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Tuesday March 11, 2008

How to make a curry
I made a curry for the parents' snack at my daughter's preschool again today. It was very well received and a couple of people asked how I made it. So here's a sort-of-recipe. I used to grind my own spices, but nowadays I buy the jars of Patak's pastes. The company's factory is close to Bolton, where I grew up, and they supply most of Britain's curry houses, so don't feel like it's cheating.

My curries are never quite the same twice as I just make it up as I go along. But the basic idea is always the same.

You will need:

1 large onion (or more) - preferably red or strong onion
Patak's Garam Masala paste - Safeway carries them
Patak's curry paste (any other style)
Bunch of coriander (aka cilantro)
oil
salt

Either: 2 chicken breasts or boned thighs
Or: 2 large potatoes
and 1 large carrot (or several baby carrots)

Either: 1 tin chopped tomatoes
Or: 1 tin chicken broth
Or: water

Optional:
Garlic
Dried fenugreek leaves
Fresh Indian chillis (NOT jalapeno or serrano please)
Mushrooms
Pasilla pepper or bell pepper

Chop the onion finely. Fry in oil (don't skimp on the oil; Indian food is supposed to be a bit oily) with the chopped garlic (as much or as little as you like) until the onion is clear, not brown. Add a large spoonful (or more) of each of the curry pastes and stir. If you are using chicken, cube it and add it now. Let it cook for a minute or two. Keep stirring so it doesn't burn. Add the tomatoes, broth or water. If using broth or water just add a cup; you can adjust later. Stir and let it simmer for a few minutes.

If you are using potatoes or carrots then peel, chop and add them. Potatoes should be 1/2" cubes. Add the chilis whole, or slit them in half and remove the seeds. Add a spoonful of dried fenugreek leaves and stir. cover and simmer until the chicken or vegetables are cooked - about half an hour.

Get a few stalks of coriander. Wash and remove some of the top leaves. Reserve these. Cut the last inch or so off the stalks and discard. Chop the rest of the stalks and leaves very finely and add to the curry. Add any mushrooms and peppers. Keep cooking until the peppers and mushrooms are cooked. Add salt to taste. It will probably need some. You can also add a little sugar if it seems a bit fiery.

At this point the curry is ready, but you can leave it on the stove on a low heat for a while. I'll often give it another half hour or longer before serving it. If it's too dry, add more water or broth. If it's too moist, simmer with the lid off.

Garnish with the chopped coriander leaves. Serve with rice and Indian breads such as naan, chapati, paratha. Buy them ready made - don't bother trying to make your own.

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Tags: curry food indian

Tuesday February 19, 2008

This is what I do for a living: xVM Ops Center
Sun has finally announced the availability of xVM Ops Center (sic). This is something that I and many others have been working on for quite some time - so long in fact that I've forgotten when we actually started. In some ways you could say we've been working on it in one way or another for ten years.

I'm not going to explain what it does; you can read all about that in the press releases and on the net. But when you try it out and you click on the Update tab, think of me and the team I work with. The odd thing about software development is that you get so close to a product, it's hard to step back and view it objectively. It's like wallpapering a room; it looks good, but I know where the joins are, where I had to cut the paper to make it fit, and above all else I know that the blasted room isn't as rectangular is it was supposed to be.

So far everyone who has looked at it seems to like it. Hopefully it fills a need and makes the lives of sysadmins a lot easier. And hopefully we can all take a breather and relax a bit before we start work in earnest on the next version.

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Monday February 04, 2008

Healthcare Reform
Last night I watched Michael Moore's movie, Sicko. If you haven't seen it, you should. It takes a fairly critical look at the US healthcare system. Critics would say that it views the so-called "socialized medicine" systems in other countries through particularly rose tinted glasses, and while that's true I don't think it really damages the movie's overall premise: healthcare should be about making people well, not about profit.

Last year was a tough year for us. Everyone in the family spent some time in hospital; Zoe had a couple of days due to dehydration following a particularly oral virus, Alison was pregnant with Jamie, and I had my brain haemorrhage. I decided to take a closer look at how much I'd spent on healthcare.

As far as I can work out, my payments to Blue Shield for insurance alone came to around $15,000. On top of that there was over $2,000 for Medicare. So that's over $17,000 before tax. Insurance covered much of the treatment, but including the various doctor's visits over the year I was out of pocket around $6,000 (after tax). Prescription copayments came to another $600. Grand Total: Around $24,000, and that's not counting the tax.

Coincidentally, My father also got sick this year. In early October he was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Lukaemia. He's since had three courses of chemotherapy, involving long hospital stays. Total cost to him: $0 because he lives in England.

The good news is that there's a bill in progress called the United States National Health Insurance Act, also known as HR 676 or the Conyers Bill, that stands a good chance of becoming law. Well, as good a chance as any bill could that had the entire weight of the health insurance industry against it. I strongly urge you to read up about it and lobby your representative to support it. (Mine does - thank you, Mike Honda!)

