Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2011

A Quick Humus

As part of the Falafel recipe already listed, I never listed a Humus recipe, or more like how to make it. Ingredients Please note that my kids are very salt and pepper sensitive so adjust to taste. A tin of chickpeas, NOT drained 4 tablespoons of tahina (sesame paste) 2 cloves garlic, bottom cut off and pealed teaspoon of powdered cumin 3 or 4 tablespoons of lemon juice 2 or 3 tablespoons of olive oil salt and pepper to taste Method The one thing about Humus is it must be smooth. SO use a strong blender. Empty tin into the blender then add garlic, tahina, the garlic cloves and cumin. add the 3 tablespoons of lemon juice and 2 tablespoons. And blend. Not that I have kept on standby the lemon juice and Olive oil. This is because you may need to add it later when the blender is struggling. Blend or pulse until mixed, then taste, add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Then blend again. If it is too thick add the extra olive oil You can also add powdere

RPC over HTTPS does not work anymore- FIXED!

Recently I have had a problem with RPC over HTTPS. It has worked for years, but suddenly users told me it was not working. If they had told me when I would perhaps have found it quicker but instead, I had to wade through all the documentation and goodies. For I tried to re set it up, that did not work. I tried reinstalling and that did not work. Eventually I founds this cool tool online Test Exchange Connectivity and when I ran this test, and expanded the errors I was finally pointed in the correct direction. In the IIS config of RPC. I click properties, and I saw that "Accept client certificates" was ticked. I unticked it and just like that it worked. By the was cool trick I learnt to check the connectivity was to Ctrl+right click on the Outlook Icon in the right of the tool bar and the select Connection Status... It then tells you TCP/IP or RPC.

Open letter to anti piracy movement

I am a big believer that you should support the people responsible for art and music by buying their product. I believe without support artists are not rewarded for their work. The problem I have is with the distributors, and why I believe that electronic distribution is the only way forward. In South Africa it is unfortunate that this option is not really available, but the methodology I have adopted is to get items electronically then order the hard copy via an on-line shop or similar sometimes not even opening the package, when delivered, although normally I like to read the printed material out of interest. Why do I prefer this. Well after I have purchased a product, I have to be subjected to the distributors advertising. I did not ask for it and why do I have to have it thrust upon me. Recently I order a few CD's I had downloaded and inside there was a advertising glossy, that is pretty easy to dispose of. But this is not the case with DVD's. Why do I have to be forced to

Very useful note about baking

I found this online at http://www.prestoflour.com/Portals/TheArtOfBaking/portal.aspx?tabid=21#FAQ14 Assuming you are working with a well-balanced formula, when a cake falls, peaks and cracks, or has poor texture, the first thing to consider is the oven temperature. The next is the proportion of ingredients (how they are weighed or measured). Incorrect substitutions without adjustments are often the problem; jumbo eggs instead of large, all purpose flour instead of cake flour without making necessary adjustment, old baking powder. Assuming you are following directions precisely and has accurately weighed or measured the ingredients, the most common cake problems and causes are: Burnt on bottom with undercooked batter Cause: Inadequate air circulation in oven Burns on sides Cause : Uneven heat in oven Oven too full Oven too hot Baked too near sides of oven Coarse grain Cause : Too much leavening Insufficient creaming Use of liquid shortening Use of ordinary flour Oven temperature too low

Where there is a will…

The eagles have really dealt with this before, in their song "get over it". I am amazed that every day there are people that blame something for the reason they have not succeed. However looking around you see many, many people that have achieved a lot more even though they have started with less than those who are very good at pointing fingers. In fact almost every self-made successful person had to fight adversity to get to where they got. I seldom hear a successful person blame other people for things, they normally get their nose down and graft through anything thrown in their way. What has driven this sudden entry, well I meet Michaela Mycroft in 2006, just as The Chaeli Campaign was getting going, and this week she won an international peace prize and she is only 17. Many for more abled bodied people should look at her and see that it is the mind and the determination of spirit that is important, rather than concentrating on the whys and why nots. Congratulatio

Julia and Lucy’s Easy Tomato and Lentil Pasta

I am teaching my 7 year old daughter (Julia) simple meals to cook, so that she can cook her own meals. While she still requires a little help, and Lucy almost 4 years old always gets a tasks this was an easy recipe and it really did taste moreish. Ingredients Yummy Tin of peeled whole tomatoes (or you can peel 4 tomatoes, if you do not want the sugar that comes with the tinned ones) A Tin of Lentils (or about ½ a cup soaked overnight in 1 cup of water and a teaspoon of vinegar) Dried powdered Cumin and dried Basil One chopped onion About a teaspoon of crushed garlic A handful of fresh basil Pasta, we used spinach Tagliatelle (made using spinach juice) 2 x teaspoons olive oil Optional ¼ cup red wine Method Take medium size saucepan and place on stove, get it warm (should take between 1 and 2 mins) Add oil, add onions, and cover the onions with oil This must cook for about 3 mins While that is busy, blend the tomatoes and lentils, and a teaspoon of cumin, until

