Blog for February 2008
10/02/2008: Mince & Dumplings
Ingredients
Mince
- 450g minced beef
- 250g beef stock or water
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 1 large carrot, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp tomato puree
- 4 strands thyme
- small bunch parsley
- 1 tbsp Worcester sauce
- 1 tbsp sunflower oil
Dumplings
- 150g plain flour
- 75g suet
- salt
- pepper
Method
Heat the sunflower oil in a pan and fry the onion and beef until brown. Add the carrot, tomato puree, Worcester sauce, herbs and stock. Leave to simmer while you prepare the dumplings.
Preheat an over to 200°C.
Mix the suet, flour and seasoning in a large bowl. Add a little water and work into a heavy dough. The dough shouldn’t be particularly sticky — add a little flour if it is.
Divide the dough up into eight pieces and roll them into balls.
Transfer the beef mix to a casserole dish. Place the dough balls on top of the beef mixture. They shouldn’t sink in too far. Bake for about 35 minutes, uncovered.
06/02/2008: The Great IE8 Meta Tag Debacle
So Microsoft, in conjunction with some of the folk at WaSP, has announced its intention to include the quirks mode that beats all quirks modes in the forthcoming Internet Explorer 8 in an article on A List Apart: Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8.
This has proved to be quite a controversial idea. It was not long before WaSP issued a release hinting that many WaSP members do not support the idea. Speaking in favour of the scheme we have:
- In Defense of Version Targeting by Jeffery Zeldman
- From Switches to Targets: A Standardista’s Journey by Eric Meyer
And against, we have…
05/02/2008: Looking Ahead to Perl 6
One of the most important changes in Perl 6 over earlier versions is that it has started out as a written specification, which may end up with several different implementations. In previous versions of Perl, alternative versions had to implement all the quirks of the official Perl interpreter, as the definition of the Perl language was “whatever the Perl interpreter will interpret”, which was (of course) a moving target, as each released version introduced new features and changed existing behaviour (though usually only on the peripheries of the language). The lack of a stable written specification killed off many useful projects, such as the Perl compiler (perlcc).
The written specification is what allows me to write this article right now, as the current implementations of Perl 6 are only partial — indeed, the specification is not yet complete, but I can comment on those parts that have been written. There are way too many changes to touch on them all, but I’ll try to write about some of the most…
03/02/2008: The World in 2050?
I drew this map and wrote the skeleton of this article in November, but have only recently gotten around to finishing it…
Empires
The US is occasionally referred to as “the only remaining global superpower”. By 2050, I believe that it will still be a superpower, but that others will have risen to join it.
The United States
The US will keep military bases in the middle east, even if its original reason to do so (namely oil) has diminished by the middle of the 21st century.
The European Union
Growing co-operation between member states, a strengthening European Parliament and weakening national parliaments will have transformed Europe into effectively one country, even if officially the member states retain some form of soverienty. Most importantly, by 2050…