sallysetsforth

Tim has been exercising his culinary muscles in the kitchen lately. I was very lucky earlier this week that he decided to whip up some potato gnocchi from scratch - it was utterly delicious :)



I made this collage using Picasa.

♪ ♫ Madness, madness, they call it madness ♫ ♪

Madness were a little before my time. I first came across them through their appearances on the Young Ones, but didn't know their music well at the time it was released.



It was during my Uni days that I really discovered Madness and their music. I bought several CDs, including a fantastic imported singles collection from the now (sadly) defunct Gaslight Records store on Bourke St, Melbourne.

I totally fell in love. The music with its ska and pop influences, and the wonderful sounds of the piano, guitars, trumpet and saxophone. The lyrics, so offbeat and funny, but also sentimental. The vocals. The band's look, attitude and energy. A brilliant combination that is as fantastic to listen to now as it ever was.

I'd be hard pressed to choose a favourite song, there are so many that I love. Baggy Trousers, Our House, Return Of The Los Palmas 7, One Better Day, My Girl, The Sun and the Rain, It Must Be Love, One Step Beyond, Yesterday's Men, Embarrassment, The Prince, Michael Caine, Night Boat to Cairo, House of Fun, Wings of a Dove, Swan Lake.

Madness has an official YouTube channel, which is definitely worth checking out. It has all the original music videos, as well as live performances and interviews.







A few years ago, I learnt that Madness were reforming every once in a while to perform in open air concerts for fans, called Madstock. I was so excited to get my hands on a DVD of one of these gigs. And then I discovered they were coming to Australia!

Here are a couple of the dodgy photos I took in 2009 during their show at the Metro in Melbourne. Absolutely wonderful, it was a dream come true to see them perform live :)

We flew down to Melbourne at Easter to buy a new (second-hand) car to drive back to Darwin. On the way, we collected our boat from the friend who was kindly looking after it for us. After doing a bit of maintenance work on the boat after it being in storage, we recently took it out on its maiden voyage in Darwin :)

We set out on a lovely Sunday afternoon from the Dinah Beach boat ramp in Stuart Park. The weather was just beautiful, and the water was calm. It was so great to get the boat on the water again!



We cruised past the Darwin wharf precinct, Northern Territory Parliament House, the Esplanade, the tall buildings of the Darwin CBD and HMAS Coonawarra.



We dropped anchor near Emery Point. I'd brought along a book to read while Tim cast a couple of lines. I was surprised to get full mobile reception while we were out on the water, so I tweeted a few photos too :)



It was a lovely afternoon. We saw the Mandorah ferry travel back and forth (between Cullen Bay and Mandorah) a few times. One of the highlights was seeing a large turtle surface near us - it poked its head and shell above the water several times, such a treat to see!

As the sun began to drop in the sky, the sunset cruise boats started coming out. The Darwin Sailing Cinema came past too, a sailing boat complete with a projector screen! It was lying out in front of the boat, presumably to be raised after dark.



We headed back to the boat ramp as the sun began to set, passing the wharf precinct of the Port of Darwin with its busy restaurants, and the Paspaley pearling fleet at anchor.







The nasty, biting midges waiting for us at the boat ramp provided a slightly unpleasant end to the trip, but overall it was a gorgeous afternoon and I'm looking forward to many more!

It's something of a tradition that I post a favourite piece of nonsense verse at some point during a daily blogging challenge. I've previously blogged Jabberwocky (Lewis Carroll) and On the Ning Nang Nong (Spike Milligan). I've even posted some of my own adolescent poetry :)

So here's another favourite:

Cinderella by Roald Dahl

I guess you think you know this story.
You don't. The real one's much more gory.
The phoney one, the one you know,
Was cooked up years and years ago,
And made to sound all soft and sappy
just to keep the children happy.
Mind you, they got the first bit right,
The bit where, in the dead of night,
The Ugly Sisters, jewels and all,
Departed for the Palace Ball,
While darling little Cinderella
Was locked up in a slimy cellar,
Where rats who wanted things to eat,
Began to nibble at her feet.

