First things first though, my brother-in-law made this for us a couple of weeks back, he’s a wonderful chef and I have completely and utterly stolen this dish from him. Sorry Paul!

What you need
2 chicken breasts
Penne pasta, enough for two
Red Pesto
Single cream
Parmesan (or any grana padano which is usually MUCH cheaper..)
Adjust portions for your own needs.

What you will use
1 pot – large enough to hold your pasta
1 frying pan – large enough to hold the chicken AND pasta combined, preferably a straight sided pan. A large cooking pot will suffice.
1 sharp knife, the sharper the better.
1 stirring implement… er… a wooden spoon or spatula.

How to make it
Firstly, get your pasta on to boil. You can just follow the instructions on the side of the pack, remembering to only add the salt once the water is boiling, and if you add a touch of oil along with the pasta it’ll help stop the pasta tubes from sticking to each other.

Now, slice up the chicken breasts into even sized pieces. I prefer smaller mouth-sized strips just a little bigger than the penne pasta, I think it helps give an even sauce coverage.

Aside: The topic of sauce coverage is of some debate in my house. I prefer to have a fine coating of sauce, lightly coating the pasta, and any other ingredients, so as to subtly slide over the palate. My wife takes the “sauce and some pasta” approach, casting the tubes of pasta adrift in a sea of passata at a moments notice (I shouldn’t be too nasty though as she makes dinner far more often than I do). Feel free to tweak this recipe to your own sauce preferences, but if you are of the latter persuasion don’t bother inviting me round!

Now, where was I? Ohh yes, you’ve got the pasta onto boil, so let’s cook the chicken.

In your frying pan, add a dash of oil, bring up to heat and add the chicken. Ideally you want a nice colour on both sides, but I’m sure you can all manage to fry some chicken. You can, of course, grill the chicken if you prefer. As long as it is cooked and there are no pink bits.

Depending on your timing skills, you may find that the chicken is ready before the pasta. Not to worry, just take it off the heat as we’ll be warming everything through before serving.

Check your pasta to see if it is ready. Some people like to throw bits of pasta at the wall to see if it sticks (although not sure what that tells them, other than that they should really clean their walls more often), but I generally prefer to actually bite into a bit to see if it’s to my liking. Al dente or whatever you prefer (although I’d suggest that ‘soggy mush’ means you’ve overcooked the pasta).

Once it’s ready, drain the pasta, and add some red pesto.

This, again, is entirely to taste. I’d suggest that you don’t want much more than a couple of teaspoons, just enough to give a nice soft covering. You should NOT have a sauce, the pesto should just cling to and pasta.

Once you are happy with the amount of pesto in your pasta, empty the pan out into your frying pan and mix it with the chicken.

Now, swirl in a dash or three of single cream (I dunno, maybe a tablespoon?) again don’t add too much, we don’t want a runny sauce! You are just adding enough so that it softens the colour of the pesto without washing it all off the pasta.

Heat gently for a minute or so, then serve topped with parmesan shavings, and possibly a nice Chablis. Enjoy!

What else can you add?
The main flavour of the dish is chicken and basil, the tomato in the pesto is very subtle, so from that simple base you could add other ingredients to give it a little extra ‘zing’. Maybe some finely chopped onion or a little chilli to give it a bit more kick, or some toasted almonds or pine nuts? Or for a more tomato-ey flavour how about some sun-blushed tomatoes?

Warning: this is kinda long. If you don’t use Outlook just skip it.

Like most people, I use Microsoft Office at work, like most people it’s the one application I use more than any other and, like most people I have no choice in this matter.

So, rather than just put up with it, I’ve slowly been tailoring it’s UI to the way I work. These days I’ve got a pretty good ‘workflow’ that allows me to track my emails, tasks and appointments. My system includes a custom toolbar that allows me to easily flag an email to a particular category, custom search folders so those flagged emails can be easily located, and a few other shortcuts.

Here’s a screenshot of my Outlook setup to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about.

My workflow
Let’s quickly run through how I deal with emails in Outlook. First things first, use that delete key! All emails require one of three (or four) actions. You can either delete it, store it, or deal with it (now or later). However your company may not allow deletion of emails, so if that’s the case you can just leave it in your inbox. For those messages that you need to store (company policy stuff for example) you can create static folders under your Inbox as required.

