Sunday Stuff
Killing time at Caribou Coffee with Clara while she’s watching Jimmy Neutron on my phone (thank you Netflix). We’re waiting here while Steven’s at Talmud Torah. He has chess lessons later on this afternoon, so I’m not sure what we’ll do for dinner. The kids are so picky, and what’s worse can’t agree on anything (which is probably pretty normal, I’m sure I’m not alone on this). I wish they’d eat fried rice…. I’m not breaking down and taking them out to eat tonight, though. Just have to hit a concensus item.
Spanikopita
Mmmmm….Spanikopita. I know, it’s not the most traditional of Thanksgiving dishes. Heck, my family isn’t Greek either. However, everybody loves these, and they’re kinda fun to make. My son helps with the division of labor. Here’s the recipe we use . If I’m not too lazy, I may even post a follow up with more detail:
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- 4 – 10 oz boxes of frozen chopped spinach – thawed
- 12 oz feta cheese (pre-crumbled is fine, block is easy to crumble, too)
- 2 Tbsp dried oregano
- To Taste – Onion powder, garlic powder, black pepper
- 4 Large Eggs
- 1 – 16 oz package of fillo dough SHEETS (Thawed at least overnight in the refrigerator.)
- 1/2 lb butter (Two quarter lb sticks), melted
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
FILLING:
Drain the spinach, and squeeze out any excess water until it is dry. In a large mixing bowl, combine the spinach, feta cheese, oregano and spices, and mix well. The feta should be crumbled until the largest chunks are no more than pea sized. Mix in the eggs.
ASSEMBLY:
This is the trickiest part of making the spanikopita. Fillo dough dries quickly, so it should be kept covered while working. The best way to do this is to sandwich the fillo dough between two layers of plastic wrap, then cover it with a damp paper towel. Only one sheet will be worked with at any given time, so this facilitates easy removal of just the top sheet in the stack. Also, since the 16 oz package of fillo is typically packaged in two smaller packages of aprox. 20 sheets, it is easiest to assemble in two batches.
Cover two cookie sheets with aluminum foil.
Lay the first sheet of filo dough lengthwise in your work area. Brush a coating of butter on the left 2/3rds of the sheet. Next fold the right hand 1/3rd towards the middle, then the left 1/3rd over that. This will ensure that all touching surfaces will be separated by butter.
(try to add a diagram……)
At this point the shape of the dough should be a long, narrow strip. Brush the side that is facing up with butter. Place a spoonful of filling at the end of the strip facing you, then fold up the filling into the dough in the same manner as folding a paper football.
(another diagram…..)
Place the spanikopita onto the cookie sheet, and brush the top of it with butter. Repeat the process with each remaining sheet.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.
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Test
From may day.
Yardbird looking stupid even in black and white.
Mayday
Going to try to go to the mayday parade today. Better get my ass in gear!
Pidgin. For Facebook!
Gotta pimp Pidgin – espcially for Facebook.
Pidgin is an IM (instant messaging) client. It’s not an instant messaging network, like Yahoo!, or MSN, but rather, it is a program that someone would use to send and recieve instant messages. The main difference in that statment, is that it is a single program that acts as a front end for most of the other IM applications that you’d run. Upon intsallation, it suports 16 IM platforms, including AIM, Gtalk, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo!.
I initlially installed Pidgin because I fount that i had too many IM conversations spreading across my taskbar (the bar at the bottom of Windows that shows what programs you have open). Pidgin uses tabbed IM, much like most modern web browsers use tabbed browsing. I have one window that contains all of my IM conversations, and are selectable via a tab from each user.
Here’s where it gets really nice- Pidgin also supports a HUGE number of additional plugins that can be found via simple web search. If you’ve ever used Facebook’s chat system, you know that it’s a bit clunky to say the least. Yes the AJAX interface is very convenient for alot of things, but the way it freezes up while i’m typing drives me insane. Pidgin does not support Facebook chat on install, but there IS a plugin for it!!
There’s a few drawbacks for Pidgin- namely that it doesn’t support voice and video, but if you don’t use that, then it’s the way to go!
