afog 136
Daze of laze
Saturday we decided to set off for JAFWA. We consulted with the Transperth website and tricked it into disgorging some possible bus routes to take us hither and yon. Five minutes before we were about to depart Maureen's brother Ian arrived. M quickly determined that he would give us a lift on his way home so we settled back for some socialising. At JAFWA Dale tapped me to be the doorprize assistant, a rare honour for a male 8-). Dale also offered a lift home which was also much appreciated.
Monday was Maureen's birthday. I cooked a variation on a Scottish Black Bun in lieu of a birthday cake. The SBB is a bread loaf with dried fruits, nuts, and spices kneaded in and wrapped in a layer of plain dough. Mid-afternoon I had to go off for a job interview (fingers crossed) and I came back via central Perth picking up M's birthday prezzy - an USB 2.0 controller on a PCMCIA card. Eventually remembered to ring Leece who has the same birthday as M.
Posted on 01 December 2004 at 04:59 AM by Stephen Gunnell
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Steveg I came across your website in my serch for info on recumbant trikes. I live in Darlington and am interested in purchasing one. However as they are fairly expensive I would apreciate the oportunity to see one in the flesh and test ride if possible. My email is 'xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxx.net.au'. Please contact me if it is possible for me to view yours.
Thank you
John Thompson
Posted on 01 December 2004 at 08:57 AM by John Thompson
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Pseudo Black Bun recipe for Leece and Eva
- Take your favourite bread recipe with about 3 cups of flour. The one I used was a multigrain bread wich was part Rye flour and had some Fennel and Caraway seeds as part of the multigrain.
- Process the dough in your bread machine to the end of the first rise.
- Turn out the dough, punch down, and divide into thirds.
- Take two thirds of the dough and knead in; 1/3 cup almond slivers or flakes, one cup of currants, and ½ cup of cocoa powder. Form this dough into a compact ball.
- Take the remaining third of the dough and roll or stretch it out into a 30cm circle. Place the ball of dough into the centre of the circle and bring the edges up to cover the ball. Seal the edges.
- Turn the bun over and flatten a little if required. Prick the bun all over with a fork. The tines should go through the outer layer but not too deep into the inner.
- Let the dough rest and rise for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, start the oven pre-heating to 180°C.
- Bake the bun for one hour or until the bottom sounds hollow when tapped. I use some baking (greaseproof or parchment) paper on a pizza tray.
Posted on 03 December 2004 at 09:05 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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Mmmmmm...thanks! It was *so* yummy!
Posted on 04 December 2004 at 04:40 AM by Alicia Smith
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What the?
I'm getting funny Capital A circumflex [Â] before the half and the degree symbols in the recipe. Edit entry ... they aren't there. Check page source ... they are there. Hmmmm. Get brainwave and flip character encoding from ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8. Presto! They are gone. Check page source again ... nope , nowhere does QuickTopic declare the character encoding. Nor does it preserve the HTML Entity encoding that I used to enter the characters. *Sigh* never be portable when being smart will suffice.
I like a lot of anime. I introduce friends and colleagues to worthwhile shows. I try and support JAFWA. On Saturday I went to the annual marathon and they were showing 2x2 Shinobuden and Cosplayers. Why do I ever bother?
John Thompson came by this morning and had a test ride and natter about the trike. I was planning to go on a long ride in October when my contract ended but at this rate it will be mid-summer before I can even think of distance riding.
Life has been quite terrifying here of late. Maureen has been cleaning up the kitchen. Not that she hasn't been doing an excellent job. It is just the manner of othe operation that is terrifying. *hide*
We played Arabian Nights again on Friday. I won with some freeloader called Rob trailing along for a so called equal victory. Hah! Gary also played for most of the game but ended up with so many bad statuses that he didn't seem likely to win when he ran out of time. Actually he had the points for a win but wasn't sufficiently in control of his characters actions to succeed unless someone was being very friendly. We were playing multiple statuses for the first time and I ended up Enslaved, Imprisoned, Envious, and Pursued. Enslaved means my destiny points and money go to another player. Imprisoned means I cannot move and my only encounters are with an Hunchback ( the infamous table 86 ). Envious means that the only action I can choose is rob unless that action is not allowed. Pursued means that all my encounters will be with vengeful beings if that condition is allowed. Luckily the hunchback is never vengeful. I eventually managed to rob enough to buy out my Enslavement and then, after a long while, I managed to encounter a hunchback for which rob was not a possible encounter response and managed to finesse a Quest Success result and get out of prison. On my way back to Baghdad I encountered a foolish Efreeteth and managed to get a 'lose a status of your choice' result which put paid to the Pursued. Finally I was able to go 'On Pilgimage' to loose 'Envious' at a cost of some newly acquired destiny points. * Ahhh* character building that's what it is.
