@ work I need to take long hand comprehensive contemporaeneous notes. Sometimes 10's of pages. Usually just the spittle flecked ranting & hooting of a enraged moron, but in the interests of fairness, transperancy, accountability & stuff'nthat I need to record it. I have learnt from bitter experience that Digital Voice Recorders, tape recorders, triple deck recorders even video cameras ALWAYS fail at the worse possible moment. Thus while it causes many hand cramps and is frequently as legible as the scratchings of an epileptic apopleptic chicken, it is still admissable, aducable *rse covering.

Firstly in my bid for pedantic bastard of the day award...Moleskine not moleskin.

As far as notebooks go I have two. The one I take to all outside the office meetings. I write all meeting notes, pre and post meeting musings and asorted other things to prompt action or record events.

In the office I have the larger A4 notebook for more detailed musings. Could I do it on screen? Maybe but there is something about the process of putting it down on paper and considering what you have written that adds...not sure what or how but it just adds.

My handwriting is some kind of unholy (& untidy) union between cursive and print, leaning more towards cursive. I write faster than I type, so if I'm working through ideas & trying to get them down quickly, it's always done by hand. And I make fewer mistakes.

The thing about a great notebook - like those Duomos - is that it's such a beautiful notebook that I feel bad actually writing in it with my shitty handwriting.

Neal Stephenson writes the first draft of all his books longhand (there's even Neal Stephenson Fountain Pen geekery).

The handwriting recognition on MS tablets (which goes back to XP so it's been around a while) is very good at converting longhand - even my extremely shitty longhand. It's certainly faster than using an on-screen keyboard.

If i wrote in cursive it would look exactly like it did just prior to me stopping doing so at about age 11 or so: diabolical and childlike. I tend to print with letters that run together more so than joined up. I don't often write long pieces on paper unless I really want a personal touch such as when I wrote to my children after their grandfather died and they couldn't attend because they are scattered to the wind across the country. If I do write longer pieces I try and write more clearly than when I'm noting things down for myself, which is more like a scribble.

JB,

Handwriting has more nuance than Typewriting.

I lost a diary in 1997 with 'lots' of stuff in it.

Trying to remember it all is near on impossible.

It's only a small fraction of my lifetime.

Or is that an infraction?

Anyhoo it's not in my possession and the years go rolling on.

If I had put it in electronica or da interweb it wouldn't be private anymore.

Writing/typing - no difference sans muscle memory. If you need to speed up or slow down you can do it in either. I use both but nowadays treat any written material as immediately binnable because

1. It's already out of date
2. It can't be easily revised
3. It's living in a non-backed up, short duration medium
4. It's light cone (unless subsequently scanned) is limited to the speed of mechanical transport.

The pros for the written form are that it uses a low tech solution for times when a high tech one is not available. It can use some tools that are more portable, though this is starting to become less of a distinction (I use my Nexus7 and Swype to capture most notes now about as fast as I can type, notes which are then persisted in the cloud and available on all my other devices).

As to cursive, it'll always be there when you want it http://www.fontspace.com/category/cursive

I tend to write in scruffy printing (with the occasional curlicue on g, y and f) that runs together somewhat.

I'm still in the old school at uni, writing notes in books rather than on laptops. It would be an interesting thing to see how many postgrad students use laptops compared to undergrads. From the back of the class it would be interesting to see how many are websurfing or using facebook instead (I've seen it on several occasions even in postgrad classes).

Laptops or typed text would make it easier when it comes timing to pulling it together for study etc, but I haven't yet got to listening and typing as easily as writing. I do occasionally use voice recording on the phone to track ideas, but not to dictation software.

Minor point: If you never learnt to write, it would be hard to have a signature.

It is still used in instruction, particularly in languages e,g. french, mathematics, chemistry, computer languages. Someone asked a question, seems natural to go to a whiteboard and quickly write some examples.

Still used in meetings when you are workshopping something. What are the things we need to be thinking about with this project? People start writing stuff on the board. It is how a group thinks out loud.

A good field scientist will always have paper and pencils, as backup. They are the relatively failsafe field recording system.

And most importantly, how else would we know the blackboard specials at the cafe or the pub?

