Secret Level

Over the Christmas break I managed to get caught up on some of the shows I'd been watching, one of which was "Secret Level". This is an anthology show with each episode based on a video game (or, occasionally, some other game). The show started with ten episodes, but quickly released a further five.

The show is extremely well made, with a variety of animation and storytelling styles. But, like all anthology shows, it's very much a mixed bag - some of the episodes were really enjoyable, some just fell flat. Though none were really bad, as such. (The kicker, of course, is that the ones that I think fell flat may well be the ones that you enjoy, and vice versa.)

For me, the most interesting episodes were of course the ones for "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Warhammer 40,000". The other one that I found really intriguing was "Pac Man" which was... odd.

Anyway, it's on Amazon Prime, and if you have Prime I'd say it's worth a watch. As with just about everything on Prime, though, it's probably not worth the subscription fee all by itself.

Experimental Cookery 2025: Chicken Enchiladas

This one comes from the latest (and last!) Hairy Bikers book, "Our Family Favourites", and was the one that most jumped out at us as something to try.

The meal here was easy enough to make. It wasn't exactly quick - all in, it takes maybe an hour to prepare. But that's fine, as it just means it's a meal for a weekend rather than a weeknight. There are no particularly complex steps nor any outlandish ingredients.

I made two crucial mistakes when preparing this one:

• Although I halved the quantities of most of the ingredients, I did not half the onions or peppers. In theory this wasn't too bad, as extra vegetables is fine, but in practice it meant that the ratios were just wrong.
• There was a gap in the cooking, and I made the mistake of assembling the dish and putting it in the oven on a timer. I should really have stopped with the sauce and chicken prepared, and only assembled immediately before the final cooking step.

Because of those two mistakes, the end result was not terribly inspiring. It was fine but... it was fine.

I do intend to have this again, as I think it's worth another shot, but for now at least this is not our go-to enchiladas recipe.

Gladiators Celebrity Special

Of all the festive entertainments we watched over the break, this was, sadly, the weakest. And, unfortunately, the issue was conceptual: in the normal game the competitors are chosen amongst the best amateur athletes available - they're obviously not at the sometimes-Olympic level of the Gladiators, but at least there's something approaching a contest to be had. In the celebrity version, the competitors are chosen from that subset of famous people willing to take part.

The consequence of all of this was that the Gladiators were very obviously not trying very hard. On the one hand, no surprise there - had they played at full force someone would have been humiliated or hurt. But on the other, it meant that the show really had nothing in it.

Assuming that they do want to have another celebrity special (which I'd tend to advise against), they really need to think about who to invite: perhaps recently-retired athletes, or something like that? Of course, the short-lived Sky reboot had a couple of specials where "the legends return", which were actually quite good. Sadly, I think the time for those has now passed - it's one thing for people to come back after a couple of decades; quite another a couple more decades on.

But all of that's a small niggle - I felt that the festive offerings overall weren't too terrible this year, and the BBC in particular did well. So I'm happy with that.

Rangers Woes 2024/25

I'm starting to wonder what the point is of having a football season where everything is essentially decided by Christmas. Though it should be noted that that's not Celtic's problem - they're doing to job in front of them as well as they can, and it's really not their problem that that means they easily outclass everyone else.

But it remains the case that the league is deadly dull, and largely pointless. And that's just not going to change until Rangers get their act together.

Right now, it would be easy to blame the management for the problems, and indeed it is likely that the current manager is not the right man for the job, at least in the longer term. But it's also the case that Rangers' players have underperformed under several successive managers; they're not up to the job either. And it's further the case that Rangers don't have the requisite money to fix these problems.

So...

My inclination is now that Rangers need to take a long view of this, and build from the foundations out. That means accepting a hard truth: they are very much the second team in Scotland, and will remain so for a very long time. Indeed, they're pretty much a mid-table team.

The strategy, therefore, should probably be to do enough to retain their second-place standing and do as well as possible in Europe, but not to spend money trying to catch or overhaul Celtic. Instead, let the manager and the more expensive players run out their contracts, and gradually replace them with better players - crucially, don't spend loads of money on compensation for getting rid of them for a quick fix - short of investing tens of millions of pounds that they don't have, no quick fix is available.

Fundamentally, I think we may be back to where we were a few years ago: the ultimate goal is to stop ten-in-a-row.

Which is horrible, but I think it may be that stark.

