Beef Wellington

Food and Cooking — 27 December 2009, 15:40
Beef Wellington is a dish made with a fine piece Tenderloin ('Ossehaas' in Dutch). It is a good piece of meat for days with festivities because part of the preparation can be done in the morning (they take about 30 min) and part of the preparation can be done approximately one hour before the dish is to be served. Since it needs to sit in the oven for about 30 min+ 5-10 min resting time. You have a time slot to prepare for your vegetables.
 
Early in the day.
 
Clarify butter.
 
shallotsmushrooms
Starts off by preparing 'Duxelles'. A dry mixture of finely chopped shallots and mushroom.
 
  • 500 gr finely chopped mushrooms
  • 3-4 shallots finely chopped shallots
  • 4 tablespoons of Madeira (you can use Port wine too)
  • 4 tablespoons of cream
Fry the shallots and mushrooms in the clarified butter until all moisture has evaporated from the mix. Then add the Madeira and the cream. Keep steering until the mix occurs dry. If the mix is to wet it will interact badly with the dough in bad ways later.
Douxelles, almost done.
 

  Next step is to brown the beef (a Tenderloin of 1-1.5 kg). As always with beef use a heavy pan (high heat capacity), make sure you use plenty of fat (also heat capacity) and keep moving the meet around while browning it. In about 5 minutes your beef will be golden brow. Let it rest for at least 10 min (but you can allow it to cool down until the afternoon).

Timewarp

Tenderloin
About 1 hour before serving you will need to finish the Duxelles by mixing it with about 125 gr of Pate de Foix Gras d'Oi. Then take your beef and cover the lot with the Duxelles.

 


Now take sufficient leaves of prefab (ouch) puff pastry and stick them together with egg-whites. You should have sufficient area to cover the whole beef. Put the Beef on top of the pastry and close the pastry. Put the lot on a piece of baking paper with the puff pastry seams down.
Cut a few figures and put on top. Cover with egg-yoke in order to achieve a nice color. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes and let rest for another 10 minutes.
 



 
Beef Wellington

Ringo Kun

Cartoons — 21 December 2009, 13:16

To be posted in the IETF Journal 

 Ringo Kun

Although the result is seemingly trivial this cartoon was a bit of a challenge as I was trying to get a Manga look and feel. Both sketching and inking and the digital post-processing took some practicing and a few retries. 

The puny-code and the two big characters represent the word "Manga". The name of the protagonist in this cartoon 'Ringo Kun' is written in the head band. The name is a obscure reference... a bit of a bad joke actually.


Old documentation

Technical — 30 September 2009, 23:39

In 1993 I had to serve and as my civil service I worked on the User Documentation for the Westerbork Synthesis Radio telescope. I found the material in a forgotten directory. I looked whether it was still available on the web but couldn't find it. For historic purposes and sentimental reasons:
  • Part 0 THE WESTERBORK SYNTHESIS RADIO TELESCOPE USER DOCUMENTATION
  • Part 1 PROPOSING FOR WSRT OBSERVING TIME
  • Part 2 INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF APERTURE SYNTHESIS
  • Part 3 SPECIFIC ASPECTS OF THE WSRT
  • Part 4 CALIBRATION AND REDUCTION OF WSRT DATA
  • Part 5 VARIOUS
  • Update 1 UPDATE
All this material is hopelessly out of date. Check http://www.astron.nl/ for current information on the WSRT.
 

Net Neutrality

Cartoons — 22 September 2009, 12:08

To be posted in the IETF Journal 

 


woord van de dag

Dutch... Hollands...Nederlands — 3 July 2009, 15:01

draalloos

synoniem voor onverwijld (het woord van de week)


Limerick of the day

Limerick — 1 July 2009, 13:18

Waarschuwing
 
Aan meisjes met kokette laarsjes
voor een man die woont in De Baarsjes
wees  op je hoede
voor die engerd z'n roede
want hij steekt hem heel gaarne in aarsjes 
 
 
(Spreek uit : ko-kette in plaats van ko-kette) 

Marvelous Idea

Cartoons — 14 May 2009, 23:46

 
To be posted in the IETF Journal
 
 
 
 

Welcome Wagon (Welcome to)

Music — 16 January 2009, 14:13

A few weeks ago I listened to "Welcome to the Welcome Wagon" on the excellent VPRO Luisterpaal (http://3voor12.vpro.nl/luisterpaal/). I ordered the CD and today it has been delivered by mail.