Actually, once in a while I use the ol' longhand cursive, but more often than not I print, and it goes back to when I started drafting. See, kids, way back then people actually lettered the drawings, and all this was done by hand. Got so used to printing on drawings every day that it became second nature to print pretty much everything.

An analogy for my trade would be (despite having 3D CAD modeling software) sketching out things on a sheet of paper. There are times I do that before modeling up a part, which is kind of bass-ackwards-but it seems to work for me.

Sadly or not, I lost what little ability I had to write in script years ago. On the other hand, I have retained the ability to write in print form (block letters, non cursive, whatever you want to call it). I can read it easily enough and more to the point, I can write at sufficient speed to get a fair bit of work down.

How much work?

Both of my professional level published stories, Tearing Down Tuesday and The Limb Knitter, were originally written in longhand form while I was working at my security guard job. Rewrites were conducted in the same fashion, though generally more targeted in nature.

In my other job at Birmo's military consultant, I use longhand to block out combat scenes in need of revision, scribble out those bits of local color that folks really like and fiddle with descriptive elements.

In terms of churning out sheer word count, an old school style clickety keyboard works best in creating quantity, but if I want quality, I use longhand.

Respects,

Murph

On the Outer Marches

My cursive is crap but is still faster than my typing. I tend to end up with a crazy mix of print and cursive which can be a bit of a bitch for third parties to decipher when doing the data entry. I've had jobs in some mines which date back to the late 19th century ( Mt Lyell in particular) and reading the old field logs of the time was an absolute pleasure. The penmanship and the quirky detail is not seen today.

As W notes in the field a good notebook ( Chartwell survey books -currently uisng the 2647 with graph paper on one side and double spaced lines on the other) and a couple of good pencils are still the way to go. I've tried a couple of different tablet configurations but they seem time consuming, a bit limiting and a pain for sunlight readability.

I tried to go all digital, but it nearly broke my soul and my wallet; I tried all the gizmos and gadgets. These days I file everything digital, but I take fsckloads of handwritten notes on mostly legal/junior legal notepads - there is just something that a scribble or a doodle on paper that at some level can't be captured with digital. But once I've finished I tear the pages out scan them with my nifty little scanner and bin them. ...sometimes I even make little explosion sounds as I hurl them across the room into the bin.

Fascinating topic. As well as being a long time reader and book collector I’ve always been a bit of a stationery fetishist – an interesting pen and a well turned notebook will always get my attention.

I don’t do as much handwriting these days as I used to, but it’s still indispensable in my work situation. Most of my work output is expected to be in various document types (or artefacts as we call them in the enterprise architecture trade) – Word documents, Visio diagrams, pretty pictures etc. all designed to show relationships and inter-reactions between architectural elements and layers. There’s not that much narrative or creative text generation – it’s all descriptions of current state, desired future states, industry trends, transition roadmaps and such-like. This whole environment is too reactive for anything like even your daily planner, John. It’s all about lurching from ‘crisis’ to ‘crisis’ here.

But for documenting meetings or simply taking personal aide-memoire notes, I’ll do it by hand in a bound A4 notebook, detailing meeting time, subject, attendees, agreed actions and so on, along with anything else I feel like documenting. And it means I can doodle or start doing my own thing in my head if the meeting can’t hold my attention.

I can always write longhand much faster than I can type – the result is often unreadable, but it helps me get ideas out of my head faster as they compete to get out or run into one another. The simple act of writing things down forces me to do a better job of remembering stuff in the first place.

On the personal side, I maintain two or more notebooks. One is for lists of stuff I want to remember – wines I want to try again; music albums or dvd movies to look for on that next trip to JB HiFi; things I write down to remember now, before I forget to. That one generally lives in a shirt pocket. It’s the Cahier version of your small Moleskine and I actually have several of them, seeded around in various bags/organisers so I’m always likely to have one to hand with a spare pen and pencil when I need to record something.

The other is the next larger version of your small Moleskine set up to use as an Ideas Marathon, ie. To try to document thoughts and ideas as they occur daily. I’ve not been so successful with that one as it lives in my work backpack and is a bit too big for a pocket carry - I might have to physically downsize it to another Cahier or a smaller Moleskine.

All you people writing on paper are obviously jihadi cyber terrorists intent on keeping the government out of your evil evil thoughts.

My hand writing is crap. Like really bad. I could probably write something cursive if I had to. What's the non-joined up type of hand writing called? legibile but barely and used sparingly mostly for notes on printed working documents or on a whiteboard.

