The amazing life and chronicles of Christian BS.

Review - The Two Brewers Inn

Information

Telephone: 01923 261 884

The Common, Chipperfield

Kings Langley, Hertfordshire

WD4 9BS

Food: ★★★★★

The food here, I found to be very, very good indeed. I ordered roast chicken breast stuffed with mozzarella, and served in a tomato sauce, accompanied by roast potatoes mixed British vegetables. The chicken was done to perfection; and the tomato sauce was sharp without being to acidic and giving me heartburn (something that I am quite prone to). The desert, I can say without a shadow of a doubt, was the best rendition of a chocolate fudge cake with cream that I have ever had. The cake was warm and soft without being mushy, and the Jersey cream with which it was served mellowed the flavour marvellously. It was very nicely served with a good helping of a thick, rich chocolate sauce, and a dusting of icing sugar. It was the perfect end to a very, very good meal.

Atmosphere: ★★★★★

Being a pub, there was of course the traditional atmosphere. However, even though it is probably twice the size of the average pub, there was no sensation of being just another customer even when the establishment is packed (as it was when we went, and it is easy to see why). The interior is softly lit, and is in original Tudor style, with dried hops adorning the beams - quite fitting for a pub, really.

Service: ★★★★☆

Your order is verified twice here; once when you make it, the waiter repeats it to you, and shortly afterwards, when another waiter lays the table for you.

Price: £44.34 ★★★★☆

Yes, it is possible to feed 3 people for less elsewhere, but at the same quality, I think not.

Overall: ★★★★★

This restaurant was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, not just for the taste buds, but for all the senses.

A Trip to Buckingham Palace

I found myself today (the date of writing being Monday, the 4^th August) on a somewhat impromptu visit to Buckingham Palace. Whilst having heard word of the trip the previous week, I only found out the date and time this morning when I was on the rounds picking-up the clients.

We boarded the minibuses and left the premises of the Neighbourhood Centre at a little past 13:00 and arrived at the gates of Buckingham Palace at roughly 14:40. Our entrance however, was not that of the regular tourists. We entered through one of the main perimeter gates at the front, and fro there proceeded through a subsidiary arch on the façade of the building. We entered the quadrangle and from there were escorted via wheelchair lift, after being given our entrance stickers and audio guides, and entered a corridor adjacent to the quadrangle. From there, we took a lift up, and entered the first floor through a burgundy tapestry room, home to some if the palace’s elaborately woven tapestries.

From here, we continued into a small room whose walls were covered with gilded mirrors, giving the illusion that the room was far larger than it in fact was. The next room in store for us, was the state ballroom, which for the first time ever was open to the public whilst set-out for a royal state banquet. This was an enormous room, probably able to seat around 150 people. It was dimly lit, but elegantly decorated with in the royal colours: carmine, cream, and gold. The coving and walls were covered in relief work, mirrors and portraits adorned the walls, and Sevres porcelain sat upon the ledges around the room. Each table was laid with delicately with fine silverware. It was by far the most imposing room yet with 6 chandeliers the widths of which were that of a small car; showing the money and therefore power that the Royal family held and still hold today.

The ensuing rooms were the various ballrooms; used to entertain foreign diplomats on state visits. Each of which had a marvellous pair of chandeliers and designated colour scheme which matched the limited colours in which Sevres porcelain is made: blue white, yellow and green. Attached to these rooms was the music room; semi-circular with a cupola in the way of a roof, and a jet black baby grand piano near the windows. Two pillars also flanked wither side of the doors„ which used scagliola (a method of coating a stone surface with a pigmented mixture which hardens and solidified to look like marble) in order to give the pillars the colour of lapis lazuli. The throne room, located at the end of the chain of drawing rooms, was one decorated in silk burgundy wallpaper, with a relief-worked archway behind which sat the two thrones; identically constructed chairs perched upon a raised section of the floor. The frames of the chairs were made of a dark - almost black - wood with pads and backs made from a fabric in the same colour as the wallpaper.

We then went once again through corridors whose walls were laden with art pieces, in particular Dutch interiors, before going downstairs for a final visit to the bow room; a turquoise room with large windows that open up on to the terrace where we proceeded to, and handed in our audio-guides. From here we made our way back to the minibuses, and headed back to the centre, dropping off the clients along the way.

All in all, we had a thoroughly enjoyable day, being neither too rushed nor too busy which gave us plenty of time to absorb the rich surroundings and history of the building we were in.