Tip: Select View > Arrange By > Show in Groups. That will give you sections in your Inbox for Today, Yesterday, Last Week and so on. An easy way to visually declutter your Inbox as you can close the older sections.

The real power starts with those emails that require some action on your behalf. If you can’t deal with it immediately, then you need to store it but make sure it remains ‘visible’. You could put it in a folder under your Inbox but, let’s be honest, how often would you check it?

For any emails that need to be dealt with in the future (within a set timescale usually) I use Outlook flags.

Flagging emails in Outlook
You can flag any email for follow up. Just right-click an email in your Inbox, and select Follow Up, you’ll see a list of coloured flags to choose from.

If you right-click on the column headings at the top of the Inbox and select Field Chooser, you can add the “Follow up flag” column if it’s not already there. You should see your newly assigned flag in that column. This is especially handy as, once you have completed the action required in the email, you can click the flag to mark it as complete.

You can also add reminders to an email when you set a flag, I don’t use this personally but if it’s a crucial email it might be worthwhile.

Tip: You can type in the message box (in the Flag To text box) to create a custom message. Unfortunately Outlook doesn’t remember these so you have to re-type for each email.

However, whilst flagging emails is all well and good, it’s a bit involved and hey, I’m lazy. I can’t be bothered with all that right-clicking nonsense so I’ve setup a toolbar which gives me some additional benefits.

Creating the toolbar
Before you create the toolbar, it’s worthwhile thinking about how you will/do use flags. I figured that all of my ‘actionable’ emails fell into one of four categories, however as Outlook offers six colours to work with then you should be OK as long as you don’t want to create… ohh I dunno.. seven categories!

I use the red flag for “Product” emails, green for “Work” emails, purple for “Misc” and blue for “TechComms” emails.

To create a toolbar:

1. Right-click on a blank area next to the current toolbars.
2. In the Customize dialog, select the “Toolbars” tab.
3. Click New…
4. Give your toolbar a name and click OK.
5. The new toolbar is displayed on screen, obviously it’s empty at this point.
6. Select the “Commands” tab.
7. In the right-hand “Categories” column, scroll down and click Actions.
8. In the left-hand “Commands” column, scroll down until you get to the coloured flags.
9. Drag and drop the flags onto your new toolbar (it should be right next to the Customize dialog.
10. Once you have all the flags you want you need to add some text (if you want).
11. On your new toolbar, right-click a flag and select “Image and Text”.
12. Right-click the flag again and hover over the “Name” section in the menu.
13. You can type a custom name for the toolbar button, adding an ampersand (&) if you want to include a shortcut key – just place the ampersand before the letter that you want to use. You can then ALT+[letter] to add the flag to an email.
14. Once you are happy, you can drag the toolbar into your preferred location and close the Customize dialog.

Now, when you receive an email that requires some action from you, make sure the email is highlighted and click one of the toolbar buttons. Great. But now what?

Creating the search folders
The real power in this method comes with using the Search folders. These are kind of hidden away in the folder tree but are very useful. You can use them to store ‘smart lists’ of emails, with each folder holding only emails that meet your criteria. Obviously we are going to use these to give us quick access to all of the flagged emails, with a folder for each ‘flag category. The Search Folders folder is in the folder tree when you are in Mail view.

1. Right-click the top folder called Search Folders, select “New Search Folder…” .
2. Scroll to the bottom of the list, select “Create a custom Search Folder”, and click Choose… .
3. Give your new Search Folder a name (Products, for example), then click Criteria.
4. In the dialog displayed, select the “More Choices” tab.
5. Select “Only Items which have:” and in the drop-down list displayed select the colour of flag for that folder (Red for me in this case).
6. Click OK to close the dialog, and twice more to close all the dialogs and return to Outlook.
7. Find your new Search Folder, right-click and select “Properties”.
8. Select “Total number of items” and click OK.

You can now drag your new Search Folder to your Favorite Folders area. Once you’ve added folders for all your flagged emails, you have a very visible and easy to find location for your important emails. I also ‘close’ the Search Folders in the folder list, and you can re-order your Favorite Folders using the right-click menu.

