wonderful Dark Star bottles. You might notice it’s taken me a while to describe the Two Wrongies, and for good reason. It’s easiest if I say what the effects were: by the end my jaw was sore from laughing, I’d pondered on topics usually anethema to me and was left dazed by being brought into the world of wrongness inhabitted by these two funnny, beautiful, and sometimes naked women. They have a great show, their dance is joyfully synchronised and their comedic timing is spot on. Words really can’t do them justice (and these definitely can’t) but if you ever get a chance to see them peform, grasp it like you’d grasp an imaginary partner in the air sex olympics.

I was catching my normal train into work this morning and happened to observe an interesting exchange between two fo my fellow commuters. In the style of Michael Holden’s All Ears I shall relate it to you.

It’s a packed train on a cold day. I get the same train every day and recognise the faces of roughly half the other commuters. Man1 is a new face to me, tall and smart with a one length beard and haircut style. Man2 is a regular on the train, a short broad man who seems to be putting a lot of pressure on his pinstripe suit and open collared shirt.

Man1 : Gets up from his seat opposite Man 2 and moves to another part of the carriage.

Man2 : Looks pointedly at Man 1.

Man1: (surprised) “Oh - you coughed in my face, should really put your hand over you mouth.”

Man2: “Well you ought to shut your mouth. You should shut up”

Man1: (still calmly) “You coughed in my face, I don’t want to catch your germs.”

Man2: “Well you ought to shave, that’s unhygenic”

Man1: “What are you talking… You silly Bugger”.

(there’s a pointed silence where Man2 stares intently at Man1)

Man2: (obviously not happy with the way the previous exchange had peetered out) “You should be careful who you speak to. You’ll get yourself in trouble opening your loudmouth like that. And you had your feet on the seats.”

Man1: “No I didn’t, you’re just making things up now.”

Man2: (embarassing himself even further) “You’re just embarassing yourself even further, you should aplogise.”

Man1: (surprisingly still calm) “I am sorry, that you coughed in my face.”

Man2: (surprisingly at a loss for words since he really should have seen that coming) “Well.” (Subdued he returned to his paper, which was the Telegraph of course.)

Calm returned to the train and we all carried on, relieved that they hadn’t come to blows. I shall be sure to move seats if Man2 ever sits opposite me in the future.