She bellowed 'Help!' and 'Let me out!
The Magic Fairy heard her shout.
Appearing in a blaze of light,
She said: 'My dear, are you all right?'
'All right?' cried Cindy .'Can't you see
'I feel as rotten as can be!'
She beat her fist against the wall,
And shouted, 'Get me to the Ball!
'There is a Disco at the Palace!
'The rest have gone and I am jealous!
'I want a dress! I want a coach!
'And earrings and a diamond brooch!
'And silver slippers, two of those!
'And lovely nylon panty hose!
'Done up like that I'll guarantee
'The handsome Prince will fall for me!'
The Fairy said, 'Hang on a tick.'
She gave her wand a mighty flick
And quickly, in no time at all,
Cindy was at the Palace Ball!

It made the Ugly Sisters wince
To see her dancing with the Prince.
She held him very tight and pressed
herself against his manly chest.
The Prince himself was turned to pulp,
All he could do was gasp and gulp.
Then midnight struck. She shouted,'Heck!
I've got to run to save my neck!'
The Prince cried, 'No! Alas! Alack!'
He grabbed her dress to hold her back.
As Cindy shouted, 'Let me go!'
The dress was ripped from head to toe.

She ran out in her underwear,
And lost one slipper on the stair.
The Prince was on it like a dart,
He pressed it to his pounding heart,
'The girl this slipper fits,' he cried,
'Tomorrow morn shall be my bride!
I'll visit every house in town
'Until I've tracked the maiden down!'
Then rather carelessly, I fear,
He placed it on a crate of beer.

At once, one of the Ugly Sisters,
(The one whose face was blotched with blisters)
Sneaked up and grabbed the dainty shoe,
And quickly flushed it down the loo.
Then in its place she calmly put
The slipper from her own left foot.
Ah ha, you see, the plot grows thicker,
And Cindy's luck starts looking sicker.

Next day, the Prince went charging down
To knock on all the doors in town.
In every house, the tension grew.
Who was the owner of the shoe?
The shoe was long and very wide.
(A normal foot got lost inside.)
Also it smelled a wee bit icky.
(The owner's feet were hot and sticky.)
Thousands of eager people came
To try it on, but all in vain.
Now came the Ugly Sisters' go.
One tried it on. The Prince screamed, 'No!'
But she screamed, 'Yes! It fits! Whoopee!
'So now you've got to marry me!'
The Prince went white from ear to ear.
He muttered, 'Let me out of here.'
'Oh no you don't! You made a vow!
'There's no way you can back out now!'
'Off with her head!'The Prince roared back.
They chopped it off with one big whack.
This pleased the Prince. He smiled and said,
'She's prettier without her head.'
Then up came Sister Number Two,
Who yelled, 'Now I will try the shoe!'
'Try this instead!' the Prince yelled back.
He swung his trusty sword and smack
Her head went crashing to the ground.
It bounced a bit and rolled around.
In the kitchen, peeling spuds,
Cinderella heard the thuds
Of bouncing heads upon the floor,
And poked her own head round the door.
'What's all the racket? 'Cindy cried.
'Mind your own bizz,' the Prince replied.
Poor Cindy's heart was torn to shreds.
My Prince! she thought. He chops off heads!
How could I marry anyone
Who does that sort of thing for fun?

The Prince cried, 'Who's this dirty slut?
'Off with her nut! Off with her nut!'
Just then, all in a blaze of light,
The Magic Fairy hove in sight,
Her Magic Wand went swoosh and swish!
'Cindy! 'she cried, 'come make a wish!
'Wish anything and have no doubt
'That I will make it come about!'
Cindy answered, 'Oh kind Fairy,
'This time I shall be more wary.
'No more Princes, no more money.
'I have had my taste of honey.
I'm wishing for a decent man.
'They're hard to find. D'you think you can?'
Within a minute, Cinderella
Was married to a lovely feller,
A simple jam maker by trade,
Who sold good home-made marmalade.
Their house was filled with smiles and laughter
And they were happy ever after.

