Today was my fiance’s birthday and so I booked a table for 2 at Habernero’s, Kalk Bay (he loves Mexican flavours). We ordered the delicious chilli poppers (3 mild chilli’s covered with philo and filled with cheese) and the tasty soup as a starter. The soup was thick and filling! It had loads of veg in and the beans added protein and substance to it. It was covered with nachos and fresh coriander that had been excellently washed.

To drink I had a tomatoe cocktail can (well priced – R10) and Gareth had their delicious homemade ginger beer that they sell separately as well. Our food arrived while we were discussing the bright, Mexican themed decorations for sale on the wall nearby. For once we ordered the same thing: Enchilladas called “Frida’s Choice” which consisted of a bed of lettuce placed next to a smallish portion of guacamole, finely chopped salsa and thick sour cream. A huge wheat tortilla smothered in cheese stretched across the length of our plates. Inside, there were re-fried black beans and smoked chicken, all with a chilli on top!

The food was not incredibly spicy, but if you’re serious about your spice and heat, the Ring Sting sauce (R25/bottle) does the job. About a teaspoon full can help transform your meal into something on another level. It’s really hot. What they say on the bottle is the truth.. Its seriously SERIOUS.

Because we were going somewhere else for dessert, we didn’t have any. Our meals were so filling that I had to take a doggy bag (probably would have made it if I didn’t have the soup – but don’t regret it!)

In terms of practicality, the restuarant was easy to find(brightly coloured, well marked out and on the Main road – #138) and so was parking – about 10m away. The restuarant was fairly empty, and quiet, but the music and friendly staff and waitrons provided a pleasant ambiance. Today was a Tuesday, but I have been there on a Sunday and Saturday before and the restuarant was about 1/4 full, but I can’t say the same about parking on the weekends!

Please do your self a favour and go there (instead of to Quatredeck in Simons Town or Dros at Canal Walk)!!! It’s really worth it ;0)

You might have been working for a year and in that time your employers might be deducting tax for you…now its YOUR turn to register as a tax payer…oooooh.

If you live in Cape Town, to become a tax payer the first time you need to go to:

She loved the exprerience but couldnt explain the film to my parents, or I, afterward. She felt very confused by the over-complicated plot. Who was this film aimed at? I found this very strange.

Although, I suppose it was good that the film was so clean and at the same time emotionally charged, with my little sister going from sobs to hysterical laughter of relief.

Its worth a watch since the characters are quite well developed and easy to love. Mittens was my favourite. The animation was well done and the 3D effect was nicely done too. Bolt comes across as a cute puppy/furball who is really adorable (not that I am a “cuuuuuute! I could eat that!” person).

Apart from that, I think they really could have gotten away  with a more simple storyline that would have been just as effective and easier for small kids (the real fans) to understand and tell their friends about.

But go watch it, its a good experience if you havent seen many films 3D.

So does my new mashedPotatoes invention: Steam/boil them with garlic and then fry an onion.

Add MORE garlic and a chilli and some salt, pepper and coriander leaves to this frying mix.

Add some milk with the steamed stuff now in the frying pot.

Fry and mash… eat up!

No meal is complete (currently) without a tasty burning salsa! This includes finely chopped garlic, onion, tomatoe, lemon juice and some coriander if you have it at hand! Goes great with plain mashPotatoes!

If you want to make real syrup to use on flapjacks and whatnot, bring it to a gentle boil until sticky. Hmmm. I think this is the best use for this. You get the most out of the taste.

You could use this sugar-water in a saucepan idea for any flavourings you like… try adding mint leaves or lemon juice… or both. Or pineapple sage.

Let me know what you tried out!

The American government (particular administration unclear) is seen as fearful, forceful, unhelpful, obsessed with national security, keeping secrets from itself to a destructive extent and therefore somewhat ineffective and plain stupid. An example would be the opening scenes which shows how the president of the United States is apparently prepared to destroy a whole village of arabs (?) with one of their newly developed “smart bombs” because he thinks there is a 51% chance that one of the men might be a feared terrorist (no names are mentioned, but of course he has a beard! / )

Themes of family tensions and relationships, as caring friends/people, are naturally brought into the film with little focus on romance.

The main theme of the film is that of technology which could raise questions in one’s mind about the true role of machines in our contemporary networked electronic society. Machines have been somewhat of an obsession/point of intrigue since their invention. In third grade English textbooks we were asked what we thought machines would be able to do in the future. Would they start replacing humans? To some, mostly the rich, this would sound absurd. Interestingly though, it is important to remeber that the less educated battle machines for employment. Why would you need someone to wash your washing or sweep your house, when a machine can do it? The social theorist Castells calls this “generic labour”, as opposed to “individual/superior labour” (which has to be done by an educated human). There are definately a few things one can think about further… Do machines fit in the middle of the digital divide? Is our advancement in technology really us just shooting ourselves in the foot with a new Tower of Babel, as many films seem to suggest?

