19 February 2010
Yesterday’s long overdue unveiling of the Pumpkin Publog’s favoured list of friends – friends who unfailingly keep our fettles fine on these February nights – let’s not speak of the mornings – prompted a bit of “who dat?” and “wha??” – at least from this corner – so if you too, dear one, find yourself in need of some architecural certainty, a solid platform from which to launch yourself towards certain bin death, look no further. Courtesy of Flickr user John Bullas, this CAD-rendered chart has pretty much everything you need to know if you want to make classic American cocktails with the precision of a construction foreman. You can click on it to go through to a gigantic version, suitable for framing.
Tracer Hand in Proven By Science / Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
29 December 2009
Every year since pubs were invented (nine years by my reckoning), the fine drinkers of Freaky Trigger and ILX have spent the 29th December in a pub. Well, at least seven pubs infact, for the 29th is the date of the Annual Between Christmas and New Year Pub Crawl. Why the 29th? Well it’s the quietest pub day of the year, so we do our bit for the licensed trade and try to bolster their coffers.
Past crawls have taken in the Euston Hexagon, the Mornington Crescent, strange arcane routes across the river and last year a foray into Marylebone. This year we are again pushing further afield, by about half a mile and have settled on the wonderful environs of Pimlico, and its surprisingly large number of estate pubs!
So I give you Das Pimlico Boot (when you see the map it makes sense). more »
Pete Baran in FT / Proven By Science / Pumpkin Publog • 9 Comments
18 November 2009
I will say not one bad word about Sam Smith’s in this review. Someone else wants to talk around that issue, but safe to say that as someone with a large social group of varying incomes, Sam Smith’s pubs being cheap has always been a factor. The John Snow in Soho is one of those pubs we rarely go to these days (in the area the Shaston Arms or Star And Garter get more visits) but hasn’t really changed, and holds a firm and fond place in our memories. I probably pop in there a couple of times a year and have whiled away a fair few hours with a pint of Hefeweisse reading about the good Dr Snow upstairs.
So things to note. The John Snow is named after John Snow the health campaigner, not the newsreader, which is amusing in itself as John Snow was a confirmed teetotaller*. The pub is near the pump that Snow brought fresh water into Soho thus sorting out the cholera epidemic. This marks it out in Soho already, for an area with a pretty full history an awful lot of the pubs are highly anonymous. more »
Pete Baran in FT / Proven By Science / Pumpkin Publog • 18 Comments
30 October 2009
An occasional series where we mock the nonsense written on crisp packets.
“It takes a more adventurous homegrown spud to volunteer for our sizzling Jamaican Jerk Chicken. Some spuds simply ‘dreaded’ not being picked so they went back to their roots (man!) to prove their worth. But the ones in this bag just chilled out ‘cos they knew they ware far better than the rest of the others.”
Well done Walkers, skirting accusations of racism and cultural stereotyping in three needless sentences to add nothing to a bag of crisps that tastes just like you mixed up the roast chicken powder with the picked onion powder.
Pete Baran in FT / Proven By Science / Pumpkin Publog • 1 Comment
17 October 2009
As part of my job, I am the recipient of lost property, contents of unused lockers and the like at a university. These usually sit on a shelf until claimed, however yesterday I was contacted regarding the contents of a locker which the student no longer wanted. “Give the contents away” he said from Dubai. So I went through the books to distribute to new students, and thought I would claim as my payment a packet of Quavers. Lovely, lovely quavers, the cheese corn puff curl which both crunches and is insubstantial. A hard mans Skip, a weak mans crisp. Moreish in all the best ways.
The locker had been in use recently I had assumed by the phonecall, accidentally left full at the end of September. Unfortunately the same could not be said of the Quavers. After eating the first one, I noticed something wasn’t right. Checking ont he packet I discovered the truth. The Quavers had an expiry date of the 30/12/08. They were ten months out of date. So what happens to cheesy Quavers after they have expired?
They taste of Humbol Messerschmitt Grey Enamel Paint. Who knew?*
*Note, I know what this paint tastes like from an accidental brush sucking moment as a child when painting an airfix kit.
Pete Baran in Proven By Science • 2 Comments
31 August 2009
8:25pm Om nom nom, they expanded and were covered in melted Mars bars and stuffed with ice cream and and… I think we are too drunk and too full to say any more tonight. More photos to come, not sure about scientific content of the day but food and drink was had by all. Hooray!
7.20pm Final science of the day, Cis is seeing how much choux pastry wll expand. Diameter buns from 1cm to 10cm have been piped onto the baking tray. Will they expand or will they POP!!!!
6.10 pmLawks – Meg is making a giant Kit Kat. Melted chocolate can be very messy! Oh and Cis and Moggy have turned up talking about doing something with Choux pastry. I keep saying Choux puns aren’t necessary but…
more »
Pete Baran in FT / Proven By Science / Pumpkin Publog • 3 Comments
29 June 2009
There is a remarkably unremarkable piece of news on the BBC website. Apparently according to that old favourite “A MEDICAL EXPERT” the appearance of so many fat people on TV normalises obesity. Or as BBC News Health section put it: Fat Stars ‘Make Obesity Normal’ (their scare quotes). One assumes this is much like the way that thin stars normalises thinness and causes anorexia VIA THE SAME MEDIA. Nevertheless the EXPERT is an EXPERT, which we can prove by a few pull quotes from him:
Professor McMahon, a expert on keyhole surgery, said: “The increasing profile of larger celebrities, for example James Corden, Eamonn Holmes, Ruth Jones and Beth Ditto, means that being overweight is now perceived as being ‘normal’ in the eyes of the public.
“We talk about the dangers of skinny media images, but the problem actually swings both ways.”
Hold up. Eammon Holmes? Since when has he been seen as a crusader for corpulence? more »
Pete Baran in FT / Proven By Science • 6 Comments
10 June 2009
So if a neologism is coined ever 98 minutes, say certain lexicographers, the English language will hit One Million Words TODAY! It surely behooves us at Freakytrigger to
a) pooh pooh this statistic
b) whilst at the same time coining the millionth word.
a) Actually the poohpoohing has already been done by The Guardian, the Guardianilists managing to elicitate this damninquote:
Professor David Crystal, professor of linguistics at Bangor University, called the idea “the biggest load of rubbish I’ve heard in years”. He said: “It is total nonsense. English reached 1 million words years ago. It’s like someone standing by the side of the road counting cars, and when they get to 1 million pronouncing that to be the millionth car in the world. It’s extraordinary.”
b) Well now that’s cleared up, what should that millionth word in English be. more »
Pete Baran in FT / Proven By Science • 2 Comments
8 June 2009
Graun journalist spends all day reading nme.com and fails to really read the glastowatch story she links to which shows a screencap from metcheck when it said that SEVERAL MILES of rain would fall per day, temperatures would top 2000°C and the wind would be over 1000mph….
Also Science dude in the original Times story is relatively reserved, basically there’s this weather pattern that happens kind of at the end of June, but really isn’t that predictable and it’s not really a real monsoon, really…
The accuweather.com forecast will DO ME FINE to be honest (it currently says no rain after monday night, overcast but reasonably warm all weekend)
CarsmileSteve in Blog 7 / FT / Proven By Science • 3 Comments
13 May 2009
alex harrowell of the yorkshire ranter proposes godwin score as a measure of a thread’s usefulness
daniel davies of dsquared digest proposes a better buzzer-causer than h!tler-mention
(useful pointer: the thread that alex and dsquared are actually commenting in is not itself especially relevant to this issue…)
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør in FT / Proven By Science • 3 Comments
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