My signature is sort of legible for my name. But good luck anyone copying it.

Purely assumptively, I would suggest that the fine motor skills involved in typing would differ greatly to those used when writing and so use different neural pathways to achieve the same end, expressing thoughts in words.

Perhaps also the ability to change the structure of our current thought when typing prevents the further flow of it. I know I spend so much time getting each sentence "right" when typing that I lose my train of thought. When writing I would take more of a "I'll come back and reword it later" approach, where required.

As to whether I still use cursive, rarely. I personally don't have a need for it. I've even noticed that when I need to sign for a delivery or on a receipt it is very jittery and I have to think about how the letters are formed. Other times I'll start scrawling something, notice it is near illegible and either print it or open up Notepad++.

It probably still needs to be taught for a generation or two though, so kids can read their letters from Grandma, assuming she isn't already on Facebook ...

A facility with cursive script is essential if you want your little darlings to achieve the job of their dreams.

i.e. becoming a tattooist.

I am embarassed by my handwriting - a sad mix of cursive and something else. My 8 year od boy has nicer handwriting than me, and I certainly insist on the kids having proper handwriting. I am OK on a whiteboard, with diagrams, arrows and single words but pen and paper sentences are awesomely embarassing. Forget writing greeting cards!!

I live in fear that my handwriting will end up being analysed by a forensic handwriting expert. Best for me to stick to a computer.

I can touch type at about 80 words per minute. I know I can't write that fast. Nothing beats sitting in front of the keyboard, pounding away my thoughts as quick as I can think them. This said, I like to write poetry long hand - there is something about having the pen poised while mulling over the right word.

My mum is a registered nurse and she's maintained for years that I should have been a doctor with my handwriting; the medical profession apparently being the only one where an illegible scrawl is a requirement.

Sadly I squandered the opportunity to have the mutant hybrid of printing and cursive that spews from the end of my pen professionally sanctioned and became a business analyst instead. For that sin I've had to learn to write legibly on a whiteboard, which, when your natural state is hieroglyphical chicken scratch, is HARD. My natural writing is so bad that sometimes ?I can't read it.

The whiteboard is invaluable though; every time I'm in a meeting or workshop where the vaguest hint of requirements gathering is needed I find myself bounding to the whiteboard to start scribbling as legibly as possible and start the thinky. I have colleagues who take bets on how long it'll take for me to hit the whiteboard. Every business analyst I know has a pathological need to whiteboard stuff, it's a professional hazard.

I find I type much faster than I write, and because I do so much writing for work and for study outside of work, I very rarely find myself needing to scribble long hand in order to get the creative juices flowing. Although when I'm writing a requirements document I find I get inspiration/motivation from any notes I've scribbled down, or the stuff I've done on the whiteboard with the group.

Next time I get stuck with an essay for uni I'll try the scribbling in long hand trick and see if that helps; I think my biggest problem in that respect is that my urge to procrastinate dampens my creativity. Suddenly things like housework become vitally important when an assignment is due, even though prior to the deadline I would be content living like a 20 year old male uni student, and happy to procrastinate on cleaning. Go figure.

"When was the last time you picked up a pen or pencil and scratched out a line or two of handwriting?

as part of investigations I use a field notebook to jot down 'contemporaneous notes' which are a lot more believeable when you are on the stand in a court than a beautifully formated typed affidiavit.

Personally I think these are mearly different tools, the actual body of words you write are just another way of creating the story in anohters head, if that is the intent of your writing. Your writing it long hand 'uses different parts of the brain' is no doubt true, but the same principle would apply if you wrote it using a harp to pray notes that correspond to letters, the points is you use whatever too you grew up with.

Could Shakespear have written as well if he was given dragon dictation, probably not but by the same token the next great writer growing up today will probably look at you funny when 50 years from now you suggest using the new I-brainwave to write instead of his computer.

Anyhoo I asked The Ejamucation Minister a question between 4 and 5 pm today.

No Response.

We'll keep 'really quiet 'bout dem rabbits'.

Some of da kids are calling him Daffy Duck!