Posted on 05 December 2004 at 03:04 AM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 141
Naaah
Tried the chocolate black bun recipe again with a cup of leftover mixed fruit instead of currants. Nowhere near as good.
Started into the 5th disk of 12 Kingdoms last night. This is definately a fine show. Possibly because it comes from a series of novels that some author spent a lot of care assembling rather than a fixed time , fixed price, script on demand committee.
Madman has some tasty anime releases coming up in the next few months ... Scrapped Princess runs for 24 eps and starts off looking like swords and sorcery but appearances are decidedly deceptive. Full Metal Alchemist runs for 52 eps and is manic early 20th pseudo-century with a form of magic called alchemy. Part mystery, part action, and part road movie this show barely pauses to take a breath on its roller coaster ride.
Posted on 05 December 2004 at 07:42 PM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 142
Rolling along
Went for a bike ride yesterday morning. I think I'll do the same today. No great problems with the hip. A couple of more jobs to apply for ... so it goes.
I spent some time yesterday getting dosbox working properly and then loaded up some of my old games ( at least the ones on 3.5" floppies ). Gee ... dosbox is ... slow. I'm not sure why it is emulating the CPU. I guess it needs to do that in order to trap all the hardware twiddles. Whatever. Master of Orion is just about playable. Warlords 2 isn't unless you are very patient. Reach for the Stars has some problems with the keyboard but gets further than it did under Win 98. Halls of Montezuma seems just about adequate.
After I am back on the employment treadmill I think I might look at upgrading the CPU to something a bit snappier perhaps with a couple of hardware mirrored SATA drives. Rob has a SCSI chained boat anchor waiting in the wings for me. I should get him to deliver it soon.
Posted on 07 December 2004 at 07:18 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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The ghost of RPGs past.
Rob dug up a what D&D alignment are you quiz. Being an old first edition player I couldnt resist.
You scored as True Neutral. A True Neutral person has two faces- either these people are merely apathetic, preferring to focus their minds on more important things, or these people truly believe in a balance of all things. To these people, there can be no light without some darkness. These people also have no dedication to, or intrinsic distrust of, laws.
True Neutral .. 85%
Chaotic Good .. 80%
Lawful Good .. 60%
Neutral Good .. 50%
Chaotic Neutral .. 45%
Chaotic Evil .. 40%
Neutral Evil .. 35%
Lawful Neutral .. 30%
Lawful Evil .. 25%
What is your Alignment? created with QuizFarm.com
I hope I'm not just apathetic. Oh well.
Posted on 10 December 2004 at 08:13 PM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 144
Monday? They still have Mondays?
Rob and Leece came over yesterday and dropped off a surplus machine for me. The unit is a Dell PowerEdge 4100/200 with dual 200Mhz CPUs and 6 SCSI disks. I fired it up and did a base SuSE 8.2 install to reformat the existing volumes and establish myself as the new root owner. Unfortunately it sounds like a jet taking off in the confines of the study. Definately some fan replacement needs to happen. Also took the oportunity to drag out the defunct Windows box, clean the floor, rationalise the cabling, replace the dodgy old Link World two port KVM switch with a new Aten Master View four port KVM switch [nice!], and finally introduce the new 10/100 ethernet hub. Whew!
Loaded up Reach For the Stars into dosbox. Yes! I haven't been able to play this game for yonks. It was originally written for an Apple ][ or Commodore 64 and then later ported to the early PCs. One of a stable of fine games from Strategic Studies Group (SSG) back when they were still an Australian company.
Off to the grindstone now. I have to go and address the criteria so that my latest job application will get in on time.
Posted on 12 December 2004 at 08:29 PM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 145
Hot hot hot
And largely humid too. Owww ... the TV just said that today was 41.5°C, the hottest December day for thirty years. Only half a degree off the hottest December day on record.
Fired up the PowerEdge again last night and reconfigured the SCSI drives to have one raid 5 composed of 4 x 4 Gigabyte disks and two single 8 Gig drives. I may mirror the 8 Gig drives later.
Still writing job applications - I not getting more than about 4 hours of work per day in this heat.
Walked down to the shops today without the crutch. A bit tiring but do-able. A heavy shopping bag carries better on the left shoulder than the right ( the right side has the almost healed ribs ).
Posted on 14 December 2004 at 06:19 AM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 146
Much Pleasanter
Cool and mild with gentle breezes today.
I discovered purely by accident that SSG is still in business and still with 3 of the core crew. Back in the 70's I met Bill Starke Jnr. through Tau Ceti and when I moved to Canberra I used to drive down Sydney to game with him. Bill in turn introduced me to two of his gaming mates, Roger Keating and Ian Trout who were the founders of SSG. SSG produced a (large) handfull of games and then I lost track of them. I had assumed they had moved offshore when I saw their logo on some games that I knew were US produced.
