I finished the main story then deleted it – Johnny would have been proud.

2.5 out of 5

This is based on an Irish stew recipe I came across. It doesn’t use many ingredients or take much effort and came out way better than expected.

I used beef brisket from the freezer, added a load of chopped parsley and altered the cooking time and temperature.

Ingredients

• Beef brisket, ½ kg, cut into ~4cm chunks
• Carrot, 250g (or one extra large carrot), scrubbed and cut into ~3cm chunks
• Potato, 500g (one extra large baking potato), peeled and cut into ~4cm chunks
• Brown onion, 2 large, cut into ~3cm chunks
• Vegetable stock, ½ litre
• Plain flour, 1 tbsp
• Flat-leaf parsley, 1 bunch, roughly chopped
• Thyme, 1 large sprig
• Salt + pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 160℃.
2. Take a mixing bowl, add the brisket followed by the plain flour and salt and pepper and stir to combine, ensuring the chunks are well coated.
3. Put a heavy-lidded casserole pan on a medium-high heat, add a touch of oil and brown the brisket in batches. Remove from the pan and set aside.
4. Deglaze the pan with a little water ensuring you loosen all the flavourful browned bits stuck to the bottom of the pan! Reduce, pour into jug and set aside.
5. Put the pan back on a medium-high heat, add a touch of oil followed by the onion and carrot. Season with salt and pepper and cook until the onion has started to colour.
6. Add the brisket and the parsley followed by salt and pepper and stir well to combine.
7. Pour in the vegetable stock from the side of the pan followed by the beef jus and stir.
8. Place the potatoes on top, add a sprig of thyme and season with salt and pepper.
9. Snug a piece of baking paper on top. Lay a few sheets of tin foil on top of the casserole pan then push the lid down onto the pan to form a seal.
10. Cook on the middle shelf for 2 hours then take out to rest for an hour. Stir and serve with sourdough bread, butter and steamed greens.

The weapon and armour upgrade system felt like a bit of a grind and the weapons themselves seemed less enjoyable. Inventory management also remains troublesome.

Climbing mechanics were much improved and the ability to fly was a welcome addition. What a world to explore!

4 out of 5

4 out of 5

I made this tasty pasta sauce last night and wanted to jot it down for my future self. I like linguine!

Ingredients

• Whole Italian cherry tomatoes, 400g tin, broken up
• Basil leaves, 1 handful, roughly chopped
• Bacon, 2 thick rashers, cut in to thin strips
• Capers, ~2 tbsp
• Garlic, 1 large clove, sliced extra fine
• Tomato purée, 1 tsp
• Salt + pepper

Instructions

1. Add the tinned tomatoes to a mixing bowl¹, break them up with your hands then stir in the chopped basil. I did this a few hours before so the basil had time to steep in the tomatoes.
2. Take a good-sized pan, put on a medium heat, add a touch of olive oil followed by the garlic and a pinch of salt then cook until lightly golden.
3. Add the bacon and cook until starting to crisp.
4. Stir the tomato purée and cook for a few minutes.
5. Stir in the tomatoes and capers, season with salt and pepper then cook on a medium-high heat until reduced by about half.
6. Cook and drain the pasta, reserving ~50ml of pasta water. Stir the pasta water into the sauce.
7. Add the pasta to the pan and use a pair of kitchen tongs to lift the pasta through the sauce to combine, ensuring the sauce is evenly distributed through the pasta noodles.

Content blockers are third-party apps and extensions that let Safari block cookies, images, resources, pop-ups, and other content.

I use a few different content blockers on iOS¹ that do a good job helping me catch the the gnarliest of waves when I am surfing the information superhighway:

• 1Blocker is an ad blocker
• Hush is a nag blocker
• Vinegar is a YouTube unblocker

I suspect there’s some overlap between 1Blocker and Hush but I’ve not experienced any wonkiness.

To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the release of Half-Life 2, we’ve gotten members of the HL2 team back to talk about the game’s development, how we almost ran out of money, what it was like when we were hacked, what happened when we were sued by our publisher, the birthplace of Steam, and much more.

Really interesting documentary.

See also: Half-Life: 25th Anniversary Documentary.

Fox on the joy of confidence:

[..] You know how to use something — it’s frictionless in how the user interacts with it. The user doesn’t have to think about how to use the tool and instead their reflexes do the work, and the UI gets out of the way. But at the same time it has a visual setting that puts them at ease, and it helps them down the path when they’re doing something novel they haven’t done before, so they hit the right thing without having to work hard to figure it out. That makes for a joyful experience.

When I received my Gmail invite more than twenty(!) years ago it was clear that it wasn’t just a improvement on webmail but a truly groundbreaking product.

It’s remarkable how many of the user interface paradigms pioneered by Gmail have become industry standards today.