After reading my latest Make: magazine, there was a great article by a guy who made a simple spectrometer from an Arduino. I'd paid scant attention to this open source board in the past, not realising it was a complete development environment. It can be used on my laptop or on my Mac too.

I did a search on UK ebay and found this shop selling Diecimilas for 15 quid! I ordered one, a protoshield and an LCD shield (the shield idea is so cool). I've got an ethernet shield on the way!

When you want to dive in and start bit twiddling on a microcontroller, you need to know what infrastructure code has to exist before you implement your idea. If you haven't written for the device before, it's off to Google you go to hopefully find someone example code you can strip down to the bare essentials. Maybe I'm the guy that Google found. Hope this helps.

I bought a chip in a 14 pin TSSOP package (0.65mm between pins!) and a DIP converter the other week. To get one joined to the other, I bought a new soldering iron with a tip that's not as thick as my wrist, some tweezers, solder wick and a watchmakers loupe; Couldn't get any flux though.

"To get there, I wouldn't start from here". Let's do something easy first. Run the PIC from its internal clock at 8Mhz. Let's change an LED on RB0 every 0.1sec.

I'm through with CakePHP. I've banged my head against walls so many evenings. I've tried so hard, but we're over. I'm going to say it. I hate it.

Quite simple to make - I like recipes where the main instruction is to bung all the ingredients in a saucepan and walk away. When ready, you have to force the pan's contents through a seive which is quite hard work. And if you're an idiot (ahem), you'll use the same spoon to push the contents through as you do to stir the result and transfer all the bits into the sieved result.

King Prawns - sweat and toil for moments of intense pleasure. You can make more of the Masala and keep it for other recipes in the book. A little too clovey (20!!!) God it was nice. Must remember to take some pics.

Hooray! A fresh release of CakePHP 1.2. The old one's been going forever! I installed it tonight on www.meterclocks.com, to be greeted by a stoney silence (0 bytes response). The previous version had a nice page that indicated when a connection to the database had been successfully made.

So I couldn't be arsed to defrost two part-boned chicken breasts and tear them off the bone. So I sliced up three large potoatos (5mm slices), blanched them for 10 mins - still firm - and did the recipe using the potato instead of the sliced chicken breast.

Laziness paid - it was yummy!!

Longest book title ever?

Didn't smell too appetising, but that's probably because I used Lidl's adequate Pollock rather than the suggested cod, haddock or sea bass. I didn't have any saffron either.

It was yummy though. Quite alien, but easy to prepare and tasty. I'd do this again.

So this should be the best ever chicken risotto recipe ever - I think not.

Dull and bland. Where was the taste ever going to come from! Only flavour ingredient was the bloody stock! Sorry, but this a major disappointment. It was the first time I've used this book. And the last. Rubbish.

Martina's best friend, Mischa and her boyfriend Rehan, popped in last night. I'm grappling with Czech at the moment, Martina's learning Spanish, and Mischa is learning Urdu (she knows more than five languages already!). She recommended a free language learning website Before You Know It.

Spot on. Lovely. Martina said it was a bit to salty, so maybe a little less light soy, or maybe use dark. The recipe said to use small prawns, but because this accompanied stir-fried tiger prawns I switched them and used red onion instead. Weirdo, but I got away with it.

Fabulous. Can't go wrong with king prawns. Getting only half of the box out when the whole lots is in solid ice is entertaining. I hope the remaining ones are ok. Shelling and de-veining them is yucky and time consuming.

Gah! It's so frustrating sometimes, not having clue one about art.

I want to replace the stock Drupal logo on my site. But with what? I'm a coder. My codey brain comes up with :-

• My initials. But in retro pixel format. I should be put against the wall for that.
• My year of birth in same retro pixel format. ffs!
• Pixelated face. Narcicist.

A winner, especially with the kids! Really tasty and filling. Easy to make- my 11 yr old daughter is learning to make this.

I use Lidl premium salami and don't use fresh sage.

Very basic and plain. A bit thin. Tasty and filling though. Wouldn't serve to someone else.

God I really must read recipes more thoroughly. Made the sauce as a dipping sauce, when on the last bit, you cook the fish in the sauce. Dufus. No harm done. Yummy scrummy. Fish tricky to keep together. I cut it into too small pieces (about 1" cubes). Should've been 2" square. Maybe a little less ginger next time.

Looks amazing - tasted out of this world.
Didn't use dried prawns, just frozen cooked prawns. DELICIOUS.

This dictionary is useful to get the proper spelling and access to the accents and hats. Afraid this isn't very interesting for you, and more of a reference for me. That's life.