I’ve previously raved about Slash’s albums, Apocalyptic Love and Ain’t Life Grand. Well, he’s done it again.
Weighing in with a bargainiferous 17 tracks, World On Fire is Slash (and friends) at his very best, especially the first few songs. With 17 of them, you would expect there to be some bum tracks on there - but there aren’t. An iTunes screen capture says it all, really:
If you only buy one album this year, I recommend this one.
I’ve blogged before about a mighty fine brunch at Two Good Eggs in Surry Hills. Yesterday, we went back for the first time since then and I am happy to report that nothing bad has happened to the place in the intervening year.
This time, I went for a special of “Chorizo Hash Brown Stack” (or something to that effect). I don’t often take photos of my food but sometimes it is so handsomely presented that it’s hard to resist. Today was one of those times (even if the resulting photos is a little blurry):
It tasted as good as it looked, with two perfectly cooked eggs. A year is too long to wait between visits, so I’m aiming to find an excuse to go back a bit sooner next time.
I do like good chocolate, ice cream and coffee. What could be better, then, than something tasty that combined all three‽ Behold! The Magnum espresso
Magnum vanilla ice cream is not spectacular but it is good - and surrounded by really good dark chocolate. (It makes me wonder whether you can just buy bars of the stuff.) Stick in some swirls of coffee syrup and you’ve got a winner. It’s chocolate with a splash of coffee, rather than coffee with a splash of chocolate - so don’t be too disappointed if you are after COFFEE!
According to their Facebook page, it’s a limited edition. I hope its not too limited!
At the end of February, I attended the first day of the two-day Soundwave Music Festival, primarily to see the headlining Faith No More. I’d perused the rest of the lineup before the day but not to the extent of doing any research on the bands that I did not know.
One such band had just started their set when we arrived to check out the main stage in the early afternoon: Steel Panther.
The picture from the Soundwave App (above) probably tells you 90% of what you need to know. The accompanying blurb:
STEEL PANTHER’s latest release ‘All You Can Eat’ fits this rock ‘n’ roll opus perfectly. There are badass riffs aplenty, arena-size grooves, lyrics about sex, drugs, and senior citizens, and the lingering scent of whisky, a stripper’s perfume, and hairspray.
I’m actually a bit of a fan of hair metal, and Steel Panther have a sound that hits the genre perfectly. Lyrically, though, they were not quite Bon Jovi. They were Spinal Tap!
I commented on this at the time but did not realise that they really were like Spinal Tap, being a parody act complete with wigs. From a small dose it was not entirely clear, except in hindsight: they did it very well.
I have since got All You Can Eat
The Saturday before last, we were with friends watching England experience their first (but least upsetting) sporting defeat of the past couple of weeks: a tight one point Rugby Union loss to the All Blacks. Despite the defeat, it was a good game and made all the more enjoyable by a fine array of beverages.
In fact, the disappointment of the rugby was over-shadowed by the impromptu pale ale beer tasting that accompanied it. The line up is above, and started with Haymaker, an English import from Hook Norton in the Cotswolds. It was quite strong for a pale ale, at 5% alcohol, but packed full of flavour. Yum.
After that it was on to the Aussie beers. We’d brought some Beechworth pale ale from Bridge Road Brewery, which was good and fruity with a quite hoppy taste. Another craft brewery to add to my increasing watchlist and another fine pale ale to add to the existing favourites. One fifty lashes from James Squire is already on that list, being one of the first decent* beers that I discovered in Australia. (*To my taste.)
Only the final beer let the side down: Coopers was by far and away the worst and, after the others, I have nothing good to say about it. If only it could have been replaced with Fat Yak from Matilda Bay, it would have been a first class collection!
Today we went for Sunday brunch at Two Good Eggs cafe in Surry Hills, central Sydney.
A good Sunday brunch is probably my favourite meal of the week - not that we have brunch every week - and so it was exciting to go to a cafe that specialised in breakfast and brunch. Starting with a very good flat white, complete with little wafer, we were not disappointed.
