7 Reasons

Tag: Pizza

  • Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Should Have Paid Attention in Your GCSE Maths Class

    Guest Post: 7 Reasons You Should Have Paid Attention in Your GCSE Maths Class

    Okay, I’ll admit it. It’s been a while since I had to break out the old sine, cosine and tangent, but it has to be said that paying attention in GCSE maths has paid off on many an occasion. I’m not talking Integrals of inverse functions or anything uber-smart like that – just good old fashioned maths. So kids, if you’re reading this thinking maths is just a waste of time, think again! Here are seven reasons why you should pay attention in your GCSE Maths class.

    7 Reasons You Should Have Paid Attention In Your GCSE Maths Class

    1.  Going Dutch. Why does splitting the bill after dinner with friends always turn out to be such a trauma? Everyone will swear blind that they’ve chipped in more than enough to cover their share, but somehow you’re always a tenner short. Even ‘going Dutch’ means a round of long division. If you weren’t paying attention at school you’d best just hope that the public display of maths skill doesn’t land on your plate to divvy up. If it does you best get counting on those fingers and toes, either that or reach for your smartphone and breakout the calculator app!

    2.  TV Test. As if buying a TV wasn’t complicated enough with all that LCD, LED, plasma talk, you also need to break out your old GSCE maths notes to ensure you get the right size, ratio and resolution. First of all what’s with all that inches stuff – we were taught in cm. Let’s just hope you were paying attention when they taught you how to convert inches to centimetres, or you could end up trying to fit a JumboTron in your living room. Screen ratios have pretty much been standardised to 16:9 these days, but you do need to know what screen resolution you want and it’s not just a matter of standard definition or HD either – with HD coming in 3 flavours 720p, 1080i and 1080p. Bet you wish you’d paid attention to Sir now don’t you?

    3.  Perfect Pizza. It’s those pesky inches at play again here. Fail to get a grasp imperial conversion when you’re browsing your local takeaway menu and you’ll either end up with a child’s portion or a pizza the size of a dustbin lid. Okay, so ordering too much pizza isn’t the end of the world – unless of course you’re ordering from that well known pizza delivery place and your all out of vouchers. Oooh – that’s gonna cost you!

    4.  DIY Disaster. Not buying the right amount of emulsion paint can be a pain, but it’s not the end of the world. However, miscalculate the number of rolls of wallpaper you need and it could spell trouble. Yes, that’s right – buying wallpaper requires major maths skills. You’ll need to consider wall height and width, allow for doorways, windows and radiators and worst of all, the dreaded pattern repeat! Don’t think you can just pop down to your local DIY store and buy an extra roll if you run out either. Oh-no! Every roll has a specific batch number which means you’d best get it right first time, or you’ll be staring at an odd strip of wallpaper for the next several years before you strip it all off and start again.

    5.  Fuel Failure. Weren’t paying attention in GCSE maths when they taught you all about litres? Then owning a car is going to be fun – especially with the price of fuel these days. Unless you’ve got pots of expendable income, you’re going to want to just how much petrol or diesel your car is guzzling. Okay, so plenty of new cars do this for you, but let’s be honest, those trip computers are never very accurate and you’re far better off getting your mind around those MPG calculations yourself.

    6.  Utility Futility. Even the best mathematicians struggle when it comes to interpreting their utility bills, so if you weren’t paying attention at school it might just blow your mind. With energy companies hiking rates more often than they drop them and constantly ‘estimating’ how much you owe them, this is one area you really must master to avoid being ripped off. Be on the ball here and you could save yourself a small fortune in unnecessary payments. Leave it to the energy companies and they’ll just keep on ‘estimating’ – usually in their favour.

    7.  Pi Eyed. Let’s hope you were paying attention when your GCSE maths teacher told you all about Pi. Not only will knowing all about Pi ensure you are always able to calculate the circumference of any circle, it will also prevent you from looking like a fool by mistakenly shouting out “Yeah, my favourite type of Pi is rhubarb” when trying to join in an intelligent sounding conversation at the local boozer.

    About The Author: Michael writes for iTutorMaths, if you want to get your maths up to scratch, then iTutor can provide you with an online maths tutor.

  • 7 Reasons To Celebrate The Royal Wedding With A Commemorative Pizza

    7 Reasons To Celebrate The Royal Wedding With A Commemorative Pizza

    Tomorrow, people up and down the land will be watching and ignoring the Royal Wedding in equal measure. I’ll probably be in the former category as I’ve been invited. Not officially you understand, but I’m assisting the photographer, Clayton Bennett. I’m holding his tripod or something. Clayton and I aren’t invited to the Wedding Breakfast but we will be hiding behind a curtain with this beauty.
    7 Reasons To Celebrate The Royal Wedding With A Commemorative Pizza
    Here are seven reasons you should join us and celebrate with a commemorative pizza from Pappa Johns:

    1.   God Save The Queen. If, like me, you are a royalist but not monarchist then you’ll probably have an interest in the wedding even if you are not caught up in all the hyperbole. Eating a commemorative pizza says, ‘Congratulations Will and Kate, I wish you the best of luck for the future,’ without going over the top. If you are a monarchist you’re probably from a generation that doesn’t eat pizza.