#1: "Machines Like Me", by Ian McEwan

Books of the Year 2024

My target for the year was to read 30 books, but alas that has not happened. Here's the list of books for this year:

1. "Ariadne", by Jennifer Saint
2. "Promise of Blood", by Brian McClellan
3. "Smart Leadership", by Jo Owen
4. "Why Should Anyone be Led by You?", by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones
5. "Atalanta", by Jennifer Saint
6. "Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life", by Arnold Schwarzenegger
7. "Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes", by Rob Wilkins
8. "Sharpe's Command", by Bernard Cornwell
9. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", by Ian Fleming *
10. "Making It So", by Sir Patrick Stewart
11. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again", by Frank Cottrell-Boyce *
12. "Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk", by Wizards of the Coast
13. "Empire", by Conn Iggulden
14. "A Thousand Splendid Suns", by Khaled Hosseini
15. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Race Against Time", by Frank Cottrell-Boyce *
16. "Surrounded by Idiots", by Thomas Erikson
17. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang over the Moon", by Frank Cottrell-Boyce *
18. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", by John Le Carré
19. "Firefly: Coup de Grace", by Una McCormack
20. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", by J.K. Rowling *
21. "The Prisoner of Heaven", by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
22. "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", by J.K. Rowling *

Annoyingly there is, once again, my records got messed up during the year - I recorded "Promise of Blood" twice, and failed to record "Sharpe's Command" and "Phandelver and Below". Those problems have, at least, been corrected.

That gives a total of 22 books. This includes two rereads (Harry Potter), and six books for Funsize/Surprise! The only RPG book this year was "Phandelver and Below", which is a disappointing one to end on.

This year's best book was "A Thousand Splendid Suns", but I'm really not sure I recommend it - I found it almost unreadable at times. I'm not going to list a worst book, as none of them seemed particularly bad.

Unfortunately, despite my best intentions I have ended the year with shelves every bit as full of unread books as I began, with some coming to their third year unread. It is very much my intention to start clearing that backlog in the near future.

My Year in 2024

2024 has actually been a really good year. Here's why...

My Year in... Blogging 

Okay, firstly a negative - this has been my least bloggy year since records began. Both here and on the Imaginarium there has been a dearth of posts. I've often found myself lacking anything to write about, and lacking both time and inclination to do so anyway.

The Imaginarium is now about to enter an indefinite hiatus, while this blog will continue for the foreseeable future. However, I'm not sure what 2025 holds, and I've elected not to set a goal while I see if my passion for it remains.

My Year in... Work

The update for this year can be identical to last: Work has been mostly good this year, but not without its frustrations. There's not much more I can say here, so I'll leave it at that.

My Year in... Health

This years has been fine for health - no particular illnesses to speak of. I have had some odd battles with anxiety that seem to be related to tiredness and stress, but those hopefully seem to be abating.

My Year in... Gaming

The "Isles of Dread" campaign came to a successful end, and with that my gaming career came to an end, at least for now. This is rather unfortunate, but the group I was with had really run its course, and I don't currently have time or inclination to find a new group.

My Year in... Band

Band has been somewhat disappointing this year, as we had only a few events and ended up cancelling several of those. The band continues to plod on, and does its job in that it does keep me practicing, but it's a shame.

My Year in... Resolutions

As always, the wrap-up of annual goals, and setting of goals for next year, are handled in another post. The headline is that this year did not see any great level of success in my stated goals.

My Year in... Travel

This year we had three trips away. We saw in the year in France, at Disneyland Paris. Indeed, one of the highlights of the year actually came on the morning of the 1st of January, where we arrived at the park early and found it really quiet.

We also enjoyed a week or so in Banff in summer and a week or so in Alnwick in October. In both cases we were extremely lucky with the weather and had a really good time.

That said, one of the things I want to do next year is to get away somewhere abroad - the weather over the summer was generally disappointing, so I'm keen to see the Sun again!

My Year in... Faith

This has been another solid year. I've gradually settled into my new role as an Elder of the church, which mostly seems to involve attending a number of meetings. There's a lot more I could say about that, but it's a topic for another day. All in all though, it's been good.

My Year in... Money

There was an odd confluence of events between August and October of this year where we had to arrange a new mortgage deal and I was then forced to take stock of my pension situation. The upshot of that is that I've spent some times digging through my finances and bringing all the information together into a single spreadsheet. This has all proven extremely reassuring, but has left me a little annoyed that I didn't do all of this years ago.

My Year in... Love

This has actually been a really good year. Probably the key thing that has made a difference is that Funsize and Surprise! seem to have mostly settled into something of a routine, which means we have a bit more by way of free time and a bit more chance to get some decent sleep.