The Two Good Eggs menu is pretty diverse and manages to hit both the usual favourites, such as pancakes with bacon and maple syrup, or Eggs Benedict, plus a whole bunch of creative dishes too.
I opted for something that I would never make myself at home: Roast pork belly with poached eggs, caramelised onion and sourdough toast. Delicious! The two eggs were indeed good, cooked to perfection and served atop tasty, crispy pork belly and sweet, sticky caramelised onions. The photo did not do it justice but an attempt seemed obligatory for something so good.
I was lucky enough to sample a couple of other dishes too: Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon and avocado, and “Goats on toast”, a vegetarian dish of “Warm Trinity Cellars French goats cheese with drizzled honey and smashed walnuts on sour cherry fruit toast”. Both were very good, although I’m glad I went for the pork belly.
Not quite as cheap or close as the amazing sandwiches at One Six Nine cafe in Randwick, but I am already looking for excuses to go back! Top notch nosh.
I’ve had a few pairs of Merrell shoes (mostly the super-comfy Moab Ventilator) and generally found them to last pretty well, given how much I wear them. Therefore, I was quite disappointed when my (non-Moab) Merrell shoes broke today, whilst putting them back on in a store changing room. They were under five months old and I have worn them a fair amount but not enough to expect one loops holding the laces to just snap. Without that loop, they could not be laced up properly and were essentially useless as a result.
Being in the city, I decided to visit the Merrell shop in Sydney (where I bought the shoes) to see if there was anything that could be done. The lady in the shop looked at the damage and, having not seen such an issue before, swapped them on the spot for a brand new pair! Now, that’s customer service! (And worthy of public acknowledgement, I feel.)
Well done, Merrell. My faith in your shoes is restored!
Ever since our Hunter Valley wine tour last month, I’ve been on the lookout for Tyrrell’s Wines in the local bottle shops. At the weekend, we had friends over for curry and I was therefore very happy to find a Tyrrell’s 2013 Old Winery Sauvignon Blanc for a snip at $12.99, which was suggested to make “an ideal accompaniment to fresh seafood and spicy Asian dishes”. Ideal, it was!
The Old Winery Sauvignon Blanc exhibits a wonderfully fragrant nose of snow peas, guava and a little passionfruit. With its classic varietal character, this full flavoured and refreshing sauvignon blanc delivers herbal and grassy notes with vibrant, zesty citrus fruit character.
Tonight, we sampled a second one from the range, the 2013 Old Winery Semillon Sauvignon Blanc, “an ideal accompaniment to a wide variety of cuisines such as seafood, vegetarian, chicken and creamy pasta dishes” - it paired very nicely with our pasta carbonara.
Citrus semillon fruit characters and lifted herbaceous sauvignon blanc overtones combine perfectly to produce this zesty wine style with a fresh and lively finish.
If cheap (but delicious) whites are not your thing, I can also thoroughly recommend the 
2011 Stevens Single Vineyard Shiraz.
Medium to full bodied with a lively, intense purple colour. Black cherry, rapsberry and fresh, spicy flavours dominate the palate with a vibrant, fresh acidity that make the wine a wonderful example of the modern, balanced style of Hunter Valley shiraz.
You have to go to the winery in Hunter Valley to get it (and it’s a tad more than $13) but it’s worth the trip!
We’ve been to One Six Nine Cafe in Randwick a few times for brunch or lunch and never been disappointed. The menu is good and all the food is made with quality ingredients in decent portions, so great value for money as well as taste. The sandwiches are particularly excellent. Today, I had the bacon, rocket, avocado, tomato and spicy slaw and I can’t think of how it could have been made better. (A bigger mouth, maybe?) Highly recommended if you find yourself in Randwick for lunch!
When we moved to Australia, my fabulous sister-in-law gave us a present of voucher for Wine Country Tours to visit the famous Hunter Valley wine region. (Nothing to do with Huntsman spiders!) At the weekend, we went on the tour and it was great!
Hunter Valley is 2-3 hours north of us, so we had a pretty early start, but much of the journey is through National Parks and very pretty. (At least the bits I saw - I must confess to having a bit of a snooze at times en route despite the often bumpy toad. Tip: if mornings are not your thing, bring a travel neck pillow for the journey!)
