The Ultimate Brownie Recipe Guide

Over on Relish.com, Tessa Arias has done us all a favour, and experimented with how to make different types of brownies - what happens when you use brown sugar, what happens when you add an extra egg.

For the brownie lovers out there, I suggest you take a look!

Are you past-oriented or future-oriented?

Fascinating lecture about the way we think about time, and how this changes just about everything about our culture and lifestyles. The bit about challenges in modern education was also super interesting (to me, anyway, but you people should know by now that I'm a big old nerd).

For more lectures like this, on a wide variety of topics, search YouTube for RSA Animate. It's good stuff.

Porcupine eats banana, has nose, sounds adorable. Is named Kemosabe.

Happy Friday!

Kiva

The other day over lunch, we were talking about charitable donations. I've been making a few, to organisations that work on things that interest me, but my aunt had a new suggestion for me - www.kiva.org

Kiva is a non-profit organisation based in San Francisco that, thanks to micro financing, the internet, the global exchange rate, enables random folks across the world to loan funds directly to borrowers, to facilitate projects and alleviate poverty. Kiva collates all the loan applicants, and puts together a profile for each, so you, the donor, can pick someone out that you'd like to help. Instead of donating to a huge charitable organisation that has to funnel some of your money into bureaucracy and publicity, you can loan cash straight to someone who'll use it to improve their life.

And then they'll even pay you back.

For example, there's a dude in El Salvador who needs $400 he needs to buy two new bulls for his farm. He's got a repayment term of 14 months, the bank he's come through has a risk rating of three and a half stars, and if farming's your thing, you could add $50 to this guy's project.

If not that dude, why not the lady in Colombia who's started a shoe business, and has too many orders and not enough capital to fill them? A total loan of $575 will help her sustain her business, and you could spare $25. Or you could help a dude in Mongolia with the $1,100 he needs to finish building his house and installing a heating system.

 The applicants are vetted by different financial institutions, and you can see who's repayed previous loans, and work out who you think might be a good bet. They've been sorted into categories like 'housing', 'youth', 'start-ups', etc. so you can pick out a project you're into. And then once they've repaid your loan, you can then funnel that cash back into other projects.

It's quite a different scene from the automatic-monthly-debits you sort out with other charities. I'm pretty keen to get started, though - I've got a spare $50, so I think I'll help a dude buy some bulls!

• www.kiva.org
• Kiva on CharityNavigator

Five for Friday no. 45

First world problems of the 1990s. Unnervingly, I can related to most of them.

 

Hipster baby names: find your own. Mine is Argyle. Which I think might be easier to deal with than my real name. 

The 50 ugliest shoes in history. 

 

A slightly odd sartorial website. 

Dream houses built for books and the people who love them.

Five for Friday no. 43

Today's Five has a theme: TUMBLRs!

Fiction bucket list. No, it's not books to read before you die.  

Fuck Yeah, movie posters!
 

 Thug Kitchen. Jane's new favourite tumblr.  

Research in Progress.A tumblr for my scientists friends. Of which I have almost none. 

Tumblr of a professional cartoonist and illustrator. Off-kilter Disney Princess, My Little Pony and Superhero comics. Adorable.

Images are the original artwork of Amy Mebberson.

James Bond x 6 fight to the death

Watch all 6 Bonds fight to the death. How does your favourite Bond fare? Who will win in the end? This might be the best thing you see all Thursday.

Hurricane Sandy from the top of the New York Times Tower

This is a live camera feed from the 51st story of the New York Times Tower as Hurricane Sandy comes in over New York.

There are trackers and images all over the net, and the storm hasn't even struck yet.

One I've seen a few times is these images of the eerily abandoned New York Subway.

You can check out the latest news from #Sandy on Twitter. You do not need a twitter account to check it out or follow any of the links you see. There are scores of updates every minute.

Two of the best things on the internet

Found yesterday and both make me very happy. This first one in particular.

Cat Bounce.LOVE IT!