Cursive? I imagine people who try to read my handwriting might be a bit cursive. Somewhere between the South Australia, Queensland and Victorian primary school systems I learned, relearned a different way, then had to start again, all of which has left a shorthandish printing style with the occasional gothic touch. Oddly if I try to do running writing it ends up a lot neater, a function of going back to grade 5 I suppose which is probably the last time I used it.

But that doesn't stop me from buying nice notebooks and filling them with my hideous scratchings. The little moleskine things that you will confuse with your passport, carry one of those everywhere, lasts about a month. Usually just random notes, but the ambition is that a longer effort might start there one day.

Mind you I get a bit retro with marks on paper. I quite like the idea of bashing out a few hundred pages on the wonderful little Imperial manual typewriter (late 40s I think) that I picked up for practically nothing at the Rocklea flea markets a few years back.

I can't even write in cursive any more. Years of taking notes at uni and at work have caused my writing to devolve to messy block printing. Usually done on the reverse of old printed documents. It's a sad and sorry tale of woe.

JB, what you need is a Livescribe Smartpen. Inside the pen is a tiny camera that can see what you're writing. You use special paper with printed micro-dots, so small that only the camera can read what they say. And by using both, the pen is able to render the page as a PDF, that can be saved to Evernote, and is thus available on all your devices.

Better yet, there is an onboard microphone that records what is being said at the time you're writing. You play back the recording by touching the pen to the paper, and it starts playing back what was being said while your pen was writing that note.

http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/

I still write in longhand. It comes in handy at TAFE for making notes during class, and I don't always carry my laptop or iPad when I'm out and about - if I get a snippet of an idea for my novel in my head while I'm away from home, I can just jot it down in the notebook I always have with me. My handwriting is a cross between print and cursive, though at this point it's predominantly cursive - it works for me, and other people can read it, so I see no reason to change it.

Thanks JB. This bit of thinky from the excellent Gillian Tett in the FT got me thinking about this earlier this year - http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/e27e8b6e-5abb-11e2-bc93-00144feab49a.html#axzz2WTEkuPpX.

As a transactional lawyer, most of my heavy duty drafing is done straight into a document on a screen in MSWord - only efficient way to do it. Some colleagues still mark up a document by hand and give it to a WP operator but I don't see the point - my near illegible scrawl doesn't help.

On dictation, we outsource this to our centre in Manila - given my thick Irish accent, I've never tried it although I'm morbidly curious to see what would come back. Digital dictation software hasn't been brought in yet as (certainly for transactional lawyers) it's a marginal form of work output. Most correspondence nowadays is on e-mail and this is very much DIY.

However, if I want to think and something out, blank bit of paper and a pen is where I start - haven't found a technology solution as effective (yet). Digital post-its rock though.

Cursive? Only when I'm taking meeting minutes - makes it easier to write faster! I'd be the only one who could read it though, and at times even I have trouble.

My printing is very, very neat when it has to be - a year of handwriting accounts for a doctor's surgery saw to that.

Son and heir's school has decreed that all the Year 8s work from iPads this year, with only their music manuscript and Japanese workbooks being pen to paper. He was struggling with some stuff the other night until I showed him how much sense it made to scrawl it out on ye olde scrap paper!!

Oh and in a strange twist, I have two fonts on my computer that are my handwriting - print and cursive!!

I'm currently in the thankless and often lack-luster process of writing my PhD and if it wasn't for a notebook and pen, I doubt it would ever have even started! When I'm in the zone and have direction and know my argument, I can smash out 120words an hour on my funky bew Mac Air but if I didn't have the opportunity to scribble through and that blank open page to deal with my mismatched arguments and differing opinions, I'd be nowhere!

That said, I also use longhand to take notes if I'm at a conference as I find it helps me concentrate on the speaker (even if I'm bored). I watch uni undergrads on their laptops and wonder how much they are getting out of classes when they are chatting to the person across the room on Facebook.

I got hand cramp in my accounting exam today! Accounting exam! [Gets shouty] Who gets cramps in a numbers based test? I should just hand in my pens now & submit to keyboard auto correct nonsense. Sigh. [Hangs head in shame]

As a young teen way back in 1965 I read "The Fury Out of Time" by Lloyd Biggle. I remember in his novel he posited that in the way-way-forward-future our descendants lose the ability to 'read' and "write" per se, but maintain the ability to manipulate images and iconography on screens with hand motions (he preceeds Apple's patents on multitouch by 30 years).