My Year... Overall

Once again, it doesn't really feel like the summary captures the feel of the year as a whole - most of the entries seem to be quite negative, while the year has actually been really good (and, indeed, considerably better than previous years). That's rather odd, but never mind.

And with that, I'll sign off for the year. I hope you all have a very Happy New Year. See you in 2025!

End of Year Update on Goals

As part of the end-of-year wrap-up, here is the closing update on my goals for the year:

• Books: The goal for this year was to read 30 books, which I have not done. I did read slightly more books than last year, and have a decent mix of books in there, but this goal was not achieved.
• Blogging: I've come nowhere close to reaching my target of 120 posts for this year. Indeed, it was almost immediately obvious that this wasn't going to happen. One thing that did happen was that I have brought the Imaginarium to a close - there are a handful of posts scheduled to take it to 1,000 posts, but then it will be on hiatus indefinitely. It is also perhaps worth noting that I've managed to end the year hitting the nominal 10 posts for December, which is nice - it would be good if that represented a return to normal service.
• Redecoration: This was all done except for looking into the heating and insulation for Funsize's room. Even there, our expectation is that a big part of the issue is actually that the windows need replaced. I feel that's enough to consider this one done. In addition, we replaced the carpet in the study (although Lion has managed to rip a chunk out of it), and have re-repainted the walls and replaced the curtain. So that's all good.
• Complete my Campaign: This was all done very successfully.
• Update the Church Website: Some of this has been done. There remains a fairly big renovation needing completion.

So that's two goals completed, and three failed. That's not a good showing, but also not a huge surprise. But, also, given how much else was in this year, I'm not terribly disappointed.

In terms of goals for next year, a big theme is "enough is enough". There are things that I've been dissatisfied with for quite some time, and some tasks I've been putting off, and it's time to actually address them. So...

• Books: The target is the same as this year: 30 books.
• Weight: After having dropped this for several years, this one is very much back on the agenda. The target is to drop at least 20 pounds by the end of 2025. Which will still leave me too heavy, but at least it will be progress towards the ultimate goal.
• Career: I'm now very much into the second half of my career, and am starting to see something of a vision for how I want it to be. Since work is one of the things I don't talk about here, I'm not going to say any more than that, but there's a goal I have in mind here, that can play out one of two ways.
• Church Website: I want to get the renovation done.
• Redecoration: We've actually pretty much finished the redecoration of the house - only the en suite and bathroom upstairs, and the kitchen and utility room downstairs, haven't been repainted. But none of these is the goal for next year - I want to get our windows replaced.

And that's it - five stated goals, all of which represent things that I've felt have needed done for quite some time, and all of which I mean to see actioned in 2025. We'll see.

Notably, you'll see that I haven't set a Blogging goal for next year. Similarly, while I have an ongoing project to enhance our home automation, that isn't a goal for next year. In both cases, anything that gets done will be considered a bonus, with a view to maybe promoting them to proper goals in 2026, especially if completing the others has cleared the decks somewhat.

Experimental Cookery 2024: Christmas

After I finished work on the 20th, I proceeded to spend five days in the kitchen. It has been an extremely busy time, between hosting Christmas dinner for the first time and also helping my parents with their own hosting duties (due to an injury taking one of them out of action rather more than he would care to admit). Ultimately, it was a success.

Firstly, the Christmas baking. This year Funsize, Surprise!, and I baked several things, only one of which was actually new:

• Ginger biscuits
• Shortbread biscuits
• Chocolate chip cookies (new)
• Mince pies

I had hoped to do some snowmen cupcakes, but time did not permit. In any case, given that we now have far too much food in the house, that's probably for the best.

Then there was Christmas dinner, cooked for seven. The menu for that was also extensive.

We actually started with baked camembert. This was intended to be an appetiser as guests arrived, but unfortunately this was the one bit of my timing that didn't work out quite right - I had less time in the morning than I thought, and it took longer than expected. Which meant that we were straight from that to our planned starters, which left everyone stuffed. But never mind - that's my main lesson learned for next time.

For the main Christmas dinner, therefore, we had:

• A choice of soups to start: roasted red pepper and tomato, or parsnip and apple. (These were supplied by one of our guests - I did a lot, but not everything!)
• Turkey
• Roast potatoes, carrots, and parsnips
• Hasselback potatoes
• Brussels sprouts
• Peas
• Pigs in blankets (supplied by a guest)
• Stuffing (supplied by a guest)
• Gravy (from the butchers)
• Chocolate orange tart for dessert, though we didn't actually get that far (made by LC)

So, quite a lot. We ended up with huge amounts left over, much of which I have since turned into a turkey curry.

