Clean IT

I remember it as clear as day, March 24th 1988, the day I turned 8 years but more importantly, the day I got my very own G1 Optimus Prime toy – the ultimate in childrens toys.

For those of you not familiar with the 1980s cartoon series ‘Transformers’ or recent hollywood remakes, Optimus Prime is the leader of the Autobots, a race of robots that fled from their planet Cybertron (it blew up) and took refuge on earth away from their arch enemies The Decepticons (bad robots).

At the time there were some absolute classic cartoons knocking around, the likes of Thunder cats, He-man and Centurions all awesome in their own right but for me Transformers was the one.

Now i wasn’t one of the lucky ones that had loads of childrens toys, I had a He-Man, Skeletor and a couple of Starwars figures but that was about it, all the rest of my stuff was the hand me downs of my two elder brothers – mainly Lego and toy soldiers (still decent).

My mates Mark and Christian had nearly every childrens toy between them – ALL the He-man stuff and ALL the Star wars figures, we’re ytalking millennium falcon, At-At, Jabba’s Palace the lot… Needless to say i practically lived at their houses and approached their parents for adoption on numerous occasions….

Anyway i digress, this was my birthday, my present and my moment. Skipping the card and gift tag I proceeded to shred the surrounding wrapping paper and was presented with:

G1 Optimus Prime Childrens Toy

I’m not being funny but look at this toy’s packaging! Seriously, the rush was like eating 20 sherbert dib dabs and washing it down with a litre of cherry aid! In my hands was the ultimate childrens toy at that time, no other kid on the block had had it, this toy was mine!

I spent the whole day with my dad carefully placing every sticker on this toy, learning how to tranform it in every possible way with my eyes shut and trying to make new variations that know one else had ever discovered.

Sat in front of me right now is a smaller remake of the original toy, its good, but its not the real thing. Gone but never forgotten. The best Toy I ever had…

I’ll leave you with a few bits of about the toy:

Optimus Prime Toy Commercial

The stuff childrens dreams are made of!

Optimus Prime Images

G1 Optimus Prime - Transformed

A recent remake of the G1 Optimus Prime Toy

Too Far!

Santa, if your out there… (wink wink nudge nudge) Either that or I’m off to find out where this guy lives.

Mr T say's eat my mash sucker!

Todays topic, my Super Sausage and Mash Recipe. I cooked this the other night and have been eating bangers and mash for breakfast, lunch and dinner!

Ingredients

Sausages and mash AKA ‘bangers and mash’, good old fashion English nosh. My recipe sticks to the traditional recipe but features a few culinary tweaks of magic.

Here’s what you need for 1-2 portions:

• 2-3 large potatoes
• 4-6 sausages (preferably finest sausages e.g. chilly/apple something with an additional twang)
• a generous nob of butter
• Philadelphia cream cheese
• salt & pepper
• 1 onion
• milk

How to cook

• peel potatoes, slice into small chunks (not to small as they will go to mush, too big and they won’t cook properly)
• boil potatoes in salty water for 12-15 minutes (if you jab them with a fork and the potato falls off you’ll know they’re done)
• oven bake your sausages (see packet for time and temperature – normally about 35 mins on 220c)
• dice and fry onion in oil (i use what has come out of the sausages to add flavour)
• mash potatoes with butter and a couple of tablespoons of milk
• add onions, pepper and a generous lump of Philadelphia to the mash and continue to mash.
• slap that mash on the plate and add your sausages
• for added bang serve with gravy
• for a healthier option add some boiled mix vegetables

Your sausage & mash is now ready. Try the recipe and let me know your thoughts! If anyone has any further enhancements please share!

Right, I’m sorry but its monday morning, I’ve had little or no sleep that i can remember and I just got totally soaked on the way in to work. Lets see if i can turn this around by thinking about the positive…

• The ducks that are outside our office seem to enjoy it.
• I’ve just had a bacon sandwich.
• I’ve got my holiday in a few weeks time.
• I haven’t swine flu!

Ok, I’m boring myself now. The chances of any one actually getting this far are pretty slim I’d say, so, if your one of the few that actually read this sentence, I salute you.

I don’t suppose anybody knows much about a Boss RV5 reverb pedal? I’m thinking about buying one. I had a little go on one at lunch and it seemed pretty damn sweet to me, although, for £154 it better be!

Also had a go on the Holy Grail whilst i was in there. Not a bad pedal at all. Not 100% sure on the flaberb setting though, not sure whether I’d get any use about that. The RV 5 won hands down for me but the price is a lot to swallow.

A few million google search engine queries going on when i get home me thinks. I’ll let you know how i get on. If anyone does know though, give us a hola!

Ta!

Heres some photos:

Boss RV5 Reverb Pedal

Boss RV5 Reverb Pedal

Electro Harmonix Holy Grail Guitar Pedal

Electro Harmonix Holy Grail Reverb Pedal

Apparantly its oddles to Price phillip!..

Welcome to CleanIT.co.uk. Here you’ll find information on Music, Photography, Google and other random IT / web stuff. Feel free to leave your comments, views and suggestions are always welcome.

You’ll have to bear with me over the next few weeks though as I’m still tinkering. If you do notice anything out of the ordinary please let me know.

Tom