Orac was a super computer in the 1970s BBC sci-fi series BLAKE'S SEVEN. If only the iPad were even half as cool as this...

C15 Espresso. 15 Riseley Street, Applecross, Western Australia 6153. Bacon and Poached Eggs ($14.90) and English Breakfast Tea ( 6/10 ); Scrambled Eggs on Toast ($12.90) and a Short Black ( 6.5/10 ). My breakfast pal and I have eaten at C-15 before and at these prices we think that adequate is not quite what I had in mind when I shelled out 15 Aussie Quid. Mr Trivia

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Some quick thoughts on the Slap Chop.  NOTE: If you don’t know what that is or how it works spend some time watching the famous infomercial. You won’t even need to watch the whole thing.  You’ll get it before the first minute is over. The Slap Chop seems okay. I don’t like it quite as much as Vince does. But Vince also likes the Sham Wow so his judgement is in question as well as up for sale.  I wanted a Slap Chop because I don’t like chopping vegetables. I do it six days out of seven and find somewhat dull. I first learnt to chop vegetables as a kid working in my parents’ various restaurants, so I’ve have sliced a myriad of onions, a plethora of cabbage and a several tonnes of carrot in my time.  It’s boring and a tiny bit dangerous. Not sky diving dangerous, but certainly ‘get me to the emergency room, stat!’ levels of threat. But my main objection to the Slap Chop is the size of the appliance. The celery, potato etc that go into it, are all sliced at least o...

Ipoh Garden Restaurant , Canning Highway. Mount Pleasant. Foreground: Ipoh Combination Horfun (fried, mild) 5/10 : Background: Ipoh Combination Laksa (hot,spicy) 8/10 . Cost with pot of Chinese Tea $11.00 per head.

When I was in Primary School back in the 1970s in Western Australia, I went to a school that taught reading comprehension in all the usual ways but also used an American teaching aid that we referred colloquially as SRA cards, but an hour or research on the ol’ internet has persuaded me that I was, in fact, one of millions of Gen X (and 2nd Wave Baby Boomers) who encountered the SRA Reading Laboratory Kit.  SRA was Scientific Research Associates a Chicago based publisher of Educational materials (thank you Wikipedia). But their tautologically named teaching aid was kick-ass for a word nerd like myself. I recall it as a box stuffed with cards. Each card had a short segment of writing on it and then some comprehension questions. You’d answer the questions on a separate sheet they provided and if you were correct you got to move on to the next card. This was self-paced learning at its best as far as I was concerned. Boring, si? NO! Because the genius part was this – the whole sy...