Mobile Phone Review: HTC One V

A little while ago I bought myself a new Phone, the HTC One V.

HTC One V

The One V is the baby of the One range and I've made the move to this phone from the Nokia C7.  Those of you familiar with the C7 will know it runs the Symbian OS and applications are only available through Nokia's OVI store.  I can say this now, as it can't hurt me any more (thank you envirofone), but the C7 was the phone from Hell.  It was slow, clunky and finding any decent applications was like trying to find an honest man in a room full of politicians, estate agents and used car salesmen.

You think your budget deficit was big!  Look at one I made!

So what a delight the HTC One V is in comparison.  It runs Android, currently the Ice Cream Sandwich version if I'm not mistaken, and Android has the mighty Google Play store to choose from a vast array of apps, many of which are indeed useful.

The phone itself is a slick affair, with a metal casing and a screen with a 9.5cm (3.75") viewable area.  In use, the screen changes are fast and I haven't seen it struggle with anything yet.

Robot Devil

Storage wise, it's the only One series phone that has an SD card slot (microSD) for expanding the storage, which was one of the attractions for me.

There are some downsides I've experienced so far, the first is an issue with the SD card in that sometimes the phone thinks the card has been removed (when it clearly hasn't) and that stops certain apps from working (especially ones that are on the SD card or rely on it).  Fortunately, turning the phone off and on again fixes that, but it can be annoying if it happens frequently.

Nokia C7 "Smart" phone

I also came across an annoyance in the calendar function, in that it doesn't do calendar repeats over a fortnight (that's once every 2 weeks for those not familiar with the term).  This is annoying because my bins get collected on alternate weeks and I used to use a fortnightly reminder to remember which bin to leave out.  Now I have to use a weekly one and try and remember what I did last week, which makes me grumpy.

Also, when I get emails and leave the notification sound on, it just beeps at me every few minutes to remind me (and repeats those beeps every few mins ad-infinitum), so I've had to turn the sound off.  It doesn't do it with texts, so why with emails? It's not as if the world will implode if I don't read a new email within 2 minutes of its arrival!

Dave, you've got mail Dave.  You really should look at your mail Dave. I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.  P.S. You've got mail Dave. 

Other than that, a fine phone.  It has a half decent camera, can shoot 720p video (though no forward facing camera for Skype etc) and does what I want it to do, well almost.

A sound 7 out of 10.

P.S. You've got mail.

Recipe for 20 per cent Spelt Loaf

Ok, so here's the actual recipe for the loaf I mentioned in my last post:

Timings

Initial Prep time: 40 mins
Fermenting time: Overnight
Proving time: 1 hour
Final shaping time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 37 minutes + 5 mins cooldown
Resting time: 45 minutes
Eating time: Not a lot.

Ingredients (makes 2 loaves)

136g Spelt Flour
544g Strong White Bread Flour
2 1/4 Teaspoons of Dried Instant Yeast (not the stuff you have to activate)
1 Tablespoon of Sea Salt (the big grainy stuff - not table salt unless you want a heart attack)
500g Lukewarm Water (yes, weight it).

Method
Mix the flour, spelt flour, yeast and salt in a bowl. Add the water.  If you're fortunate enough to own a Kenwood Chef or similar, mix it with that using the K-beater (not the dough hook) for a minute or so.  If not, then use a spoon and mix the old fashioned way.

Leave for 5 mins to let the water mix in with the flour.

Turn out to a floured work surface.

Use the "stretch and fold" technique that Peter Reinhart talks about here.
For this dough, you can use flour on the work surface, like I do, rather than oil.  Try oil if you like though!

 Stretch and fold from from one side, rotate 90 degrees, repeat until you gone round the whole 360 degrees. Leave for 5-10 mins, repeat the process.  Do this for a total of 4 times, more or less.

Split into 2 portions and put your dough into well oiled bowls (spray oil works well for this). 

Leave overnight in the fridge (or for up to 4 days).

When you want to bake it, you need to be careful. Get your bowl out of the fridge.  Flour the work surface.  Turn out the dough on to the work surface.  It'll slop out.  Grab each "corner" and bring it to the centre.  Flip over the dough and pull the outside of the dough slightly taught towards the centre of the underside.  Be careful not to be too aggressive, you want to keep the air pockets in the dough.