Cover ARtThe reason I happily pay a few extra bucks for a CD is that there is artwork included and in this case the artwork provides a little background about the work.

This album was recorded and produced by Sufjan Steven and his musical touch stands out. What I did not know is that the music was composed and performed by Pastor Vito Aiuto and his Monique Aiuto. The music classifies itself as folk/gospel.

I do not regularly look at music in the Gospel category. The reason is twofold. First the message does not appeal to me, and second, and more important, is that Gospel music is often stereotypical and not inspired.

This album is different. Although it clearly has a religious message it is inspired, made with the appropriate lower belly feelings, and sometimes has a touch of humor. The album is cleanly produced, lighthearted but still has balls. Proof? At the moment I wrote this paragraph the tune "American Legion" is played, it brings tears to my eyes...

While I do not believe in God there are emotions that one could classify as religious. Sometimes they are communicated through music. And while not true for all tracks this album contains such an examples.

Read more about "Welcome to the Welcome Wagon" at Asthmatic Kitty Records

  



Pillow Talk

Cartoons — 6 January 2009, 20:59

 


B: I hate your guts
D: Why? Do I remind you of yourself?
B: Nah... you murdering sonofabitch. I only scare them, break their legs, and occasionally cause a cardiac arrest --frighten them to death-- while you continue to cross the line.
D: Which line, your line?
I never cross my line. Harry's code helps me to ...
B: Henry's fucking code. You working on my nerves, damned. It never takes more than 20 seconds before you bring up Henry's code. Its a damned lame excuse for your nocturnal cutting-a-psychopath tours.
D: And how are those different from your nocturnal scaring-a-psychopath tour?
... [silence]...
D: and his name is Harry, not Henry, you fuckface
B: You sound like your sister now
.. [silence]...
D: According to the code I should kill you
B: And I should make you relive your worst nightmare a dozen times... That kind of terror worked with others.
D: Not with me, not with me, thanks to Harry.
B: Fuck Harry.
D: Fuck you, Bruce
B: Not today Dexter, sleep well.
D: sleep well, sweet dreams

A Propos Bistro

Food and Cooking — 1 December 2008, 14:40

Last weekend I got  "A Propos Bistro" by Stephane Reynaud. A book with 299 mouth watering recipes, great pictures, great recipes, and a bit of humor. It is one of the best cookbooks that I've laid my hands on recently. Although I have not yet prepared any of the recipes they look straightforward and very standard. Very inspiring!


More Postbank Secure Code annoyances

Technical — 1 December 2008, 14:13

 Remember my previous post on this topic. I went back to the postbank site to see if things had improved. Turns out they have not. Here is a screenshot from the page explaining the SecureCode. Its all about the footnote (the last line on this screenshot).
 
 
Postbank December
The last line reads: 
Caution: When you click on this link you will be lead to a website that has no Postbank address. Check wether the address starts with https://postbank.arcot.com. With that you will have a safe connection to register your Secure code 
 
 
I will not be repeating my argument that notifying, from a non-http- secured page, to a https page breaks users expectation (why would you trust postbank.arcot.com over of postbank.secure-bank-services.com). Instead, I want to highlight that if you click on the link that displays "https://postbank.arcot.com/" you actually get redirected via a non secured link like  http://www.postbank.nl/ing/pp/page/external_link/redirect/0,3042,1859_180483_849292156,00.html?ExternalLinkId=849292156
 
Again, that is unnecessarily  complex and confusing for users.
 
Controleer of het adres begint met <a class="body_text_link" href="https://www.trend-watcher.org/JavaScript:openWin('/ing/pp/page/external_link/redirect/0,3042,1859_180483_849292156,00.html?ExternalLinkId=849292156','arcot','scrollbars=yes,left=10,top=10,location=yes,resizable=yes,toolbar=yes,menubar=yes,status=yes,height=600,width=800');" target="_top" onclick="linkCode(this,'o','https://postbank.arcot.com - 849292156','849292156');">https://postbank.arcot.com</a>. Hiermee heeft u een veilige verbinding om uw SecureCode te registreren.  
 
 

NAT 666

Cartoons — 26 November 2008, 22:52

To appear in the IETF Journal 


The First Principle of Adultery

General — 22 November 2008, 15:17
 

 
The first principle of adultery:
Never make out with a liability 
 
 
To answer the obvious question: No, this is not inspired on personal experience but on a recent conversation. 

From the Waste of Time Dept.: applescript IMAP nested folder creations

Technical — 12 November 2008, 15:21

This is for those folk in google land querying for "applescript make new mailbox Imap"

Today I finished my first applescript. Using components from several other scripts I set out on the following task.