The tour itself started with morning coffee and baked goods at Peppers Guesthouse, which was very pleasant. As a bonus, we got to see our first wild kangaroo, even if it was quite far away.
Once refreshed, we drove down the road to the main event: a tour and tasting at Tyrrell’s Wines, where we got up close and personal with some of the vines. Tyrrell’s Wines have been making wine (and family run) since 1858. Indeed, thanks to Phylloxera blighting European vineyards, the winery has some of the oldest vines in the world. At the time of our visit, the grapes were close to full colour and would be harvested in a few weeks. (Sooner for the whites.)
We then had a tour of the winery itself. Our guide, Richard Everett, is a trained Oenologist (winemaker) who worked in the wine industry for many years before moving into the wine guide business; he really knows his stuff and was able to give lots of insights into the wine-making process and the challenges it faces. (If you ever have doubts about the reality of climate change, talk to a winemaker!)
After the tour of the cellars, we then got down to the highlight of the day: tasting (15!) delicious Tyrrell’s wines. The tasting concentrated on what Hunter Valley (currently) does best - Semillon, Chardonnay and Shiraz - with several interesting comparisons, including three “vertical” tastings (same wine, different vintage) and several straight comparisons of the same grape from different vines and/or vineyards. (Tyrrell’s have vineyards outside Hunter too, so we were able to taste some of those and compare!) Richard was great and made the tasting highly educational, entertaining and enjoyable.
It’s fair to say that I came away from the tasting a major fan of Tyrrell’s Wines and will be looking out for them in future. It also really struck home how dynamic the whole wine business is - and how hard oenologists have to work year on year to maintain quality in the face of changing weather and climate.
After the tasting, we went for a somewhat pricey but very tasty lunch at Roberts Restaurant before a flying visit to Hungerford Hill Wines for a second (smaller) tasting with glimpse of the future: “cool climate” wines grown at altitude in the Snowy Mountains.
All-in-all, an excellent day out and highly recommended! (There are a few more photos here.)
Christmas is a time full of superstitions and traditions from a variety of sources. Whilst I enjoy the odd tradition, I’m not generally a fan of superstition; we adopted a black cat, for example, I have been known to deliberately walk under ladders - after checking that it was safe to do so - and I have nothing against the number 13. One superstition I can get behind, however, is Jura Superstition, which I was fortunate enough to receive as a Christmas present from my lovely wife.
Superstition is Jura's "Lightly peated" whisky and is a bit less peaty than some of my favourites but very tasty and ever so drinkable.
They say:
Jura Superstition is crafted from a selection of the finest aged Jura single malt whiskies. This mysterious spirit has a unique style and character, with tastes of tangy cinnamon, ginger spice and honey with whispers of salty sea spray, rich coffee and roasted chestnuts.
At first, this description confused me as I thought that mixing a bunch of single malts would make it a blend rather than a single malt. I was (of course) wrong. According to Wikipedia:
To be called a single malt whisky in Scotland, a bottle may only contain whisky distilled from malted barley and produced at a single distillery. … If the bottle is the product of malt whiskies produced at more than one distillery, the whisky is called a blended malt or vatted malt, or pure malt. If a single malt is mixed with grain whisky, the result is a blended whisky. Single malts can be bottled by the distillery that produced them or by an independent bottler.
So, there you go.
When I was last buying some wine from Liquorland, I was informed at the till that I had spent enough to qualify for a couple of special offers at the till at $10 for a bottle. Generally, I say no to such attempts to getting you to spend more but the sight of a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc made me pause - long enough to be told it was normally $23 a bottle.
I can’t (always) resist a bargain and had just bought some sushi for dinner, which I thought might go nicely with a glass of wine, so I decided to get a bottle from the fridge. A good decision, for very nice it was too! (And did indeed go well with the sushi.)
They say:
“Distinctly Marlborough, this 2013 Sauvignon Blanc captures the vibrant herbaceous, grapefruit and gooseberry characters of the region. Superb weight and elegance combine to complete a wine of remarkable fruit intensity and style.”
