Aneres11

I was grinning for you reading that Jay! Get in there!! Update from me. Not heard anything from date guy. Similarly I haven't contacted him and found myself forgetting the date happened until earlier today when I was like 'oh shit yeah' haha. So that's that. Anyway, been chatting to a different guy who is currently at uni in Manchester and he's a bit of a treat. He's 2 years younger than me (22) which normally bothers me as I prefer guys slightly older than me. Anyway he definitely has his head screwed on, we've been chatting all weekend and he asked if we could meet up. I don't work Wednesday's so I have suggested going to Chester Zoo as he's never been and I think the zoo is a perfect place to go to get to know someone - and the bat cave provides the perfect placement for a cheeky grope. I jest So we'll see what happens there! I'll be sure to keep you posted as always!

200g good quality dark chocolate I actually used a mix of milk and dark (70%) as didn't want it too rich 200g butter 1 tbsp instant coffee granules 85g self-raising flour 85g plain flour 1⁄4 tsp bicarbonate of soda 200g light muscovado sugar 200g golden caster sugar 25g cocoa powder 3 medium eggs 75ml buttermilk (5 tbsp) For the ganache: 200g good quality dark chocolate , as above Again, I mixed 2 bars - 1 milk, 1 dark. You will get a glossier ganache if you use all dark - but you will get diarrhoea 284ml carton double cream (pouring type) 2 tbsp golden caster sugar To make it just break 200g of your choc into a heavy bottom saucepan. Add the 200g of butter to the pan. Then, mix your instant coffee with 125ml of cold water and mix. Add that to the pan. Put the pan onto a low heat just until everything has melted - don't overheat it though! You can use a microwave if you'd rather! While choc is melting, mix your plain and self raising flours into a mixing bowl and add your bicarb of soda, the light muscovado sugar, the golden caster sugar and the cocoa powder and mix together with your hands. This will help you rid the mix of lumps as the muscovado sugar can be very lumpy. Beat 3 medium eggs into a bowl and add the buttermilk to your beaten eggs. Now, take your melted choc / butter / coffee mix and pour that and the egg / buttermilk into your dry ingredients in the big mixing bowl. Stir until everything is blended together. It will be a smooth, runny consistency. Ok, now you have 2 options. You can stick to the original recipe and bake in a 20cm round tin (7.5 cm deep) then cut in half once baked and cooled. The cake will need to be in for 1hr to 1hr 30 mins with this method. Or do what i did and separate the mix into 2 bog standard victoria sponge tins and bake for around 40-50 mins (depending on oven). For both methods, the oven is to be set to 140 degrees for fan assisted or 160 for non fan assisted. Your time is the only thing that differs depending on how you choose to bake. Once baked, a skewer will come out clean. To make the ganache, cut / break your 200g of choc into small pieces into a bowl. Pour your double cream (1 full standard pot of Elmlea or whatever) into a pan along with 2 tbsp of golden caster sugar and heat until it's just about to boil. Once it's at that point, take it off the heat and immediately pout onto your broken chocolate. Stir until you get a glossy runny bowl of choc ganache! I then just poured a small amount onto the top of one of my cakes, then put the other layer on top to sandwich together. Then I poured the ganache all over and used a palette knife to smother round. You can make the ganache but leave for a while to thicken - then pour over. Might be easier doing that and less messy! :p Once done, leave the ganache to cool / set and cut, shovel in and enjoy!! I can confirm it is very very good!

You're so right @MadDog - and that Paramore track is so so good. Bring on the album!! If Hanson were female? Ha. Loving this track! Totally stuck in my head! The Saturdays have been in America trying to 'make it' over there. They need to stick to trying to make the UK market first although this track looks like it could give them that number 1 they've been searching for.

I've been quiet for a while on the old cooking, well - baking! Today I turned this little lot: Into a very rich chocolate fudge cake with chocolate ganache topping! It's really moist and sticky and probably the best chocolate cake recipe I've used. Most choc cakes are dry (too much dry to wet ingredients with the flour and cocoa), but as this cake is made up of actual chocolate (see above!) and very little flour / cocoa it's very moist! Right, if you'll excuse me I'm going to cut myself a massive slice and make a cup of tea!