 

  • For all messages in a set of selected Imap folder
    • Find messages that originate from a mailinglist
    • Apply heuristics to determine the domain of the mailinglist and the name of the mailinglist
    • File the message in an IMAP folder with name "ArchiveRepository/domain.of.list/listname/<year>/<Quarter>

One of the subtasks is to build the mailboxes in IMAP with these directory structures. Taking an existing example (The MailArchiveByDate scropt from Dough Hellman) I first took a left to right approach. Writing out what happens internally in a test script would look like:

-- Emulating what would happen in the code loop:
make at the end of the mailboxes of account (name of theAccount) new mailbox with properties {name:("ArchiveRepository")}
make at the end of the mailboxes of account (name of theAccount) new mailbox with properties {name:("ArchiveRepository/domain.of.list")}
make at the end of the mailboxes of account (name of theAccount) new mailbox with properties {name:("ArchiveRepository/domain.of.list/listname")}
-- etc etc

In Doug's code functionality is achieved by:

-- Find the month archive mailbox. If this does not
-- exist, we create it.
try
set monthMailbox to (mailbox archiveMonth of yearMailbox)
on error
log "Creating " & archiveMonth & " mailbox"
if imapAccountName is "" then
make new mailbox with properties {name:mailboxName}
else
make at the end of the mailboxes of account imapAccountName new mailbox with properties {name:mailboxName}
end if
set monthMailbox to (mailbox archiveMonth of yearMailbox)
end try

Unfortunately this does not seem to be portable to all IMAP servers. My email server generates an error when I try to CREATE "ArchiveRepository/domain.of.list" while "ArchiveRepository" already exists and is not a container of other mailboxes.

The obvious solution is create the mailbox using the full path, all the way to the last mailbox that will not be a container of mailboxes but of messages. An example is below:

try
set rootMailbox to mailbox ArchiveRoot of theAccount
on error
display dialog "Creating " & mailboxName & " mailbox in " & name of theAccount with icon 1
make at the end of the mailboxes of account (name of theAccount) new mailbox with properties {name:(mailboxName)}
set rootMailbox to mailbox ArchiveRoot of theAccount
end try
set ListDomainBox to my ReturnChildMailbox(rootMailbox, TheDomain, theAccount, mailboxName)
set ListnameBox to my ReturnChildMailbox(ListDomainBox, TheListName, theAccount, mailboxName)
set YearBox to my ReturnChildMailbox(ListnameBox, archiveYear, theAccount, mailboxName)
set QuarterBox to my ReturnChildMailbox(YearBox, Quarter, theAccount, mailboxName)
log "Box set to " & name of QuarterBox as text move theMessage to QuarterBox

Where ReturnChildMailbox does the appropriate creation

on ReturnChildMailbox(ParentMailbox, childname, theAccount, FullPath)
tell application "Mail"
try
set ChildMailbox to (mailbox childname of ParentMailbox)
on error
display dialog "Creating " & childname & " mailbox in " & name of ParentMailbox & return & FullPath with icon note
make at the end of the mailboxes of account (name of theAccount) new mailbox with properties {name:(FullPath)}
set ChildMailbox to (mailbox childname of ParentMailbox)
end try
end tell

return ChildMailbox
end ReturnChildMailbox

Maybe I'll post the script at some point ;-)


From the Waste of Time Dept.: hpss unable to bind to socket

Technical — 4 November 2008, 10:12

This is for those folk in google land querying for "hpss Unable to bind to socket"

I am running a tiny appliance that is configured with Voyage linux. Its my always-on box that runs as web, mail, print, and file server. Between a update or two printing stopped working. A few minutes of investigation told me that something went wrong when starting /etc/init.d/hplip. It generated the following error:

Nov 3 19:22:39 tiny hpiod: 1.6.10 accepting connections at 2208...
Nov 3 19:22:40 tiny python: hpssd[24441] error: Server exited with error: Unable to bind to socket

Reinstalling cupsys, hplip, and foomatic did not fix this problem. 

It took me quite a while to figure out what was wrong: localhost did not resolve to 127.0.0.1. The reasons for this are manyfold but boil down to the fact that I try not to mess with the default configuration to much and that that default configuration happens to create an /etc/resolv.conf that points to opendns resolvers. Those do not resolve localhost to 127.0.0.1 but to their web-traffic-magnet address.

The fix: make sure that /etc/hosts existed with a mapping from  127.0.0.1 to localhost 

 


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