Creating quick shortcuts
One last goodie for you. You can create shortcuts on your desktop (or anywhere else you like) that will create new emails, tasks, appointments or notes. It’s really simple and means you don’t have to open Outlook to bash out a quick email.

You need to create a new shortcut (right-click your desktop), and give the following as the location (unless you have Outlook installed somewhere else). The crucial bit is the stuff at the end:

• Email: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE” /c ipm.note
• Task: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE” /c ipm.task
• Appointment: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE” /c ipm.appointment
• Note: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\OUTLOOK.EXE” /c ipm.stickynote

And no, I don’t know why email is “ipm.note”.

And finally
Whilst doing a little research for this post I stumbled across this method of creating tasks from emails (scroll down to the third last post). It requires a particular CDO library to be installed, and that you muck about with some macro code. I’ll give it a quick test at some point and let you know how it works out.

Right, that’s enough of that. If you have any questions, let me know.

Now, according to Sharon Dupont who contacted me, the product in question:

provide[s] a simple Web 2.0 service that allows bloggers to include syndication feeds, like news headlines, posts from other blogs or podcasts, into their blogs without any programming knowledge required. We hope that our take on the “problem” might be of use to both bloggers and web surfers.

All well and good (I’m not saying I’d USE the product myself but some might be interested).

Now, I’m not in the habit of plugging things on here without good reason, and so before I posted this I emailed Sharon to ask her a few questions, primarily about the company behind the product, and if whether they were deliberately targetting blogs as a form of marketing.

That was a several weeks ago. I’m still waiting for a response.

There are many companies, let’s call them “traditional” companies (with offices and products that come in boxes), who ‘get’ the internet. They realise that an online presence can help their business. Some of these companies also realise that blogs can be used to improve communication with their customers, and the really enlightened ones have worked it into they way the work.

Yet some companies still see blogs as a ‘free ride’, presuming we’ll hawk their goods for them. They seem oblivious to the possible downsides (this post is one), and whilst I don’t feel sorry for them it does annoy me. There is no good reason why a successful company can’t have a blog and make that blog work. Or at the very least there is no good reason why a successful company can’t at least UNDERSTAND how they could WORK WITH bloggers.

An example: at the recent BlogHer conference in the States, a car company turned up at one of the social events with a couple of soft-top cars. They allowed people to take them for a spin, didn’t try and sell and largely contributed to the whole ‘fun’ ethos of the event. They didn’t hand out marketing brochures, or push their product in any way. Yet they benefitted. How? Numerous mentions of the fun people had in their cars, photos galore in Flickr, and we all now that Google loves links and they got a barrowload of them (barrel? barrow? hmm that’s an odd one).

Obviously this is a form of marketing but, when conducted in such a fashion as to be unobtrusive and actually giving something BACK, then I think it works. Wouldn’t you love to take a spin in a convertible on a nice sunny day? Of course you would.

Now it’s all well and good for a large corporation to provide such freebies but I think blogging can help smaller companies as well. Putting aside the fact that ANY kind of web presence is no longer good enough (if I want to stay in your hotel, let me see the rooms, check availability and prices please) then the success stories will be the companies that realise that it’s not the size of the audience that visits your site, it’s that the RIGHT PEOPLE VISIT YOUR SITE.

[insert penis related "size doesn't matter" pun here]

If I run a business from my home, say a dog walking service, then it will benefit me more if my website is known to people that are in my area, have a dog, and would like their dog looked after during the day. Currently the best way to do that would be target dog shows, leaflet some houses in the area, or just get chatting to dog owners in the area.

Blogging may fit into that equation, but I’d see it as more of an add-on, a way of providing a human face to the business in an online context. For the moment, as blogging becomes increasingly popular it will continue to drive more and more ‘referrer business’ into all types of businesses. Those that are web-savvy now should be able to reap some benefits.

As for Ms. Dupont, I won’t mention the company/product name here as they don’t deserve the publicity (if you are really interested, google the quote), and here’s a tip for anyone with a business online. Be transparent. If you want me to invest my time and blog in your product, if you contact ME in an effort to market your product, presume I’ll do some research into the company behind the product and I’ll definitely want to be able to see the name of the person who contacted me listed somewhere on your site.