Maybe in the future we will all write like the Italians of today communicate: we will shout at hidden microphones while waving our hands around and making eye-contact with some attractive person in the room totally removed from the conversation.

Cursive will require a rosetta stone of some sort or another.

I'm a mature-age post-grad student, and I cannot produce any work of any worth unless I first play with the words on paper. This means I have notebooks and notepads chokka-blok full of ideas and partial sentences. I need to hand write everything, and the stuff I produce this way is generally not bad. What I find frustrating is the push from my supervisors to ditch the pen and type my thoughts directly into the computer. I think this is because my way is slower than they would like, but my thoughts and ideas cannot take their proper form unless they move from my fingers to paper and are shaped by me physically moving a pen. It doesn't need to be a 'proper' pen - an el cheapo plastic gel pen is best as it flows easily. There is a little romance in filling a page with my words. I see my much younger post-grad peers constantly pecking at their laptops and notebooks and tablets, and wonder if they find the joy and satisfaction in the plastic keys that I find with my plastic pen and newsagent school exercise books.

JB

As an aside-

You is getting some amazing traffic today!

Do da hokey pokey!

When my kids were taught to write joined-up at primary school, I became so ashamed of my post-college handwriting that I took classes and practised caligraphy for 10 years. The result is that now, decades later, I still love to pick up a pen, any pen, at the least excuse. Most of the above comments totally ignore the pleasure of forming or reading beautiful letters. The world is the poorer for it.

I wish I could print... then maybe other people could read my writing!

my son has hi-functioning autism and one obstacle he meets in (mainstream) primary school is to focus on the technique of handwriting, spelling and at the same time producing content. he has excellent spelling, and lots to say, but all together will not come out easily. the teachers and special needs staff have been using ipad and typing, saying "he won't need handwriting much in the future, who does really?". I have now explicitly asked to use typing only occasionally. I want him to train the automatism of writing more (i am also doing some at home). it's essential excercise for the brain. it doesn't matter if 'we don't need it anymore' (really?). he is getting there, slowly, he can type anyway already better than his peers. I believe it's like learning a foreign language in school. the point isn't really if or when you will use it. it's the learning progress that is formative for your brain.
in my son's case, it's harder, but i think it would be a mistake to just give up, because : computers..

There something deeply satisfying about filling a page with script, of using a pen until the ink runs out. Of writing so fast (but not too fast) that an idea emerges and at other times writing slowly and savouring the form of every letter. I dunno. Maybe I've been scarred by watching The Pillowbook and inspired by reading Shadow of the Wind, but I love script. Not type.

Oddly enough in days long gone, when I was first an IT man (you know, before it was cool to be nerdy) working on Mainframes I did all my doc in long hand, and a bunch of typists typed it up for me. When I got my first PC with good old MS Word, I was stumped. Sure I could write COBOL and SQL straight from a (hand written) design, but words and actual human communication? No way!! So I did the doc long hand and typped it in. How times have changed. I have trouble putting a sentence together with a pencil in my hand these days, but thoughts flow through a keyboard no problem. I love that I can learn things.

Pure blazing speed of creation: Type straight into MS Notepad, no editing

Make raw text into a formated, correctly spelled and formated document: MS Word or gmail inbuilt editor.

A personal note to someone important: Cursive

A note where the information is critical, or forms: Printing (Block)

To make something beautiful: I do calligraphy (1460's Germanic mainly)

Any thoughts on doing a Blunty on the ADF Cheif's speech about the cutbacks?

A serving General willing to put his head above the parapet is a rarity!

No.

I tried to see an advanced screening over the weekend but they were all 3D. Wearing glasses over glasses is a deal-breaker for me.

If you shout me a ticket I'll buy the popcorn and smuggle in a hip flask..?

No, but I feel an afternoon sickie coming on later this week, cough, cough, sniff, sniff, headache. Best go and sit somewhere dark for a couple of hours....

NO, but thinking I might this wek fkn loks tre fkn wickedness baby yeah!

I saw it at a preview screening last week. Having read the book, I was concerned about what Forster might do. Turning the zombies from classic lumbering undead into bastard, speedy undead only upped the action, which is a good think in an action flick. But it was well played and I didn't feel like it wasted my time - always a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

As soon as I realised that the only extent to which this was World War Z was the title and I let go of the intial buring rage over them not making that movie, which to be fair I think would work much better as a TV series in the style of Ken Burn's Civil War, I am looking forward to this film as an excellent action-zombie film. The first of the blockbuster summer zombie films.

