• Made chocolate orange cupcakes. The icing was a half batch, with the zest of two oranges added to it. I’ll write up the recipe properly over the next couple of days.

• Bought a proper icing bag and nozzles set. The very first time I used it I split the larger of the two icing bags that came with it. Bugger.

• Watched far too many things containing people called Edward.

  • Twilight: New Moon (ugh).
  • The Wicker Man (The Nic Cage one. Silly, amusing, enjoyable).
  • A whole load of Jedward videos. Nuff said.

• Oh, and we watched Giant Shark vs Mega Octopus as well. That was fun.

It was Becca’s birthday today, and I was ill. Never the greatest of combinations, but I hope she managed to have a good time even if I was a little bit non-communicative because of it.

She got to steal my pudding at least, so hopefully that made her happy.

Also, she got Scribblenauts, stamps with her face on them and a John Barrowman poster that reads “You know, I’m really wired. What do you say I take you home and eat your pussy?” (photo soon). A good day for presents then

I love my sketchbook paper filled little Moleskine. I love writing on it in pencil. I love the wonderful textures.

I also love my macro lens, and the fact that the two lines have absolutely nothing to do with each other in the recipe.

PS A prize of my adoration for anyone who can tell me what the recipe is for.

This is all it took to make the cupcakes. This four egg mixture made 48 teeny tiny cupcakes, which I’ve baked and glazed with vanilla sugar syrup tonight. Tomorrow will be the icing stage, and another 48 cupcakes; this time in chocolate orange flavour.

I also made the first half of Becca’s birthday cake; a chocolatey affair, also made with four eggs. I’ll be baking another one of those tomorrow evening before turning it into a four layer cake with ridiculous amounts of butter icing sandwiched between each layer. As I write this upstairs in bed I can still smell the fantastically chocolately aroma. It’s both amazing and annoying.

None of this is for general consumption though – this is all for Becca’s birthday gathering on saturday.

In other news, I’m really enjoying having the Kenwood Chef.

I’ve previously photographed two other Mac laptop keyboards. I’m going to have to go back to this again another day, I’m really not happy with the result here today, but I need to go to bed.

I’m a big fan of flapjacks – they’re sweet and oaty and fruity and yummy. Even better, they’re gluten-free, so my coeliac friends can eat them too.

Most of the time I make mine with cherries and sultanas, but it’s just as easy to substitute in other ingredients.

After the latest haul at Christmas, I’ve now got fifteen different ice-cube trays, ranging from Lego to Space Invaders to Skull & Crossbones to Eyeore to Shark’s Fins. Anyone would think I was obsessed…

Earlier this week I finally got round to buying a new saddle for my bike. This would be the bike that I bought about nine months ago, and have ridden probably as many times.

One of my many excuses for not having ridden it was that I didn’t particularly enjoy the sharp little saddle that came with it riding up into my arse. So, last week whilst it was pretty damn cold and there was no way in hell I’d be going out on my bike anyway I decided that enough was enough, and decided to buy a sofa to replace it with.

It arrived today, and yup – it’s a sofa. As you can see, it’s more than twice the size of the original saddle. It also comes with its own suspension, and I’m hoping it’ll make my ride a little bit more comfortable whilst I get back into the swing of riding after seven years away.

The stupid thing is, I used to love riding. Here’s hoping I end up loving it again.

I’ve been blogging in one form or another for years. From saifai.co.uk (now well and truly defunct), where I wrote about Buffy and Ally McBeal, to LiveJournal where I did the random moaning about life thing, to workingwith.me.uk, to The Code Train, flickr and various places in between. The common denominator over the last eight years is that I’ve always been trying to produce something of worth.

Last year, I started taking a photo of my toy ED-209 every day. I lasted for about 70 days before I gave up on the every day thing, but what I found during this time was that everything else suffered. By taking the time to take photos of Ed I ended up not writing about code, t-shirts, food or any of the other things that I find interesting. So, this year I decided that instead of doing the Photo 365 thing, I would instead endeavour to produce a piece of content on the internet every single day of the year and link to it from this blog.

The idea is that by keeping this open I’ll not let any one aspect of my productivity suffer, and everything will get some content this year. I’m going to try and keep the meta-ness low on here though, and not have too many explanatory posts like this. Almost certainly there’ll be a load of photo posts though.

4% through the year already, here’s to the next 96!