Sink your teeth into this

Looks can be deceiving when it comes to cake. Paul's Chocolate Moelleux. I can't say it loud enough as I shiver anxiously in the queue, eyes on the display, so much is at stake. The world could end, it wouldn't matter, I would have this cake!

Not corrupted by icing or murdered by raisins and nuts, it stands alone, brown and unassuming, even somewhat unattractive. The first bite is a revelation; this cake has managed to embrace the extremes; sweet but with a hint of cocoa bitterness, soft but nicely crusty on the sides, crumbles and melts in the mouth at the same time. A little goes a long way, but even a whole cake wouldn't induce nausea.

Great choice for any occasion, especially if you need to fool anyone about your baking skills. This cake has such a home made, just out of Mom's kitchen oven taste, that you could get away with it!

Can you eat a painting?

So I was listening to a chap singing at the Fitzwilliam Museum here in Cambridge. The setting is amazing. The walls are adorned by fine paintings of great people, in ornate golden frames. The room was filled with people who were enjoying this demonstration of what happens when society has the resources to allow some of it's members to reach the peak of their abilities.

Yet all I could think about was where this was all going to be in 10 or 20 years time. The science about climate change is now lagging behind the speed of the change itself. Reading Mark Lynas' Six Degrees introduces you to the sheer terror of a world blighted by 4, 5 or 6 degrees of warming. We will not be worried about how to tune our pianos or where we can get a tube of red ocher, we will be worried about where our next meal comes from as we fight for resources on a massively over-crowded planet with a collapsed eco-system.

Last year I read a book, recommended by Monbiot, called 'The Road'. It's the most wrenching, tragic yet compelling book I have ever read. Testament to this is the rather frank text I got from Francis when he read it at my suggestion. A post-apocalyptic world where people have to do anything to survive.

Is this really the gift we want to give our children?

I do everything I can do reduce my personal emissions but I have recently joined the whirlwind that is Francis Irving to help create: http://seriouschange.org.uk in order to help effect political change. Join us. Write to your MP/representative to let them know you care (http://writetothem.com).

If we don't sort this out, as Starbuck herself would say, "It's the end of the world".

Adding GPS track data to JPG exif data

Recently I went on holiday with my girlfriend, my little olympus digital snappy camera, and my nokia E71 phone.

While touring Paris, I left the E71 (with built-in GPS) running Nokia's SportsTracker software, which is quite a respectable GPS tracking tool. Naturally, I also took more than a few photos.

Just before starting the SportsTracker session, I ensured that my camera and phone times were more-or-less in sync.

Various web-based photo sites allow one to see where a photo was taken by using the GPS coordinates in the JPG Exif data, and I rather liked the idea of being able to see a map displaying the photos I've taken. I'm specifically thinking about google's picasaweb here, but they're not the only one. For example: http://picasaweb.google.com/karl.dane/Testing?authkey=6ER8sJ42S90#5260750179838664114

Now, some weeks later, I have the data that SportsTracker recorded, and a load of photos. The problem was how to merge the two. Well - I'm a perl coder, so that seemed to be the sensible approach.

SportsTracker will export to various formats, and of these XML seemed the most useful. This was where I learned just how limited XML::Simple is; the XML file produced by SportsTracker was about 4.6MB, and to turn this into a perl data structure took about 20 minutes!

XML::libXML seemed the way to go, but it looked reasonably scary. Thankfully, I found a splendid page 'Stepping up from XML::Simple to XML::libXML' which provided the necessary examples: http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=490846

All that remained was to find a good exif editing utility, and Exiftool seemed to be perfect: http://freshmeat.net/projects/exiftool

So - the script I wrote looks at a directory of JPEGs and uses exiftool to lookup the original creation time of each image.

It then hunts through the XML file for a timestamp that closely matches that of the jpeg. When found, it pulls out the appropriate coordinates, and uses Exiftool again to update the file accordingly.

It's a little on the slow side; there are definitely areas for improvement / efficiency gains, but it does the job.

Obviously this is tuned to work for SportsTracker XML exports, but it should be quite easy to adapt to any other XML format.

Find the script here: gps-exif.pl

Requires Date::Manip, XML::libXML and Exiftool

Must pass -d switch to tell it where your photos are, and -x to tell it which xml file to read.


Karl Dane

Olverum Bath Oil

Are you stressed and worn out? Coryzal symptoms? Or nothing to do on a Friday night? The prognosis is good with Olverum Bath Oil, the only bath oil that has fulfilled all the criteria for the perfect soak. Absolutely amazing relaxing and yet uplifting aroma, wafting out of the steamy water and soaking perfectly into the skin, with no oily residue on the bath afterwards. All muscle aches and negative thoughts are dismissed, a recipe for insomnia as well, the pillow rises to meet my head and I am instantly asleep and restored when I stumble into bed.

Read all about it and order online at www.olverum.com

Tweed Cycle Bag

In the fashion of a Thai bag (which is made from two pieces of cloth).



I used some New Grey Raver from Dashing Tweeds. I had intended to make a top out of it, as illustrated in the previous post, but I lost the nerve (and the fabric isn't cheap!). So I just made this simple bag which folds up beautifully small and seems almost invisible until it reflects. I figure that while cycling you can wear it across the body so it would work like a sash. Because of the cycling use, I made it a bit shorter than normal.

Below is the bag when photographed with a flash.

Warmest and Coolest Coat Ever

I'm in love with my Hemp Hoodlamb (flash site). Its stunningly warm, but yet one doesn't overheat. The ladies' version is even a bit shapely, which is pretty amazing for a warm coat (see Michelin Man style coats favoured by those who get very cold and want to wear a duvet)

Inhabitat have a good review of the hoodlamb and some other stuff in the range with some nice pictures.

Really impressed with the quality of the hemp/acrylic fur which lines the coat (and is delicious when you put it on, its like being hugged by a bear). It hasn't matted in the two years I've had it.

I'm currently looking at a pair of earmuffs in their range. Although the hood on the hoodlamb is pretty fantastic. And check out the Ruderalis Hat too. I challenge any head to get cold with that on.

Snow Dome in Wycombe

View Larger Map

Just found out today that there is a Snow Dome planned to replace (or augment) the dry ski slope in Wycombe. Its brilliant news and apparently should take a year. Some sketchy information on this Wycombe Summit website. Might go look soon and report back if anything is happening.
It seems that there are several of these snow domes going up in the area though. Perhaps buoyed by the success of the three big ones (Milton Keynes being one of them). I just hope that they really take spiralling energy costs into consideration and build in some decent insulation to cut down their costs. Otherwise I can see it becoming prohibitively expensive to run pretty quickly.
It shouldn't be that hard to build smart, but of course the material and design costs would be higher. Considering that humans were building ice houses long long along, it should be possible.