Brent's Blog

And now for something completely different…..

I have certainly become quite the little homemaker of late – especially when it comes to the kitchen.  The years I spent towards the end of my time in Sydney without a stove or oven certainly stifled my culinary expressions.

But now I have a full and working kitchen again, the magic has started to happen!  As several of my friends can contest, I make a damn fine roast – and a hunk of steak with 3 veg is always a favorite.

Anyways, I have slowly been re-arming myself with the kitchen-gadget necessities – Rice Cooker, Sandwich Toaster, and of course, the Perculiator! (Coffee Percolator to the uninitiated)

Yesterday, another gadget joined the family – a Blender! Marvelous machine – and so versatile – from making Purple Milk (Mixed Berry Smoothie) to cocktails of all descriptions, to a hearty soup…Which is where this story sort of begins…..

I had the idea of making some home made Roast Vegetable Soup.

Working right next to the Central Markets makes shopping for fresh vegetables very convinient – So at lunch time today, I headed out and got some Butternut Pumpkin, Sweet Potatoes, Baby Potatoes, Carrots and Onions.  Together with some mixed Herbs, Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil, Garlic Cloves and Vegetable Stock Powder – I had everything I needed to make it.

I only used one of the onions and one of the sweet potatoes from the picture above – I didn’t want the soup to end up to oniony or pumpkiny.

Next was to chop everything into small cubes – no need to peel anything (except for the butternut pumpkin and the onion) as all the nice flavours are in the skin.

I then covered the chopped vegetables with a liberal amount of Olive Oil, and sprinkled with the Mixed Herbs, Salt and Pepper.  Then I rubbed all of the vegetables together so there was an even coating over everything.

Next, it was into the oven for an hour and a half at 180 degrees celcius – I took them out and stirred them about every 30 minutes, making sure they weren’t sticking to the oven tray too much and were cooking evenly.  The result was some pretty awesome smelling crispy coated roast vegetables!

Once I’d let them cool down a little, I put them all in the newly purchased blender, together with 2 cups of vegetable stock.

Now, this is where my story gets rather upsetting…

The blending process worked a treat, however, towards the end (only about 2 minutes of blending), zapping noises were heard from the blender, and a strong smell of burning electrical components emanated from the motor.

After quickly unplugging the blender before it took the whole house out, I removed the glass container to see thick horrid smelling smoke pouring out of the motor’s innards.

Dear Sunbeam: This is unacceptable for something I bought yesterday.  I did smell that “electrical” smell when I was using it to make a smoothie last night – but put it down to being the fact it was new.

The problem now is that I have thrown the box out, and dont particularly want to lug the whole thing back to Myer to get it replaced (its rather heavy).  So I will be trying to get Sunbeam to replace just the motor part for me.  Fingers crossed!

However, in the end, the soup turned out rather well – I had to add a lot more water as you would have had to eat it with a knife and fork!

Oh, and if you’re trying this at home – when you heat it up on the stove, use a low heat, or it will bubble away quite violently…..

Oh, and just to confirm – it tastes WONDERFUL! :)

 

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Well, have just spent the last week in Sydney for work – all in all, a very productive week.

Additionally, I also bought myself a shiney new iPad2 when it was launched Australia-wide on Friday at 5pm.

I was thinking about getting in the line at the Sydney Apple Store after I finished work on Friday, however, by that stage the line was about 400 deep, and I had no intention of standing in a queue for hours and hours, with the possibility of them being sold out and not getting one in the end.

I do think Apple could possibly have managed this a little better – I know how they love their secrecy and giving customers as little info as they can – but some sort of system to let people know they still had a chance of getting one when they’re 400th in line – Perhaps, some sort of ticketing system – handing out a “voucher” or something to each person in the queue for whatever model(s) they wanted – I could see that working.

Anyways, at around 3:30pm, I made a quick phone call to the NextByte store in Glebe to discover there were only around 20 people in the queue out the front of their store, and that that had “more than enough” iPads in stock to cover those people.

So I arrived at the store at around 4:30pm, half an hour before they went on sale, and ended up being about 30th in line.

Apparently, the White 64GB WiFi+3G models were the most popular (or the least stocked) and after about the 10th person had entered the store, someone came out to say they’d sold out of that model.

After another 10 or so people had gone in, they came out again to say that ALL of the 64GB WiFi+3G models had sold out.  By this stage I was getting a little worried.