Carefully move the dough on top of a piece of baking parchment and slide a peel (or a chopping board will do) underneath that.  Stick your bowl over the top and leave it to prove for an hour.  This dough will tend to slop out sideways rather than up, so it's a good idea to try and contain it.  Using a couche or just 2 rolling pins round the side of it (under some baking paper) should do it.

When ready to bake, make sure your oven is hot, and you have a hot baking sheet/stone in there, and a hot pan in the bottom.  I set my starting temp at 210 degrees centigrade with my fan oven.  My oven is quite lethal, so you may need a little bit of a higher temperature, it's very oven specific.

Boil a small jug of water (half a litre or so)

Pour the water into the hot pan at the bottom of the oven to create your steam bath.
Carefully slide your bread dough and baking parchment onto your baking tray in the oven.

Shut the door and wait for 12 mins.

After 12 mins, turn the loaf around, shut the door and reduce the temp to 180 degrees.  Bake for 25 minutes.  Turn the oven off, and leave the bread there for 5 minutes.

Take it out and cool it on a rack for 45 minutes or so.

Eat.

You should get a crumb with big holes in it, and a fairly crispy crust.  I get a lot of separation from my crust and the crumb as well.

Give it a go and see.

You can also just use all white flour if you fancy it (that was the original recipe anyway) - that's 680g in total to save you the trouble.

Bread

Bready, Steady.... GO!
A while ago, I found myself randomly flicking through TED videos, and came across Peter Reinhart talking about bread.

I've been trying, on and off, to make decent bread (mostly through the medium of the pizza base) since 1999, and never seemed to be able to figure it out. I always ended up with dense inedible lumps.  Peter's little talk made me go and buy one of his books, Artisan Breads Everyday.

I found this book very useful. It make me understand much more about what actually happens when you knead bread, when you prove it; basically the whole process.

I've since tried a few of his recipes, and I think I've made some pretty good bread as a result.

These days, I make at least a loaf a week, sometimes more, and it really doesn't take that much effort (using his overnight fridge fermentation method), and I haven't had to buy any fancy utensils or whatnot to get some great outcomes.

My latest bread takes his basic French bread, and just adds 20% Spelt flour to the mix and I've found that is makes a bread with a bit more flavour than the standard plain white stuff.

I'd encourage anyone who likes good bread to give it a go.

The Leap to Linux

Death of a Laptop?
Thanks to a recent birthday, I have inherited my wife's old laptop.  It was the black sheep of my computer family, as it had the much hated Windows Vista operating system pre-installed on it when it was new 4 years ago.  After all those years of use, with no refreshing, the poor laptop had ground to a halt.  Even using the web browser seemed to drag it down like a pack of wolves attacking a bison; except there was no film crew on hand and Sir David Attenborough wasn't narrating.

So, what to do? Chuck it in the bin?  Dust off the backup disk and re-install Vista?  Well, no.  For a while now, I'm been dabbling with Linux every once in a while, so I thought that it was time to bite the bullet and see if I could live with using Linux on a more or less every day basis and give an old laptop a new lease of life.

Choices Choices...

Horny Heffalump?

But, which distribution to use?  There are quite a few to choose from to say the least.  The most popular choice these days seems to be Ubuntu in one of its many flavours, mostly because of its famed ease of use for first timers.  I've tried using it a few times, but to be honest, the default colour scheme just annoyed me. It was brown.  I gather these days it's some kind of purple, which is more appealing, but once bitten twice shy, so, what about something else?  

Minty Fresh!

Well, I settled for something that is based on Ubuntu (so should suit my ham fisted approach), but has a much nicer colour scheme.  LinuxMint 12 (http://www.linuxmint.com/).  This particular version also has a nice name, Lisa, which is much easier to remember than "Horny Heffalump" or "Kinky Kylie" or whatever Ubuntu releases are called these days.

Installation
Fairly simple really. Download a disc, burn it, shove it in the DVD drive and reboot the machine.  It loads the live CD version of Mint and then you just click on "install" to install it.  Ok, so you have to follow some prompts like telling it what keyboard you have, and what you want to do with your hard drive, but it's not that difficult.  All in all, a pretty easy experience, if anything, easier than installing Windows 7 from scratch (and I've had to do that a few times).