I've just wasted about three hours reading the back issues of Seraphic Blue. I'm still a bit confused but it is interesting.
Posted on 16 December 2004 at 02:10 AM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 147
Boot
I have given Sylpheed the boot as my mailing agent and gone back to Evolution. Not that Sylpheed is a bad mailing agent. It is just that it lacks some features that I have wanted recently like the ability to click through html links that arrive in e-mail and having a mime attachment open in my preferred tool for that type rather than having to manually enter a program name every time I switch between types. Plus Evolution gives me back my links to my Palm III.
I might fire up the PowerEdge while Maureen is out at her office party and start configuring the Gentoo distribution. Oops I need to load a multi processer kernel ... and NFS.
Posted on 16 December 2004 at 10:53 PM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 148
Gingerbread!
Go to Mediatinker and look at the gingerbread.
Posted on 18 December 2004 at 07:51 PM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 149
Well. I'm boggled. I especially like the fan.
Posted on 19 December 2004 at 04:09 AM by Alicia Smith
afog 150
Steamboy
We went down to the Luna Outdoors last night and watched Steamboy. Now the LO is not the best place for this film. A lot of the film has low contrast tones which wouldn't be a problem if the screen wasn't also low contrast. Watch this film as an extravaganza of steam powered derring do and be absolutely certain to switch off any memories that you have of physics, history, or steam technology.
I'm having a very hard time putting a finger on what I liked about this film. I did like it ... I just don't know why. The steam technology looks 1930s rather 1860s but coupled with some ship designs that remind me of the Nautilus from the film version of The League of Extroardinary Gentlemen in fact I half expected some league members to turn up. The british battleship is decidedly post Dreadnaught (1906). The whole runaway mill engine scene near the beginning of the film was just strange with the steam regulators flying apart rather than controlling the steam flow and no sign of a safety valve. I swear they have no idea how a steam engine is managed. I lost count of the number of people drenched in what should have been live steam (which is clear) or showered with shards of broken glass who walked out with just dissarrayed clothing. And as for the flailing machinery ... or the steam tower itself ... *sigh*.
Okay ... for all its faults the story is well told. The characters are human. There is a charming naivety and enthusiasm about the technology and some of the ships are downright pretty. The closing credits do a kind of what comes after with plenty more story.
This is not cutting edge reality anime. This is a sophisticated, retro styled, two hour cartoon. Grab the popcorn, park your brain at the door, and enjoy the big screen.
Leece (Gingerbread): Cute isn't it. I also had a look at the origin site but the pictures were too slow loading to view them all.
I have used NFS for years but never has it been so unreliable. I have the Gentoo portage directories which contain the source code NFS mounted from eldred to william while I am compiling a new system for william. Regularly the compilation falls over with permission denied messages from the NFS server. Switching from udp to tcp fixes it. Why? NFS was never this unreliable when I used it before.
Posted on 19 December 2004 at 08:58 PM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 151
On the busses.
I took a ride on the 99 down to SCG Hospital today to return the crutches. On the way I saw an Egret, a White Faced Heron and a bunch of Pacific Black Ducks foraging in the large drain that runs alongside Ellen Stirling Boulevard. On the other side of Lake Herdsman, in another drain, I spotted an Egret and a Spoonbill working side by side.
On the way back I stopped at Herdsman Fresh and stocked up on stuff. Including some low GI foods that might make their way into Maureen's Christmas stocking. She isn't likely to read this so the rest of you keep your mouths shut ok?
I keep seeing the posters for The Incredibles. I want to see this but M isn't interested. I'll just have to sneek out one day while she is at work.
We are re-watching Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex as it is released by Madman. This is such a cool series and the Yoko Kanno opening and closing tracks are just sooo gooood.
Posted on 22 December 2004 at 04:05 AM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 152
Trill!
The local Black Faced Cuckoo-Shrikes have been in trilling overdrive for the last couple of days. They seem to move to a new area each day and spend a lot of energy sitting around calling with their weird double trill.
Went into Perth to raid Kakulis Bros. today. Stocked up on various flours for the bread making and got some almonds for 2/3rds what it costs in the local stores. I had hoped to get some real oatmeal to make oatcakes but all they had was rolled oats. Cooking day tomorrow. At least two Christmas buns need to be produced.
Posted on 23 December 2004 at 03:57 AM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 153
The butcherbirds have been really going off here.
Posted on 23 December 2004 at 05:43 AM by Alicia Smith
afog 154
Oatcakes!