Sorry would have posted earlier but I no longer can post comments through explorer at work. Its only happened in the last week.

Plan on seeing it this weekend. Will remove all knowlege of book from brain first.

Managed to get an advance screening of Despicable Me 2 yesterday, can highly recommend taking your kids to it JB, and you'll enjoy it too. Has that 2 level kid/adult thing going. Several funny scenes for adults and the kids stuff had me laughing too. I think you'll be particularly taken with the whole "eldest girl dating" bits.

I look forward to seeing World War Z. The shorts look great, plus it stars Brad Pitt. Win win. Opens on 20 June in Brissie.

I'll probably see it as a big dumb action movie. Every time I see that wall in the trailer I flash on Judgement Day from Judge Dredd in 2000AD.

I still think zombies should shamble though - dead people should not be faster than Usain Bolt!

Read the book earlier on in the year (over a 2 day period), absolutely loved it, so a read it again the same week.

The movie has not disappointed at all. It is not like the book set 15 years after the event with everyone reminiscing. Its set now during the event whilst searching for the means to stop the horde spreading (so basically the first third of the book). Leaves it open for a sequel into fighting the Zombies to take back the cities.

If they don't have Redgums "A walk in the light green" at the end, like the book, it loses all meaning. :)

Where is Spanner's cheesecake?

Yes where. Is. Spanner's. Cheese. Cake?

Unacceptable. No samples for the masses.

Where is Dino's Cheescake as well?

It is occasionally difficult to express oneself fully in text. So in order to properly express my appreciation you'll have to imagine me with my shirt pulled up over my face an running around with my arms outstretched.

I wish I could do my famous "I got cheesecake & You didn't" dance for Khan Greybeard's benefit, but it would seem Aunty Q is a sucker for decrepitude.

I ate it for breakfast. And still feel sick.

Bloke I work with bakes cakes as a bit of a hobby. Per my request, he made a chocolate cheesecake on my birthday last year, and I kindly consented to letting the rest of the staff have a glimpse before repairing to my office and eating it. I was still having sugar-induced hallucinations a week later.

I like cheesecake.

I find baked cheesecake like Star Trek, boring and unsatisfying.

Hang on. She took her own cheesecake to an eatery? How did that go down with the owner?

Crazy Turk owner was past out on home brew Arak so didn't care. Waitress was so slow she may not have noticed.

I bribed them. With cheesecake.

It was a very good cheesecake. Right down to the last (the very last) crumbs. But I must respond to Aunty Q with my signature dish, the salted caramel brownies. Prepare yourself Q!

I see we are now out of the closet about it rather than drenching it with blueberry sauce and calling it a serving of fruit.

My own digestive problems make cheesecake consumption problematic but just before our lunch with Birmingham back in 2009, Cindy and I shared a bit of cheesecake in Central Park, right by the memorial to the USS Maine. Not only was it the best cheesecake I'd ever had, it didn't tear up my stomach either.

Birmingham, having missed out, got his at Carnegie Deli after a mountainous pastrami on rye.

The texture on the above subject is different from what I am used to. I wonder why that is? I'm used to seeing something more solid, creamy whereas the above looks more cake like in texture.

This is not meant as a criticism (I'm half a planet away so it is not like I can sample it) but an honest question.

Respects,

Murph

On the Outer Marches

The baked New York style cheesecake is uniquely American and worthy of jingoistic pride. Bravo, Q.

I know what I want when I return your way. I'll trade you a neck tie I borrowed from some punter.

The classic crust is a combination of butter and what we call Graham Crackers. I'n not sure what a dark biscuit is but it sounds like the title of a really awful science fiction space horror movie ("In space no one can hear you ask for a glass of milk").

"I ate it for breakfast. And still feel sick."

That is because you ate too much (understandable) and probably didn't include strong black coffee.

So sorry we weren't able to make it, sounds a pleasant day. I feel another expeditionary incursion to Redcliffistan is in order; perhaps a handful of weekends from now.

