Love the raph one. Still havent gotten round to ordering mine.

I've used electrical tape in my bedroom for various devices. I don't mind LEDs for standby/power etc but it is frustrating when they are so bright that they light up the bedroom.

Surface Pro 3.

It is great. I decided against the Lenovo in the end and went with the Surface. It passes (just) into my manbag. In the end it was the more compact form factor that swung it, along with the stylus, which I use for taking notes in OneNote in meetings (which recognised what is typed and indexes, so you can do proper searches of the hand written notes).

It is very quiet. Even when the fan spins up (which it is doing more at the moment, because it is still indexing the disk), it is nearly silent. I did spring for the keyboard cover as well, which isn't bad and is more useful than the keyboard dock on my old Samsung ATIV - I used it only 2 or 3 times in the last two years. The 3:2 form factor is very nice. I can still read the screen at 100% magnification, but it is comfortable at 150%. I'm looking forward to see what the battery does, once it has finished settling in the OS. 7 to 9 hours should be on the cards, which isn't too bad for something this thin and light and with a "proper" CPU in it.

Tescos mince pie cookies. Truly awful. Worse than a ten year old's first attempt at baking.

They just sound like an abomination from the name. To me it sounds like they dropped a batch of pie and then tried to recover the situation by mashing them into cookie shapes.

The idea, I think, is for them to be kind of a christmas version of jammy dodgers, but with mincemeat instead of jam. And, indeed, that's the impression the pic on the front of the pack gives. What you actually get are two circles of absolutely flavourless biscuit dough - no cinnamon or ginger or any other spices associated with christmas - with a blob of nasty, textureless mincemeat dropped on the centre of the lower layer, so the whole thing has an appearance slightly like a flying saucer, just flat with a mound in the middle. No decoration, to attempt to make it look christmasey at all.

Then you show it an oven, briefly. I know we've had the discussion about soft cookies vs hard biscuits before but there were actually virtually raw in the middle and just about cooked at the edges. I had to bake them a bit more to make them edible (part baked pastry will give you the runs).

Genuinely, if a ten year old kid did those as a first attempt in a cooking class at school you'd score it about a 4/10 and hope they improved with practice. To actually be asking money for them is a travesty.

The name makes them sound vile. Kudos for taking one for the team.


In other news M & S All Butter mince pies are frikkin lovely. Some of the best I've had.

I haven't had minced pies in years, it isn't something they eat over here.

The gold chain and heart pendant with inset diamond went down well with her indoors.

Its funny how Gold and Diamonds always seem, to go down well

MINE!

2 bed cottage with planning permission for a 2 story extension side and back with one and a half acres of land including woodland

Well done you.

?

Thanks. Not all signed and sealed yet and you know how things can go wrong but it's looking good so far

Plus I'm looking at other deals so I could own 4 properties soon lol

The name of the property is Station Cottage

Ordered a Wii U for the kids birthday. Also Far Cry 4. That one is for me though. Using vouchers, codes and cashback both were a bit of a bargain.

Bought The Shadow DVD (Baldwin) for £3.50 off eBay - always wanted to see it, though I can't imagine it's stellar. We'll see how it goes...