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Ersatz horchata

Here’s a recipe for fake-but-tasty horchata. Fauxchata. For the real deal, look elsewhere. For something quick, single-serving:

In a medium jug or bowl, whisk together 250 ml rice or oat milk, a generous pinch of cinnamon, a drop of vanilla essence, and ½ tsp brown sugar (or to taste). Whisk until the sugar is dissolved. For a more pervasive cinnamon flavour, allow to rest for 1 hour and then whisk again. Serve over ice, with a little spoon to keep stirring.

Is there a a cocktail to be made from this, with dark rum or tequila?

Holy cow, see the Wikipedia article. Had no idea that horchata is such a widespread thing, and with so many different methods.

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All Things Bright and Beautiful

Close up of weathered boards and tarring in Dungeness, UK

Just learned about Keith Collins and his relationship with Derek Jarman via Collins’s obituary in the Guardian. What an interesting life. This “how we met” interview with the two of them (The Independent, 1993) is worth reading, and there are some lovely photos around.

SB and I went to Rye with some friends in May 2017 and took a bus out to Dungeness. We just wanted to experience that strange landscape but came across Prospect Cottage as well. It’s all on it’s own, pretty far from much. No plaque or barriers or anything.

It’s a wonder that Collins maintained it for all those years after Jarman’s death. Who is maintaining it now?

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#pianogoals

Songs I’ll learn when I get a piano:

  • Chopin, Nocturne en bi bémol majeur opus 9 no2: Ballade en Sol Mineur No.1
  • Tom Waits, I’m Still Here
  • Chilly Gonzales, Armellodie
  • Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guébrou, The Song of the Sea

Some of these are almost certainly wishful thinking, it’s been a while. Reach for the moon… 💫

Tips for buying a secondhand piano (focus on uprights):

Want to moonlight as a piano tuner someday, but looks like it might be difficult to find any courses… Supposedly there’s only one left in the UK. Maybe it’s this one? Pretty formal though.

Time to turn to the #1 self-teaching resource, the WORLD WIDE WEB. Have quickly discovered some circa-2000 diamonds in the rough. Sometimes the writing is a little salty, and it always has a pointed perspective, but pretty useful and fun. Need more room for tools.

And a few books:

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Resolving Craft 3 Setup Wizard error

I keep encountering issues when running Craft’s setup command locally. Note that I use MAMP Pro for this sort of thing. I entered all the database creds correctly, and then got a SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory error. This StackExchange answer sorted it for me. Add 'unixSocket' => getenv('DB_SOCKET') to /config/db.php and DB_SOCKET="/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock" to .env.

Still encountering database connection issues on staging for one site currently under development. All of the credentials are set correctly in .env, but getenv() in /config/db.php retrieves the wrong DB_USER value. Ended up explicitly adding the problematic value to the /config/db.php file as a quick workaround, but it’s not ideal.

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LilyPond project boilerplate for music engraving

I was digging around the web for old folk songs this morning and came across Chumbawumba’s English Rebel Songs 1381–1984, was particularly taken by “The World Upside Down”. I wanted to try arranging it but didn’t want to just duplicate and Frankenstein the last score I was working on, so I finally sat down and made a boilerplate.

LilyPond project boilerplate