TILT - more

Things I learnt today the web.config file is the bees knees. It tells the website all the things it needs to know, where to find the extensions what to do with what. I works like other html tags with "<" and ">" and "</" and ">" See -  http://www.csharpfriends.com/Articles/getArticle.aspx?articleID=307  http://www.dotnetrobert.com/dotnet/DotNetBlog/tabid/83/EntryID/6/Default.aspx to get some guidance, and believe you need it, knowing what the file does and knowing how are two different things. I am still not clear on it. One thing I can say is the version numbers for DLLS must match the version numbers on the DLL Also learnt what AJAX is Ajax (sometimes called Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a way of programming for the Web that gets rid of the hourglass. Data, content, and design are merged together into a seamless whole. When your customer clicks on something on an Ajax driven application, there is very littl

Some things I have learnt, that are Easy Peasy, about databases and SQL Express

The is real 101 stuff, but though I would blog it anyway. To create a new database is SQL Express: Run SQL Server Management Studio (if you do not have it download it from Microsoft downloads) Expand the connected database engine (if you are not connect to one then connect) Then right click on the Databases folder Click New database… Then fill in a database name and ok There is a new empty database. The data type to use for a new table in SQL express that is autoinc Create a new table Type in the column name Select datatype int In Column Properties click the [+] next to Identity Specification Next to (Is Identity) select Yes If you want to make that the primary key right click on the row and select Set Primary Key Oh and when you create a table it asks you to name it when you save it.

Recovering SBS 2003 after hardware failure - WOW!

Yesterday afternoon after 6 years of solid uninterrupted service my hard drive on my SBS 2003 server failed. I was pissed, the server had been telling me for about 3 months that it was coming, and I had just ordered a drive to mirror the system volume, and it had failed 2 days too early. My BAD. After calming down I thought well I better pop out and get a new SATA drive (or 2, to do the mirror). I had been backing up; using standard NTBackup, to an external drive (which I was alternating) and the backup has been reporting success. I also use SyncToy to backup the critical data to an external drive attached to my Laptop, so I was confident the critical data could be recovered. I saw a mountain ahead to climb as I was a bit worried about all the settings for: users firewall, RRAS, VPN, SSL certificate for Active Sync access mailbox data on Exchange my SQL Express data and the internal websites Once I had purchase a drive, I started loading the SBS box again. I googled to see if there wer

A simple how to export from TableAdapter to XML file

I recently wanted to import data from an existing system that is written in Access. The system allows for XML imports. Since I needed to do some background programming on the system, I opted to rather to it programmatically than use the standard export, since I would have to do it a few times, and also manipulate the data once it was imported and then exported. I struggled to find information on how to do this, so eventually decided to figure it out myself and this is how I did it: In Visual Studio I created a new project I added Connected to Access database using the Database Explorer, this created a link in the App_Data folder Then on the default page I allowed the user to place the file name, I then added a new DataSet, created a new TableAdapter, put the query I needed in there and Then in my code I exported to XML So the in Default.aspx It looks like this: File to Export to: < asp : TextBox  ID ="tbxCustomersToXML"  runat ="server" Width =&qu

How to post Twitter update on my website?

We are using Twitter to send out news, and would like to post that one a page on our website, so off I went reading about what and where to do.  On the Twitter dev page I found, the below: Web Applications Being browser based, a web application or service is able to use the full web-based  OAuth process  which means the user has the smoothest of the authentication methods. To authenticate your web application with Twitter you must use OAuth. Requests to use xAuth will be declined. Web applications often support multiple users so it is important you manage the association of OAuth tokens to user identities carefully. The way you do this will be dependent on your application and setup. Search API The search API does not require authentication. Streaming API The streaming API supports both basic and OAuth authentication. For the time being there is no date on which basic authentication will be turned off for the streaming API so you are free to choose whichever method yo

Some items to consider about R-R-R

There are three R's in lots of things, the three R's I am talking about here are Reuse, Recycle and Reduce. Reduce impact using eco friendly paints: Here is a list of eco friendly paints: How much energy is saved per item Here is one that compares the environmental impacts of plastic vs Paper: PaperVsPlastic All though I do not agree with everything in this article, it is worth reading: Myths debunked Wanna recycling in Cape Town Recycling in cape town

Great movie sites...

Looking for what to go see at the movies yesterday I stumbled across two sites that are well worth a look. The first is: http://www.moviesite.co.za/ , they have a review of the current movies and have a click through to the new and now much better Ster Kinekor website, where you can now actually book with out being as frustrated as a serial shopper is in the middle of bush. For this site I found a link to Film and Publication Board of South Africa . The link I have here, lists all the movies they have rated. I could not find a search engine, which would have been cool. I now use that site to check out the ratings for movies on TV, I real help. Enjoy the movies, even if you have to pay R55.00 for two waters and a pop corn there.

Export Query and Table structure details from Access using VBA

I am busy migrating an Access system, and documenting, so I need a way to document the SQL Queries and Table details. After initially trying to get Access's documentation tool to give me what I needed, I started looking for alternatives. The below code is partly mine and based on the websites mentioned in the comments. Essentially it exports Query and Table information into 3 files in the tmp directory. I tried to do the SQL queries using CSV but even using "'" and """ did not work, so change it to TABS. This means that you can get most of the details for structures in a usable format (not like the Database Documenter which provides unusable details) so here is the code that I ended up with, thought I would share it: Public Sub GetQrysAndTbls() ' Using a few items found on the internet write query and table definitions ' to a text file including field detail for tables ' Original posts found at: ' http://www.techrepubli