Personal

Quiet for a bit

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Thu, 09/06/2007 - 11:38
You may have noticed this week has been exceptionally quiet, well thats been for two reasons. This past weekend I fell horribly ill. Ill like I actually went to a doctor (only the second time in 6 years) and was flat on my back in bed for all of the weekend and haven't really felt myself until Tuesday night. In addition to that I hit my cap on the MTN 3G the company provides so not quick posts from work have been possible. Anyway things should get back to normal next week.

Today is such a day

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Mon, 08/20/2007 - 13:02
People aren’t chocolates. D’you know what they are mostly? Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling. But I don’t find them half as annoying as I find naive bobble-headed optimists who walk around vomiting sunshine Dr. Perry Cox

Shiney new logo

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Tue, 08/14/2007 - 16:46

Sarah Grant noted today on the CRM team blog that support for Dynamics had been added to the MCP logo builder, which is great for me since it means I can now build a logo for myself Laughing Which will be shown with pride on website from now on. But for those reading through rss readers then here is the logo

My first potjie

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Thu, 07/05/2007 - 12:15

This past weekend I braved Makro and the evil hordes which invade it on weekends to buy my first potjie since I had asked some friends over on Sunday for a late lunch. Since I have never made a potjie before I did some searches on line and found a few articles, but in the end decided to just go crazy. From all accounts the food was good so here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
- 1.3kilos of beef, cubed into about half inch sizes
- 3 crazy big carrots, diced into bit size pieces
- 4 large sweet potatoes, cubed in to about half inch sizes
- 2 pundits of button mushrooms, diced
- 2 green peppers diced
- 2 large sweet peppers diced
- A cast of other things I forgot about now and will unveil during the preparation.

Cooking:
Take the meat and added some freshly ground thyme, rosemary, and Robinson's meat tenderizer. Put that in a container and add a couple of dollops of Mrs Balls chuckney, BBQ flavored marinade and Bandito hot sauce (I used the 5 heat level one). Close container, shake and store in fridge turning every so often until needed. Mine sat for about 3 hours but the longer you leave it the better.
Once your potjie is nice and hot add all the veggies plus half a liter of water and leave for about 30min-45min.
Next add the meat and the basting sauce it has been in to the mix and throw in two cubes of beef stock, and two packets (50g each) of tomato paste. Mix well. Close lid and leave for 2 to 3 hours stirring every 15-20min.
Eventually the liquid should be low and you get more of a thick sauce than soup (think of it as a stew almost). If it starts to catch on the bottom it's ready and has been for 10min or so. Move it to a low heat and dish up on rice.

Why so quiet?

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Mon, 05/28/2007 - 23:39

Why has this and my other blog been so quiet for so long? The answer is that I got married on the 19th of May :) and have had crazy stuff to do before that and have been on honeymoon since then (back at work on the 30th though).

So hopefully it should take me a few days to get back into it and running again.

In the mean time there are a few changes, one is that comments are disabled. I have been getting hundreds of comment spam for ages and just can't care enough. If you want to post a comment, until I get something to help deal with it, email me and I will create a login for you.

Lastly the gallery is finally getting some pictures in it :) (You may need to hit Ctrl+F5 to force a refresh to see some of it).
Been a long time getting round to it, but with the wedding pictures and honeymoon pictures (which is all Namibia and Botswana) going up its a good incentive to get it going!

Website restoration

Submitted by Robert MacLean on Wed, 01/17/2007 - 20:09
Update: The website is no longer hosted at Hetzner - it is now at Web Hosting Buzz. The reason for the move is not because of any issues at Hetzner, they were great. However the cost was a major factor - I now pay the same in a year as I used to pay in a month!
The website is slowly getting rebuild/reuploaded, so relax, it will be up soon ;)

What happened: In 2006 all access rights to my previous host were revoked and all my email addresses were also removed.

A good friend also started to have issues with the same hosting company who previously offered him free email only hosting, due to a number of favours he had done for the hosting company. The hosting company is now sending hi invoices and suspending his service too. The cause of this is a management change internally and the new owners do not want to comply with the agreements we had with the old owners.

As such I moved my domain to Hetzner. They had a special at the point and offered great discounts on paying in advance, in addition to that they offer a great management system which does everything I need (I have only dealt with one person and that was a question about if they offered Mono on there hosting, they don't).

I have delayed getting the website up as email has been a priority and I have not had the time but suddenly I have had a few hours to look at it and this is the result :)

Why is it not ASP.NET? because Hetzer does not offer Microsoft Windows hosting or Mono on their Linux servers.