So it goes

I made my second batch of jam-on-the-hob today. Last time was strawberries, this time plums. I can’t recommend it enough. Here’s three reasons:

• it’s super easy (three ingredients)
• it’s at least as cheap as buying jam from the store
• unless you’re buying Fraser Doherty’s SuperJam, your homemade jam will be ten times better than anything else. continue reading »

I’m in a first class coach hurtling toward Edinburgh at the end of a brief trip down south. There are big yellow fields on either side, and every now and again the coach shakes as another train rattles past.

I rarely take the chance to read whole books. On this five-day foray to England, I read two: The Portrait of Dorian Gray, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. They were both immensely gratifying. continue reading »

I stumbled upon glassesdirect.co.uk yesterday. It was good. Glasses Direct is like Zappos for spectacles. In the 24 hours since I found the site, Glasses Direct has already become a serious contender for the most personable, professional, service-oriented company I know. continue reading »

I had several reasons for not rushing out to read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

1. The book was immensely popular. Occasionally, this is indicative of quality, as in the case of Freakonomics. More frequently, widespread popularity is indicative of terrible writing. Case in point: The Da Vinci Code; Harry Potter. continue reading »

This weekend is our annual teambuilding “Debrief” session. All the SIE interns are gathering in Stirling to reminisce about our year and to say goodbye to those who are leaving. To celebrate, my boss asked us all to put together some sort of presentation about our favourite thing to happen this year.

It was the perfect opportunity to use a new tool: Prezi, an amazing new PowerPoint alternative. It’s easy to use, free, and makes cool presentations. (PowerPoint is so ’90s. At least, it is now that I know I can use something else.)

Here’s the presentation I made for the weekend:

http://prezi.com/82606/

I’m afraid you’ll have to provide your own narrative, but if you just click the arrows, Prezi will take you straight through the images.

Prezi. Consider it recommended.

I received Victoria Moore’s book “How to Drink” for my birthday (thanks Ann and Brian!). I thought it was intended to help me become better acclimated to Scottish beverage culture (i.e. binge drinking). If that’s the goal, however, the book approaches it much more subtly than I anticipated.

“How to Drink” is a collection of mini-rants, recipes, tips and anecdotes about all things drink-worthy. Moore makes the very reasonable point that while many of us have an understanding of gourmet food, we have little appreciation of what makes a good drink good. continue reading »