Be Excellent To Each Other

Thanks! I even recognised two people!



You could combine it with Soskan's event there in October, but we'd rather you were at the cottage that weekend. ;P

The team I was placed in for this year's shmups forum tournament came dead last.

Hardcore.

I think the other guys just didn't bother playing anything. You wouldn't believe how much whining people do about the selection of games each year. It sometimes feels like a forum for folks who hate shooters.

Well, those numbers don't really mean much because they don't take the huge bias into account. Two people with similar interests and careers are vastly more likely to bump into each other online than those without shared interests, so going "here's a big number, here's a small number, oh my gosh!" doesn't really reflect all that is going on.

Also, is calculating improbabilities different to calculating probabilities?

Infinitely small. You've now "used up" all the luck you will ever have on that one coincidence - sorry, you'll never win the lottery or be dealt a straight flush or find a pound coin in the street.

I found a pound coin next to my car the other day!

However, I had just dropped it.

Those awful flag pin badges that politicians in the Colonia wear seem to have moved over to the UK. Not quite sure for the reasons, but maybe it is subtle reinforcement of identity and other INSIDIOUS METHODS OF COERCION PERPETRATED BY THE STATE.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healt ... coldc.html

I know it might just all be hype but the title of the story is

"A virus that kills cancer: the cure that's waiting in the cold
Sitting in a refrigerator in a Swedish laboratory is what promises to be a cheap and effective cancer treatment. So why are the trials to bring it to market not going ahead? "

An interesting read

Huh, electroporation to allow plasmid ingress. Clumsy. Might as well attach the DNA to gold pellets and shoot them through the solution.

EDIT: Seriously, getting drugs through trials costs money and 99% of them don't pass.

Hmm. Just bought a couple of books for my Kindle and I didn't receive any sort of order notification email from Amazon. The books have been delivered fine to my Kindle, but they're usually shit hot with their notification emails.

The One Coin is looking for a way back to its master.

Mince pies are in the shops!

This is awesome, as Mrs T is away and i'm not allowed mince pies until december... usually

Get in! I might count how many I eat this year.

Sounds like you need a spreadsheet making up.

Which do you favour? Mr Kipling are the usual ones, but I do like a Tesco finest. Their standard ones are not so good.

A good mince pie is like a good creme brulee, easy to make, difficult to master.

Waitrose own are the mince pies of the gods. Kipling ain't shit.

Are they not a bit "try hard"? M&S think they know what they are doing, but don't actually know anything, I would have put Waitrose in the same category. I might take a wander down to Sainsbury's this evening and see if they have theirs out.

I like all of them. They all have their own positives. Some are better than others, of course. Never, ever buy the really cheap ones, though. They're just shite. All dry pastry and no filling.

Some of the "posh" ones aren't too great as well though. I think you can have too much filling. There's a perfect ratio.

My mum makes really good ones with puff pastry.

Are mince pies really only sold on the (increasingly long) run-up to Christmas? I would have thought in today's modern world of commerce and global trading, that mince pies would be for sale all year round.

It's very simple. The more butter in the pastry, the better the pie. And puff pastry mince pies are broken and wrong.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8887

All mince pie talk in the mince pie thread, or no presents for you this year.

You can buy "mincemeat" in a jar year-round, but the pies only come out seasonally. Like Easter stuff. Increases demand and that.

We can take this to it's logical conclusion by getting a pack of butter, hollowing out a hole and filling that with mincemeat. Possibly then sprinkling the whole thing with sugar.

And you're 100% correct about the puff pastry thing.

That's a review thread. This is conceptual mince pie discussion, not restricted to simple things like brand choices.

IN.



Craster, correct about face-stuffing? Who'd'a thunk it?

You're totally wrong about puff pastry. They might not be considered a classic mince pie, but they're a decent Christmassy treat regardless.

Oh, they might be very nice. They're not a mince pie though. My wife makes delicious frangipane topped mincemeat pies. They're not mince pies though.

Ugh, what about those icing topped mince pies. A fucking tragedy if ever there was one.

Is the answer in the Grot, Grumble and Scud thread?

They hurt my teeth.

What are your teeth made of? Paper?

A cat wearing a tiny Miami Vice t-shirt and cap may yet suddenly jump through my window, quick - calculate that improbability!

Still, mind blown!

Yes, yes, you are quite right.

They hurt mine too, so do mars bars. Some people are sensitive to hot and cold, others are sensitive to sweet stuff. Weird things teeth.

oh god, you just reminded me we've got boxes and boxes of ecclefechan in the freezer from when sainaburys were punting them cheap in January.

At least I don't need to worry about mince pies now.

I fucking love ecclefechan.

Great summary of today's cabinet appointments by, of all people, fleetstreetfox in the Mirror:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fl ... my-1302938

We belmed ourselves pretty badly at work today... The boys were digging a trench and uncovered some bones but they were quickly identified as animal bones, most likely a cow. Then the Architect came to site. He's been a dick recently so the site manager and I played dumb to see what his reaction would be, hopefully making a twat of himself, we told the boys not to tell him they were animal bones. His reaction was called the police. So we let him crack on, assuming they'd turn up and say "It's a cow, you dick" and our prank would be complete. After a few minutes standing around with the Architect and Sherlock Holmes, I got bored and went back to my cabin. When I walked back through to go to the car, they were fencing off the area I told the policeman he was a massive disappointment for not having any police or crime-scene tape. Our joke backfired quite spectacularly there, as half of our site is closed off while they do whatever it is they do to determine the bones belonged to a fucking cow that died over 100 years ago.

She may be right, that doesn't stop her from being the vainest, self centred hypocrit in print.

Well quite. Hence "of all people".

Sam Brick, Liz Jones and Jan Moir want a couple of thousand words.

Then whack the GAW DAMN SPLOICERS with the wrench!

I appear to have left the middle section out of my NEW SUPER INSTRUCTION MANUAL FOR STATISTICAL ANALYSIS INCORPORATING A BLAME MODEL FOR BEGINNERS. Which is quite funny, as I've forgotten how I did it.

"Blame myp."

Scheduled to be tested for coeliac disease tomorrow, so going to binge on gluten today to make sure that if that is what my problem is, then it will be obvious in the tests.

Friend of mine had a motorbike accident and woke up with Celiac disease. Which was weird.

Maybe he collided with a Celica hard enough to scramble it up?

Reminds me of the time I got struck by lightening whilst listening to Simon and Garfunkel and woke up with Cecilia Disease.