I originally posted this in the Recipe Box page on my website, but I'm now turning it into a blog post too for those who only access my site via their RSS readers :)

This is a recipe I came up with myself for a simple and colourful beetroot risotto. I first made it in Melbourne, where we had prolific rosemary bushes to call on. A dollop of yoghurt or sour cream on top would go very nicely too.



Easy Beetroot Risotto
Serves 6

Ingredients:

• 1-2 Tbs olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cups arborio rice
• 2-3 tsps fresh rosemary, finely chopped
• 4 1/2 cups vegetable stock
• 450g can sliced beetroot
• 2-3 tsps fresh herbs (eg. chives, oregano, thyme), finely chopped
• 2-3 Tbs parmesan cheese, grated (optional)

Method:

• Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. Saute the onion for several minutes until soft. Add the rice and rosemary. Stir until the rice is coated in oil, and cook for a further minute.
• Gradually add the hot vegetable stock (about half a cup at a time), stirring each time until the stock is absorbed before adding more.
• While the risotto is cooking, drain the can of beetroot and reserve the liquid. Cut the beetroot into strips.
• When all of the vegetable stock has been absorbed, add the reserved beetroot juice and stir until absorbed.
• Stir through the beetroot strips and fresh herbs (if using dried herbs, only use 1 tsp and add them when the beetroot juice is added). Stir in the parmesan if using. Serve immediately.

A beautiful hibiscus flowering in our garden.



One of these days I'm going to set up my tripod early in the morning and do some time lapse photography of a hibiscus opening up to greet the sun. It's one of my favourite sights from the kitchen window each morning :)

This evening we went along to India at Mindil - a cultural festival featuring food, music and dancing that was held at Mindil Beach.

To be honest, I was underwhelmed. We bought palak paneer from one of the food stalls, and found it to be distinctly less than hot - so much so that we worried about the food safety aspect. It was a bit of a measly serve too. We made up for it with a yummy fruit shake, but in that case were let down by poor customer service.

The crowds were huge, with lots of jostling, so we escaped to the beach to watch the sunset and drink our fruit shake. We could hear the music coming from the performance stage, so that was lovely. The sunset was beautiful, of course, and I was glad I brought my camera along :)





After the sun had set, we made our way to the stage area to enjoy some of the music and dancing on offer. We soon discovered that people who had set up chairs didn't want *anyone* in front of them to interrupt their view, and even enlisted their small children to ask people to move out of the way. Ugh. I was over it all by then, so we picked up some gulab jamun to take away, and went home.

A so-so evening. But the gulab jamun was great :)

Do you ever forget how good you are at your job?

I do. But today I had a nice little reminder.

A researcher needed help to locate a health questionnaire that had been published in a journal. She'd made some headway, but was stumped when it came to finding the full-text. I took her through a few steps about finding out which database holds a particular journal in full-text, how to navigate through a journal's archive to find an article, using the reference list in an article to locate source documents, and using citation linking features in a database to identify more recent work that cited the article we were looking at.

To be honest, it was all pretty simple stuff. For me, the real work is in explaining what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and how the researcher can do it themselves in future.

We found the questionnaire (happy ending!) and the researcher was so pleased. She'd spent many hours trying to do what we accomplished in that session. And it reminded me - I'm actually really good at my job. I'm awesome at finding information. I'm excellent at talking people through steps in a way that makes sense and that will make their jobs easier. I haz skillz.

FIGJAM.