Apparently the Best Gif Ever. I don't think so, but it is pretty damn good none the less.

Vice Presidential debate: an non-intelligent commentary

I did not follow today-ish's American Vice Presidential debate. I didn't follow the Presidential debate either, but by all accounts Mitt back-flipped on every statement he ever made and confused the heck out of Obama, who floundered as a result.

The closest I came to following either was reading about them on Twitter. Which was not particularly instructive but was entertaining.

So I am not going to attempt some super-intelligent commentary on the debate. Instead I am going to redirect you to the debate, retold in gif form

Vice Presidential face-off gif-ified.

Enjoy.

Resource Furniture: Space Saving

I don't know about you guys, but this looks like complete sorcery to me! IT'S MAGIC. And amazing.

Removie Posters

Movie posters, with one letter removed from the title. Hilarious and awesome results.

Following up on B's post about how awesome Post-It notes are - which they are, I'm a big fan - the internet has shown me something wonderful.

Toast Messenger - Burn messages on your toast

To which I say: would you call these TOAST-IT NOTES?

Interactive world map of literature

This is amazing. The Book Drum World Map is a multimedia map of 150 books. You can spin the globe and find the locations of books such as Perfume, Midnight’s Children, Lord of the Flies and Wide Sargasso Sea. You can learn about the real life-locations of some of the world’s best-known and most enchanting works of literature.

Or else, look up the map to see if your next holiday location was the scene of some great fictional drama.

You need to download Google Earth to join in the experience but it’s just too nifty to pass up.

What's on your menu?

One does not simply...

On Friday, B went to see the Lord of the Rings with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra - I expect she'll tell you about in a later blog post. And I expect she was also expecting to be able to tell this anecdote, but I'm going to steal it.

When she was watching the film, and Boromir delivered the line, "One does not simply walk into Mordor," the whole theatre apparently got the giggles, and wouldn't stop laughing for the next ten minutes. B says the orchestra didn't seem to get it, and she thought possibly half the theatre was just laughing at the other half, for laughing at something so random in the first place. But anyway, obviously a bunch of people at the orchestra on Friday night have spent enough time on the internet to have absorbed the Sean Bean meme!

So, in honour of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring:

There are bazillions of others, each more nerdy than the last! Feel free to send me your favourites!

Five for Friday no. 27

I desperately want one of these travel bags from Sweden covered in Josef Frank designs, which I adore.

Perfectly Timed Photos. Only look if you have an hour to spare because you WILL get sucked in.

Things I saw and liked – a new tumblr I follow.

Target have released the next list of designer collaborations and it is some list. It really depresses me that most of this will never see Australian shores, but one can hope.

Local Brisbane fashion blogger Professor Barbie on dressing for that job interview. Plus, I like discovering local bloggers. 

 Image courtesy of Professor Barbie in the Playground.

The website history game

This is going to sound weird but as you would all know, your browser saves your web history. And a scurrilous thing it is too. I don’t need to see just how often I look at trashy celebrity fashion websites.

That aside, I have recently developed a new habit utilising that dastardly search history. Into the address bar I type one letter – a random letter of the alphabet – and see what websites pop up from my history. So I choose ‘D’ and the first two options are a couple of tumblrs. I choose ‘C’ and it’s A Cup of Jo, a blog I look at all the time. ‘X’ of course brings up XKCD.

Comic courtesy of XKCD. If you don't read it you're missing out on very important pop culture.

It also varies on whether I’m at home or work. My home computer has so many more options; 'E' is for Entwined Happiness, 'R' is for Fuck Yeah, Parks and Recreation, and 'V' brings up a plethora of websites with the word 'Vintage' in the title; Posh Girl Vintage, Heartbreaker Fashion and then Vogue.

 From the Posh Girl Vintage homepage.

Sounds like a weird habit, doesn’t it? Bet you’re going to try it now though, just to see what your computer remembers about you.

Happy Monday...