Ah well, sick elderly relatives trumps cocktails and cheesecake. You were very good to go visit the old timer. And think of the suffering you've been spared on the treadmill, burning it all off.

Give it a sucker punch from me.

It looks divine. Baked cheesecake has to be the winner. Does it work well with Ginger Nut biscuit base? And boozed up raisins!!

It would work great with a ginger nut buscuit base.

drool. I love cheesecake as well. I interviewed my now mother-in-law to make sure she was able to pass the cheesecake test (you can't be too careful). I also bake a controversial cheesecake - the chocolate biscuit base has a liberal mixture of a cocoa/chilli mix.

Chocolate + Chilli + Cherry + Cheesecake/Cupcake = C4

Right. I just sent JB the file with the cheesecake recipe, dumbed down (or made clearer) from the original Family Circle recipe that I modified - becoz the one in their book didn't FKN work.

Hopefully there's no typos. If so I blame sugar burnout.

Being as school holidays are upon us I've adapted it to make it easier for junior master-chef practice. And for those of you who are likely to absorb more rum than the raisins do, and who are as such at risk of becoming mildly addled.

Thanks Muchly,

I have made 1 cheesecake in my life so far.

Gonna have a go at dis one!

It looks beautiful.

Thank You

Wow! Madame Quokka is most generous! Not sure that I would do the same...assuming that I ever made anything that was worthy of the expressions of delight that this cheesecake has elicited. Thank you so much. I have always been a bit scared of having a bash at baked cheesecakes...but I think the said dumbing down may be sufficient to tempt!

I am a great believer that if you can read, you can cook. My mother died when I was 6 and Dad's repertoire extended to fry ups for breakfast, ham sandwiches with a thick layer of tomato sauce for lunch, and chops for dinner. Unsurprisingly I became a vegetarian at 15.

I am a self-taught cook, with some gracious input from my grandmother, who came from a family of bakers and whose cakes and biscuits were legendary, and some hippy house-mates who passed on the art of making lentils edible.

So as much as I would have loved to grow up under the guidance of 3 generations of CWA grand poobahs, truly, I'm evidence that it's a skill you can learn from reading, practice, and having no irate mother to scream at you when you fuck up and burn holes in the kitchen lino. All things considered, Dad took that rather well.

WAIT A MOMENT. Security. SECURITY. Someone let a leaf & twig muncher in here. After all her talking up of salty porcine goodness she accidently outs herself @ 50+ comments as, as a, I barely have the courage to whisper it; a vego.

Relax Nblob, it didn't stick beyond the 7 year itch point. At which point I got glandular fever, became very thin & anaemic & had to be re-issued with my Carnivore Badge. Still not a big fan of meat but will put it in my body 3-4 x pw, just enough to keep my iron count. Bacon is the only animal product I would genuinely miss if I were to go all tofu & betel leaf again. Oh wait, they're still some of my favourite things.

Whew. You had a fella worried. I had wondered how you keep your girlish trim figure in the face of bakery noms. When you said the V word, it all fell into place. V's beong all undernourished & such. Now the Most Likely Hypothesis is something the Coven cooked up; Eye of Newt type business.

Oh yes. The same high level security system that took nearly a year before you lot figured out I was a GRRRRRL.

After the "unfortunate sequence of assumptions" with (surprisingly) Brother Enjoy Medway " gender asignations were verboten.

Mate once made a cross bow out of a car leaf suspension spring. Made some bolts out of cut down arrows. We test fired it in his back yard. Went through the paling fence, through the neighbours fence, and we lost track of it after that. There was no screaming from two houses over, so we didn't think we hit anyone.

Would go rather neatly through the doors of a car. Just saying....

Fabulous, JB. Next thing you know, the Brisbane cyclist jihad will be spiking pedestrians off our footpaths. I once did archery, so could defend myself with a long bow, but it would be a bit hard to run the city streets equipped like Nerida from Brave. Watch the pointy ends, comrades in Burger. I'm sure that karma will ensure the cyclist who shot the homeless man will get an arrow up his Lycra pants in return.

JG. Save our footpaths

I think cycling is fine and we should all just mellow out and share.
However, to amuse myself, when a cyclist is having a rant about drivers, I throw in my little question. Their almost inevitable response makes me smile about the perculiar absurdities of my species.

