Category: 6000 recommends

Happy Rooster

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Our second visit to this spot in Muizenberg, and though it feels a little like I was cheating on Dias Tavern, this place absolutely holds its own when it comes to Portuguese cuisine. In fact, dare I say it…?

[Whispers] Maybe it’s actually better than Dias…

Anyway…

It’s literally in the Muizenberg Railway Station building, up on the first floor (no wheelchair access, sorry), and you can enjoy the Edwardian history of the Herbert Baker design as you walk up the wooden stairs with their tiled risers, and into the expansive space and amazing enclosed veranda. The sea view over False Bay and Surfer’s Corner is spectacular, and the food and service are equally impressive.

They’ve just released their new Winter menu:

The food is good, honest fare, cooked with care and pride, and powerful Portuguese flavour. And yes, there are a few things on there to cater for those who have just wandered over from the beach for a post-surf burger, but that doesn’t detract from the authenticity of the specialised dishes.

Complimentary caldo verde when we arrived, warmed us up nicely and got our taste buds ready for the main meal. But here’s the thing: as an unlicensed restaurant, you are not paying through the nose for beers and wines (you’re welcome to bring your own – no corkage fees are charged) and so you end up coming out of there feeling wholly satisfied, but with a wonderfully reasonable bill.

Dinner was R1300 (including a well-earned, decent tip) for four of us last night, including two starters and two desserts and several soft drinks.

Incredible value.

I can’t recommend this place enough: it scores highly on every metric.
Booking via WhatsApp on 067 901 0900.

Another Bonjourr upgrade

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Still my browser window minimalist background app of choice, Bonjourr has just had another upgrade.

It now has a Pomodoro timer.

What that?

The Pomodoro timer is our first new widget in quite a long time, we’re really excited about it! If you’ve never heard of the Pomodoro technique before, here’s the short version: it’s a time management method where you break your work into multiple intervals, for example: start working for 25 minutes, then take a 5-minute break, work again for 25 minutes until the timer rings, take a longer break and repeat.

This structured approach can help you stay motivated, avoid distractions and overall get more done in less time.

And loads of other nifty features, including a lot of new personalisation options.

Incredibly, it’s still completely free, although you can (and should) (and I have) donate if you are using it and feel so inclined.

So much nicer than a plain browser window when you open it up, it’s absolutely a 6000 Recommends…

Actually speechless

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So thank goodness I’m writing this down.

Regular readers – yeah, plural because I’m an optimist – might recall that on Monday, I was wondering whether to stay up late for the football.

I decided to be sensible and not to. But then circumstances took over anyway. Because sadly, our son’s car was broken into while he was dodgeballing, and stuff – a lot of stuff – was stolen. Parked outside, in a private car park, under a very bright floodlight and behind security-manned barriers and with only one way onto (and off) the site, 50 whole metres of direct sight from the security booth.
His was one of about ten cars that got done.

So those two security guys are at best, utterly useless, and at worst, actually just complicit. As a TikkiTokker would say: “Let me know what you think in the comments”.

As is the way with these things, we’re not sure exactly when it happened. But for police and insurance purposes, we’re saying about 8pm.

Reporting it all to the police took quite a while, and then there was the drive home, and so actually, I was still wandering about at half past midnight, and yes, I was absolutely right, my body did not appreciate the 6am wake up call in the morning.

Not one bit.

Yesterday was all about paperwork and glass vacuuming. But can I just shout out our insurance?

Because the working day begins at 8:30am.

The claim form arrived at 8:50am and we had Glassfit in touch with us before 9am*.

I submitted the claim form yesterday afternoon, the claim was settled by close of business yesterday and the money was paid into our account at 10:30am today. That’s only 38½ hours from the incident. And only 26 hours since we told them about the incident.

Bloody hell.

Here in SA, we – quite rightly – complain about the poor service we get (and there’s plenty of it to choose from), but it’s only right that we praise the good service as well. And this is more than good. It’s unbelievable. (But it is also true.)

So. Despite all the ads you see for that green and purple company, can I recommend that if you are looking for a decent insurer, then maybe you should give RBS a go? If you want, you can tell them that I sent you, but I doubt that it’ll make any difference either way.

Absolutely mindblowing stuff.

.

* There’s no window glass in stock in Cape Town, so we have to wait until Friday or Monday before it can be fitted, depending on transport, but I don’t think that I can blame anyone in particular for that.

Bonjourr 21: the background update

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I’ve been using Bonjourr for almost a year and a half now, and it’s just lovely. I’d only been using it for a few weeks when I wrote a post about it and said this:

Sometime we can have nice things. And this is one of them.

And I was absolutely right. Well done, me.

Bonjourr is a really simple way to decorate your browser background – although the customisation options mean that it can be far more powerful if you want it to be – and while it might not seem like a very big thing, it’s just really cool to have images there instead of the same old block of colour. With the latest update – Bonjourr 21: the background update – they’ve added several new features, including the choice of using local files as your background, the option of having a video background to your new browser windows, and new texture overlays to make your screen look even cooler.

Let’s get this straight: this isn’t a massively important or necessary app but it’s free, it’s fun and it just makes things look nicer. And who doesn’t want something nicer on the screen in front of them?

I still haven’t really kicked off anything on Unsplash, as I had planned to do, but there’s some work that I am doing at the moment that might tie in nicely with that, so maybe you will be able to have a raft of my images decorating your desktop in the very near future. In the meantime, there’s plenty of other stuff on there for you to choose.

As browser add-ons go, this has to be right up there as one of the best. Again, not because it enhances the functionality of your software, but just because it’s so customisable and it looks so good.

It’s available for all major browsers – and some others, too.

Sevenns

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Yes. It is spelled like that (for this, anyway).

It’s a new puzzle game that was shared on Reddit, and when people said that they like the format, the author revealed that he’s made an app for it.

Here are the IOS and Android links:

https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/sevenns/id6502391025

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.CommuterGamesLimited.sevennsTheGame&pcampaignid=web_share

The puzzle itself is like a three way Venn diagram, with three ellipses forming seven separate regions. Each ellipse has a clue, and there are seven different two-letter tiles to put into each ellipse to make a word relating to the clues on the ellipses.

Sounds complicated, but it’s not really. Here’s an example:

For this one, the answers are DE CI MA TE, HO MO CI DE & MO DE RA TE.

The DE tile is shared by all three words, so it goes in the middle.
CI is in homoCIde and deCImate, so it goes bottom left. MO is shared by hoMOcide and MOderate, so bottom right, and DE goes top middle because it’s in DEcimate and moDErate.
Fill in the gaps with MA on the left, RA on the right, and HO at the bottom and Robert is your Aunt’s hubby.

You’re a bright sort. You see how it works.

I’d love to show you the finished article, but the app is occasionally a bit buggy and wouldn’t let me take a screenshot.

But it is a lot of fun. Add this to some Geoguessr and a bit of Puzzgrid, and you are sorted for brainteasers for at least a while; maybe even some time.