Evil Content?
Lots of action (I wouldn’t really class it as violence), one scene of blood, a few people dying, lots of shooting and so on, lots of chase scenes, not much swearing, one kiss.

Ratings
Rotten Tomatoes decided it was worth only 27%. However, it IS rated 10th in terms of earings with $2.5M (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/) . I’d give it about… 65%.

Upon seeing the price of pita bread in the shops, I suddenly decided it might be cheaper to make my own. I thought it should be fairly easy since there are so few ingredients.. I found a great recipe at www.thefreshloaf.com. For me, a great recipe is one that’s quite easy to follow and apply. The recipe helpfully explains why each of the ingredients is important and how they work together.

The amount of preparation is huge (a LOT of waiting and waiting), but results are pleasing and well worth it. This was my first time making any sort of bread and it came out well even though I deviated from the recipe a bit.

To make it extra tasty and extra browned, I thought sesame seed oil would be a good substitute for normal/olive oil and treacle (sugar) for normal sugar. I think these ingredients where a bit heavy because some of my breads where just flat (with no pockets). But they were GOLDEN and slightly sweet. They also had that lovely extra Mediterranean taste…HMMMM!

I say that because tahini, one of the main ingredients for humus, is a sesame seed paste (which I also tried to make but didn’t quite succeed). And they’re always putting sesame seeds into Mediterranean salads and so on. Anyway, although my pita’s were a bit heavy, they tasted fine!

Another reason why some of my breads might’ve come out flat is because I might’ve made them too thin before I put them in the oven. The thicker ones seemed to rise easier. So, I’d say er on the side of thickness.

AND… washing up is so easy! I used one bowl for mixing and a large cutting board on which I rolled, kneaded and let my delicious dough rise. The pan you turn upside-down and it hardly gets any dirt on it.

Judge a Book by its Cover
This book can be judged by its fun and stylish cover. As does it’s unique look offer insight into the style of the narrative. What is special about this childrens book is that its pages are all black, only to have a white square on each page that contains the content. This is very effective as the aim of the way the book was compiled is to make one think of going to the cinema. Everything is dark around you, bar the white, flickering screen in front of you.

Although the book is fat, really fat, by paging through it, you would notice that infact, it is not a heavy read. To increase the versimilitude of the notion of going to the cinema, Selznick has included over a hundred lovely, soft, densely detailed drawings of the characters and simple events that span over several pages at a time. What is wonderful about this drawings is the way he uses film language (namely different shots and angles) to tell the story, something similar to a storyboard. In other words, some events one reads by only looking at the drawings. One or two clues can be picked up from the drawings as you go along – clues that aren’t in writing.

Another thing that makes the book an easy read for children (and some adults) is the way Selznick often does not use a page conventionally, in the sense that there might only be one paragraph on some pages, surrounded by white space.

To make the book more interesting, Brian has also included some photographs of early 1900′s films. This helps give the reader, who might not be very clued up on their film history, a chance to gain a deeper understanding.

Film History
Having done two years of film courses at the University of Cape Town, I was quite surprised and most delighted to see the way that film history of the 1900′s was incorporated into the narrative! If you didn’t know anything before reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret, you’ll come out knowing a few director’s names and a bit about a few early films and special effects!

Narrative – No Spoilers
An orphan looks after clocks at the Paris station in the early 1900′s. He’s lonely, somewhat of a thief and quite a mechanic. He meets a strange girl and an old man. They all have a profound effects on each others lives as they lead each other to happiness and and a life of deeper meaning.

For Children? – Spoilers Ahead
The only ‘bad’ things in the book are the fact that the boy is a thief (without a choice), his uncle is a drinker and his dad dies in a fire. The book has a happy ending and all evil is paid for, so ultimately, the message is good and the atmosphere is pleasant, although sad.

Should I get it?
Yes! Get it! Read it!
The book is for sale at Amazoncom for $15.63, but if you can get down to Reader’s Warehouse in Tokai (the ex Reader’s Paradise from the Cape Town city bowl – which is amazing in every way!) you can get it for R40, that’s about $5 I’d guess.

Other Books by Brian (I haven’t read these)
The Houdini Box
Walt Whitman: Words for America
The Boy of a Thousand Faces

I eventually had a breakthrough with my project: I’ve got the sound and text working!

The text works with scroll over (loads externally from a txt file) and the sound loads (external mp3 file) to play on a click. The text disappears when you scroll off of the object.

because there might be alot of people in the world struggling with the same thing, I have decided to post a semi tutorial over here.