    2.  Elizabeth Who? If, on the other hand, you are an anti-royalist and/or a republican – like that Welsh girl who is now Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard – you can rid some of that anger by biting the King presumptive on the neck. Given that you’ll probably also be giving the world snide commentary on twitter, a pizza is the perfect accompaniment to keep you fuelled.

    3.  It’s Loaded. Some people will be having street parties tomorrow. It’s not really my type of thing, but food certainly is. And, if I were going or heaven-forbid put in charge of organising such an event, I would certainly turn to the commemorative pizza. Why provide various plates of salami, pepperoni, cheese, pepper, ham, sweetcorn, onion, olive, mushroom and jalapeno when I can have it all on the same one? Mixed in. On a doughy base. I would save a lot of time, a trip to Tesco and hours of washing up.

    4.  Sharing. A pizza, unlike a sausage for instance, is ideal for sharing. I hope we all agree that we could never share a sausage. Especially a cocktail sausage. A pizza though, loathed as I would be to do it, can be shared. And that’s what the Royal Wedding is all about. At least according to Big Dave. We’re all supposed to share in this happy day according to him. And if Dav’s sharing his pizza then I think we should all follow in his example. No double dip for us.*

    5.  USA! USA! I like Americans. I like Americans because they like our Queen. And Princes. And assorted others. And they like them more than we do. I also like them because they adhere to the maxim that when it comes to food ‘quantity beats quality’. While paying £10 for a mushroom on a stick of celery is okay once in a decade, I would much rather a stack of nachos for $5. Anyway, the point is that the company selling the commemorative pizza is Pappa John’s. An American company. So there you go. You know your royal wedding pizza is coming from a team who love royal weddings and you know it’s going to be huge.

    6.  It’s Free! Assuming enough of us buy it that is. Imagine if we all ordered a commemorative pizza. Pappa John’s would be inundated and unable to cope. They would never deliver it within forty minutes which means we get it free. All we have to do is whack it in the oven for ten minutes and it’ll be as good as new. Obviously we don’t want too many people ordering because if they do we probably won’t get the pizza until June. And it’s too hot to eat pizza in June.

    7.  Mystery. That’s right, you don’t have to eat the pizza. You can keep it. In the loft. Then, in many years time, when you have grandchildren and you are searching for an old train set, you’ll find it. Once the mould is scraped off you can put it on the kitchen table and stare at it. And then you’ll wonder who the hell these two people are. That Kate girl looks a bit like Queen Catherine, but who’s the bloke? He looks like Walter from the Beano.

    *A recession double dip I mean. Obviously we’d get the garlic dip.

  • 7 Reasons My Italian Self-Teaching May Get Me Into Trouble

    7 Reasons My Italian Self-Teaching May Get Me Into Trouble

    Hello. I’m on a plane. At least I am if you are reading this at 9am on Monday morning. If you are reading it at 9pm on Monday evening then I bloody well hope I’m not on a plane and if you are reading it in June 2014, well, I couldn’t really care less. I’m assuming, as I write, that it is 9am on Monday morning and I am currently on a plane that is destined for Italy. Yes, I’m going on holiday. I thought you’d be pleased. Over the last week, I have done a little language based learning. And, in what is quite a coincidence, I have been learning Italian. Unfortunately, I am not the best when it comes to languages. Partly because I always sound a bit Indian when speaking with another tongue and partly because I just can’t be bothered with it. Which, I admit, is an abysmal attitude to have, but I will gladly take any applause you are prepared to give me for honesty. As a result of these two factors, the Italians might be in for something of a shock. Here’s why:

    7 Reasons My Italian Self-Teaching May Get Me Into Trouble

    1.  Accents. My Italian accent isn’t very good. Unless you like Italian accents that sound Indian. I imagine the Italians don’t.

    2.  What A Mistaka To Maka. I can’t help it. Without a teacher I revert to learning my Italian from Allo! Allo! clips on YouTube. I keep adding the letter ‘a’ onto anything I say. Oh, and I’m speaking English.