Review - Café Café

Information

cafecafe-onthehill.com - 020 8864 8456

51 high St.

Harrow, Middlesex

HA1 3ST

Food: ★★★☆☆

Good, food, nicely presented, and good size portions. 

Atmosphere: ★☆☆☆☆

Whatever atmosphere that there could have been in the restaurant, was drowned-out by the music blaring from the bar/café area, which quite frankly, sounded like something out of a five-year old’s party. The lighting was dim (as it should be in a restaurant), but to the point at which you almost had to feel your way around. I came as part of a party of 3, but we were still seated at a table which was only designed to be able to take 2; as a result every time that the menu was moved, you risked it catching alight on the candle. The wallpaper was a dark burgundy, almost black, making the entire restaurant part feel small and cramped (which in all fairness is not far away from the truth).

Service: ★★★☆☆

The service was, good, the waiters were polite, friendly, and fast. The only suggestion I could make is that they ask you whether or not you enjoy your meal when you have actually started eating.

Price: £56.49 ★★★☆☆

Service charge was included in the bill; something I despise. I have eaten at a better price at various other establishments.

Overall: ★★★☆☆

I would not recommend this restaurant very highly, and I hope that the aforementioned points outlined can be used to better the experience of the clientele.

Cryptography

Within this message is a secret message, hidden. There aren’t any prizes for the person who can figure it out, but it’s just a little time filler for you code-breakers out there.

Here:

“MacThemes is a community of developers and designers who share alike a great enthusiasm for the Mac OS X experience and desktop environment as well as a general passion for Apple.”

Best regards,

   Christian BS

Greetings from a place far away

At the moment, as the title suggests, I’m on holiday in Haifa, Israel which as you can probably guess means that I shall be updating my blog (even) less often. I started this blog in the hope that I would update it fairly regularly on topics that some people would find interesting. Obviousy I was wrong. I do not know why, but I had these sickeningly idealistic visions of this blog attracting hordes of people, replicating some form of lonelygirl15-esque success. A bit of a tall order for a finnicky, condescending, pessimistic, temporarily bespectacled, and (according to many at the state school he attends) spoiled teenager. Best regards, and I sincerely hope that I am not boring you even more than I do on other occasions, Christian BS

Lego in numbers

1.5 - The speed of lego brick transporting robots in the old warehouses.

2.5 - The speed of lego brick transporting robots in the new warehouses.

2.5 - The average storage time for lego bricks (in months).

4 - The number of warehouses.

4 - The number of robots per warehouse (old or new).

4 - The number of aisles per warehouse (old or new).

7 - The number of lego sets sold around the world per second.

13 - The height of the old warehouses (in metres).

20 - The height of the new warehouses (in metres).

62 - The number of Lego bricks per person of the Earth’s population.

65.6 - The shelving area of all four warehouses (in square miles).

65.6 - The height of the warehouses (in feet).

130 - The number of new Lego sets launched annually in the U.S.

170 - The shelving area of all four warehouses (in kilometres squared).

4, 720 - The number of Lego sets produced to date.

36, 000 - The number of lego bricks produced per second.

162, 240 - The number of storage boxes per old warehouse.

262, 240 - The number of storage boxes per new warehouse.

424, 000 - The number of boxes in storage in all the warehouses (at 80% capacity).

2, 160, 000 - The number of lego bricks produced every hour.

900, 000, 000 - The number of lego bricks collectively stored in all four warehouses at any given time.

19, 000, 000, 000 - The number of lego bricks produced and moved per year.

400, 000, 000, 000 - The approximate number of lego bricks ever produced.

Thanks to Gizmodo and their wonderful enthusiasm for Lego.

Round-up of WWDC Stevenotes

Well, it must be said. WWDC this year was a let-down. Whilst some new features (not products) were introduced, there was not a lot of innovation present; the factor that sets Apple apart from all its rivals. I shall take a gander at the products announced in turn:

• OS 10.6 - Snow Leopard
Sorry, only mentioned, no information to share. All we know is that is focuses mainly on reducing the footprint of Mac OS X, and optimising its performance. All the other information is strictly under an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). Thanks for building up the suspense, Steve.