1) File structure:

I have my .fla file in a folder with  two other folders in the same directory, The once is called frenchSound (all mp3′s are here), the other frenchWord (txt file is in here).

2) Making objects:

I have 2 objects, but you can have more because I am using an array. They can be a mc or button. You must remember to give them an instance name! Mine are “stairs” and “cupboard”.

3) Coding:

This is the tough part! But since it’s all here, it’ll be easy.

// create an array called “words” where words from txt file can be loaded into:

words = new Array();
//to load text we need to use loadVars as below

myVars=new LoadVars();
// we want to create a function for loadVars that looks like this:
myVars.onLoad=function(){
var total = Number(parseInt(this["total"]));
trace(“total words: ” + total);
for(var i = 1; i != total && i < 5000; i++)
{

/*I’ve told it to trace the words onto the output panel so that when I test the movie I can check that all the words are being loaded (we havent made the text file yet though!)*/
add(words, this["var"+i]);
}
};

/* here I tell Flash that to load the variables it needs to go to a folder called frenchWord (mentioned in 1) and look in the file called “KitchenDining.txt”. The path to my txt file is in inverted commas because it’s a string.)*/
myVars.load(“frenchWord/KitchenDining.txt”);

function add(array:Array, item:Object)
{
array[array.length] = item;
}

/*I need to tell Flash where ti find my sounds now! So I give it the path (folder it’s in) called “frenchSound” and tell it that all the files I will be loading are mp3 extentions.*/
path=”frenchSound/”;
ext=”.mp3″;
//To make another array for loading my sound externally (called “sounds”), I need to do the following:

sounds = new Array(“stairSound”, “cupboardSoundFileName” “);
/*right next to the array I put the names of the actual sound files in “”. A different and possibly less confusing way of doing this will be to create the array below and adding the files names in with a number next to each of them. Flash starts with “0″ here, not with one (like you will see when we do our text file): */
sounds = new Array();
sounds[0] = “escalier”;
sounds[1] = “cupboard”;

// yet another function is created below which tells Flash to play the sound
function playSound(soundIndex) {
var variableName:Sound = new Sound();
variableName.onLoad = function(success:Boolean):Void  {
if (success) {
trace(“Sound Loaded”);

/*the above line of code tells Flash to let us know that there has been no problem loading the sound by leaving a note in the output panel */
variableName.start();
}
};
variableName.loadSound(path+sounds[soundIndex]+ext, false);
}

/* to make life really simple, below are 3 functions which tell Flash to play/load the sound on release (on click) and to load the sound when we rollOver the object (“stairs” or “cupboard”) and then not to load any text on rollOut. Note that there is an empty string(“”) after txt.text: */

function release(index:Number){
playSound(index);
}

function rollOver(index:Number, txt:TextField){
trace(“rollOver”);
txt.text = words[index];
}

function rollOut(txt:TextField) {
trace(“rollOut”);
txt.text = “”;
}

/*Getting there! Alright! Now we can call th functions and tell Flash which object they concern at which time! Rember I had to start with “0″ not “1″. I tell Flash that it needs to load the text into text files.*/

stairs.onRelease = function(){release(0)}
stairs.onRollOver = function() {rollOver(0, diningRoom.stairsText);}
stairs.onRollOut = function() {rollOut(diningRoom.stairsText)};

cupboard.onRelease = function(){release(1)}

cupboard.onRollOver = function() {rollOver(1, cupboardText);}

cupboard.onRollOut = function() {rollOut(cupboardText)};

/*if I have another object to which I want to load the same sound and same text I just give the object a slightly different name. My 3rd object would therefore be called “cupboard1″ and would be like the above 3 lines of code, simply with a diffierent object name! */

cupboard1.onRelease = function(){release(1)}
cupboard1.onRollOver = function() {rollOver(1, cupboardText);}
cupboard1.onRollOut = function() {rollOut(cupboardText)};

4) Create the text fields:

They must be dynamic text fields. You can set the styling -font, colour, size, etc -  in the properties panel easily. Make sure the text field is big enough for  your word. From the code above, you should be able to trell that I have given my 2 text fields the following instance names: “stairsText” and “cupboardText”.

5) Making the text in the txt file:

Open notepad and write how many words you will have in your array. We have 2 (hardly worth havving an array for, but you can easily add more into this code for your own use!). Then give them a variabble number and write the text you want to load. It should look like this (dont put spaces between the = and everything else!):

total=2

&var1=this is the text that I want to load externally into Flash near the stairs

&var2=this text will be loaded near the cupboard object!

THE END

Hope that helps some….

Oh, ps, you actions could be attatched to the first frame of your flash file! But the important thing is that the actions frame should be on the same frame number as the objects and text fields (but layers dont matter) – or else it wont work!!!