This one is certainly on the watchlist for recurring offers!
One of the noticeable things about Sydney is the quality of coffee. Unlike the UK, which is dominated by several big chains (Costa, Starbucks, Nero etc.) and has quite variable coffee outside of these chains, the Sydney cafe scene is still ruled by small independents and they are all good! One cafe worth a particular mention is 22 grams on High Street in Randwick, which is just down the road from where we spent our first month in Sydney. Their coffee rates as some of the best that I have ever had - and they do a mean cinnamon bun too!
It would be wrong to mention good coffee, however, without a shout-out for Cafe Brioso, which is more commonly known as the “Library lawn coffee cart” (above). Situated next to the Library Lawn (below), this is my favoured spot for a flat white on campus. Although quiet in the photo above (as I try to avoid taking and posting pictures of strangers), the coffee cart gets pretty busy at peak times but the crew of baristas are awesome and churn through the orders like a well-oiled machine. It’s good coffee, too! My only regret is that, as it’s takeaway only, I alway have a lid, which covers up the pretty “barista art” in the crema/foam. Somehow, it’s nice knowing it’s there, though - a sign, I think, that the barista cares!
Both were good but the Pinot was the one that I really liked. It wasn’t quite up to the awesomeness of Roaring Meg from Mt Difficulty but it’s definitely one that I would get again. It’s also pushed New Zealand Pinot Noir slightly higher up my red wine wish-list. (Australian Shiraz has been sitting at the top of the go-to list since moving over but I’ve also had some decent glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon - my wine of choice as a student - whilst out and about, which has given me pause for thought.)
Today I moved all the textbooks and folders that had been shipped over from the UK into my office from our apartment. I was therefore thoroughly in the mood for a nice cold beer after work. Happily, there were already plans to meet a friend and she took us to Papa Gede's bar at 346 Kent St in Sydney CBD, which can be found at the end of a very unassuming little laneway.
Although they are new to me, Papa Gede’s is a fairly new addition to the bar scene in Sydney and it’s a good one. The interior is cosy and comfortable and they were playing very funky music too, which the friendly staff identified as the Budo’s band (also new to me). They also made a fine beer recommendation in the form of Mountain Goat hightail ale: malty and tasty but also a thirst quencher.
Both beer and bar (and Budos’ band) are recommended!
We shared the smoked salmon brunch - smoked salmon on sourdough toast with ricotta, avocado and a poached egg - and the day’s special: peanut butter pancakes with maple syrup, grilled banana and crispy bacon. Amazing. The portions were just right (for me) - large enough to feel that I was getting value for money (and full!) but not obscene - and the food was all top quality. The coffee was good too!
I suspect that this is the first of many brunches to come but it might be a hard one to beat! Fortunately, One Six Nine is within walking distance of where we'll be living but not too close. (The temptation might be too strong for our wallets!)
As an added bonus, they also served Tap™, which I had seen advertised outside a cafe before but did not really understand what it was. It turns out that it’s not a crazy gimmick/scam (along the lines of Dasani) but is instead an attempt to save resources by encouraging people to drink tap water, something that I can happily get behind!
We’ve been in Sydney a few days now* and things are beginning to calm down enough to consider a bit of blogging. A lot’s been happening since my last proper posting period and I was not sure where to start but the trip over seemed like a good place to start. [*At time of writing.]
I’ve made a fair few long haul flights over the past couple of years and although this was one of the longest it was also one of the most comfortable - even though we were just in standard economy class. Things did not start out too well, it must be said. Despite checking in literally the minute that online check-in opened - I was there hitting “refresh” until it would let me - we had a choice of 3 seats, only two of which were next to each other. I generally like a pair in the centre block of four, so there is no need to disturb (or be disturbed by) a stranger when exiting the seat. Instead we ended up with a window and middle seat in one of the outer three seats with me in the middle.
Lesson 1. Pay the extra $25 to pick seats as soon as the booking is made! For a long haul flight of that price, it is not much extra to pay - and apparently everyone else does it, if seat availability was anything to go by!
