Bored bored bored.

There was a plan for tonight and the plan was simple. Stay up late and do 2 college assignments.

The reason i planned to do it overnight rather than in the day is because you can do more in one night session than you could in a whole week of daytimes. It's the lack of distraction, nobody else is online, nobody else is about the house, nothing is on tv, nowhere to go out, nothing to do.... Except work.

This plan was just kicking into action, i had megadosed up on coffee to get me through the night, and was ready to go. Then my internet connection died on me. I can't get any further than i already am on my assignments without using online resources, so i'm buggered.

So here I am an hour later still without internet, still dosed up on coffee and completely unable to sleep.

WANK!

Chocolate eating techniques #3

Todays guide is a little bit of rule-bending because today what I'm going to show you how to eat properly is not chocolate: It's skittles!

Of course I don't mean bowling skittles, I wouldn't recommend eating those, I mean this kind

There are several varieties of skittles nowadays - as you can see I've got fruit skittles, which is the new name for the original ones - this technique should be applied to every type.

First off open the pack in the same way that you should open all packets of chocolate, crisps, sweets etc; Go along the seam so that you can undo it neatly without tearing anything. Unfortuately this packet wasn't playing ball with me today and it ripped open spreading skittles across my floor, so I went by the 2-second rule.


Step 2: The pairs and squares rule, which states that you can only ever, ever eat skittles in coloured pairs or coloured squares. Pairs is obvious enough, but coloured squares means a squared number of the same colour so 2, 4, 16 etc. Since you're unlikely to have 16 of the same colour this really just means 2 or 4.

Start off by picking up any two (or four) of the same colour from the packet and eating them together.

You may prefer to empty the skittles on a table and separate them into coloured pairs first, like so:

Continue this until the bottom of the packet. You don't have to stick with one colour you can swap back and forth, it's up to you.

This is where the technique turns into fortune telling! That's right you can actually read your luck for the day from a packet of skittles! If you get to the bottom of the packet and you have managed to pair up every last skittle - that is, if there are no odds ones left in the bottom, then you know that today will be a good day.

It's an omen, a sign that all is well with the world, that the universe is in order, that whichever gods you believe in are smiling down upon you.

If not all skittles are paired up, don't forget the pairs and squares rule - you can not eat single-colour skittles so just throw them in the bin.

No, seriously. Throw them in the bin.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how to properly eat a packet of skittles.

Coming soon: The definitive, ISO standardised way to eat a Cadbury's Creme Egg!

Until next time, ta-ta.

Swinstead the medieval warfare master (aka geek)

Yesterday I made a Trebuchet. For those not in the know a Trebuchet is a medieval warfare device something like a catapult - you will have seen them in films being used to hurl huge rocks at castle walls and stuff.

It was made from paperclips and it could take very little weight without falling to bits.


It managed to fire about 5 times it's own length but only a few times before the axle bowed and the whole thing died. It was good for nothing more than a proof of concept.

So then I whipped out the bamboo, the hacksaw and the wood glue and took things to the next level with attempt number 2.

As you can see attempt number 2 is much larger and more sturdy.

This model could fire around 5 feet compared to being a foot long. Then I made some structural changes (not pictured) and it now fires to well over ten feet! I'm convinced I can get it higher when I get around to making a heavier counterweight, but now I've had my fun I probably won't bother.

Instead, my next plan is to make a bigger version, roughly 4 feet tall, which will be awesome. It will be so awesome that it's second name will be awesome and people will say "Hey have you seen that trebuchet John Awesome and his 2 kids 'Totally Awesome' and 'Frickin Awesome'?"

Anyway. Other stuff I did yesterday was look into steampunk modding some things. Steampunking makes everything cool, see below.

And also I was looking at pictures of some of the coolest tattoos I've ever seen:



And the pièce de résistance, without a doubt my favourite tattoo ever:


And to top off my online meanderings I was looking at galleries of a lego artist who makes actual artistic sculptures out of lego. And this is my favourite:

And there we go, a day in the life of someone too skint to go out on a Friday!

Luckily tonight I shall be leaving the house instead!

Chocolate eating techniques #2

To properly eat a kit-kat, you will first need a couple of pieces of equipment.

Primarily there is, of course, fig 1 - a kit-kat.


Whether you enter the competition to win a mini or not is an optional part of this lesson. Secondly, you will need a cup of steamin' hot java! Well actually any hot drink will work so you can substitute it for tea or whatever you like, but I'm a caffeine addict so I used coffee. This cup was lovingly made for me by my friend Lizz.

That's all the preparation done so let's start the method.

First, unwrap the kit-kat from it's wrapper. Now, if you're anal like me then you're going to want to unwrap the kit-kat without tearing the wrapper at all; the way to do this is to open along the seams instead of tearing.

Next thing to do is carefully remove one of the 4 "fingers" from the "hand". This is the finger we will be eating first, so you can discard the others for now and come back to them later.

Now you've got the little finger isolated from his gang, you can do whatever you want to him.

Being careful not to bite into the wafer at all, nibble off the chocolate from one end of the finger.

Next, repeat this step on the other end of the finger.


Now your finger has been wantonly nibbled at, it's time to put this together with your other piece of equipment, the coffee!

As you can see in the photo below, you need to dip one end of the kit-kat finger into the coffee, and the other end in your mouth. What I'm essentially doing here is using the kit-kat as a straw, sucking the coffee up through it.



Repeat all the above steps for each finger.

The end result is a delightful chocolatey coffee taste, that simply dwarves the comparatively bland taste of a regular kit-kat.

Et voila, you now know how to eat a kit-kat properly.