The Outcome

Everyone ate far too much, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The turkey came out extremely well, which was the most important thing, and then the sides accompanied it brilliantly. All in all, I'm calling that one a success.

Lessons Learned

After an epic like that there are always some lessons to be learned. Some things that went well, and some that were not so good. So:

1. There was way too much food. And drink for that matter. I'll need to give some thought to either cutting down in future, or having more robust plans in place for dealing with the leftovers.
2. The camembert needed to be starter earlier, or perhaps even prepared on Christmas Eve - the second proving step could have been done overnight.
3. Surprise! really wanted sweetcorn in addition to the peas. Given how small an addition that is, I'll bear that in mind.
4. But the big one is this: A few weeks before Christmas I made up a meal plan showing the courses, breaking down the ingredients, and indicating what was coming from where. Then, two days before the meal itself I wrote out a "Plan of Attack" detailing what I was preparing on Christmas Eve, what on Christmas morning, with a space for the calculated cook time for the turkey (after it was weighed after being prepped to go into the oven). These two lists were hugely helpful, as they ensured that nothing was missed and that everything was being done in the right order. After which, it was just work, not stress.

So that's my main takeaway for the "No-stress Christmas": those two lists are utterly invaluable.

The one thing I would introduce as an enhancement is that, in addition to calculating the cook time for the turkey, it then becomes possible to work back from the preferred time for dinner to determine when you need to start put the turkey in the oven, when the various bits of preparation need to be done, and so on.

But... it's important, if you do work backwards like that, that you allow time for things taking longer than expected (because they will). And it's also important that you don't try to schedule everything down to the last second - if your list of steps goes over half a dozen, you're probably setting yourself up for disaster. The key thing is that those plans are there to help you, they mustn't be allowed to become another source of stress.

Anyway, that's Christmas for this year. It was a good one, fairly quiet despite everything, and I have no complaints.

Experimental Cookery 2024: Beautiful Brussels

From that same book "Together" as the Hasselback potatoes come these Brussels sprouts.

The choice to have Brussels was a controversial one - I knew going in that there was considerable resistance from several of the people around the table, and it doesn't help that Tesco seem to only sell them in huge bags. But it was Christmas, so I persevered.

These were quick and easy to make. True, there was a step where each sprout needed to be individually trimmed, peeled, and then the base cut, but that was the only tedious bit. The rest was just a matter of putting things in a bowl and then two small cook steps (a quick boil of the sprouts, then roasting the whole for 10 mins).

One thing that does amuse me is that so many of our TV chefs have done so many different ways of showcasing sprouts and they all, including this one, seem to involve adding one or more strong flavours to them, as though to disguise the underlying taste. Which rather seems to defeat the purpose.

The end result of this one was that the sprouts were fine, but the dish did nothing to disguise the essential sproutiness of the vegetable. So anyone who doesn't like sprouts is unlikely to be moved by this, while those who do like sprouts will like this fine.

For me, it was just important to honour the sprout, and this achieved that. I don't regret cooking this, but I think I'm unlikely to do so again, even if we do have sprouts with Christmas dinner another year.

Experimental Cookery 2024: Amazing Hasselback Potatoes

I got Jamie's book "Together" three years ago and somehow haven't managed to make any real use of it. It's a lovely book, well put together and filled with things I think I might like to try... and yet somehow it's just never seen the light of day. Until now.

For Christmas this year I cooked two types of potatoes, just because. The other were regular roast potatoes (with the only oddity being that I don't bother peeling potatoes any more). Just to be sure, I actually did a dry run of the Hasselbacks a few weeks ago, meaning that this was their second outing.

Well, first or second, they're really good. The only downside was that quite a lot ended up in the bin, by virtue of there just being way too much food.

In terms of effort to prepare, these are rather more work than regular roast potatoes, as there's a load of work cutting slices through them. But that's not too bad - amongst other things, when I got them into the oven for the first roast it gave me ideal time to prepare a load of other things.

All in all, these were a winner, and we'll definitely have them again. They will not, however, be supplanting the regular roast potato - I like them both.

Handbrake Turn

I always find it bizarre the speed at which the shops change: we've been having a build up to Christmas for five months (I first saw "Christmas stuff" in Tesco in August), with ever-increasing urgency, all declaring CHRISTMAS IS COMING!!!!! and then, by the time the stores open on the very next day it's all disappeared and we're on to the next thing (HOGMANAY IS COMING!!!!!).

Which is neither new nor particularly profound, but is still bizarre.