Cake baking and Dicing

So it was my boyfriend's birthday and I decided I needed to be incredibly overambitious in the cake I made him. Now we both love board games and as Catan has already been done I thought I would try another one of our favourites RoboRally. http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/roborally

But I didn't just want my boardgame cake to be decorative and delicious, I wanted it to be playable!

My first step was to make the playing figures and squares to make up the board out of modelling icing. I hadn't made or used any before so it probably wasn't the best result.

The game also has some little cardboard squares of the robot's so I used icing to make those as well. Here they are with their counterparts.

Twonky:

Spin Bot:

Next I wanted to try and make something to represent the the bases you need to navigate the robots to. They are made of orange/yellow plastic so I decided that boiled sweets would be the best option. Again I had never made them before, so I did some research on the internet to work out how.

First I had to dissolve a large amount of sugar, in a pan with golden syrup and then add some food colouring and orange flavouring:

Now as I didn't have a sugar thermometer it was a bit of a challenge to work out when it was ready. I had to repeatedly test it my dropping small amounts into cold water and waiting for it to make brittle threads. I then had to pour it into a pan, and try not to horribly burn my hands whilst I moulded the hot mixture. Some of it was made into squares for my cake and the rest I just made into random shapes:

Then I left thing's for a day or so until I made the actual cake. Which was my standard chocolate. Then I cut it into a square and coated it with orange flavoured buttercream icing:

The square shaped hole was left on purpose to be a pit, one of the obstacles that robots can fall into.
Then came the final stage piping details onto the squares I made earlier

and assembling them to make the board:

Then I just had to drive the cake an hour and a half up the motorway to my boyfriends house and keep it hidden till his actual birthday the next day. Then I convinced him he wanted to play Robo Rally and said I would set the board up for him:

Then we actually got to play a game, moving our edible playing pieces around the cake. We did use the cards from the actual board game:



And fittingly enough it being his birthday he won, and then we finally got to eat the cake!

Local Elections

So it's the local elections and as I haven't been the voting age for two long, this is actually going to be the first time I end up using my vote.

We have been getting various bits of paper shoved through our door, which I had put in a pile so I could read them all and make an informed decision. Unfortunately when our living room was tidied they all ended up in the recycling box, which ended up outside, in the rain. Damn.

So this morning when I remembered that it was election day today, I realised that I have no idea who to vote for. But i thought you know these bits of paper shoved through our door are unlikely to have any real detail anyway, I want to read manifestos. I want detail. I'm sure I will be able to find lots of information online. apparently I was really, really wrong.

Firstly Labour. I did actually find a website on the current labour councillor. unfortunately she is standing down, there isn't actually anything on the current candidate.

Conservative were slightly better I actually found information on the current candidate. About five hundred words worth:
http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=people.person.page&PersonID=136641

The details on the successful campaigns he has run in the past are useful, but nothing much at all on what he intends to do.


Finally the Lib Dems who are probably the bets represented on the web with an entire website for our constituency:
http://sellyoaklibdems.org.uk/index.html

The detail on the candidate is minimal though, I know eh cycles, but that doesn't really inform my voting opinion. I have also not been able to find a campaign manifesto, or what I will do if I am elected page.

So being able to make an informed decision based on an understanding of the candidates aims and policies is not something I can do. Fantastic. Seriously I think I got more detailed information in our Guild Elections. Although They do have e-mail addresses. I really wish I had though about this earlier, because I have plenty of questions.

Something which has really annoyed me though is that nowhere in nay of the little information about what they are planning to do (why are going to make Selly Oak Greener type promises)do they seem to acknowledge students. Students will make up a sizable amount of the Voting population for the constituency and yet from all the websites you woudl think we don't exist. Do they think we won't vote? Or that we are just not worth campaigning to.

I mean for example all they need is a sentence saying something like and we will support the community warden scheme set up by the guild and i would be happy. this scheme is something run by students in our area working to do many similar things to the concillors policies. As it runs by students and is campaigning for what we want in the area you woudl have thought the councillors might have pay some attention to it but obviously not.

One of the main things that our guild scheme is trying to do is build connections between students and local residents. Students get a lot of bad press as residents. Admittedly there are students that by the way they live deserve this but not all students. In Selly Oak it feels like we are completely separate form the local community. The community warden scheme run by our guild is about students trying to change this. But none of the local councilors have said anything about stduent integration. Instead it also seems like they are making it worse, by not involving us in their campaign past putting their flyer's through our doors.

Egypt

So I went to Egypt recently. (Don't worry this isn't going to be a travel diary of my holiday)

Whilst I was there I quite obviously visited the Giza plateau, the site of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. The experience was well Heartbreaking.

The fact that its very commercialised, the pizza hut, the KFC I was expecting. The fact that everywhere there is someone trying to get you to ride your camel, to buy their small glass pyramids I was expecting. Depressingly even the people climbing up the side of the pyramid and the young boy trying to snatch the camera out of my hand I expected.

