Monthly Archives: June 2007

Chaos in the making…

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Last week on Friday (June 22), I got an email from my website host with the subject: “Collarhosting – URGENT!” The email read something like this:

Dear sir, this email is to inform you that collarhosting.com will be shutting down it business by june 30, we advise you to by hosting from other hosts. Here are a list of host that you may find interesting. please cancel your subscription with us on paypal. If you are using paypal a refund will be provided for you for this month.

….

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Collarhosting allowed me to pay by the month, so the last thing on my mind was getting a refund, it was only $5 a month and PayPal is good about refunds.

The big thing on my mind was “Where do I find a host within the next week?” and “Can I copy everything in time?”

To be entirely honest, I mis-read the email at first, and took it that I had 30 days to find a new host. The second email I got on Sunday made me take a second look to see that, I in-fact, had only 7 days.

As of right now, I am moving the final files over to bluehost.com, my choice for my next webhost. I did not have much time to research them, but I felt they were the best of the options I gave myself. I’ll be posting more on my thought process within the next week. For right now, I just want to make sure that everything is up and running properly. I have to switch over email accounts and make sure my domain names and subdomains are functioning properly.

If you find any bugs, let me know, I’m doing my best to fix them.

Plethora of Useless Choices: Digital Cameras

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or “What to look for in a digital camera.”

A few months back I had the opportunity to help a friend go camera shopping. She was looking for a simple point and shoot digital camera, hoping to use it for up close pictures of flowers, flora, and general greenery. It had been quite some time since I had been in the market for a camea myself, so I thought it would be fun to see how things have changed and get an idea of what is actually out there.

After a fairly thorough investigation of options, I have come to this as my conclusion: all the cameras are the same. No one camera has any features which separate it from another. To make matters worse, the camera companies seem to not only in competition with their camera making rivals, but also be in competition with themselves. Companies like Kodak and Canon have dozens of cameras with the only difference being so subtle, it’s hard to tell the difference between them.

When looking for a camera, there are really only 6 things that you need to look for. Continue reading →

Apple Rhubarb Pie

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I wanted to make apple pie tonight, but I soon found out I did not have enough for apples. So I decided I would add some rhubarb to make an apple rhubarb pie instead. I used basically the same recipe as apple pie, but added more sugar to counter act the sour rhubarb and didn’t add any cinnamon. Basically, my recipe was as follows:Apple Rhubarb Mix

3 Cups Sliced Apples
3 Cups Sliced Rhubarb
1 Cup Sugar
3 Tablespoons Cornstarch

Mix this together, and set it aside. You may want to add more sugar if your apples are really tart. Next comes the crust. The crust is as follows:

2 Cups Flour
1 Teaspoon Salt
3/4 Cup Butter Crisco

Mix these ingredients together thoroughly, so that it has a consistency like cornmeal.

Now add 6-8 Tablespoons of ice water.

Start with 6, then add more as needed. Use a fork to fluff the dough together. DO NOT over work the dough as you add water. This is the KEY to a flaky crust.

Now that you have your dough, take half of it and roll it out for your bottom crust. Place in a 9 inch pie plate. Then you can add the fruit mixture. Next roll out the rest of the dough, and use that as your top crust. Pinch the top and bottom crust together in the manner of your choice, some people use fingers, others use forks. Put some designs on top with your knife. I like to make a pi symbol, but a line and some pokes work fine.

Apple Rhubarb FinalPut the pie in the microwave for 15 minutes while you preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. When your pie is done in the microwave, bake it in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the crust is a nice brown color.

And with that, you are done! I would recommend letting the pie cool a bit before you attempt to eat it, but I wouldn’t let it get cold. Vanilla ice cream goes very well with the pie.

Enjoy! I know I will!

Posted in Pie

Temporary Setup

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While my family is gone for the next several days, I finally took the liberty of setting up all the computers where I can easily access them, without having to climb over some to get to others and then have to sit on the floor. I’m currently working on panoramic photos, so I have my PowerBook’s external where the main files are stored, and I’m pumping them over to the Windows machine (I can’t get Hugin running on Linux due to dependency issues… believe me, I’m trying…), where they are being crunched on and saved, and then I drag the files back. The whole setup is running through a small little Linksys Wireless-G router, which is holding up miraculously well.

