Wanchai Ferry

Discovered in a local supermarket 3 new Chinese dinner kits from a company called Wanchai Ferry. There is a choice of Xiang Gu Chicken, Kung Pao Chicken and Bo Luo Pork. As a someone who enjoys Chinese cooking, I found these dinner kits a refreshing change, as it made cooking Chinese food easy, and created a great meal that everyone liked.

On the front of each kit is a list of the ingredients inside the kit and also a list of extra ingredients you will need, such as pork, chicken and any vegetables. To make a meal with the kit you simply follow the instructions, and voila you have a simple and easy Chinese meal that serves 2-3 people. I have tried the Xiang Gu Chicken and the Kung Pao Chicken and am looking forward to trying the Bo Luo Pork. Have a look at http://www.wanchaiferry.co.uk for more information on their products.

Fozzie Bear vs Statler and Waldorf

This is a great clip from an episode of The Muppet Show starring Bruce Forsyth, in which he “shows” Fozzie Bear how to deal with Statler and Waldorf in the balcony. Very funny and worth watching.

Lotus Symphony

Been using a new office suite on my Mac recently. It’s called Symphony and is made by IBM Lotus, based on OpenOffice. What IBM Lotus have done is taken OpenOffice, making it in to an office suite better suited to an office environment. IBM Lotus Symphony can be downloaded for free from the Lotus Symphony web site.

At the moment Symphony has a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software built in, along with the ability to add plugins. There is also a web browser built in as well which is useful for surfing the web, while you are using the software, as it saves you switching to another web browser. Symphony is fully compatible with OpenOffice as it uses the same Open Document standard file type that OpenOffice uses, as well as being compatible with Microsoft Office versions up to 2003 - Office 2007 file types are not yet supported, tho I guess they are coming in a future release.

I noticed that when using the word processor a formatting sidebar appears on the right hand side of the screen, and this is useful for selecting text size, font etc. This sidebar also appears in the Spreadsheet and Presentation modules as well, providing useful formatting commands for the file you are working on

I hope that IBM Lotus improve Symphony even further, perhaps adding some of the other OpenOffice tools such as Base and Draw. I think it is great addition to the office suite market, and will help showcase how good OpenOffice and its derivatives are. All in all if you are looking for a good office suite at no charge, give Symphony a go, I think you will enjoy using it.

Cycling 3

Been cycling a lot this year, and I am actually improving. I think this is due to the fact I purchased a new bike, as it is much better suited to my body height, being a bike with a smaller 14” frame. Compared to my cycling last year, I am now able to cycle for longer periods without resting, and can get up some hills in one go, which is great as it means I can begin to cover longer distances in a shorter time. Also I am now able to cycle a bit faster on flat roads, partly due pushing myself to go faster, and having a bike with a lighter frame.

Hopefully by the end of the summer, I will have improved even more, and be able to tackle even more hills in one go!

Another Site Design & iWeb Thoughts

Decided that while the design for my personal web site was good, it needed to be simplified, to make it easier to add and edit pages, and shorten the uploading process. So lo and behold I switched to this more simple design, which make my site more streamlined and look good. Comments on the design are always welcome.

Having changed the design of my site, I wish that iWeb would allow you to specify which parts of a page are the title, so that whenever you add a new page, such as a blog entry you do not need to keep having to change the page title, from the templates default design to your site title. I guess It would also be good to have an easy way to modify a template in iWeb so it is ready to use, customised to your needs, so that when you add another blog entry, there is no need to spend time customising the page to fit in with you site design. Hopefully a future version of iWeb will address this.