Jonathan Waddingham

Category: Food

  • Can you donate using a banana? (Update – YES YOU CAN)

    **Update 15th July 2013 – yes you can**

    Here’s proof:   //instagram.com/p/bysL98QElR/

    If you’re interested, here’s how I did it.

    *Here continues original post*

    Listening to the Guardian tech podcast a few months ago, I heard about a certain kickstarter project that sounded pretty interesting. Called makeymakey, some clever chaps had built a way of allowing you to connect pretty much anything to a PC, and use it to control your PC, using some crocodile clips and a little USB motherboard. I was curious about the potential for this, so backed the project on kickstarter and received my kit a couple of weeks ago. Naturally my first thought was to bring it into the office to see what clever ideas we could come up with and apply to giving. Unfortunately, we didn’t come up with any especially great ideas (yet), although seeing David, our technical architect, using a banana as a joystick to play canabalt was a bit special: David playing the bananas (Incidentally, in my MVT test of three fruits, bananas proved a more effective controller than apples or clementines. Test and learn. Test and learn.) Anyway, the kit allows you to connect anything that conducts electricity to the board, and control the arrow keys, space bar and click. Unfortunately, we couldn’t make a donation on the site using just those keys, but maybe we’ll add shortcuts so you can… But aside from donations on our website, could you think of any clever ways to use a makeymakey and apply it to giving and technology? I’m off to a Facebook hackathon tomorrow, and it would be a good time to try some of your ideas out… For inspiration, here’s the video from the makers of makeymakey. Enjoy.

  • Vote for Recipe for Disaster

    What is a blog for if not some shameless self-promotion? Say you needed people to vote for you in a masterchef-style cookery competition, the obvious thing to do would be to, well, ask on a blog.

    So, if you happen to come across this post, please take a second to vote for Recipe for Disaster.

    This is what it’s all about:

    What is Nom Nom Nom?

    It’s a fun competition for bloggers, writers, photographers and food enthusiasts. Over one day eight teams of two will shop for ingredients & cook a three-course meal for four, to be judged by a panel of experts. Afterwards, there’s a public “Viewers Choice” vote for the bloggers who produce the best online record of their meals.

    You can read the whole story about what we cooked (including videos) over here, but just look at the ile flottante below. Isn’t that enough to tempt you to vote Recipe for Disaster?

    Our Nom desert - Ile flottante

  • New year, less cheese

    For some strange reason, I’ve decided to give up one of the great pleasures and passions of my life (cheese) for January. It’s a new year’s resolution, but for a good cause. In my case, the cause is the charity Good Food Matters.

    I’m raising money for them because they work with people who aren’t as fortunate as I am to help them enjoy food and learn all about the wonders it holds. They do this by educating young people and children in Croydon on how to cook as well as providing information on nutrition, health and wellbeing. Here’s a slideshow of what they do.

    Needless to say, I’m raising money online and you can help me help Good Food Matters help disadvantaged young people by sponsoring me on my fundraising page.