First Impressions?
Well, first it uses GNOME3 as it's user interface.  There's a lot of controversy out there in Linux Land about this one.  The power users tend to agree that they don't particularly like the switch from GNOME2, and there are many and varied posts saying how to undo it and make things like they were in the good old days.  To be honest, I'm not much of a power user, and to me, it looks fairly pretty and well organised.  You can search your programs to find the one you want, or just use the "start menu".

Oooh err, that's different from Windows!

The one criticism I would level at this interface is the lack of ability to right click on a program and add it to the desktop.  I love this feature in Windows and older versions of Linux I have seen.  I like to clutter my desktop with shortcuts, and I'm pretty miffed that it won't let me do it.  Ok, sure, I can find a way around it using command line to create a shortcut, but your average user might find this a bit tricky, and I'm not the greatest fan of the CLI, I like my GUIs.

At least you can add your "favourite" programs to the favourites bar on the start menu, but it just doesn't feel the same somehow.

Installing stuff is a doddle!

Aside from this gripe, the rest of it looks pretty good.  The package manager makes installing new programs a real doddle, and the system runs pretty quickly compared to the years old clunky Vista machine it was until recently.  A look at the system monitor tells me the laptop is barely breaking a sweat, which is nice.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?
So will I keep this up. Well, yes, I think I like this setup and I'll use it for a while to see if I can get used to Linux on a more regular basis.  I've already got my podcasts and radio stations set up using Rythmbox, and I can use Firefox or Chrome just like I do on Windows.  Let's wait and see how this plays out.

Drink problem... me?

It seems our antipodean cousins have found even more ways of getting drunk according to this story...

Click here

Enjoy.

Adventures in Shaving Part III

Well, it's been a while and it's time to come to the promised update on the whole Traditional Shaving Front.

Blade Runner

Since my last report, I have tried a couple of different types of razor blade to see which one suits me best.
I soon came to realise that my starter, the Derby, just wasn't sharp enough and that as soon as it became just a tiny bit blunt it started to scrape.  So, Derby eliminated.

Next up, I tried my hand at a sample of some mystery Israeli made (unbranded) blades.  Well, I stopped after the first shave, it was blunt as a biscuit tin, still I have 4 more of them things that can be used for DIY purposes.

Next on my list was the Gillette 7 O'clock Sharp Edge.  These are made in Russia under licence and I have to say I was impressed.  They are sharp and they last at least 3 quite lengthly shaves.  So, I have stuck with a whole bunch of these for now (120 to be precise), so my stash should last for a considerable time.

It's all in the Wrist

Technique wise, I have now sorted this out, and generally find 2 with the grain passes and one or two against the grain ones seem to suffice.  My speed has increased and so has my accuracy, so little nicks are becoming much less common.
My lathering technique has also become much more consistent, and it definitely comes down to having the right amount of water in the mug and in the brush to achieve a good lather.

Apres Rasage

I have two things I now use after a shave.  Firstly, if I notice any irritation I used some distilled Witch Hazel (from Boots), and this nips anything in the bud if it threatens to get a little nasty.  Secondly, I use Peruvian Maca Root Razor Relief from the Body Shop as my after shave balm.  You don't need much of either, and they make all the difference to soothing that face after a really close shave.

And now, the end is near...

All things considered, I think that both the cartridge method and the traditional ones both have their pros and cons.  The traditional method has cost going for it, and the modern gizmos have speed on their side.  Personally, if you've got patience, then the old way of doing things will cost you less in the long run, and being a bit more patient than I was 10 years ago, I think I'll stick with this for the time being, but I'll admit, it won't suit everyone.

Amazon Kindle (3rd Gen) Review

Hello one and all.

I have had a request from Anna to post a review of my Amazon Kindle, and so I shall.
I've had my Kindle (which is the 3G + WiFi version) since the end of September 2010, so I've had plenty of time to get used to it.

An Introduction
For those of you who have not seen the device.  Here's what it looks like.

The screen size is 6 inches on the diagonal, and it uses e-ink technology.  For the uninitiated, electronic ink screens work using ink, just like books and newspapers, but display the ink particles electronically. E-ink displays require no power to keep the current image being displayed, they only require power to re-arrange the page into something else (i.e  when you turn the page).  It also doesn't require any backlight, which means you can read it in bright sunlight, unlike most laptops.