Blogging is huge, the numbers are startling, but until some businesses wise up it’s largely going to remain the remit of the hobbyists.

How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not “the thing with feathers.” The thing with feathers has turned out to be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.

From Woody Allen, The Complete Prose

And so I sat there, chuckling to myself whilst my fellow commuters stared obstinately out of the train window. At least I hoped that’s what they were doing given that my involuntary giggles were at times quite loud and mostly sudden.

Now I’d warrant that you, dear reader, have heard Mr. Allen speak. You’ve heard the tones and inflections he imparts on his words, the stresses and strains he places on the punctuation, and the stuttering pause ridden asides that you realise are faked as soon as he starts to eloquently pontificate on whatever it is that currently irks – and here I’m thinking specifically of the Marshal McLuhan scene in Annie Hall, you know the one, where he breaks away from the cinema queue to berate the amateur film critic and people like him.

Must watch that movie again, it’s wonderful and probably has had more impact on modern cinema than a lot of people realise. I’m not a die-hard Woody Allen fan, he has produced a few duds in his time, and these days he is in severe danger of becoming a parody of himself, which in turn is probably a sign of his success and fame (and notoriety?).

I digress.

As mike noted a few weeks back, the written word can take on a whole new realm if you are aware of how the author uses phrasing and rhythm. The word patterns and movement that are created when speaking aloud offer a much deeper understanding of the words as they leap off the page and through your eardrums.

The spoken word goes back a long way, yes even before blogs or *gasp* the internet was invented (honestly, there was a time when there weren’t even computers, how did we manage?!), and it’s little wonder that it still carries the most impact. However I wonder if, given the rise in “personal publishing” in the past few years, there isn’t a requirement for a separate set of Writing Style Guidelines aimed solely at personal writing, where the writer is free to punctuate in a way that enforces the pauses and inflections they naturally use?

And no, I’m not talking about any free-form punctuation nonsense, but surely within the strict rules of grammar to which we all *coughs* adhere there is a little wiggle room for some artistic expression?

Or am I… you know… talking rubbish again?

Onto deeper matters then, why doesn’t Woody (Allen to his friends) have a blog? The one thing that hits me whilst reading his Complete Prose is how suited it would be to a blog format. Most of the pieces are short and punchy, and only really suit a compiled print publication. Ohhh sure he could write for a magazine, granted the bulk of the pieces in the book featured in New Yorker, but admit it, you’d LOVE a Woody Allen blog. Admittedly the fact rumour that he doesn’t own a compuer and still uses the manual typewriter on which he wrote his first screenplay might put the kibosh on that idea.

Mind you, thinking about it, a Woody Allen podcast would be much better.

For a lot of us, the occasional trip to a big city or a holiday resort, for others you only know what you see or read, filtered through news networks or blogs. What do we REALLY know about America?

How many people live in poverty? What’s the rate of child deaths? How many people die of starvation? Will Brad and Jen get back together?

Then there are the calls for charity, for donations to help the sick and starving in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The images still fresh in the mind, the looting, the violence, the death, are interrupted by another appeal, this time for the starving people in Niger. Drought and locusts killed off last years crops, and the people have no food. They are not in a rich country, they do not have neighbours who can take them in, they have not looted and violated. Who deserves?

The culture in America has created a “winner takes all” society, and the richest country in the world is asking for help. Billions of dollars are required to rebuild houses and lives, and Americans are pitching in, doing their bit, helping their neighbours. But why do they need my help? My charity? Where will my money make a difference? Africa or America?

There is no right or wrong answer of course. Yet the internal conflict remains and I struggle to balance my own thoughts on the matter. America has been treated harshly, yes. Their government has failed to act appropriately, yes. They have the resources they need to solve this themselves, yes. Have they helped out other countries when similar has happened? Yes. The good and bad sides of America are at war, and the country seems to be stretching itself, slowly awaking from its slumber with the realisation that only whilst it is sleeping is it truely the land of dreams.

* Insert deity of choice