I managed to get into the store around 5:30, and as I entered a guy at a makeshift reception desk asked what model I was after – If it wasn’t so shectic, I was actually planning on saying “Erm, I actually looking at getting an iPod nano…” but thought it proably wouldn’t have gone down too well :)

Since I knew all the 64GB models were gone, I went for the next model down, and asked for a Black 32GB Wifi+3G – and I was in luck – THE LAST ONE!  It was a relief, however, I did feel sorry for the rest of the people in the queue.  I grabbed myself what I thought was a black leather smartcover, but it ended up being “Navy” (I personally think it looks more grey than anything) and headed for the checkout, where a lovely fellow (who was camp as Christmas) completed all the bits and bobs, and I was the proud owner of a shiney new iPad2!

Once my purchase was complete, it was straight into a taxi and heading for Justin and KC’s place in Darlinghurst where I was staying for the last 2 nights of my trip.

Once I arrived and popped my bags down, both Justin and KC were hovering in anticipation of me opening the box.

Justin did his expected roll-of-eyes etc when I told him it wont do anything till I’ve plugged it into iTunes on my laptop – which I discovered shortly thereafter that I had never installed on the work laptop.

After installing iTunes, backing up my old iPad, and restoring the backup to the new one (and trying to convince iTunes that it was the same one) all was good with the world.

KC had been eyeing off my old iPad ever since I got my new one out the box, so I sold it to him for a substantially reduced price :)

Suffice to say, since this was his first iProduct, the remainder of the weekend has been spent showing him the Apple way of thinking (its not like PC) and advising him of some good apps to install.  It will be an interesting learning curve for him – though he has taken it on the plane with him as he’s heading to Malaysia this afternoon for a few days.

Well, Im sure I have bored you enough with this, so I shall sign off for now, Im off to enjoy the last few hours here in Sydney with some lovely wine, home made pizza, and telly :)

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Well, last Friday (11th Feb) it arrived, in a rather large plain white box with a carry handle on top.

My (refurbished) 27″ iMac Quad Core i7!

The first thing I said to describe it: “ITS HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE”

You can see above how it dwarfs my teeny-tiny 24″ screen to the right of it.

And before all of you wireless people get all upity – the reason Im using a cabled keyboard is that I need the numeric keypad.  Why they only have the compact version available in wireless is beyond me – but the one that came with the iMac will go to good use with the iPad – or on the old MacBook whose internal keyboard doesnt work.

I have had to resort to running a cable into the next room to allow me to have a reasonable network connection – We only have 802.11G here, and its dodgy at best.  I plan on buying an Airport Extreme next week to try and get a better connection in my room.

I have also reduced my carbon footprint somewhat, by virtualising the PC that does all my torrenting – Now that I have more processor power up my sleeve in this iMac, I am running it under VMware Fusion.  I used the PC2Mac migration utility – which worked very well.  On the topic of working well, the virtual machine runs a lot better than its physical predecessor.

I am very pleased with this pretty major purchase overall – Now, just to start using it productively ;)

Posted in: Blog by Brent / Tags: apple, imac, vmware

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In case you were wondering, and I’m sure you weren’t, I have just turned off user registrations for this site.

Mainly, because in the 2 weeks the site has been up, 8 people have registered, and all 8 (from what I can tell) are all spammers/bots/not real people.

If I have made a mistake, and you are reading this about to burst into tears because I’ve closed the registrations and deleted your userID, get in contact with me, and I will sincerely apologise. :)

At any rate, you dont need to register to comment on my site.  As you will note below each post I make, there is indeed a comments section – You can add a comment by authenticating into the comment system (Powered by Disqus) by using a Disqus, Facebook or Twitter account or you can use an OpenID.  Now if you dont have any of those, please, step away from the screen, and go back to the cave you just walked out of (just joking ;)

As you can also see, no-one has commented on my site at all.  This makes me put on my sad panda face.  Surely someone wants to make a comment about my bow tie…..

Oh, now, on the topic of bow ties – the grey one I was showing off in the previous post has “gone in for repair” so to speak.  It was sufferring from a terrible case of fraying polka dots!  But the LOVELY staff at Déclic in Rundle Mall have sourced me a new one and will let me know when it comes into the store.

In the meantime, I bought another one – dark blue this time:

I might buy a couple more – Im *REALLY* liking them!  Lots of people at work have commented that they think it makes me look “smart” and “distinguished” – I was sort of going for “quirky”, but its all good :)

On another topic – I’m going to try to get my head back into to learning new things :)

Waaaaay back in the day, I studied programming, and new my way around the C programming language well enough to tutor my fellow classmates on the subject.  So I thought why not try and update my knowledge a bit, and maybe even put it to some practical use!