What this means for the user is that the battery life is quite long (Amazon say upto 1 month if you've got the wireless turned off, and 10 days with it on).  I'd say the figures are about right, I usually get somewhere between the two given that sometimes I use the wireless and sometimes I don't.
It also only weighs a featherlite 247 grams, which is usually less than the paper books I tend to read.

It has enough memory to store literally thousands of books (3500 or so if you're wondering), and this is main reason I bought it.  If you've ever read Peter F Hamilton's books, you'll know that they are generally 1000 page monsters that can take a lot of room to pack into your holiday bag, whereas this thing can store his entire collection in a tiny package.  Lovely.
Even if you bought more books than the device can store on its own, you can delete the books you don't read and they'll still be there available for you to re-download from Amazon at any time and at no cost. 

Any Colour You Like.... As Long as It's Graphite

There are two options when it comes to the latest Kindle, WiFi only, or 3G and WiFi.
Regardless of which one you pick, the network connectivity is used to connect back to the Amazon Kindle store so you can buy your books.

As I mentioned, mine is the 3G and WiFi version.  The bonus with the 3G is that you can use it for free in over 100 countries (it uses the Vodafone Network in the UK).  This is great when you're out of the house or on holiday with no access to free WiFi.  I've already used it twice on the train to buy the next book in whatever series I was reading.

Nitty Gritty

So what's it like to read a book with?  Basically, it's great.

The screen is just about big enough, and the fonts are crisp and clear.  You have a choice of three typefaces: regular, condensed and sans serif.  You can also adjust the line spacing and the font size, so it'll be no problem for those people that need their reading glasses for everything.  It includes a built in dictionary (two actually, one US and one UK), so you can find out the meaning of words as you read (or just look them up when you're playing Scrabble).

To turn the page, you just use on the of the buttons on the side.  They're positioned on both edges, so you can use either hand.  Page turns are pretty quick, under a second, and I'd say they're faster than you can do it by hand.

When you need a new book, you just fire up the menu and select the "Shop In Kindle Store" option and you get taken to the storefront. You can either search for the book you want with the built in keyboard, or browse through the various categories.  Amazon say they have about 550,000 titles to choose from (and more get added every day), so there is sure to be something to your liking.  A notable exception as far as I noticed is the Harry Potter series, but the Twilight Saga is on there if that's your thing.


When you find what you want, you just click to buy it and it downloads a few seconds later.  You really can be reading something in less than a minute, another big plus for me, because I hate having to wait for 5 days to get a book through the post (and I'm too tight for next day delivery).

Price wise, ebooks are subject to VAT, but I find them to be at least on a par with their printed versions, if not a bit cheaper (certainly cheaper than the list price).  It does mean however that you are tied into Amazon for your books though, as the Kindle only supports certain formats:

Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, Audible (Audible Enhanced (AA, AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion.

It also includes some other features.  You can put MP3s on it and listen to them (through the inbuilt speakers or the headphone socket), and you can even try out the "experimental" web browser.  I have tried this feature, and it's a bit odd, e-ink has its limitations, but if you were out and about and you really needed to check your web mail with it, it could just about manage it.

It's also not so great with pictures.  I actually bought a couple of textbooks for work, and the pictures can be a little pixellated.  Fortunately, all is not lost, because as well as being able to use your Kindle to read the ebooks, you can download the app for your PC, Mac, iPhone, iPadsych up to Amazon with where you last left off, so you could read your book on your PC, and then when you get home, turn on your Kindle (with the wireless on) and continue where you left off, and then switch over to your iPad and continue on that.

This is a really handy feature, as the Kindle doesn't do pages, it does locations.  As you can imagine, if your font size was set to the smallest, then your tenth page would be different to someone else's tenth page with the font size set larger, so it does take little getting used to.
[Edit:  They've added the ability to use page numbers in the latest software release]


It Ain't Easy Being Green

One thing I've heard about elsewhere is the green credentials of this thing.  Allegedly, once you get to your 23rd book download, the Kindle has saved you CO2 when compared to the printed equivalent.  That study was for the previous model, though I doubt much has changed (the Kindle 3 is actually a bit smaller).  I'm on my 16th book so I think I'm fast approaching that point.