On a 747, this might have been an issue. Happily, we were travelling on an Airbus A380, which have three things going for them in the comfort stakes:
1. New. I think it’s fair to say that new planes are always more comfy than old ones - the seats are new and comfortable, the plane is quiet and the entertainment system is better. The A380 ticks all three boxes.
2. Big. These guys are big. Really big! As a result, the inside is really rather roomy, even - on Qantas planes, at least - in economy. Although I spent 13 hours with a person each side of me, often with the chair in front reclined, I never felt particularly cramped or claustrophobic. The cabin ceiling is also high, which adds to the sense of space, and the overhead lockers for hand luggage are roomy and accommodating.
3. Well-designed. In addition to being shiny and massive, there were some little touches that added to the space and comfort. For example, the seat base slid slightly forward when the back reclined, which gave the person behind a little more knee space. They are also surprisingly quiet on the inside for a 600 ton lump of metal being jet propelled at 30,000 feet. I did use my noise-cancelling headphones but they were not a necessary as for most planes.
As a result, despite a very good selection of movies that I had not seen and a usual inability to sleep on planes, I managed to get a fair few hours, especially on the long Dubai to Sydney leg.
Lesson 2. Always book on an A380 where possible, even if the times are less convenient. I would rather have a couple of extra hours on the plane we flew over on than have a shorter trip on the BA 747 that I flew back to the UK on in February. (Happily, the Qantas route via Dubai is also the shortest!)
The only real negative on the flight over was that we were given some dodgy advice in Heathrow regarding Duty Free. Having scoped out our chosen whisky to bring over (Dalmore Valour), we were advised that this would not be possible as we were travelling through Dubai. Nonsense. Although you have to go back through security, they just take your duty free off you at Dubai and put it in the hold to collect later.
Lesson 3. You can buy duty free, even when travelling via Dubai.
And therein ends the lesson(s).
Having a few minutes to kill at the airport, I thought it was fitting (and easy!) to leave a quick blog post about the last place we stayed in Southampton (having sold the house back in September): Number 10 on Landguard Road, Southampton. It’s run by the same people who run the excellent Mayfair Guest House across the road (#1 in Southampton on Tripadvisor!), where we also stayed a couple of nights.
Time is short, and I am lazy, so here is my Trip Advisor review:
Excellent self-catering accommodation in Southampton
We feel lucky to have found Number 10. We stayed here for our last two weeks in Southampton prior to moving abroad and it was exactly what we needed.
We stayed in one of the “standard rooms” with a shared bathroom. The room was big and well presented, as in the website photos. There are two standard rooms sharing two bathrooms, so we never had to wait to use the facilities. The bathrooms themselves are kept very clean and the showers are superb! Other shared facilities are great. The kitchen is well-equipped and each room has its own locked cupboard. Laundry facilities etc. are also good and seem sufficient for the number of guests.
The owners of Number 10 (who run the Mayfair Guesthouse B&B over the road) are extremely friendly and helpful; they made us very welcome and looked after us well but never felt intrusive.
The accommodation is very well situated, close to the train station and the city centre. It’s also a great price for what you get - a lot cheaper than a serviced apartment, for example. All things considered, Number 10 is ideal for someone moving to/from Southampton or visiting for a couple of weeks.
For anyone from the University of Southampton (and Solent, for that matter,) I reckon this place would be great for visiting academics or arriving postdocs etc.
It’s exactly a month until the Big Move Down Under and therefore seemed an appropriate time for a quick post to say goodbye to an old friend. Before you feel too sad on my behalf, the friend in question is a hat - an Australian Barmah “Squashy Kangaroo” hat to be precise.
I got my Squashy a few years ago during my first visit to Australia, on holiday. One of the appeals at the time - as suggested by the name - is that it folds up and squashes down nice and small, ideal for travelling.
Since Australia, I have mostly used it a sun hat in the garden but it’s also been on a few more exciting/adventurous trips with me, including our Honeymoon in Belize. Over time, however, it has got a bit mis-shapen sweat-stained and the prospect of ample opportunity to replace it meant that it was finally time to say goodbye. I am not sure whether I will get exactly the same type but I definitely see another Barmah hat (or two!) in my future.
