More coins

Playing with some more effects and different pictures, mostly by frostfox - think I'm beginning to get better results. I'm starting to think in terms of a collage of a lot of different coins for the cover, rather than all the same, so none of this is entirely wasted effort.

I hope.

( Read more... )

Later - added another Great Sea Serpent variant

Bread and stuff

I forgot to mention that my main birthday present last month was a bread making machine, a Morphy Richards 1.5 lb model - not as highly recommended as the Panasonic version with the fruit / nut dispenser, but seems to work well enough and more in my family's budget.

So far I've made ten or so loaves, mostly successfully; the biggest failure was a multigrain loaf that didn't rise properly and ended up with the texture of lead, probably my fault.

One of the things I've noticed it can do is make jams etc., and I was vaguely wondering if anyone happened to know of a good recipe for onion marmalade that will work in a bread machine? Tried a web search but so far I haven't found anything - lots of onion marmalade recipes, of course, but they all need saucepans, frying pans, etc.

One question I should ask - just how messy is jam making etc. in a bread maker? So far I've barely had to clean it, just a wipe with a damp paper towel and a smear of olive oil, I'd really prefer things to stay that way.

Another stupid AV question

I'm not 100% sure but on a re-read of the manual I think that my AV amp (made by Sony) on its auto setting will automatically switch between its two digital inputs - optical and coax cable - if only one of them is "live"; this would mean that I couldn't have both DVD players running at the same time, e.g. to record on the recorder while playing on the high-definition box, but I really don't think that is a huge problem. I'd greatly prefer to have proper Dolby stereo etc. from both.

Firstly, does anyone know of any reason why this might not work? And second, what's a good reasonably-priced brand for the optical SPDIF cable?