Cyclist: Fkn drivers! They reckon that we are too slow and have no right to be on the road. Bastards! Then they yell abuse and drive past with no care and give me a bloody fright.

Me: But what about pedestrians on paths?

Cyclist: Fkn pedestrians! They are too slow and should just get off the path. Bastards! I tell ‘em to fuck off. Or I just speed up and ring my bell right in their ear. That makes 'em jump! Ha!

I saw that one and wondered what was going on.

Why are people assholes? No idea.

I saw it.

Humourless comments on an article which mentions cyclists? How shocking & surprising.

dude wtf? are you serious... i almost die everyday... ? i dont hate on all drivers, but sometimes when i have just watched my girlfriend cut off by a taxi so she had to slam into the pavement just as a bus was pulling up, or actually grazed by a car half in the bike lane, i will hit their cars, kick them hard, hopefully leave a non fatal dent for future reference... its about lives not convenience... spose youll find no humour here, what was that article about giving females shit really for... so its ok for people to be worried your comments are hatefilled towards cyclists in general, but not ok for the same to apply to feministic issues, fuck off, you had me this morning with that article about men being dicks, but just lost me for life...

Meh. I don't care how many letters Bryan Gaensler has got after his name. I get all my sciencamatific knowledge from Alan Jones. Everyone knows the universe is not 13.8 billlion years old, and there was no Big Bang. It's all just leftist lefty leftard lefty hogwash, designed to cover up the fact that we'll soon be ruled by One World Order, and all of our income will go directly to single mothers and drug addicts.

Love this stuff, and its available in the kindle

if interested in this sort of science stuff check out Downloaded the Universe reviews these sort of electronic books.

Wow!

I just watched 300 for the first time last weekend (Yes! took me a long time but I got there) and I loved it!

I hope they can continue the awesome saga without the King is all.

Greek history is known to people who identify as Greek by ancestry, but for all of my life only historians and wargamers knew it, too. It amazes me that average punters know who Leonidas was and what he did at Thermopylae, and that they soon will learn who Themistocles was and what he did at Salamas.

I can't wait to actually see Athenian triremes smashing Persian ships.

Cersei Lannister vs Vesper Lynd

This is AWESOME.

also on a techie matter, while tryign to view this on explorer at work the formating goes weird and I can not open the comments by clicking on "x responses to..." but if I click on the recent comments then I can see the comments but still can't post. Works fine in fireox and Chrome.

Bounces up and down with excitment

If this is better than the first one I may be able to endure more than the 15 minutes I actually lasted with 300.

Bounces up and down with excitment

Seven times in Imax.

I can't wait a whole year!

That sheila was good.

Need to fix the IE 10 thing. Means I can't pause during the playback and this caused an issue when there was a child related event during the listen back. IE 10 has been pushed out to Windows 7 and it's the default on Windows 8 and Windows RT.

Just a thought but Kym Wilde could do Doctor who.

GC is too sexy. OMFG.

FFS what kind of anti-nerd drugs were you guys on?

It was the Botany Bay not the Endeavour. They got on it because they were running away after getting their arse kicked, not because they were off on a voyage on discovery.

Khan didn't kill David. FKN Kruge (Christopher Doc Brown Lloyd) killed him in the NEXT FILM! That's the whole fucking point of Star Trek 6. The KLINGONS KILLED MY SON.

Eugenics Wars were in the 90's. Khan was meant to be from the sub-continent (yet was played with a Latino actor - so if someone from india/pakistan can be played by a latino actor, why not have him played by Benedict)

"sponsored by the one pot breakfast at Bungaow 4171"

By sponsored, do you mean they paid you hard cash or is it free brekkies for life? Enquiring minds and all that

Cheers

Best one yet, during the podcast I think its Dan or Greg who says to Girl Clumsy "your recaps are quite different' and he is correct GC's are different, they are loaded with much more awesome.

I was one of those readers finishing a GoT episode then racing to Fairfax to read GC's recaps and howling in desolated angst when they were late. Glad it was not just me. GC and her recaps should be awarded National Treasure status. They made the separation anxiety from Westeros bearable as Tuesday loomed.

Looking forward to both Agents of Shield and your recaps though JB. You've got a high standard to reach after GC's efforts :)

Damn, The Rhino is lovin' these podcasts. GC sounded awesome. The testosterone in the room are not too shabby either.