    3.  Roma! Lazio! The only words I can pronounce with any confidence are the names of football clubs or, indeed, names of footballers. I may get away with randomly shouting ‘Cannavaro!’ and ‘Del Piero!’ but I imagine I would not with ‘Totti!’. And, talking about football, Italy are playing Serbia tomorrow night. Along with many people in the 1990s, I watched Football Italia on Channel 4. And, along with many people, I always assumed the phrase uttered at the end of the opening credits – ‘Golaccio!’ – meant…

    4.  ‘Goal Lazio!!’. That’s what it sounded like after all. You can see it here if you need reminding/have no idea what I’m going on about. Now ‘Golaccio’ may seem like a sensible thing to say if Lazio’s Sergio Floccari finds the back of the net for his national side. But it wouldn’t be. For the simple reason that the word is actually ‘Golazo’. And it’s Spanish. And despite finding this out, I know it’s not going to make any bloody difference. I am still going to shout ‘Golazo!’ if Italy score. Or Spain. Or Serbia. Or England. Because that’s me. And no one would have me any other way.

    5.  French. The only language I have ever learnt – apart from English and Latin obviously – is French. And, despite years of trying to forget such nonsense, I still seem to remember a fair bit of it. And the reason I know this is because unwelcome words keeps slipping into my otherwise expertly recited Italian phrases, ‘Buon giorno. Parla inglese, s’il vous plaît?’. If someone started asking me a question in English and then slipped in something about frogs-legs, I’d be furious. I would expect the Italians to be similar.

    6.  Hands. Whether it’s a myth or not, Italian’s are famous for their hand gestures. So I’ve been practising mine too. So far, I have the ‘bang on desk’, the ‘I’ve got the whole world in my hands’ and the ‘bunny shadow’ gestures in my repetoire. And they make very little sense with my Italian/French/Indian speil.

    7.  Pizza. I spent much of my time in the week before Rome, practising the pronunciation of pizza names using a Pizza Express menu. As a result I am unlikely to be able to eat anything other than pizza for the whole week. While this is not a problem in itself, the fact that I can only pronounce Margherita with any confidence, could be.

  • 7 Reasons to Make Your own Pizza

    7 Reasons to Make Your own Pizza

    Making your own pizza is amazing.  It’s fun, produces tasty results, and is a more self-satisfying activity than cooking almost anything else, no matter how complicated or tasty.  Here are seven reasons to make your own pizza.

    A rather delicious looking homemade (home-made, home made) pizza with a cheese, tomato and oregano topping

    1.  Environment. If you make your own pizza, then chances are that you’ll be doing it in your own home.  This is good.  Your own home is nicer than visiting your local takeaway and you probably won’t see a fight there.  You also won’t see overweight couples attired in sportswear eating something unidentifiable from a polystyrene box, and there’ll be little chance of witnessing kebab-meat rotating on a pole, which will prevent nightmares.  You can order a pizza by phone, of course, but then a moped just takes it to someone else’s house instead.  Someone in New Earswick (we have no idea where this is either) gets all of our pizzas.  It’s a reciprocal arrangement; we get all of their taxis.  Anyway, I digress; not having to visit a takeaway to enjoy a pizza at home will make you feel ever so slightly smug.

    2.  Bonding. Making pizzas is something that you and your partner can do together.  You can also make pizzas with children, who seem to find the whole experience very enjoyable indeed.  They’ll have loads of fun putting the ingredients on top of the pizza and, however they arrange it, it will always resemble something rude, which will give you a laugh.  Of course, you won’t be able to share the joke with them, and being in on the joke always makes people feel smug.

    3.  Healthy. Because you’re choosing your own ingredients, your pizza can be healthy.  The total cheese content can be limited to a few slices of Buffalo mozzarella, rather than coming loaded with plastic-y processed cheese, more salt than you would expect to find in a minor ocean, and weird globules of fat sitting on top of it.  Eating healthy pizza will prolong your life; meaning that you can be smug for longer.

    4.  Garnish. Rather than the flavourless offerings of the takeaway or the supermarket, your homemade pizza can be topped with herbs from your own garden, which will taste fresh and great.  Using herbs from your own garden will elevate you to a whole new level of smuggery: You may even begin to pronounce herbs, ‘erbs, which will propel you serenely across the line between being merely smug and being a smug git.

    5.  Cost. The ingredients for a home-made pizza cost far less than buying a pre-made pizza from a supermarket or takeaway.   And eventually you can spend the money you’ve saved on a yurt, a folding bicycle, a chimenea, orange trousers or any other must-have accoutrement that takes your fancy.

    6.  Dough. If you have a bread-maker, you can also make your own dough really easily.  You can make it with brown or wholemeal flour, instead of the ubiquitous white stuff and you can also spin it around your head and generally hurl it about your kitchen, while pretending to be Italian.  This is more fun than almost anything.  David Cameron has a bread-maker.

    7.  Self-Sufficiency. A pizza-topping can be constructed from many ingredients that you can grow in your garden.  And if you get a buffalo, you’ll be almost entirely self-sufficient.  Anyone know how to milk one of these?

    A large buffalo standing in a field looking directly at the camera