If the little one says roll over, I’m falling out of bed.
Month: February 2014
My contribution to the Olympic protests
[Recipe] Red Velvet cookies with cream cheese filling
Ingredients
Cookies:
1 box red velvet cake mix
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup powdered sugar
Cream Cheese Filling:
4 oz. cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3-4 cup powdered sugar
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, combine cake mix, eggs, oil and vanilla extract. Mix well until smooth.
3. Roll the dough into balls (about 1 1/2 inches). (Dough will be gooey)
4. Drop into powdered sugar and cover with the sugar, then place on the cookie sheet, 3 inches away from other dough balls.
5. Bake for 7-10 minutes. Watch for the cookies to puff up a bit and form cracks along the top, then take them out of the oven and let them rest on the cookies sheet for a couple of minutes.
6. Remove the cookies to a wire rack and let them cool completely.
7. Make the filling: Beat cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add vanilla and slowly add powdered sugar until you reach your desired consistency.
8. Pipe onto the bottom of half the cookies, sandwich with another cookie and then roll in coarse sugar to decorate.
quote of the day
They can make me come to a meeting, but they can’t make me listen.
The guru will see you now :D
Woot! I have successfully registered cote.guru as a domain, and also have richard@cote.guru as a mail address (that currently forwards to my gmail account. So, if there’s any member of the Cote family that wants an email account, let me know :)
Quote of the day
What’s that spot on my hand? Oh, it might be ink. Noooo. Oh, it might be blood. Noooo. Oh, it’s probably chocolate. Yeah. It’s chocolate.
Proper Katyism.
Technicolour dreamcoat
Wonder if his name is Joseph…
Happy (belated) 70th birthday, Colossus!
The Colossus computer that helped decipher German messages during the Second World War celebrates its 70th birthday on Wednesday, as The National Museum of Computing marks its place in IT history. The machine first sprang into life on 5 February 1944 when it was let loose on messages that had been sent by German units and encrypted using the Lorenz machine. The Colossus – designed by engineer called Tommy Flowers who worked for the telecoms division of the General Post Office, which later became BT – was able to crack these codes fast.
It had the ability to read 5,000 characters a second, far in advance of anything else available at that time, and this meant it could take just four hours for it to find the first key in a code, the most important part in any code-breaking. By the end of the war, it is estimated that Colossus had deciphered 63 million characters of German messages, helping shorten the war and save countless lives. Despite this, its existence was kept secret for 30 years after the war.
The machine certainly earned its name: it was huge. It measured 7ft high, 17ft wide and 11ft deep, weighed five tonnes and had 7km of internal wiring.
How I’m feeling today
… Bit less than productive.
Lays asks the Internet: “Please, come troll us!”
When Lay’s launched it’s #DoUsAFlavor campaign to crowd-source the next great chip variety, it was pretty much written in the stars that it would be heavily trolled by jokers on the Internet offering ridiculous (and inappropriate) suggestions.