Extinct Woodpecker Found

A large woodpecker thought to be extinct for sixty years has been found living in the "Big Woods" section of eastern Arkansas.

I crack me up.

Ok, here's the right link: Ivory Billed Woodpecker

6 Years of Electronic Engineering

I bought my first soldering iron and multimeter by mail-order from Maplin when I was about 16 (1984) to build some add-ons for my ZX Spectrum. None of my creations ever worked :-(

I still have the soldering iron. I finally retired the analogue multimeter only last week after 21 years of sterling service and replaced it with a no-name digital one that I picked up in B&Q for €25.

I spent 6 years in UCD studying Electronic Engineering. In that time, I didn't make one useful thing. I know, I know, they weren't teaching me how to solder, they were giving me the skills I needed so I could get someone else to do it ;-)

Every once in a while I get the urge to put some wee electronic kit together, but I never make the time available.

I have the urge again.

Blogs for Dummies

Actually it's a great tutorial on how to use Bloglines to track RSS feeds of peoples blogs. I have converted fully over to Bloglines for managing my feeds but they still have a lot of improving to do on the actual blog feature. Blogger is still far better for running your own Blog.

Using Bloglines

Software Development Approaches

Who needs SOA or AOP when you have the far more interesting POSD:

Politics-Oriented Software Development

O'Neill History

Neat summary of the history of the O'Neill's. No famous Conor's sadly.

http://www.araltas.com/features/oneill/

More Technorati messing

No idea what I'm doing

Technorati Profile

If you're not, you should

Of the zillions of web-sites I access in an average week, only one is unusable with Firefox - the online banking one from the donkey's over at Ulster Bank. Has someone not told them that even MS now recommend the use of the Sun JVM?

Get Firefox and at the very least, learn to browse with tabs.

You'll love it.

Channel 4 gets it right this time

"The Simpsons" is voted the best kids programme of all time.

And someone just said that it's the best TV show of all time. Ye know, they might be right.

Nice to see "The Muppet Show" and "Danger Mouse" do so well.

But "Bagpuss"? Never liked that show. Nothing ever bloody happened.

And a huge relief that they had "The Tomorrow People". For years I thought I had dreamt that show!

Ah, nostalgia.

Anyone got a MIDI of the theme music to "Play Away"? Might make a good ring tone. As a small child, I thought Brian Cant was god.

Whew!

My BMI is a disaster. I started on the road to reduction last thursday, but if I fail then it's good to know this:

Pleasantly Plump May be OK.

Meatballs in Tomato Sauce

I have a recipe for Meatballs with Tomato Sauce which is based mainly on Sophie Grigson's recipe in her "Meat Course" Book. That is one of the best Cookbooks of the past few years but sadly is out of print now. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's "River Cottage Meat Book" is a pretty good alternative for carnivores. My family rave about this meal when I cook it and I have to admit to being partial to it myself. All of the amounts are approximate (use your judgement).

For the Meatballs:
2 lbs minced beef
1 lb sausages
3 tbs milk
1 egg
2 slices white pan (crusts removed)
parsley to taste (couple of tbs chopped)
3 cloves garlic minced (or more if you like)

For the sauce:
5 cans plum tomatoes
basil to taste (loads!)
parsley to taste (couple of tbs chopped)
3 cloves garlic minced (or more if you like)
1 tbs red wine vinegar

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I prefer Filippo Berrio)

To make the sauce:
Cover the bottom of a medium pan with the oil and put on medium heat
Add the garlic. Cook gently for a few moments but do not let it get brown
Add all of the tomatoes
Cook down gently for 20-30 mins breaking up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon
Add parsley about half way
When it is well broken down, add red wine vinegar
cook a few minutes more

Meanwhile

To make the meatballs:
Add bread to milk in a bowl and soak for a few mins
Peel sausages (or use sausagemeat) and add to a large bowl
Add minced beef, soaked bread and egg
Season well with salt and pepper
If you are very anal, cook a bit of this mix in a pan, check the seasoning and adjust.
Mix together very well by hand
Make the balls from this to whatever size you like (golf-ball is a good compromise).
Add oil to a frying pan and apply medium to high heat
Brown the meatballs well in batches so that they are well cooked on the outside.
Do not over-fill the pan or the meatballs will not get a nice dark colour
Add cooked meatballs to the tomato sauce and cook for another fifteen minutes or so.
Add water if sauce has gone too thick
A few minutes before the end, add tons of basil and then add salt/pepper to taste.

Serve with spaghetti and loads of freshly grated parmesan.

Notes:
There are a million tomato sauce recipes. Use whatever you prefer e.g. add onion or oregano or red wine or whatever. I just like this simple one in this case.

I'm sure I've forgotten something above so don't blame me if it is kak.

Brassica Heaven

Yes, she definitely has Walls genes.Sibéal is as big a fan of broccoli as her Nana Rose.

It's a miracle

No, just more dumb blind desperation.

Living, as I do, so close to the famous moving statues of Ballinspittle, I love it when other nationalities can act as clueless as us.

Statues moving? No? Squint. Moving now? Nah. Here drink this paint thinner. Moving now? Yeah! Wow, that's amazing, tell the world.

Mary Image Still Drawing Crowds

Check out the Other Holy Sightings in the side-bar of this one for a belly-laugh.

Project Lifecycle

I was sent this a while back and I laughed my ass off. Inspired single cartoon summary of my working life for the past 13 years. Check it out:

Deepak Alur's Blog

Web Archive - Spooky

I've seen plenty of mentions of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine but I only just tried it for the first time today. Bloody ell! Put in www.conoroneill.com and it gives old snapshots of my web-site going back to 2001. You can never leave your mistakes behind. I was disappointed tho that the old Integral Design web-site was never archived. It would have been fun to look back at that awful spinning gold 3-D integration symbol I put on our very first web-page in '96. Now, who else shall I look for on my lunch break?

First Post from w.bloggar

I'm doing a trial of a client-hosted tool called w.bloggar to see if it can work reliably with Blogger and reduce the overhead of making posts. Seems fine so far for the simplistic stuff I do.