Talking about WordPress Internet Explorer 8 Accelerator | anant garg
Talking about WordPress Internet Explorer 8 Accelerator |
anant garg
anant garg on web development
WordPress Internet Explorer 8 Accelerator
The Problem Many a times while browsing the internet we come across text which we would like to blog about. A straight-forward solution is to copy the text and paste it in our WordPress text editor. However, we have to copy the site URL separately as well as the title of the page. To ease this process, the new Internet Explorer includes a useful feature called Accelerators. Great! So now we need a plugin for WordPress. The Plugin Unfortunately, we cannot use the Internet Explorer Accelerator out-of-the-box. We need to install a small plugin for WordPress which will enable you to pre-populate the title and content of your new post. Also the Accelerator has to be generated on-the-fly because each WordPress URL is unique. I have developed a two-step hassle free procedure to enable Internet Explorer Accelerator on your WordPress blog: Note: This solution works only for self hosted blogs and not for blogs hosted on WordPress.com because plugin installation is not allowed on WordPress.com 1. Download the plugin 2. Copy accelerator.php to your wp-content/plugins directory and activate the plugin 3. Now fill in the form below: Website (required) Admin directory (advanced setting) New Post file (advanced setting) Screenshot Once you have added the custom accelerator, select any text and “Blog with WordPress”! Suggestions Feel free to let me know if there are any suggestions or comments you have. One feature currently missing is that your text will not get posted if you are not logged-in to WordPress. I will be adding this in the next version along with customizing the output. ShareThis About this entry You’re currently reading “ WordPress Internet Explorer 8 Accelerator ,” an entry on anant garg Published:3.20.09 / 6pm Category:PHP Tweets @anant_garg New Article on Subversion Trac for Multiple Projects http://tinyurl.com/cwvl6g 9 hrs ago Titanium looks like an interesting alternative to Adobe Air http://titaniumapp.com 1 day ago PHP Symlink interesting function http://in2.php.net/symlink 1 day ago More updates… Subscribe in a reader Subscribe via Email Follow me on Twitter 1 Comment Jump to comment form | comments rss [?] | trackback uri [?] baron 3.21.09 / 10pm Works great, thank youHave your say Please select one of these third-party accounts: Or enter your OpenId URL: Or manually enter your details: Name (required) Email (required) Website Finally, what would you like to say? About I’m Anant Garg. I live in Mumbai, India and run a web development firm called Inscripts. We are involved in visualizing, developing and deploying cutting edge web applications and customized software solutions since March, 2001.Recently 3.25 Subversion Trac for Multiple Projects (One Click Build) 3.20 WordPress Internet Explorer 8 Accelerator 3.19 WordPress Third Party Accounts Login Plugin 3.13 Write your own PHP MVC Framework (Part 1) 3.10 PHP XDebug & Webgrind Installation 3.8 Adobe AIR Application Distribution and Installation Categories Adobe AIR (1) PHP (4) Web Development (1) Contact Name (required) Email (required) Subject Human? Your Message © Anant Garg 2009Entries RSS Comments RSS
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While this didn’t format the page out, it’s still VERY cool. – Ben
Home again
Yes, four days at the office. Really quite a whirlwind. Training for a good chunk of the day on Monday, dealer conference on Tuesday, half staff on Wednesday, another half day to travel Thursday made it quite hard to keep on top of my work load, but I did manage to get through it on Friday and feel relatively caught up.
My presentations went well (I think… I hope….). I had thought that I’d be able to get through them faster, but I actually went a bit long on both. Or, maybe i just went long on the VoIP presentation, and that delayed the PRI presentation.
It was very odd meeting people that I’ve only talked to via phone, or via email. This was espceially true of our sales staff, whom I have much less interaction with than our engineers. There was alot of “oh yeah… I’ve seen your name in emails…” on both sides, which was kind of funny. At least I feel like i have a slightly better idea of what other people’s roles are.
More studying this week- figure out how the test has changed between the versions, and get it DONE next week.
Mike, an old friend of Alison’s came over for dinner last night. It was great to have an another adult in the house, though Steven still attempts to monopolize the conversation. We’ll have to have him over again soon, along with any other long lost friends that we can find!
Faliure, and Hell Again Today!
OK- I exadurate a bit…
I did fail the test on Wed, as expected. I’m writing this post from my phone as I sit at McDonald’s waiting to retest again today. Major problem with the test is that its for OCS 2007 R2, but all the study materials seem to be written for R1. That, coupled with trying to just cram through it in a weekend with limited resources was rough. So, why am I taking it again today? Simply it has to do with Microsoft’s retake policy. Given my timeframe, I’ll only have one chance in March, so today is just a “what-the-hell-why-not” attempt. Hopefully I’m a bit more prepared, and though I’ll most likely fai, it will give me an even better idea of what the question pool is like.
Off to Fremont next week for training on our new software version. AltiGen’s dealer conference is also next week across the bay in San Franciso, so I’ll be teaching two classes there (“PRI Troubleshooting” and “VoIP Troubleshooting”). I finished up most of the presentation for the PRI class last night, and about 40% of the VoIP presentation. I still need to dig up trace examples and pcaps. I can grab actual dealer collected traces for the PRI cases, but I’ll probably want to gather my own pcaps. Wireshark away!
Also, as a result of re-installing Windows on my laptop weekend before last, I’ll need to install OpenVPN before I go, so that I can connect back to home. I should also try to figure out a way to VoIP hop off from home while I’m away. Biggest problem that I’m aware of is that we use telco provided voicemail. If I hook up a server the telco VM will still work, but I don’t think that message waiting (stutter dial tone) will pass through. Worth a look though!