Yes, a recipe! I like to cook, and I’ve started experimenting in the kitchen, as I dont often have what a recipe asks for, so I try to use up what I do have instead. After reading and trying many overly-elaborate recipes for a simple tomato soup, I decided to try coming up with my own. So here it is:
Ingredients
2 Tins Chopped Tomatoes
100g Frozen Carrots (A handful)
1 tbsp Olive Oil 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp Dried Basil
2 Garlic Cloves (thinly sliced)
1 tbsp Tomato Puree
1 Large Onion (chopped)
Method
Heat the oil over a moderate heat in a large saucepan. Fry the onions and the garlic until softened. Add the tomato puree and tomatoes and stir until fully mixed. Add the Basil and salt, then turn up the heat a little. Add the carrots and simmer very gently for 10-15 minutes. Transfer the contents of the saucepan to a blender and blitz. Alternatively, you can use a stick blender directly in the saucepan, but make sure you get all the chunky bits. Return the soup to the pan and heat gently. Add water and keep stirring until you reach the desired consistency. The amount of water you require will depend on how watery your tomatoes were, and how thin you like your soup. Serve hot with some (preferably fresh) bread. Yum.
Note: Although I’ve included carrots, they dont really add anything to the flavour, they are included for texture. You could use fresh ones if you have any handy, but I always have vegetables in the freezer.
As I wrote in an earlier post, my iMac recently had a well overdue reinstall of everything. Whilst this is good news for the most part, it does cause problems with things like iTunes. I was particularly concerned about losing my iPhone backups. I needed to get my iTunes library back to how it used to be, including all my preferences, iPhone applications and backups. How do you do this though? The only bit of information Apple provide on their website is how to migrate your data from an old mac to a new mac, when you have both machines available. What if your old mac is your new mac? I didnt want to restore a Time Machine backup, as I wanted to ensure this was a fresh start, and not be bringing a load of stuff over that I wanted rid of. The migration assistant was of no use either.
Google wasn’t much help initially, but I did eventually come across this gem.
Whilst, like Apple, that article does discuss the process of copying from one physical machine to another, the process described works just as well when copying from a backup. In my case, I backed up the entire hard drive contents of my iMac using SuperDuper! before I wiped the iMac clean. So I had every file I’d ever need, including old system files.
A friend of mine recently bought a new MacBook Pro, and asked me how he could transfer his iTunes stuff to it from his G4 iMac. As he was not familiar with the Terminal, or Unix/Linux commands, I gave him an expanded version of the above article. If you’re in the same boat, here is the full process he followed to ‘restore’ iTunes:
I came across this video as a link from a story on the BBC News site. It’s a cover of the current UK No. 1 single by Taio Cruz -- Break Your Heart. I much prefer this cover to the original. I think I might have to check out some more of this bands work. The singer has a great sounding voice.
It might seem a little odd to some, attempting to install Microsoft Windows XP into a Virtual Machine running on VMware’s ESX 3.5. That’s more of a job for VMware Workstation or Player. However, I wanted to install a Windows XP VM in my ESX test environment, to try some things out. I was a little surprised when I was greeted with this message during the initial install though:
I’ve installed countless Windows Server 2003 VMs, and not had any issues. Pre-morning-coffee, it wasn’t immediately obvious why Windows XP would have any issues installing, especially as its listed as a supported VM type during the virtual hardware configuration steps. Continue reading 'Installing Windows XP on VMware ESX/ESXi – No Hard Disk Drive Found'»
It’s been a while since I’ve had a rant about something on here, but this one has been bubbling for a long time.
I’ve read several articles over the last few months relating to how Apple always seem to be ‘working’ with record labels and movie distributors to improve sales of albums and movies on the iTunes store. Most recently is the news that they may be looking to include better ‘digital booklets’, or some kind of ‘interactive digital booklet’. Now, dont get me wrong, I like iTunes. I regularly buy my music from iTunes, but mostly, it’s just singles, or the odd specially-priced EP. Sometimes even a music video. I’ve not bought a single movie or music album from the iTunes store. I also know that I’m not alone with this. There’s a very good reason I don’t buy movies or music albums for download, and one that Apple (and the record companies/movie studios) seem to be ignoring.
As an example, let’s look at the top 5 albums currently in the iTunes music store:
1. Now That’s What I Call Music!, Vol 73 – Various Artists
iTunes Price: £16.99
CDWOW CD Price: £ 10.99
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1. Now That’s What I Call Music!, Vol 73 – Various Artists
2. iTunes Price:Lungs – Florence & The Machine
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