Ingredients:

1kg Sugar with added pectin ( got this from Sainsbury’s)
1kg strawberries
Handful of blueberries

Equipment

Knife
Chopping board
Large heavy bottomed saucepan
Jam jars -  sterilised as per my other blog post!
Plastic circle things that go with the waxy discs
Waxy discs
Sugar thermometer ( optional )

Step 1, gather the stuff

Step 2 chop and hull the strawberries. You want to get rid of all the leaves. One good technique is to cut under the leaves at each each side to create a v. This wastes less fruit than cutting off the whole top. You want to cut them into chunks.

Step 3, smush the fruit with the sugar in a saucepan. I used a potato masher. Then when it’s all mixed, begin heating slowly. This helps with the smushing. Don’t smush all lumps out unless you want a smooth jam but the seeds and blueberries wills hinder this.

After 5 mins of mixing and smushing it should look like this:

Heat slowly, stirring occasionally until it reaches 120 degrees C, or until the bubbles will not stir down but the liquid below is not cloudy. It shouldnt be grainy with sugar.

Quickly spoon the jam into warm sterilised jars, at the wax disc and plastic disc and pop the lids on!

You can see the plastic disc sticking out from under the lids.

Tasty!

Keeps for 6 weeks in fridge open,1 year in jars in cool dark place.

Times are changing and universities are becoming more and more aware of how many brilliant and talented people are out there, hidden by public schools and lack of encouragement. If you aspire to medicine, it has never been more accessible. Go for it!

You will need:
Small crosshead screwdriver

Start by removing screws marked in red

Then remove the green screw labelled ODD. This releases the cd drive and allows you to remove this screw:

Then remove the other green ringed screw labelled HDD/Memory and remove the plate.

Next remove the screws around the hdd:

You should now be able to remove the whole back plate of plastic, being careful of the vga port. Start by clicking it off around the edges and slowly work around until it pops off. The hdd will feed through the hole where the RAM sits.

From here you can see a good layout:

Removing this screw releases the battery:

Android configuration details.

One or more pieces are missing from the Android SDK. It may be that the Android SDK is already installed and Titanium Studio cannot locate the directory, or it may be that some additional components need to be installed…

So I kept telling it that it had everything, and in a fit of desperation tried to bribe it with additional add ons and tools. It just wasn’t having it.

Turned out that in Window -> Preferences -> Titanium Studio +> Titanium and in the box called Titanium I hadn’t correctly specified the file path to Android SDK Home. I had “C:\Program Files\Android\” when it really wanted “C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk”.

This may have been obvious, and probably should have been, but I missed it and took a day to find it. If I can save someone else some time then I am all for it.

C: (or equivalent) -> Program Files -> Appcelerator -> Titanium Studio and open up TitaniumStudio.ini.  Mine looked like this:

-name
Titanium Studio
–launcher.XXMaxPermSize 256m
–launcher.defaultAction
openFile
-vmargs
-Xms40m
-Xmx1024m
-Declipse.p2.unsignedPolicy=allow
-Declipse.log.size.max=10000
-Declipse.log.backup.max=5
-Djava.awt.headless=true

Remove “–launcher.XXMaxPermSize 256m” (line 3) and save the file. Restart Titanium and tada! Success!

Now to configure android…. 0.0

System:      XP Professional, SP3

After the incident at the petrol station I wrote a letter to R&M Electricals explaining what had happened. This has arrived this morning with a sincere apology. Very sweet as wasn’t really expecting a reply, let alone flowers. Such lovely people!

There is good in the world after all!

Beth

Just as we drove off I decided that in fact, I wasn’t going to have that. We did an about turn and went back for the number plate details, and noticed that it was a company van. After a quick Google, a letter was fired off explaining what happened.

So a big thank you to the man in the R&M Electricals van and uniform who used the Shell Garage in Burgess Road on Tuesday morning. Not only did you ruin my make up, but you ruined my day.

