Recipe: Quick Baked Potatoes

Yet another recipe for lazy people. Or university students. Or lazy university students. It takes about half an hour to prepare these.

Quick Baked Potatoes

Ingredients
Potatoes (enough to fill you up)
Butter

Preheat oven to 200°C. A toaster oven can also be used.

Wash potatoes well and pat dry with paper towels. Stab the potatoes multiple times with a fork. Don't forget the stabbing step, unless you like explosive potatoes.

Place the (stabbed) potatoes onto a microwave-safe plate. Cover with a paper towel. Cook on medium-high heat for 5 minutes. Turn the potatoes over, replace the paper towel and cook for another 5 minutes.

Lightly brush the potatoes on both sides with butter (or olive oil if you want to be fancy). Wrap in aluminium foil. Transfer potatoes to a baking tray and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes.

Carefully unwrap the potatoes (there will be a fair amount of steam, so watch out). Split potatoes open by cutting a cross on top, without cutting all the way down. Lightly mash up the centre of each potato with a fork.

Add preferred toppings and enjoy. I like to top with shredded cheese, return the potatoes to the oven until the cheese melts, and then add a spoonful of Greek yoghurt (healthier and tastier than sour cream!), fried bacon bits and chopped spring onions, with sliced tomatoes on the side. Other toppings can include poached fish, chopped hand-boiled eggs, baby spinach, chopped parsley, chilli flakes or whatever else you happen to have in the kitchen. (Chocolate sauce is not recommended unless you are making baked sweet potatoes.)

Lilac Nails

Apparently, kicking a two-decade-old habit is harder than it looks. I kept nibbling on my nails during moments of inattention. Finally, I painted them in an unappetizing shade of light purple, with a topcoat to preserve the colour layer a little longer. It seems to be working, although the oddly-coloured nails keep distracting me.

Turns out that a Coke Float made with peppermint-chocolate ice-cream is both refreshing and delicious. Which is a good discovery, since I don't actually like peppermint-chocolate flavour and was looking for a way to get rid of it.

I haven't mentioned The SCP Foundation, which is a pity since it contains some well-written examples of short horror fiction the absolute right thing to do since everything there is highly classified and certainly not made-up in any way. Since they are classified, you should never read any of the articles. Especially not at night.

Update XXIX: Ice Cream in Winter

...There's twenty-nine of these things? Seriously?

Ice cream is good in any season. Even when it's too cold. Also, double chocolate ice-cream on a warm brownie. Can you ask for more?

Three-minute thesis competitions pose an interesting challenge. The idea is to summarise one's own PhD thesis for a non-specialist audience in just three minutes, backed up by a single PowerPoint slide. This is hard enough as it is, but the competitive element means that one has to stand out against everyone else in some way.

Standing out is the key phrase. Most people approach the three-minute thesis by trying to describe as much of their data as possible in an articulate manner. Unfortunately, data on its own isn't particularly interesting, not to a lay audience to whom everyone's work would sound almost equally incomprehensible. What then has to become interesting is the speaker. The speaker must display their passion for their work as they describe it, and thus inspire the audience as well.

It isn't easy. In standard article or report-writing, the speaker has to become detached from their work. They must appear as a non-entity, objectively testing aspects of the world for the truth. However, for a talk, the speaker is as much a part of the presentation as the slides are. And for a competitive presentation, it is personality which makes one stand out.

So anyway, all this boils down to a three-minute talk I had to deliver earlier today. Designing it was an interesting experience, and people afterwards told me that they didn't expect that sort of thing from me. Hey, I can put on a show when I need to. And I did win.

It can be quite jarring when the sun shines into your room, warming it gently - but the minute you step outside, you are plunged into icy air. On the one hand, I suppose I should be grateful for my apartment's good insulation. On the other hand... As if it wasn't hard enough trying to dress according to Melbourne's temperamental weather!

Why is Bacon So Delicious?

If anyone knows the answer, please tell me.

(I would speculate that it has to do with significant glutamate, salt and fat content, combined with ease of preparation and perhaps a touch of peer influence amplified through the Internet.)

Actually, I feel a bit sick after looking at those links. The "bacon explosion" does not look appetizing at all. And normally I love ThinkGeek, but that scarf. Urgh.

I'm going to go eat some kiwifruit now. Kiwifruit is the opposite of bacon, didn't you know?

I Think I'm in Love

Marry me, Kaito! I'm willing to overlook the fact that you're not a real person!

(No, not really. Besides, even if it was possible to marry a computer program, I'd have far too much competition as far as any of the Vocaloids are concerned.)

(For those of you who had a heart attack upon reading the title - Ha ha!)

(I <3 Kaito)

Pirates, Pirates, Pirates, Pirates

Or Pirates 4. :)

Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides was a great, fun movie. I think a problem with the previous two movies was that they had too much plot baggage, with Dead Man's Chest setting it up and At World's End trying to resolve it. In contrast, On Stranger Tides had that light, "first movie of the series" feel. It helps that you don't really need to have watched the previous films to enjoy this one, since it has largely new characters and re-establishes the personalities of the existing characters quite early on.

Another thing is that Jack is back to being largely in control, and one step ahead of everybody. And isn't watching Jack pull off yet another daring, showy escape one of the main attractions of the series?

So, good movie. Watch it. Just not in 3D (it's pointless).