A colleague of mine recently took part in a retro dinner party, where all of the food had to be popular dishes from the 50s and 60s. We had a marvellous conversation on this topic, dredging up all kinds of memories of foods of the era that we'd seen in films or on television, but especially from our own recipe collections. It was this conversation that inspired us to make blancmange this week :)

During our discussion, I reminisced about a set of old Weight Watchers recipe cards that my Mum once had. It was typical of the time period that every single savoury dish on the cards was pictured with a garnish consisting of a sprig of parsley and a wedge of lemon :) But what really stood out to me was the number of moulded dishes - in particular a garden salad in aspic. Yep. Lettuce, tomato and cucumber. In aspic.

I didn't hang on to that old recipe card, but I decided to have a look on Flickr to see if I could find something similar to show my colleague. To my eternal amusement, I discovered there was a whole Flickr group dedicated to kitsch aspic-based dishes! It's called Aspic Delight! and boy does it have some beauties!

Allow me to share some photos from the group with you:











P.S. I couldn't believe it when my colleague told me that someone had *actually* brought a salad in aspic to the dinner party!!

Photo credits to akbuthod, cbder and glen.h.

Today I attended a forum called "Finding Solutions: Assistive Technology in Education, Training & Employment for People with Disability or Learning Difficulties", organised by the National Disability Coordination Office Program and held at Charles Darwin University.

Accessibility is an area that I've long held an interest in and felt strongly about, so I was really glad to have the opportunity to attend this forum and learn more about what is being done in education, and what *can* be done - especially in libraries. It was a thought provoking day, with excellent speakers and discussion.

Tiga Bayles, chair of the National VET Equity Advisory Council (NVEAC), started the event off by telling us about the NVEAC Equity Blueprint, which has analysed the VET system with respect to equity and made recommendations regarding policy directions in areas that require reform to support learners with disabilities.

Greg O'Connor, from Spectronics Inclusive Learning Technologies, reminded us that assistive technologies provide not only access to knowledge, but also social connections. He spoke about how one-size-fits-all teaching styles disadvantage some students to create an achievement gap that gets bigger every year. Universal Design for Learning is a framework that supports multiple means of representation, expression and engagement - providing greater flexibility in content delivery and assessment for students with a variety of learning styles as well as learning difficulties. Greg also talked about the SETT (student -> environment -> task -> tools) framework, reminding us that we always need to think about the student first, not the technology.

Trevor Boyd, from Quantum Technology, described the DAISY file format, which provides accessibility in multiple ways - by providing audio, unformatted text, and summaries. Conversion programs like Dolphin EasyConverter now make it easy for anyone to transform digital documents (including the ePub format) into DAISY and other accessible formats, including navigation functionality (eg. table of contents, chapters). Trevor also spoke about the WYNN software tool, which transforms print media into audio. It also includes features that are helpful for people with learning disabilities, such as highlighting each word as it is read out. Trevor noted that easy conversion of print material to audio can also benefit mainstream users who are time poor, so that they can listen to mp3 files while doing other tasks.

Consultant Gerry Kennedy also talked about how assistive technologies (or inclusive technologies, as he called them) can benefit students with different learning styles, not just learners with disabilities. He described a number of useful free tools that are available, focusing in particular on AccessApps, a collection of about 50 free and open source software tools that can be downloaded onto and then run directly from a USB flash drive. This is a great idea for overcoming difficulties created by the inability to install software on every computer a student might find themselves using. There are neat tools for learning, productivity and accessibility (PC only). I'm planning to try a few of them out for training purposes.

Andrew Downie, from the NSW Curriculum and Learning Innovation Centre, gave an excellent presentation and deomstration on best practice in structuring documents for accessibility. He explained that when formal styles are used to create document structure in Microsoft Word, it makes the document much easier to read using a screen reader, and will also transfer across more successfully in conversion to accessible formats such as DAISY. Andrew also advocated for the use of meaningful alternate text (alt text) for images in all kinds of documents, not just web pages.

We were asked several times during the forum to take at least one thing away from the day and act on it in the next two weeks. I hope that in reading this post, and maybe clicking on some of the links for more information, you might also find some inspiration for trying something new and thinking about how to improve accessibility in your workplace :)