Happy Birthday Sprout!! Have a great day!!

Well it got me hard. And I have no opinion on Fire Emblem haha. Unboxing porn is the best.

Hmm see I despise Lord of the Rings so I have zero interest in the game tbh. That's probably slightly ignorant of me I know, but it's one franchise I just can't abide. Like I say, I'll maybe rent this. At a push

I'm really starting to tire with the Lego games now. I feel like it's just a massive cash cow for the developers seeing how they push it to every single platform they possibly can. They are a bit too slow paced for me to warrant a purchase. I usually rent the Lego games and have a bit of fun with them, but buying them on release for full price just to button mash things into pieces and hold a button to build things, AGAIN. Nah. :p Maybe if they Lego'd up a franchise I was really into then i'd be more excited. But so far only Batman raised my interest and that was just more of the same.

So back to the Smash Bros thread, or is this a Capcom thead? I still think work needs to be done with the single player side of things. I loved the mission mode from Melee and I absolutely LOVED break the targets. Although, in Brawl it was totally cheapened and felt rushed with each character having the same stage, rather than individual stages to utilise their move sets. I even loved the Home Run contest! I think that was one of the only times I found Ganandorf useful! Ha. I'd love to see more of that in there. The single campaign of Brawl was adventurous but totally lacking for me. It had no identity of what it wanted to be and just felt very messy. As for characters, a smaller roster suits me tbh but I also don't mind if they wanna throw in odd characters that work well.

I actually think Layton would be a genius character inclusion! What about Dr. Kawashima?! I think they may need to tone down the character roster slightly this time. But if they do continue to add or have similar characters, at least lets make them play differently. As long as Ness remains there then I'll be happy!

No don't think it's the real deal. He's a nice guy - not really my type but a nice guy and like I said easy on the eye. When you say a bit of fun - do you mean like a shag haha. That's generally the gays way of sayin they want some ha. If that's what you mean then nah. He's ok, but I didn't wanna jump across the table on to him ha. If you mean fun as in just meeting new guys then yeah, I guess so. You never know what it might lead to!

I love the sound of this. I am a Sonic fan boy whore. Not even ashamed. I even liked the 3d Sonics This sounds very interesting re the different characters opening up different routes in levels - I like that a lot. Interesting that they want to give the Vita the console version but make a Rush style game for the 3DS. That's great for the 3DS - maybe not so much for the Vita. Be nice to get some more information as it comes. I am a sucker for all things Sonic! : peace:

Oh yeah I mean Canal Street is fine for straight people - they love it for some strange reason. But it's not my bag. It's frankly gross. And @Animal yeah I think there may be another meeting on the cards. Potentially. It went well enough to warrant a second date I guess but it's one of those situations where it won't give me sleepless nights if nothing else comes of it! But yeah like I said it was nice to be able to get out and meet some new people - and that's what it's all about! Whether love blossoms or not ha. Gotta say it has spurred me on to get out there a bit more though - I just have a POF account I don't really use it, so maybe if I made an effort I could get to meet some more nice men!

I have 1 friend who is like, amaze. Ha. You may know him! @Mike1988uk Known Mike since I was at school and we've always been great friends. We can go weeks without seeing each other but the minute we get together again we spend most of the time just chatting etc. We always text though so we're never not in contact. I then have mates from work who I spend a bit of time with. Like I'll go to their places or we'll go out for coffee or trips to the zoo (such a child!) etc. That tends to happen more as it's easy to just sort something out when we're all together at work. I also class my sisters as 'friends' and we spend a lot of time together, whether it be shopping trips, cinema, eating out, lunches etc. I probably spend more time with them than friends as we're all so close and get along so well. It's not really a case of finding time for them either as we always have the time - if that makes any sense?! So that's basically my friend group(s). Small and nicely formed haha. I have to say I'm not one of these people with a shit load of mates and I quite like having a smaller group of people I can class as true friends who mean a lot to me.

