#strangefortunes: A DIY fortune cookie experiment
I've always had a bit of a thing for fortune cookies, which are (in my opinion, at least) truly the Kinder Egg of biscuits. However, they're never terribly exciting. I bought and ate a wholesale bag of them once, and I didn't even get told I'd meet a tall/dark/handsome stranger (although to be fair, I haven't. Probably because I go around eating wholesale bags of fortune cookies).
Then, a month or so ago, it occurred to me: what are we doing? Why are we letting fortune cookie writers decide our futures? Why can't we decide our own futures? This is the modern age, after all: has our society entirely run out of optimism amidst all the bad news, bad money and bad politicians which daily surround us? Why can't humanity, in the form of popular social networking website Twitter (don't know if you've heard of it) decide its own fate?
Basically, I had a worryingly optimistic moment. I promise not to do it again.
So, after much research (read: no research) I found this recipe for fortune cookies over on allrecipes.com. And doubled it. Tip 1: don't do that. Fortune cookies have to be made one at a time and moulded when molten hot. So really, don't do that.
Meanwhile, I'd set up a hashtag on Twitter - #strangefortunes - and asked my followers to suggest fortunes. The response was overwhelming, which made me feel slightly better about doubling the recipe. However, I didn't want to waste the fun fortunes on the first few cookies, which I just knew I'd ruin, so I made some Lorem Ipsum ones:
...which turned out to be a rather good idea.
Next, I mixed up some egg whites, which I will show because I'm rather proud of the snazzy whisk my friend Edward got for me.
I then added flour and blah blah blah, and (by putting them directly onto a greased baking tray and baking them ONE AT A TIME) started getting the cookies together. When they came out I have seconds to scrape them off the tray, put the fortune in, fold the cookie in half and bend it over the edge of a cup. I then put them into muffin trays ready for double baking (as they were still vaguely squidgy):
And here's what they ended up looking like:
I don't have any pictures of them being eaten, because the moment I got to work and opened the lid, WHOOSH: instantly gone. Everyone loved them - even the poor sod who got Herm Baskerville's submission (something about blood and gristle and sweetmeats: I forget). Unfortunately my favourite ("I know I'm a fortune cookie, but I can't tell you anything without a tarot pack") didn't make it: ke sera sera, I suppose.
If you have any suggestions for fortunes, leave them in the comments section - or tweet me @isntit.
George Auckland and The Internet v2.0
Ever seen this sequence from The IT Crowd? It's my favourite:
I've arranged a trip to the pub to celebrate the 56th birthday of Tim Berners-Lee (and because I wanted an excuse to go to the pub with my colleagues/mates one last time before I leave London for Salford Quays), and as we're all geeks/Graham Linehan fans I thought it might be funny to take along my very own internet. When I took a black box, a car security LED and a battery to our brilliant Innovations team to check I wasn't going to break anything, I didn't expect George to be there, because he's recently retired.
A little about George Auckland, in case you don't know about him. He worked for the BBC for over 40 years - latterly in my department, BBC Learning. I feel I can safely assert that at the BBC - and particularly in all things educational at the BBC - George is legendary. Check out some of the members of his Facebook fan page - you'll notice people like Bill Thompson in there. In fact, the joke goes that although Tim Berners-Lee might have invented the world wide web, it was George who hit the Enter button.
George is a busy man. Over the years he's been involved with the original BBC Micro, set up the Beeb's first web production unit and has worked on all sorts of things - including things like Blue Peter, Bitesize, good old WebWise and - well, I can't list everything here, but he's won more awards than it's worth mentioning and far fewer than he deserves. I didn't expect George to help out, but it was jolly nice to see him.
However, I underestimated the sheer awesomeness of George Auckland. Not only did he make me my very own version of the internet, but he added a brand new function that Berners-Lee either never thought of looking for or was never brave enough to make use of when he originally kick-started the world wide web: a switch. However, times have now changed: HTML 5 and CSS 3 are increasingly popular, IE6 is finally being turned off, and the world is ready.
The default position is hibernation (i.e. usual, day-to-day running of the internet - it is of course impossible to turn the internet off without breaking it), but you can activate advanced functions such as a fully semantic web, DSL rings, cold fusion and world peace by lifting the cover and flicking the switch. At this point the red light starts flashing, to indicate that the internet is working at maximum capacity. However, it's not advisable to do this for long, as the battery wears down fairly quickly. Luckily it's replaceable, but you know, batteries can get expensive etc. and it's a bit of a faff, since they're held in with blu-tack.
Here is a picture of George switching on The Internet v2.0 for the first time this very afternoon. Please excuse the fuzziness - it was a very emotional moment:
Thanks George. I shall treasure my internet forever.
P.S. I found this very interesting talk by George on YouTube, in case you're interested in the future of learning/mobile platforms - particularly interesting given that it's from 2007.