Result

I love my Kindle, and I'm a definite convert to ebooks.  I've stopped buying paperbacks ever since I bought it. That's not to say I will abandon the printed word entirely ( I do still love the tactile nature of books, and some books are better in print), but the Kindle has opened my eyes to a new way of doing things.  The arguments are little similar to the days when Vinyl, Tape and CD were all replaced by the MP3.  We carry our music libraries around in our iPods, why not our reading library as well?

Further Reading
I've not really covered everything the Kindle can do, so for more information, feel free to follow the link to Amazon's Kindle site.

Life, the Universe and Everything

I recently read a blog from my friend Anna.

And she's got me thinking into posting some thoughts I've had over a number of years about how we value jobs in our society.

By value, I'm going to generalise here and say that a job that has value has to benefit either the human race in general or individual humans on a personal level.  So, jobs like doctors, nurses, hospital staff, teachers, firemen, policemen, these benefit the lives of individuals every day.

Then we have the jobs like scientists, miners, engineers, architects.  The people that discover new things, and build tangible artifacts that benefit large groups of people or humanity as whole.

Of course these examples are just touching the surface, I'm sure that you can add to the list.

And how much do we pay these people?  More often than not, not very well when compared to other, less "valuable" jobs.

But it really gets me when you think how much a carer, or a nurse, or a teaching assistant gets paid when compared to some city banker just shuffling numbers around. 

And of course, we know that thanks to the events of recent years, that these money movers have actually adversely affected humanity.  Why is this?  Why is that we not only tolerate it, but bail these people out, and then consider them punished when we reduce their bonus pot a little bit.  Why do we value these people more than the ones that do good work?  I sure as hell can't figure it out.

Discuss.

Adventures In Shaving - Part II - Arrival & the First DE Shave

Packaging & Assembly

The package of shaving materials has now arrived, and as a refreshing change (when compared to a well known South Yorkshire based online computer retailer), the people at The Traditional Shaving Company used a box that was perfectly sized for the contents, with a little packing material and some boiled sweets to fill it up.  Nice touch.

So, extracting the important components, here's what we get:

Clockwise from top left: razor, brush and blade boxes

After extracting the items from their containers we can see how they look, along with the shaving cream and a mug I'm using for a shaving bowl.

The assembled kit including the cream and my mug

I was surprised by how small the razor itself actually is; I don't know why, but I was expecting it to be bigger. Perhaps this is down to the fact that until now, I have only used the mass market cartridge razors that tend to have longer handles.  It feels pretty sturdy and well constructed though.

The razor comes in two parts.  If you use the wheel at the bottom to unfasten the top bit, it comes out and you are now able to place the razor blade into it.

The blades are wafer thin, I'm talking paper thin, which gives them a very delicate appearance.  Of course, this is deceptive, as these things are mightily sharp.

To attach the blade, you just slot it over the guide rails and then screw the top of the razor back into the handle.

This causes the blade to curve, giving it a slight angle.  You might just be able to see in this in the close up pic.

The First Shave

First things first, you've got to find something to mix the shaving cream with.  For this purpose I decided to drag out an old mug I don't use anymore.  I didn't see the point in buying a dedicated bowl when this would suffice.

Then came mixing the cream and loading the brush.  I've looked at a few online videos about how you should mix up your lather, and it all seems straightforward, but it's not as easy as it first appears.  I wet the brush and added an almond sized chunk of cream into the bowl, and started mixing it up.  My first result was quite a "wet" mix, and as a result it tended to run on my face after a while rather than stay put, which isn't ideal.  So I tried adding a bit more cream into the mix to thicken it up a bit.  This seems to have done the trick, but I can tell this is going to take a bit of practice to get it right.

Rather than applying the razor to my face straight away, the online tutorials I've come across state that you should try and find the right angle to hold the razor at, so the blade touches the skin.  This is best practiced on the arm, where you can actually get a very good look at what's going on.  So, angle sorted and memorised, it is on to the main event.

Taking a light grip with my thumb and first 2 fingers I put the razor to my face and then proceeded to lightly pull the razor down along my face going with the grain (WTG) for the first "pass".  The tutorials all recommend to use short strokes and concentrate on small areas of relative flatness.  One thing that is emphasised above all, is not to mash the razor into your face, let the weight of the razor head do the work.
On the first few strokes you can definitely feel the razor blade cutting the hairs away, and it makes quite a distinctive sound, even when compared to cartridge razors.