One of my favourite quotes always comes to mind when people are unpleasant:

“Don’t be yourself, be someone a little nicer”

- Mignon McLaughlin

UPDATE:  R&M Electricals have sent flowers (click here to see a picture) and an apology which was extremely kind and I sincerely appreciate all the effort they have taken to make up for what happened. Thank you!

Liz Earle Gentle Face Exfoliator

This smells really great but is quite strong smelling. It says “Gentle” so I figured it was okay for my sensitive skin. It’s really great to use and a little went a long way. The beads are quite scratchy and it felt harsher than I had hoped, but left my skin feeling really smooth and soft.

After a little while my face got really hot and went quite red. This went down after half an hour and left my skin looking awesome.

Overall:

7/10

Good coverage. Quite abrasive but does what it should. Left quite red for short while but afterwards skin was clear and very soft.

Vitamin E Cream Exfoliator

This exfoliator by TBS smelled very nice and wasn’t strong. It’s described as “soft and gentle” so again I wasn’t worried about my sensitive skin. The beads were small and gentle and didn’t feel like it wasn’t doing much, however afterwards my skin was clear and soft but not as clear as other products had left it. It left redness and heat but not as much as other products and it went down after 10 – 15 minutes.

Overall

8/10

Good coverage and works without having to feel like you’re being sand blasted, however as it isn’t as harsh as others it is less effective. Hoping using it a lot will give better results.

Coming soon – Soap and Glory Breakfast Scrub and Body Shop Strawberry Shower Scrub

This is available from the Faculty of Medicine but seems to be hard to find, so I thought I’d share it here. It gives a general overview of the content covered in the BM6 year at Southampton. It’s not detailed enough for you to get started (so don’t, you don’t need to, you’ll be fine ) but it’s nice to have a general idea of what lies ahead.

Human Structure & Function I
This will enable you to understand key physiological, anatomical & biochemical concepts and principles that you can apply in problem based scenarios.
This will prepare you to successfully undertake the early years of the BM programme. You will specifically study; the structure and function of biological macromolecules and the principles of metabolism; principles of homeostasis & homeostatic imbalance, particularly as applied to the cardiovascular system; the structure & function of cells & tissues; basic anatomy; nutrition & the digestive system; principles of enzymology and energetics; principles of medical microbiology and immunology.

Professional Practice I
This will enable you to understand and experience the practice of medicine through work placements and to help you evaluate & reflect on these experiences and to apply theory to practice.
The unit is designed around 3 projects; The roles of health care professionals; Communication in health care: The media and medicine. You will be introduced to aspects of health sociology and psychology as applied to medicine and also develop your skills in numeracy, statistics, IT and information retrieval.

Human Structure & Function II
This unit will enable you to build on your learning in HSFI as it is in a similar format with similar modes of assessment. Again you will be provided with an understanding of essential anatomical, physiological & biochemical concepts that you can apply to problem based scenarios.

The topics include the structure and function of the nervous system, muscle, the renal system & the endocrine system. Aspects of imbalance in these systems will also be considered. You will also explore the principles and applications to the human body of acid base balance, pH, dissociation constants, buffers and redox reactions. Also covered is cell division, the cell cycle, growth and the stages of human development. Finally you will explore the principles of genetics and some of its applications.

Professional Practice II
This unit will enable you to build on your learning in PPI as it is constructed in a similar format. As in PPI you will produce a portfolio of your placement experiences and project work.
In particular this unit will develop your understanding of the organization of health care ( primarily in the UK), the different factors that influence health and illness and ethical issues in medicine. You will further develop your understanding of IT, information retrieval and basic statistics and their application in health care.

It’s a new rule that is being enforced by TSR but it should apply regardless. Once you’ve had your interview, don’ t share the details with other applicants. It’s nice to help and once you’re in, that’s all very nice. But putting other people at an advantage at this stage in  the game is not what you want to be doing. How much would it suck if they send out 45 offers and someone you helped was 45 thanks to you, but you were 46?

This is a post on how I prepared for my interview, and here is an overview of what happened in mine.

Anyway, good luck if you’ve got an interview, I hope it went well if you’ve had an interview and to those still waiting, I have my fingers crossed for you.

Beth