In the end I ground up 1 cup of instant rolled oats in the chopper/blender and added another cup of Barley flour, 2 teaspoons of salt, 1 tablespoon of Ghee, and 8 tablespoons of hot water to make a dough. The dough will be crumbly but this turned out a lot crumbly so a little more hot water was added. Roll out to around 3mm thick and cut rounds with a 5-6 cm biscuit cutter. Bake for 15 minutes in a 180°C oven. I thought these were a little salty ... possibly because I used sea salt. Nice with drinkies. This makes about 18 biscuits. I might try making some with whole caraway or cumin seeds.
Aieee! There is a Cuthulu worshipper at Kakulis Brothers. I'll get a photo of the evidence to post here when Maureen's camera gets fixed.
Leece: Maureen says the Butcherbird juveniles have been going wild in Kings Park. Come to think of it the BFCS was probably a juvenile as well.
Posted on 23 December 2004 at 07:28 PM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 155
mmmmmmm.......caraway.
Posted on 23 December 2004 at 07:57 PM by Alicia Smith
afog 156
Mmmm.......salty porridge!
Posted on 23 December 2004 at 09:15 PM by Poss2003
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Poss: actually that is the way I like it. Especially in recent years now that the diet restricts the sugar intake. I make 2 minute porrige with milk and add a few sea-salt crystals and a teaspoon of caraway or cumin or a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, or whatever. Congratulations on the new car.
Posted on 23 December 2004 at 09:30 PM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 158
"Tha's no how you make porridge!" she says, quoting an old tv ad.
I like it the old fashioned way - soak the oats overnight in water, next morning add a drop of milk and some salt and bung it in the microwave. Has to be a Scottish microwave, of course.
Will I be able to show you and Maureen Manfred some time this Xmas weekend?
Posted on 24 December 2004 at 05:37 PM by Poss
afog 159
Happy Midsummer Festival of your choice everyone
Merry Christmas, Rob, Leece, Poss, Clara, Richard, & Gary.
Poss: Ahh, traditional oats. Yes I remember them. Actually, once you have soaked them overnight they are fine summer eating with a small handfull of chopped dried fruit.
You can come over and introduce you gigolo anytime on or after Boxing day. Maureen has offered lunch. Healthy lunch. I'm just saying that I'm cooking roast leg of lamb Sunday afternoon and you're welcome.
Posted on 24 December 2004 at 07:20 PM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 160
Xmas Lunch
We went off to have lunch with Maureen's family yesterday. I took Chrononauts along and intoduced the nephews to it. Michael, the middle brother, won the first two games and Chris, the eldest, won the third. Bring it back next year
they said.
I probably ate too much but I had a good time.
Just inserted a sound card from my defunct Windows box into eldred. Recompiled the kernel to support sound and rebooted. Nothing. nada. not a sausage. Oh well I'll debug that later. It is getting too hot to concentrate on fiddly technical stuff.
Posted on 25 December 2004 at 09:18 PM by Stephen Gunnell
afog 161
Hail?
The esteemed Poss came by on Sunday, introduced us to Manfred and then gave us a lift down to see Rob, Leece, and Ros who were living it up in holiday apartments down at Scarborough. We sat and chatted for a couple of hours while cleaning them out of munchies and then Poss took us home.
Yesterday afternoon we had some hail during the thunderstorms or at lest it attempted to hail. Every 10 to 15 seconds a hailstone pinged off the roof among the raindrops. Most melted immediately but we collected one that was over a centimeter across. This is only the second "hailstorm" we have seen in the five years we have been here.
What can I say about the tsunamis? Such tradegy. Kudos to John Howard for an immediate aid response. Perhaps he could put money into an Indian ocean early warning system as well?
Posted on 27 December 2004 at 06:22 PM by Stephen Gunnell
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And an enjoyable visit it was too.
8-)
Posted on 29 December 2004 at 03:53 AM by Poss
afog 163
Dinner
Our peripatetic friend John Samuel is in town and invited us out to dinner last night. I was arranging a location and the favoured restaurant for the desired area was closed so after a little scouting we ended up at Hippo Creek Steakhouse and Grill. When we walked in Maureen said I recognise that pool
and we discovered it was downstairs from where we visited Rob and Leece in afog 161 . Apart from the usuall steaks there were a number of game dishes and som South African specialities. We quickly divided up a game taster ( Buffalo, Crocodile, and Camel ) and some stuffed mushrooms for entree and then moved on to the main course. I had Pork Spareribs in a BBQ sauce based on fruit chutney, John had the Boerwars Baati (S.A. sausage), and Maureen had Ostrich. Everyone enjoyed their food and we had to pass on desert. Prices were about average, $13 to $20pp for entrees and $22 to $30 for mains.
Posted on 31 December 2004 at 04:02 AM by Stephen Gunnell