So, first pass over, it was time to re-lather and go for it again, this time across the grain (XTG).  It was easier the second time around, but you could still hear the hairs being chopped off.  This is where it seems to differ from the cartridge shave, on the second pass the cartridge razors don't tend to do an awful lot, which means you sometimes try and press the razor more firmly into your skin.  Resisting this urge took a fair amount of concentration.

After the second pass, I decided to take the advice for the novice DE (double edge) shaver and stop there.  It's recommended that you try to get used to this for the first 2 weeks at least and then you can branch out into adding more passes, and specifically going against the grain (ATG).

Results

So what was the overall result? Well, considering it was my first attempt, not bad.  Some parts of my face are baby bottom smooth (BBS) , whilst the others (particularly under the jaw area) still have some roughness to it.

I think that it's a good idea to follow the advice to get hold of some non-alcoholic after shave balm, as you can tell you've been using a very sharp blade on your skin, since it feels a little warm.  Saying that, I got that anyway from the old cartridge razors, so no change there.

I'm going to try again tomorrow and see how things go.  I reckon that this is going to take some practice to get right.  I'll keep you posted.

Adventures in Shaving - Part I - Decision Time

Yesterday, I was shopping in the supermarket and taking a look at the cost of replacement blades for my Wilkinson Sword Quattro Titanium razor.  After the shop assistant had asked me if I was alright and having assured her I was not having a stroke, I resolved myself to seeing if there was a more cost effective way of shaving.  Having tried electric razors in the past (and not been impressed) I have decided to venture into the grounds of "traditional" shaving.

A picture of Benjamin Disraeli.... for no good reason.

This generally means one of two choices.  Either the straight edge "cutthroat" razor, or the double edged single blade "safety" razor that King Camp Gillette (yes that's his real name) started selling in 1903.  Well, I've gone for the less life threatening of the two.
 
Choose Your Weapons Gentlemen!

Merkur HD 34C

First up, the razor itself.
I have decided to go for the highly recommended Merkur HD 34C in Chrome.  I have read a few sites about using such razors and there seems to be general agreement this is a great starting point for the beginner, as it's well made (German) and is a forgiving piece of equipment.  Let's hope so.

A packet of blades. Duh.

Next up is the type of blade that you use, and let's face it, they need to be damn cheap, the whole reason for looking into this in the first place.  But there are apparently many different types of double edged blades!  Who knew?
Blades apparently differ with their coating, their bevel angles and all sorts of other things, but I'm just looking for something that won't cut my head off.
Well, the weapon of choice here is the Derby Extra.  They're supposed to be good for the beginner, as some blades are insanely sharp and only for experts who have the technique down to a tee (blades by Feather for example).

A pack of 10 will set you back £1.50.  Needless to say that's a marked improvement on the £6 it said in the supermarket for a 4 pack of blades for my existing razor.

At least it's not real ivory

Now for the brush.  Traditional shaving brushes are made from Badger hair, and even different parts of the fur have a different feel.  I have no idea if they actually kill the Badger in the process or just have a bunch of bald ones running around, so if anyone can shed any light on that I'd like to know.  In any case I have gone for a following "Pure Badger" brush that uses hair from most of the pelt and is regarded as the standard starting point.  Hand made in Sheffield apparently.

Creamy

Last on the list is the shaving cream.  Now, apparently the stuff you get in a can from your supermarket of choice has all sorts of nasty chemicals in it, so the traditional shaver has to look for a more traditional product.  They come in 2 sorts, either a shaving soap, or a shaving cream, whichever you use is up to personal preference.  I have gone for the cream, and have selected the rather tasty sound avocado variety.  Which "flavour" you choose is down to personal preference, but you can get ones that contain eucalyptus that give you that cool feeling afterwards, or lemon and lime so you smell like a citrus fruit orchard.



So, that stuff is all on order as a "starter kit" from an online retailer.  I'm forewarned and forearmed with some lovely YouTube videos and will be updating you in later blogs to see if I manage to rip my own face off, or, just the hairy bits I'm aiming for.

Stay tuned.