I was doing some internet surfing on the iMac, but I decided it would be best to save power and shut it down. The eMac is currently uploading a video to YouTube, and will continue with any downloads when it’s done. I’ll only be able to keep this setup like this until Saturday, so I hope it works while I have it.

Temporary Setup
Temporary Setup 2

I also hope I don’t blow a fuse. (Although, it wouldn’t be a fuse it would be a circuit breaker.) The interesting thing though, is that my laptop and hard drives are being powered from a different room in the house via an extension cable, and the other computers are all from different power outlets, so outlet wise, it’s pretty spread out. With the iMac off and the Printer off, I don’t think I’ll be having any issues at all. Although, it would be great fun to pull up the old PowerBook Duo… if only I had a place to plug it in…

Sherlock Holmes

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Recently, that is to say, within the last few months, I acquired, by means of a large library book sale, a volume entitled “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes,” by A. Conan Doyle. I purchased this fine volume for a grand total of 50 cents, with the intention of reading it as I found time over the summer. To date, this has not yet expired. However, even more recently, I have, quite astonishingly, stumbled upon a free audio book in iTunes entitled “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I quickly downloaded the audio files and placed them promptly on my iPod in the hopes that they will entertain my mind while I mindlessly package tape in a monotonous assembly line, as is my custom to do for several days on end, breaking only on Saturday and Sunday for a few hours. As it came to pass, I find myself completely thrilled and entirely absorbed with the good work. My only complaint is that the reader of the books has a habit of getting soft at times, which is perfectly fitting for the story, but hardly fitting for the noisy environment I labor in.

I believe, that as of current, only Sherlock Holmes book I have read would be that of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” which I read many years ago, and enjoyed quite thoroughly. Now having listened to most of the audio book, I look forward to getting time to read the work that I purchased.

Maple Pie

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For those of you who don’t know me. I love pie. While in Canada last month I had the opportunity to have a Maple Pie in a neat little cafe called Terrasse La Nouvelle. I was very impressed by this pie because it had a texture similar to a pumpkin pie, yet was sweet like a pecan pie. It didn’t taste like pumpkin, and neither was the maple flavor very strong. If I remember correctly, it was also a light-ish grey in color.Mixed Crust Ingredients

I knew that I had to try to duplicate this pie over the summer, and I knew that my mom would love to help me. So tonight we decided to try to tackle our Maple Pie. The first thing my mom did was surf the net to try to find a recipe, but instead she found several recipes stemming from two different methods, one being a pumpkin base, the other being a gelatin base. We decided to try the pumpkin base for starters, and we ended up going with a fairly standard pumpkin pie but without the seasonings.

We started with making a crust. A good crust makes a pie twice as good, and a store bought crust is not good. We needed a single crust, so just double this recipe for a single crust pie:Pie Crust in Pan

1 cups of flour
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter Crisco
Mix together well consistency should be like cornmeal, add
4-6 tbl ice water, mix in gently a few spoonfuls at a time KEY to flaky crust, don’t over work the dough once you put the water on it. Use a fork to FLUFF it once the water is added.
roll out in a circle

We rolled the crust out, and then placed it in our 9 inch pie pan. With the crust taken care of, we set to creating the pie filling. In our case, we used:Maple Pi Mixture

1 1/2 cups canned pumpkin
1/4 cups maple syrup
1 1/2 cup heavy cream
4 eggs
2 tbsp flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp maple flavoring

We mixed all of the ingredients together, and had our oven preheated to 350 degrees. We put the pie in the oven, and baked it for about 45 minutes, turning the temp down to 325 after the first 10 minutes to provide a more even baking of the pie.

Pouring into CrustWhen the pie was sufficiently cooked we took it out and let it cool. Then we were able to try our creation. This is my favorite part. Our final result was not like the pie I had at the little cafe in Quebec. But it is a very unique pie, and I am pleased with how it turned out. To me, the pie tastes almost like a pancake, because the maple syrup is a strong flavor, yet I can still taste a hint of pumpkin in the pie. The crust is excellent, it is very flaky and very good.

