» archive

2001-08-06 22:47:52 Source: Web

My mum arrived from London today for a week's visit. It's fantastic to see her and we had a lovely afternoon pottering around the local area, followed by a nice dinner at my flat with Lotta.

Part of my Mum's visit is the annual trip up to the summer house for crayfishing! We'll be heading up on Thursday, but my good mood about the trip has been partly spoilt by hassles with work. Despite me booking this holiday months back, an important management group meeting was booked which clashed totally. Originally it looked like I would be able to attend the beginning of the meeting, before being picked up to drive to the summer house (6-7 hours journey!). However circumstances have forced the meeting to move to later in the afternoon and I'm now going to be unable to attend.

Needless to say, this is causing some friction. I'm quite sure everything will work out fine, but it's an unnecessary conflict that could have been avoided with a little better planning.

To top matters off, I've been booked into other meetings for next Tuesday in Stockholm - the day my mother is due to fly home, so I'll be unable to see her off the last day. Fortunately, Lotta will be around to help her sort out the airport bus.

Grrr! Sometimes life throws some irritating complications eh?

2001-08-05 16:47:38 Source: Wap

Now I can post from my WAP phone when I haven't got access to a computer! Cool huh?

2001-08-04 14:23:13 Source: Web

Finally! I've borrowed a serial card and it works! Woohoo - I'm mousing again ;-) That's quite a relief.

2001-08-03 21:30:16 Source: Web

Well, still no luck on the mouse front :-( I'm now pretty resigned that it's a problem somewhere in the hardware - which is a complete pain! I'm not too sure what the next step is, either to try a new case, or to get hold of a usb card and mouse to sidestep the problem, or to try and locate an ATX motherboard that will handle the processor.

I'll sleep on it! Still, at least I have the command-line!

My mum is coming over next week, so I doubt I'll have too much time to spend on the problem anyway.

2001-08-03 14:48:10 Source: Web

Well, I'm still mouseless, but I'm going to borrow one that's known to work from Lotta this evening.

I've also been browsing lots of sites featuring "case mods" - customised computer cases. That looks like a fun new project :-)

2001-08-02 10:36:19 Source: Web

So I have a faster computer! Woohoo!

Only problem now is that it won't recognise the mouse! So now I have a faster machine that I can only use with the command line!

If anyone has any tips for debugging a serial mouse setup (mouseconfig segfaults, I can see the serial port with setserial, no joy manually setting XF86Config), then I'm all ears. Especially useful would be some more diagnostic info - anyone know of any test tools for the serial port??

I'll get there!

2001-08-01 12:14:49 Source: Web

... and the bad news is it's the wrong sort of motherboard for the case I have :-(

With a little luck, I may be able to lay my hands on the right sort of case (AT for those in the know) this afternoon. I'm slowly heading towards aquiring a complete new system ;-)

2001-07-31 18:03:03 Source: Web

Woohoo! Just got all my groovy techy stuff for my computer. The extremely good news is that it looks like this m/b takes normal simms instead of EDO which was on my old m/b. That combined with that I got a 64Mb simm as part of the deal means that I can now upgrade my memory waaay more easily (and cheaply). That is GREAT news!

On top of that, the 64Mb of EDO ram I have in my old machine is probably worth more second hand than what I paid for the whole packet. With a little luck I may be able to bring the cost of upgrading down to a really minnimalistic sum.

Now all I need to do is work out how to install everything ;-)

2001-07-31 10:21:56 Source: Web

In the immortal words of Vivian from the Young Ones "Bored bored bored bored bored! Even mindless violence seems boring today".

I just hope my motherboard and processor show up this evening - then I can have fun making my computer stop working :-)

2001-07-30 20:52:08 Source: Web

Mmm - I promised recipes from the other evening's dinner party.

Steve's Salad Nicoise
Baby spinach
Lettuce leaves
French beans
Can of tuna
2 or 3 hard boiled eggs
Garlic stuffed olives
Vinaigrette dressing

It's a fairly straighforward Nicoise, but the use of a mixture of spinach and green salad leaves adds interesting variation.
Cook the beans in well salted water and cool immediately after cooking with plenty of cold running water.
Divide the eggs into thirds and it's probably best to halve the olives. A plain, fairly vinegary vinaigrette goes best with this salad.

Grilled pepper Tunisean salad
3 peppers - red and yellow - you decide!
300 ml Rice (~1/2 pint)
600 ml water (~1 pint)
1 tsp curry powder
1 skinny leek
2 tomatoes
1 clove garlic
Herbs to taste
Marinated feta cheese to taste

Grill the peppers - either place under a hot grill and turn each side once it had blackened, or use a fork to hold the pepper in the gas burner on your stove. You want to vlacken the skin all over! Once they are blackened, place in a bowl and cover with clingfilm. The steam will loosen the skins.
Add the rice and water to a pan, season and add the curry power - you could use turmeric, the golden colour is the main aim here., though I personally think a slight hint of curry (rather than a vindaloo taste) is quite nice. Bring to the boil, stir once, cover and simmer as slowly as possible. Simmer for 15 minutes before taking a peek. Then carefully check to see if all the water has been absorbed. You want to avoid stirirng the rice as this will make it sticky! When the water has evaporated, pour out into a bowl and leave covered to cool.
Skin the peppers and chop the flesh into 1/2 cm square pieces. Add to the rice.
Skin the tomatoes by either burning the skins over a gas flame, or dipping into boiling water for 20 seconds or so. Chop these and add to the rice.
If you got a skinny leek, then clean the upper part by slicing into four pieces where it goes from white to green and washing under the tap. If the only leeks available were somewhat bigger, then select the bottom white part - you can save the greener area to use in something cooked later. Slice into super-thin rings and add to the rice.
The salad is almost complete - you want to drizzle over some fine olive oil and some white wine vinegar to taste. Add chopped herbs of your choice (fresh only please! I recommend parsley and oregano). Stir in all the vegetables with the rice and use a fork if necessary to "fluff" the rice.
Finally, add marinated feta cheese to taste! Yum!
I have no idea if this is actually Tunisean, but it seems right to me ;-)

Finally I served this with
Goats cheese and thyme stuffed chicken
8 chicken thigh fillets
A light goats cheese
Fresh Thyme

This is simplicity itself, but tastes wonderful! Dice your goats cheese in small pieces, add chopped thyme and simply crumble them together.
Take your chicken fillets and roll a piece of the cheese and thyme mixture in each. Fasten with a wooden cocktail stick.
Place in an oven dish, be sure to coat with a light brushing of olive oil, season and sprinkle over a little extra thyme.
Cook in the oven for 20-25 minutes at 225C - gas mark 8 until golden brown and the cheese is starting to run out.

The nice part of this combo is that the simple chicken pieces can be served separately from the salads, meaning that there's something for vegetarians as well as meat eaters. Serve with some big roast slices (3/4 inch thick) of potato. Parboil for 5 minutes, then drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with thyme, pepper and salt. Place in an oven dish and roast at 225C (gas 8) for approx 40 minutes until crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. AAAArmadillos!