I went to Dymocks and bought a book, and a DVD instructional video:

After putting the word out on Twitter, I decided to try two roads – the first one, Objective-C, to enable me to possibly write an iPhone/iPad application or two, and the other Python, because I’ve heard its great, and all the kids are doing it! ;)

Ive had a quick look at the video tutorial – The dude is a bit….erm….well….dull – but I’m going to stick it out and see how it goes.  I’ll probably leave the Python book till after I’ve got my brain back into learning gear again.

Interestingly enough, in the first 60seconds of the video on Objective-C, the dude says that he advises to have his other book on hand to help guide you through the lessons – Now, the DVDs cost $150, I wonder how much the book costs – Marketing ploy, much?

Well, I’m about blogged out for the moment, so I’ll sign off now – but PLEASE do leave comments on the site – I can’t make it better without feedback! :)

Posted in: Blog by Brent / Tags: blog, Bow Tie, Disqus, Objective-C, Python

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Those of you who read my previous post know of my “list” of things to do in 2011.

Well, one thing I appear to have added to the list is changing my own personal image.

On a bit of a whim, I went out and bought myself a bow tie.  As everyone is quite aware, Bow Ties are cool, or so says The Doctor ;)

I think there may be a few more improvements to my persona over the coming year – Its time for a new and improved me I think!

Posted in: Blog by Brent / Tags: 2011, to do list

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With just 12 hours of 2010 remaining, I thought I’d do a little post on the things that have gone on in the past 12 or so months.

Of course, most notable, was my return to my hometown of Adelaide.  I had spent the last 16 years in Sydney, and while enjoying most of that time there, thought it was time for a bit of a change, and I was missing all of my longer-term friends back here in Adelaide.

So, I packed a suitcase, a backpack, and 3 boxes of stuff I wanted to keep, and literally threw out the rest of my belongings.  While I was hoping to donate all the stuff I dumped to a charity, none at all seemed interested in anything, and were even less interested in coming to get it.  This has strengthened my resolve of not giving to the bigger charities (yes, I’m talking about you Salvation Army, St Vincent dePaul and Mission Australia – you spend heaps of money on advertising, but are not interested in free stuff that could actually help some people in need.)

I have been living in Adelaide with my best friend, Paul, and his late mothers husband.  Its been “interesting” to say the least, but one of my first tasks of the new year will be to find a place of my own.  I need the privacy, and quite frankly, the space – I’ve been sleeping in a single bed (something I havent done since I was a kid!) and am still sort of living out of my suitcase, with limited wardrobe space.

Also, Paul is about to go to Europe for the best part of the next 6 months (he leaves on Sunday) so it will just be 2 of us in the house, and I’m sure it wont take too long for us to wish want to kill the other in their sleep….. LOL

Not much really happened in the past year worth mentioning before my move to Adelaide, it was basically same-sh*t-different-day for the duration.  The job I had at Regal IT went sour with them employing a “Managed Services Manager” whom I did not get along with at all – especially when he hired someone as a Team Leader, which was promised to me by management months earlier.  But I take it as a good thing I got out of there – I now have a much better job, doing what I want to do, and getting paid well for it (much more than I was being paid in Sydney, so go figure!)

Looking to 2011, I have a few things on my list, these are not New Years Resolutions at all, its just a list:

• Move into nice CBD apartment
• Do lots of training related to my job
• Enjoy myself a lot more
• Increase my circle of friends here in Adelaide

Of course, its always nice to have a list - whether or not I tick everything off of it is anyone’s guess :)

I’d be interested to see what other people have on their lists for the coming year – feel free to comment and let me know (or, give some suggestions of other things I should add to my list! :)

Until next time… “I am DEFINITELY a mad man with a box!”

Posted in: Blog by Brent / Tags: 2010, 2011, adelaide, sydney, to do list

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Well, after having all sorts of problems hosting my blog from home, I have decided to go with a hosted solution.

Im now using BlueHost.com to host the website, and multiple email accounts.

$6.95US per month for a mostly unlimited service is pretty darn good IMHO.

The unfortunate part about it, is that I think I may have lost all the previous posts from the old blog.

I did try and copy the old blog into the new one, but it was far less than successful. Granted, there wasnt a whole lot in the
old blog, but it would have been nice to keep it.

Meh, Cest La Vie.

Anyways, as I have promised before, I will attempt to keep this thing a little more up to date (the fact that Im paying for it now should be incentive enough really)

Until next time…..

Posted in: Uncategorized by Brent / Tags: blog

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