Once this pie is gone, we will have to make another attempt at our Maple Pie, probably trying from the gelatin standpoint. I’ll let you know how it turns out. In the mean time, I have pie to eat!

Finished ProductEating Pie

Posted in Pie

Storage Space

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A few weeks back I had about 3 Gig of storage space on my PowerBook’s 100 Gig Hard Drive. My 250 Gig external drive is partitioned into a 100 Gig clone of my laptop drive, and the remaining segment was free space for video editing and and other file stuff. This partition had about 7 Gigs left.

I had just returned from a choir tour with 3000 new photos, many of which were to be stitched together to create panoramic photos. I realized I needed more storage space. So I went to Other World Computing, and purchased a 320 Gig Seagate hard drive. (Which actually turns out is really a 300 Gig hard drive, but I kinda expected as much…) As well as second NewerTech miniStack. (I love the look of the miniStacks. Can’t wait to get my next one!)

The first thing I did, when I got my new drive was set it up and hook it up to my computer. I then copied my iPhoto Library, (all 30+ Gigs of it) as well as 12 Gigs of Panoramic work to the new drive, and deleted the old files from their respective drives. (Leaving of course my backup drive with the photos on it.)

I then started working on some new panoramic photos from my tour. So far I have started on 12 panoramics from my tour. These 12 photo projects collectively take up 55 Gig of space. For those of you who are use to taking photos that are 1-2 MB in size, or those that have the nicer cameras and have images in the 2-4 MB size, you’re basically talking about workign with a 500-800 MB image file. I actually have a 1.55 Gig tiff file for one of the documents. These are the images that take 3-5 minutes to save, on my 1.67Ghz PowerBook with 2 Gig of Ram.

All together, I am using about 104 Gig on my new drive, and I still have a lot more work to do. I’m very glad I made the purchase.

PowerBook Keyboard

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Sometimes the best fixes are the ones that go crunch. My PowerBook half-heartedly fell from my knee to my foot this evening, and soon after I found that my space bar didn’t always want to give me a space. I had lines of text which kindalookedlikethis. At first I began to worry, but after a few Google Searches, I found this advice on Adam Kalsey’s blog:

The space bar on my PowerBook has been sticking as long as I can remember — perhaps it came like that, I don’t recall. The key only travelled about halfway down; sometimes it added a space, sometimes it didn’t. I tried all the various recomendations I’d found online: vaccuuming the keyboard, shaking it upside down, and a few other odd ones. Nothing worked.

Today I got annoyed with it enough that I just pushed down really hard. I heard a “crack” and a bunch of spaces appeared on the screen. The spacebar now works just fine. Whatever was causing it to stick has been broken, pulverized, pushed aside, or otherwise rendered harmless.

(Original Post)

After following the advice, my keyboard is working smoothly again!

Pan’s Labyrinth

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A few months back I passed up the opportunity to see Pan’s Labyrinth in the theater. It was too expensive, a long trip, and I had other plans for the night the group was going, but I knew I wanted to see it. So the first movie I put on my Netflix Queue when I started Netflix back up this summer, was Pan’s Labyrinth.

For those who don’t know, Pan’s Labyrinth is a foreign film, set in Spain during one of the wars. As a result, the film is in some form of Spanish, so I was forced to read subtitles for the duration. I am curious as to how accurate the translation between the Spanish and the English is, there were a few exclamatory lines where in I wondered if the English was more of a loose translation of the Spanish, but besides that I assume it was fairly accurate.

I  was extremely impressed by the cinematography of the movie. Unlike American films, where the camera changes angles ever two seconds whether it needs too or not, this film was nothing but long shots, and the majority of the shots were panning or moving. As a result, the shots never felt too long, and between the amazing camera work and the intriguing story-line, the movie flows along smoothly, and almost too quickly. It was a two hour movie, and when it was done, I could hardly believe that two hours had passed.

There were a few instances where the music was very touching, but overall the soundtrack was not very noticeable. Which gives you a bit of an idea how everything really just blended together.

It is also a very sad movie, and although it is described as a fairy tale for adults, it
might not be the fairy tale ending you initially expect.

Overall, I think it’s a really amazing movie, and superbly executed. It deserves the awards it has achieved. Highly recommended for those who don’t mind the violence that is portrayed.