If you monitor my Twitter feed, you might have noticed that I was sent a free copy of a Instant Markdown eBook from Packt Publishing to review. I’d not come across Packt before but their general approach looks good - making DRM-free eBooks in multiple formats (once bought, you can get the ePub, PDF or Kindle versions) and paying some kind of royalty to Open Source projects that form the basis of their books. Despite time being a bit limited at present, learning more Markdown is potentially a big timesaver (as I use it a lot now) and it’s a short book, so I agreed.
Unfortunately, the book itself turned out to be rather disappointing. It was indeed quite short - a bit too short. The topics covered were themselves quite useful and it reminded me of a couple of things that I had previously noted to look up. The problem was that they did not really provide any insight that five minutes on Google or, in some cases, even the Markdown Wikipedia article would not match or beat. All too frequently, the content consisted of:
<url>. Screenshots, examples and even descriptions were sorely lacking. Just directing the reader to a website does not really seem enough to me. It’s the kind of thing I might do it my blog, or in a Markdown cribsheet, but not in a book, even an e-Book - especially one priced at £7.64. (Bizarrely, when there are screenshots they tend to be things like login screens, which is rather pointless.)
The lack of screenshots in the intro section could be forgiven as one of the best ways to learn Markdown is just to play with it and see for yourself what it does. Another criticism that I have, however, is that this eBook does not explicitly promote this approach: rather than starting with an online Markdown editor, such as Markable (or one of the other editors mentioned later in the book), the author begins by recommending the download of the official Markdown Perlscript and running it from the command prompt as a starting point.
The other reason that a different approach would be useful is that the book seems to assume a lot of HTML knowledge from the outset. Being a bit of a geek, I generally code my webpages in raw HTML - or, at least, I did before I discovered Markdown! - and so I recognised the HTML code that the Markdown was being converted into. People used to WYSIWYG editors might not be so familiar, especially with tags like <blockquote> and <code>. I am not sure at whom the book is aimed but it seems too superficial for geeks and yet too geeky for non-geeks.
Some of the more advanced features in the Top 8 features section are potentially useful but suffer from the superficial handling mentioned above. A few more screenshots or descriptions would have been useful for tools such as Scriptogr.am and writing Presentations - what do these things look like? Ditto the MultiMarkdown section. For example, the maths section for this is:
Math
Here is a math support example:
\\[ {e}^{i\pi }+1=0 \\]
I don’t know about you but, at the very least, I would like to know what \\[ {e}^{i\pi }+1=0 \\] actually looks like when converted into HTML and opened in a web browser. For me, this really epitomises the book: it feels like it was lazily knocked out in an afternoon.
There were some useful things here - Pandoc is something I will be playing with and it was good to be reminded of it - but I’m not convinced that it is any more useful that one of the many Markdown guides that are kicking around for free online. (Some of these, almost ironically, are provided in “People and places you should get to know” section!)
The final problem that I had with this book was the lack of critical insight. It will, for example, give the basic code for embedding a picture in Markdown but fail to point out that it cannot be sized or aligned - to do this, you need to insert actual HTML. It will point to a few different tools but not really discuss the pros and cons of using an online versus local editor, for example. When giving the code for inline links ([text](url)) versus reference links ([text][ref] … [ref]: url), I expected it to point out that the former was clearer and safer if likely to be combining Markdown text from different sources (especially if using numerical references) whereas the latter is better if the same URL is being referenced multiple times. There was nothing like this. As someone who has largely picked up Markdown on the fly, I had hoped to pick up some useful tricks and tips and things to watch out for. I did not.
In summary, this is a handy reference guide to Markdown with some links out to some useful tools that themselves use Markdown. At £7.64, however, this eBook is not worth the money. More informative guides are freely available just a quick Google search away. (The documentation of free Markdown editors like Mou (Mac OSX) and MarkdownPad (Windows) is a good place to start for the curious.)