It was katie’s birthday, so i spent the whole day making cupcakes with margot. Seriously fun, if slightly nerve-wracking. Turns out mum is the genius when it comes to getting the mixture in the patty pans. She learned from her Aunty Phyl .. back in the day.

And look, here’s the cake backstage at Handsome Steve’s.

Yes i know Katie really wanted a profiterole mountain made out of mini-magnums, but i just couldn’t work out how that would be as much fun.

So tough luck kt you’re stuck with a mountain of cupcakes.

Some serious research before-hand led me to find out that there are dedicated cupcake bloggers out there. That’s right, people who blog about cupcakes and nothing else. take a look at the vietnamese coffee cupcake recipe.

Nice one Albert. i get an Einstein quote every day in my iGoogle feeds. This one made me jump. i think Albert spent much of his life regretting his contribution to inventing nucular weapons.

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Daryl the lovely minister at Northcote’s heathen / community church, has pulled together a bunch of performers for a big event in support of bushfire sufferers.

• 3-8pm this Sunday 1st March at
• Northcote Uniting in High St.
• Heidi’s choir Expressive Women
• Kavisha Mazella
• Rod Quantock as MC.

$10/15 money goes to uniting church Victorian bushfire appeal.

Daryl says: “Please come and have a great time with us in solidarity with those who have not only lost so much but now contemplate a long physical and emotional rebuilding process.”

(Some moments of reflection involved.)

PS: i caught Heidi’s choir, and they were really good. Heidi sang solo and she was fab. Then Zeena and i fled the choir scene, over to Wesley Anne where “The Tiger and Me” were playing. They Were Good. Alt-Country-ish.

plus: get your Flyer here: Northcote-Concert-Flyer(pdf)

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photo credit: alana jonez

Thinking back to my time in Vietnam, one of the best things about travelling is the people you meet along the way ..

• Like the Vietnaustralian guy from Sydney who had had “such a boring time” returning home for his sister’s wedding;
• or the Parisien woman returning to her native Cambodia for the first time since 1974, to share christmas with her Son who’s moved to Sydney;
• the German art student who’s half Vietnamese, and studying in Saigon .. to get a better feel for her father’s culture;
• the UK couple, an entrepreneur and his partner, who sold up to go travelling, and flee the UK economy because it has changed shape .. into something more pear-like;
• a Dutch woman who takes a couple of 8-week-long travelling holidays every year.

And that’s not even counting the flocks of wonderful people in Phnom Penh, lovely exPats and aid workers, volunteers, NGO people, teachers and masterful communications officers!

Really it’s all about the people isn’t it

so tell me .. who did you meet in an exotic location?

photo credit: shapeshift

This is too hilarious.

Never heard of it before, but microsoft has a program called songsmith, which puts a backing track to your vocals. So people added in vocals from famous songs to find out what would happen. Here’s the murder of one Radiohead classic.

You’ll find more examples of songicide over on the original article in the Times (uk). (And more on youTube of course.)

Seriously the company should be charged with songslaughter.
(is that songs-laughter or song-slaughter?)

Unlike garage band from apple which i’ve heard inspires creativity.
go microsoft, go far.

Plus, someone’s had a go at songsmithing one of Obama’s speeches.

i’ve posted 17 of my favourite photos up on flickr. Selected from a range of ooh about 3000. Is 100 photos a day too much when you’re travelling? i don’t think so.

Some of these shots were taken without looking .. that is i would point and click in the rough direction of whatever i wanted to capture. Usually it would be terrible, but occasionally it worked.

Here’s a slideshow .. or you can look on the flickr site direct, and add comments etc. Go on.

Reading a book i picked up in Cambodia .. about the neuro-plasticity of the brain: Norman Doidge, “The Brain that Changes itself“.

Chapter One tells the story of a scientist back in 1969, who hooked up a computer to a camera .. and wired it all into a small pixellated metal plate, touching the skin of a person who had been blind since birth.

He did this because he wanted to show that the brain’s visual cortex can take sensory input from .. not only eyes but also skin. Touch can create a picture .. and the brain can adapt to turn this into vision. After a few weeks of practising, the person was experiencing something very like vision.

Nice experiment!

However back then, people hated the idea that the brain could re-make itself back then, so his research went largely un-noticed.

Here’s Dr Doidge talking on Slow TV, the Australian Monthly series:

Related stuff:

• Author Norman on 7.30 report
• Norman on Slow TV: part i, part ii (rss at blip.tv)
• The book at Readings
• Knitted brains!!

photo credit: onkel_wart