So I'm back from my date! It went well. I think. He was a nice guy. We just had a couple of drinks and a nice chat. Best thing about it was how relaxed I was and how easy it was to be myself. A few years ago when I was new to the whole dating thing I used to be a little more reserved for fear of doing or saying something that would put the other person off me. Stupid I know, but it's what goes through your mind when you're new to the dating game! Anyway, very relaxed, very casual and the conversation just flowed. Before I knew it, it was 10pm and time to go as I had to pick my sister up from the train station and he had to leave as was up early next day. I had the usual 'omg you don't drink?' situation to justify and the 'you've never been to canal street and you hate gay pride?!' to also justify, which most gay guys find difficult to understand. I think if there was anything that would go against me it's that. Most gays love Pride and Canal Street - I however would rather chop off my own hand than bear either. Gross. (I'm a bit of a homophobic gay ) But yeah all in all went well. I think I'd prob go for another drink if the opportunity arose, only because we seemed to get on. Either way it was nice to get out and have an evening with someone new. Nice to speak about stuff that other gay guys can relate to (coming out etc) and to be fair to the lad he was pretty easy on the eye! :wink: I'll be sure to keep y'all posted. :p

That's a good point you make re the news getting to the masses. I think it may filter to the potential buyers though. I use DigitalSpy for all music and entertainment news and this was reported (along with the Yoshi game) on there. That website has millions of people viewing it so hopefully with that kind of exposure it'll maybe help the Wii U along a bit. Big maybe, but you never know!

This looks great. I really like Epic Yarn and was just charmed the whole way through it, so to have a similar looking game with Yoshi as the star is I like it when Nintendo give their other characters their own game rather than it being Mario all the time. We just need a Super Princess Peach 2 now and I'll be a happy man!

This looks unbelievable. And I never ever played Wind Waker so for me, this is the perfect remake! Don't get the negativity either. It's bridging a gap before they drop a new Zelda and who knows when we're gonna get that. Still, they can't please everyone and if you've already played it then you may not want to bother again. I get that. It seems those who own the console are happy though.

Devastation. My afternoon tennis is on. 2-4 Gonna miss. Fuck!

Hmm, see I am not a lover of preowned. Particularly with games. There's just nothing like peeling the wrapper off a brand new sealed game. If I ever do buy preowned, rather than getting that nice new smell I've always had a smokey, not so pleasant odour ha. Plus, with Nintendo games (my main purchases), they tend to come with the points cards which you rarely get with preowned. It's pointless really though I guess, as the Nintendo star points shop is pretty dire but I still like to get them as there have been some cracking things on there. In terms of music, I would definitely buy preowned CD's. Same with DVD's / Blu-rays. But for some reason I like my games new. : peace:

I can't see Nintendo announcing any MAJOR games from the Mario or Zelda franchise. I just think it would be better to save them for E3. My predictions are: Wii Fit U Wii Sports U DLC for NSMBU Resident Evil Revelations And mentions of games we already know about that are coming If this is the case (prob not!) then I would be slightly disappointed. I wouldn't mind another Wii Sports, but I want tennis in there. If it isn't, no point for me as it's all I played on the original!

Thanks guys! I will report back later. And oh my life can we just check out that abysmal spelling / grammar error in my original post?! "Wish me LOOK" I apologise haha. I blame the late time

I have a date tomorrow. I haven't posted here much as I've been single for ages and also date-less so had nothing to report. I met the guy from POF. He's quite local (he actually lives right by where I play tennis) and we're meeting for a drink tomorrow night. Not sure how I feel about it tbh as it's been so damn long since I've had a date (even though it is casual) that I am kinda neutral on the whole thing! Most people would be excited or nervous ha, but I'm just not that arsed. That's probably not a good sign right?! Haha. Of course, I will make an effort and not give off this cant be arsed impression ha, but I think I'm just passed the hype when it comes to dating. He seems like a nice guy though and we have a lot in common as we exchanged loads of messages before agreeing to meet up, so that's something! Wish me luck fellow daters. : peace:

I guess I'm going on what's happened with the high profile titles that have already been ported. Weren't exactly definitive versions. Unless they port it well and it utilises the Wii U's unique features in a decent way then I'd rather just play them on the 360 or ps3 and wait for developers to start bringing fresh games to the console. Each to their own.

Lols. Well if I do get a version it'll be the Wii U what with having the second screen. The way it's meant to be played. : peace: