Amusing Food
Found on the back of a Turkish delight packet:

Diving Logbook
I've slowly started to convert my diving logbook from paper form to digital form. I've still got a number of dives to enter, as well as photographs to add, and that will no doubt happen as time permits.

Of note of the dives that I have entered was our "deep dive". It describes a rather interesting of inexperienced divers, strong currents, and our first dive below 18 metres.

Backwards Books
As jarich pointed out to me, it wasn't the Template Toolkit (Badger) book that required 6-8 weeks to arrive, it was Data Munging with Perl that needs to be ordered in specially every time -- just as davorg had expected.

The universe is how it should be.

I had become confused since we had previously shipped a number of Data Munging with Perl books to our clients, whereas this was the first time I recall us shipping badger books.

Is Your Flag HOT or NOT
A few more improvements to Is Your Flag HOT or NOT. I added a brief history of the Oklahoma flag, and more amusingly, the history of the Thai National Flag. Other improvements include better navigation on the HOTTEST and NOTTEST pages, allowing visitors to see more than just the top 10 in each category.

Tax and Food Poisoning
Had a lovely day gardening, and a less lovely time working on my tax return. In the evening I made a delicious meal of turnips, potato, wild garlic, dandelion and sunroot (aka jerusalem artichoke) that we had harvested, or had left over from planting. The meal tasted great, and promptly gave Jacinta and myself food poisoning.

We're not exactly sure what in the food caused the classic gastrointestinal symptoms we experienced. The potatoes are the biggest suspect, as some had been in storage and may have accumulated significant levels of solanine. I'm not aware of the other ingredients (turnips, wild garlic, dandelion, and sunroot) containing any poisons in their raw or cooked states, however the sunroot had been in storage under potted soil over the winter, and may have accumulated microbial or fungal derived toxins.

In any case, symptoms were quick on their onset, and quick to recede, with no after-effects. During the time that I wasn't feeling very well I took the opportunity to write a short piece on solanine for wikipedia. It could do with some significant expanding, but it contains some interesting references to an overview of published solanine-related literature.