The heartbreaking bit was when we ventured off the beaten track a bit (although not far we were in still in the shadow of Cheops' pyramid and we saw the shaft graves, and the small tombs of the nobles. We we're excited and really interested that their were graves as humble as shaft graves this close to the pyramids. Until we saw that they had become little more than middens. To have these graves so close to the pyramids the effort it would have taken to build would probably have meant so much to those people. And they were just filled with rubbish!


There was nobody really in that part, nobody cleaning away the rubbish, or even stopping people putting new stuff in. These graves the eternal resting place of real people, were treated with no care and no respect. Egypt has one of the most interesting histories in the world and it is treated only as a way of getting money. Only the real pretty, shiny, interesting things are treated with respect.

And to make matters worse, this is our fault. it was us who went over there a hundred years ago and created the ethos that, that was what was valuable. And it's tourists from our countries that go over their just to see those things.

And I knew that but I didn't realise until I saw it how much of the archeology was suffering because of it. On the grand scale of things compared to all the tragedies in our world this one really isn't that important.Compared to the conditions some people are living in just down the road from the pyramids, compared to actual human suffering it pales into insignificance.

But still seeing it and understanding why, broke my heart.

my thoughts on shoes

Do you know what really annoys me at the moment?

The fact that all nice shoes appear to have been designed by people who have never seen feet.

Does anybody honestly have a heel shaped like these shoes?
http://www.marksandspencer.com/gp/product/B00168RNKK/sr=1-2/qid=1208192719/ref=sr_1_2/202-5990669-7632657?ie=UTF8&node=67549031&m=A2BO0OYVBKIQJM&keywords=&mnSBrand=core&size=9&rh=&page=

It's not like it's a foot shape that would even look nice if it did actually excist.

Okay rant over I am just annoyed by how long it is taking me to find a pair of nice, smart shoes that don't want to kill me feet.

On a more positive note go read girl genius, it kicks ass, with science!

Some things never change

So there is a piece of writing by an Ancient Roman Writer called Juvenal called the Satire on women (he wrote satires on everythign so we shouldnt take it personally).
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/juvenal-satvi.html
What amused me most about this Satire was that it was 2000 yeras ago and yet seemed incredibly similar to comedy today.
For example he moans about Women playign sports, and women being to smart and talkative.
He also has a fun reference to a woman falling for a gladiator, because she was only attracted to his sword.

But the bit that really shows how little some thigns change, he moans about mother in laws. 2000 years and men still moan about their mother in law.

Althoguh it makes me wonder is it the men who never change or is it the mother in laws?

On our Guild of Students.

My university guild of students is on my mind a lot at the moment as we are busy with campaigning to pass a referendum to help us comply with charity laws and to help us run better. Last night I went door knocking, in the snow for three hours. An also by the time I got home I was basically one giant icicle, it was actually really fun.

However what this has bought to my mind is student satisfaction with our guild. Many students are saying that we are failing them. Many say we are failing them because Tuition fees exist which I personally think is frankly unfair, yes we all hate tuition fees but realistically, how is one guild meant to convince the government?

Especially as most students at our university don't get involved with the guild. At our election last year less than 10% of people voted! Yet they seem to expect the guild to have the force to push major changes. How can we do this if it is seen to be a minority of students campaigning?

Another quite depressing factor is people complaining about the lack of services which I know the guild provides I've used them. The problem is students just don't know. So they way our guild of students is failing people most is because they don't know or care about us. But i know the guild is trying to encourage people, we have an officer whose job is to do just that. We are failing because so many students don't care and we haven't found the right way to make them. Obviosuly we are not doing enough, but I find it quite depressing that we have to go out and make students interested in the guild. Depressing that we are trying to convince people they should care.

This apathy for voting, is unfortunately something I see reflected in a society as a whole as well. Looking back across all the societies that existed we are incredibly looking to be in one thats democratic, and allows more than just one group of society to vote. there have been times when people would have given anything to be able to vote. Juts think about the suffragettes. Yet a hundred years on how many women are actually utilizing this vote that was fought for so strongly?

Our society is so secure in it's democracy that voting is no longer seen as a privilege it's a chore.

on deciding to start a blog

I have decided to start a blog because occasionally I think about things that I would kinda like other people to read (or thats what I like to think. Probably it's just because my friends have them, oh and I want to reminisce about my secondary school days on diaryland.

Although I'm not sure why I thought I would do this as I am already rubbish at getting stuff done for deviantart, my society and not to mention my degree course. But oh well I might learn to procrastinate less.


So to start a few simple facts about me:


I write, I love Scouting and Guiding, I want to spend my life studying people and cultures that existed thousands of years ago, I am fortunate enough to love many people and I drink, far, far to much Coca Cola.


And the title. Well it's been a few years since people found me, but I sure as hell remember what it was like to be lost.