Critics of the systems say things like "You wait in line to see a doctor" and "It costs too much". Well I've been to many doctor's surgeries in the UK and I've rarely had to wait more than an hour or so. When I was a kid the doctor came to me. Whereas in America I've had to wait for an hour in the doctor's surgery several times - even though I had an appointment. And that's assuming you can make an appointment the same day. As for costing too much, by my rough calculations the cost of the National Insurance in the UK is significantly less than the SunFlex benefits.

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Sunday January 20, 2008

Hitler's YouTube inconsistency
The Oscar-Nominated movie Der Untergang aka "Downfall" has been the inspiration for various parodies. So far he's had his hacked XBox banned, been unable to run Forza 2, been kicked off an online poker site and iSketch, had his car stolen and seen his beloved Cowboys defeated.

However it seems that using a clip to parody the HD-DVD and BluRay format wars hit a nerve - YouTube has pulled the clip.

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Thursday December 13, 2007

Zoe explains Swan Lake
Zoe: I'm Odette and you're Arfar. Arfar turns Odette into a swan with his magic ring.
Me: Why does he do that?
Zoe: Because he's got a magic ring.
Me: But why does he turn her into a swan? Is he nasty?
Zoe: Yes he's a nasty man.
Me: Doesn't he like Odette?
Zoe: I think he likes swans more.

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Thursday November 29, 2007

Useless Spam filters
I have to wonder what kind of spam filter Sun uses when it lets through an email with the subject ADV: Visit Our New Web Site....

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Tags: filter spam useless

Monday November 19, 2007

Hopscotch goes to 11
In a vain attempt to keep Zoe occupied we tried to teach her to play hopscotch on Sunday. She wasn't happy with our board and amended it. Guess there's a little bit of David St. Hubbins in her.

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I want my weekend back
I spent most of the weekend trying to find and fix a bug in my code. But nothing was working the way I thought that it should. To cut a long story short, I eventually discovered that the name server was returning a value for localhost that was not 127.0.0.1!

I logged a priority 1 trouble ticket with Sun's support organisation yesterday. So far I've had to explain to at least four different people what the problem, is and why it's a problem. And it's still not fixed.

The wierd thing is why this is happening at all. /etc/nsswitch.conf has "hosts: files nis dns" and /etc/hosts contains "127.0.0.1 localhost" so you'd expect that to take precedence. But it doesn't:

# traceroute localhost traceroute: Warning: localhost has multiple addresses; using 10.x.x.x

I suspect that the problem is something to do with the fact that this system's IP address was assigned via DHCP, though why that should make a difference I don't know. But it still doesn't explain why someone thought that it was a good idea to use "localhost" as a hostname, or why that was allowed without being spotted.

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Tags: dhcp localhost

Saturday November 17, 2007

Whatever will they think of next

Yes, it's Double sided paper! It's reversible! And get this - it's for Ages 3 and up. I didn't realise that paper was hazardous to 2 year olds until now. Thanks for the warning, Crayola.

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Wednesday November 07, 2007

Format Wars get personal
C|Net News reports that the High Def format wars are getting personal: We have seen members attacking other members not only in debate, which is the right way, but with physical threats that have involved police and possible legal action.. Yikes!

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Monday November 05, 2007

Zoe's Pre-Emptive Strike on her brother
We had some visitors on Friday. Two friends with their children, Charlotte aged 6 and Stephen aged 2. Which makes them the same distance apart age-wise as Zoe and Jamie.

Charlotte and Zoe were playing in her room when there was An Incident. I don't know exactly what happened, but it seems to have involved Stephen and a toy giraffe.

Following the Incident it would appear that Charlotte explained to Zoe her views on younger, male siblngs. Because soon afterwards Zoe came downstairs and asked if I'd put a (child-proof) lock on her bedroom door to keep Jamie out. I agreed that I would and she went back to play with Charlotte.

I thought that would be the end of it, but oh no. Not my Zoe. On Saturday she announced that she wanted to make a sign for her door. From what she described it sounded as though she wanted something like the image I've got here. I got her some paper and mummy helped her make it, I gave her some sticky tape and she stuck it to the door.

On Sunday night I took a closer look at the sign. I meant to take a photo of it, but my camera is bust, so it'll have to wait. And as expected there is the stick figure of Jamie and lots of red. But next to the sign she has had mummy write the words "Jamie, please stay out of my bedroom when you are two years old". I just fell about laughing.

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Saturday November 03, 2007

The High Def Format wars part 2
I was thinking more about the Toshiba HD-DVD player sale from yesterday. And I've read some criticism that it doesn't make sense from Toshiba's perspective to fill the market with cheap players - why would consumer electronics manufacturers enter a marketplace where margins are so low?