• MobileMe
I must say that although I have always been keen on investing in a .Mac account, I most likely would not have done so given the opportunity partially beciase I was never amazed by what it offered: 10GB of online storage, which was up from100MB; a fancy @mac.com email address with full IMAP capabilities, and online back-up (the limits of which I do not know), and photo and film galleries online which could be viewed in all manners of epilleptic fit-inducing styles. Now however, my attitude toward said service, under the new name MobileMe, has changed. I must have it at all costs.

• iPhone 2.0/1.2
Very nice software update, bringing several improvements such as a scientific calculator in landscape mode, the ability to save images from websites, portrait video playing, a separate contact application (rumoured), much more international support (including character recognition for Chinese), a new iTunes icon (a pair of beamed quavers à la desktop application icon as opposed to a downward icon), parental controls, MobileMe “push” email, (which pushes the email to your iPhone as soon as it arrives at your e-mail’s server and last but certainly not least is The App Store. A novel way of distributing 3rd party applications through a built in application which is just like the iTunes application. If features genres (like the Apple downloads section), and also variable pricing, determined by the developer, 70%of which goes to the developer.

• iPhone3G
Well, no big surprises here, this was the only product really which had been predicted since rumours first came out of the dates for WWDC 08. As the product name somewhat subtly suggests, this phone features 3G. This will enable download speeds almost as fast as conventional Wi-Fi. Consequentley, it will also allow for faster downloads from The App Store, but not blisteringly fast, hence the 10MB limit for apps downloaded over EDGE/3G. The rest will have to be done via iTunes on a computer.
Oh, and one more thing…
GPS. iPhone3G has GPS. I had never really sought this in a product I wanted, but I understand just how important it is today; now that American TV has rendered society as a whole dead, we are no longer able to read maps unlike our cousins of yesteryear.The only thing that I dislike about iPhone3G is the curved black plastic back. Plastic being the important word there. Why? Let’s have a look:A) It scratches more easilyB) It looks cheap. One of the reasons I love the iphone that I have it the beautiful anodised aluminium back. It looks professional, more refined and quite frankly, more expensive.

In my opening paragraph, I stated that I was somewhat disappointed with the announcements, yet so far I have not indicated as to why. Well now I think would be a good time to answer this question. Why am I disappointed? Because I already knew most of this. I already knew about iPhone having 3G and GPS. I already knew about the rebranded .Mac, and it’s name “MobileMe”, oh, and that the website was me.com. I already knew the name of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and that it focused more on optimisation than innovation. I already knew about iPhone firmware 1.2. Except for the execution of these new features  (not products), for example the beautiful interface of the MobileMe web applications, and slick blue pin in he map of iPhone3G, there was nothing new.All I wish for future Apple events, is tighter security. Yes, I know, hark who’s talking, but with Steve Jobs on stage unveiling his new technological marvels, nothing is better than a good surprise.

Sent from my iPhone

Diagnosis through urine samples. At Tesco.

One day, leaning on the bar, Jack says to Mike “My elbow hurts like hell. I suppose I’d better see a Doctor!”.

“Listen, don’t waste your time down at the surgery,” Mike replies. “There’s a new diagnostic computer at Tesco Pharmacy. Just give it a urine sample and the computer will tell you what’s wrong, a nd what to do about it. It takes ten seconds and only costs five quid. It’s a lot quicker and better than a doctor and you get Tesco Club card points as well”.

So Jack collects a urine sample in a small jar and takes it to Tesco. He deposits five pounds and the computer lights up and asks for the urine sample. He pours the sample into the slot and waits. Ten seconds later, the computer ejects a printout: “You have tennis elbow. Soak your arm in warm water and avoid heavy activity. It will improve in two weeks”.

That evening while thinking how amazing this new technology was, Jack began wondering if the computer could be fooled. He mixed some tap water, a stool sample from his dog, urine samples from his wife, daughter and the cat, and masturbated into the mixture for good measure.

Jack hurried back to Tesco, eager to check what would happen. He deposited five pounds, poured in his concoction, and awaites the results. The computer printed the following:

i) Your tap water is too hard. Get a water softener.
ii) Your cat is having kittens. Get a vet
iii) Your dog has ringworm. Bathe him with anti-fungal shampoo.
iv) Your daughter has a cocaine habit. Get her into rehab.
v) Your wife is pregnant. Twins. They aren’t yours. Get a solicitor.
vi) And if you don’t stop playing with yourself, your elbow will never get better.

Thank you for shopping at Tesco.

This is just something to tide you over, should you be reading this blog for any reason. I am busy with my studies and researching universities at the moment.

Cordially yours,

Christian BS