It makes sense to me. If you look at the major backers of the two formats, Sony is the main force behind BluRay and Microsoft and Toshiba are two of the main forces behind HD-DVD. In fact the free DVD offer is co-sponsored by Microsoft. Every single HD-DVD player or disk that's sold means royalties for Toshiba and Microsoft.

So right now it makes sense for Toshiba to sell players at cost - or even give them away - so long as it gets HD-DVD media into the punters' hands. And having bought a HD-DVD player they are unlikely to rush out and spend another $200-$300 on a BluRay player just yet.

Now there's no denying that BluRay is the vastly superior technology. You can fit way more information onto a disk for one thing. Plus the standard includes Java, which makes for some great possibilities in terms of interactive menus etc. So even though Sony has a less than stellar record in terms of backing the winning horse (Betamax, SACD, MiniDisk, etc.) to some extent it's like the battle between CD-R and CD+R a few years ago; eventually there will be no clear winner, the standards will exist side by side. There's enough BluRay and HD-DVD disks in the market today to ensure that neither format will fade away completely. And there are already players that handle both BluRay and HD-DVD media, though they cost around $600. But the costs will fall as time goes on. My first DVD player cost about $300; the last one I bought cost about $30 and plays all kinds of media (CD-R, MPEG-3, DiVX) that my old Sony player won't.

So eventually the market for HD players will be like the market for DVD players today. The winners will be those who embrace both technologies. In the meantime, buy whatever format you like and expect to replace it in a year or so.

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Friday November 02, 2007

Bumbo Seats and Dumbo Parents.
A company has recalled 1 million child seats because of a few retarded parents who placed their kids in seats on top of tables. Apparently the parents did not possess the common sense of a goldfish and this warning label wasn't clear enough:

WARNING — Never use on a raised surface. Never use as a car seat or bath seat. Designed for floor level use only. Never leave your baby unattended as the seat is not designed to be totally restrictive and may not prevent release of your baby in the event of vigorous movement.

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The High Def Format wars continue
Interesting events today in the battle between BluRay and HD-DVD. WalMart had a "secret sale" at 8AM with Toshiba's HD-A2 player being sold for under $100 and discs for under $15. Each store reportedly had on average 25-50 units, which in most cases sold out in minutes - multiply that by the 750 stores thatvreputedly offered it and that's a lot of players. Toshiba also has a mail-in offer going on until the end of february, where you can get 5 free HD-DVD titles with the purchase of a player. 5 discs and a player for under $100 is a pretty good deal, even if most of the titles on offer aren't that exciting. Best Buy also had the same player for sale at a similar price online but is also sold out.

This represents a significant boost for the HD-DVD camp. The BluRay faction has been claiming that their players are outselling HD-DVD players, but that's counting Playstation and computer drives - if you only count standalones then HD-DVD is way ahead. And while I know some people who used their old PS2 as a DVD player, frankly it was a huge PITA. Most people prefer to keep their home theatre and games systems seperate.

What's interesting though is the timing of this deal. With Thanksgiving just 4 weeks away is WalMart making a pre-emptive strike on shoppers' attention in the hope of luring them away from competitors? Their web site does say that there will be more of these "secret sales". Or is this the first sign that Black Friday is moving to the beginning of November?

Unfortunately I missed my chance to grab one of these units. Hopefully I'll get another opportunity soon. This has effectively set a new price mark for next-gen players and surely other manufacturers will have to follow suit. After all, as with commodities like phones, razors and printers the real money is in the media, not in the initial sale.

Update: Circuit City still has them for $129. Hmmm...

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Tags: bluray hd-dvd

Monday October 22, 2007

In the pants
While investigating a strange error message in part of our project I came across an entry on a German forum. Not being much of a German speaker (although I do own several Rammstein albums) I naturally turned to Google for assistance. I was particularly struck by this comment:

Du versucht eine Instanz der Klasse "java.util.logging.Logger" per RMI zu verschicken, was natürlich in die Hose geht. (sun wird doch nicht seine eigenen Systeme unterstützen, nein, das wäre ja zu einfach).

which Google translated as

You tried an instance of the class "java.util.logging.Logger" by RMI to ship, which of course in the pants. (Sun, but not his own support systems, no, that would be too easy).

So I turned to my polyglot friends for assistance. Eric suggested:

You tried to transmit an instance of the class "java.util.logging.Logger" via RMI, which is of course a complete flop. Sun would certainly not support your approach-- that would be too easy.

Eric went on to point out that in German vernacular there is a completely different meaning. We aren't quite conversant with the latest German trends, but we suspect that it has something to do with this.

Update 1: According to Jan, In die Hose gehen corresponds with crapping out, quite literally. Basically crap into ones pants. It is used to describe a failure in a derogative way. Something that failed, but shouldn't have, due to bad design or idiocy or ignorance. Now, this is not the definition in the dictionary, so don't think: wow, the Germans DO have a word for everything!

Update 2: If anyone is interested, the root cause of the problem was trying to serialise a class that had declared an instance of the Logger. The fix was to declare the instance transient

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