Classic bread recipe

1 cup water 120 degrees

1 cup buttermilk - room temperature (substitute 1 tbsp lemon juice and milk to make 1 cup)

.25 cup olive oil

1.5 cup wheat flour

4 cup bread flour

.5 cup sugar

2 large eggs beaten

1 tbsp salt

4 tsp yeast (room temperature)

Mix liquids.  Add wheat flour and mix with wooden spoon until smooth.  Add sugar, mix.  Add eggs, stir until smooth.  Add salt, mix.  Add yeast, mix.

Add .5 cup flour at a time, mixing until absorbed until it becomes too hard to stir.

Pour flour on counter and continue to add more flour, kneading dough for 8 to 10 minutes.  Dough ball should be elastic and slightly sticky.

Place dough into lightly oiled bowl and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

Pour onto floured surface and degas.  Cut dough in half and form into two rectangles.  Place rectangles into greased 5x9 inch loaf pan.  Cover and let rise until dough crests pan.  45-60 min.

Bake at 375 degrees for 30-35 min.  Remove to wire rack immediately.  Internal temperature should read 180 degrees.

My Iced Tea recipe

So you like my home made iced tea, huh? Well, here's the recipe.

1 gallon water
4 black tea bags
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice concentrate (like "Realemon") or juice from one lemon.

 Boil water.
Add tea bags.
Let steep 6-12 hours
Remove tea bags
Add sugar and lemon juice
Stir.
Serve over ice and enjoy!

Acrobat Distiller/Normalizer joboptions AutoRotatePages settings and behavior

In the Adobe Distiller or Normalizer products, there is a joboptions file that controls presentation and conversion to PDF behavior.

I've been doing some research around the settings for the AutoRotatePages entry in this file. When editing the joboptions file with a text editor, the valid values are "None", "All" and "PageByPage". These correspond to the GUI editor settings "Off", "Collectively By File" and "Individually". 
In theory, the settings mean:

•  None/Off: Do not perform any automatic page rotation. 
• All/Collectively By File: Rotate the minority number of pages such that all pages are presented in the orientation of the majority of pages. 
• PageByPage/Individually: Present each page such that its native orientation is demonstrated 

In practice, it's a little more complex.

A PDF document has a default orientation that applies to every page. That orientation is either portrait or landscape.

One can give the impression of a differing orentation for a subset of the pages by using page rotation. For example, a Portrait PDF file may have pages that appear in landscape orientation by rotating it 90 degress clockwise or counter clockwise.

Additionally, using the Document->Insert pages menu item in Acrobat Pro, one can insert pages that are in a different orientation than the rest of the PDF. This is not accomplished using page rotation, but by defining the page dimensions (in points) for a page. It is not possible to change an existing page's dimensions, nor is it possible to add a new page with different page dimensions.

Consider this PDF (Portrait with inserted landscape pages)
After distilling/normalizing, the resulting PDF page orientation with various settings of AutoRotatePages is:
None: All pages are displayed portrait, but page 2 and 3 are rotated 90 degrees counter clockwise
All: Same
PageByPage: Same

Consider this PDF (Landscape with inserted portrait pages) After distilling/normalizing, the resulting PDF page orientation with various settings of AutoRotatePages is:
None: All pages are displayed portrait, with landscape pages rotates 90 degress counter clockwise
All: All pages are displayed landscape, with portrait pages rotated 90 degrees clockwise
PageByPage: All pages displayed landscape, with portrait pages rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
Analysis:
Page By Page setting does not work. It should show each page in its native orientation but it always behaves the same as "All".
All setting makes all the pages render in the same orientation, based on a majority of page orientation. This setting should be used in most cases.

End of May Basement update

The basement project is coming along nicely. Next I'll be working on the floor, including leveling some areas where there will be vinyl flooring and selecting the carpet and floor that we'll be using. In the last few days, we've sprung another leak near the furnace - I hope it's just the drainage water pump, but I may have to call my furnace guy over. On top of that, we have a tree coming down in the yard, some aluminum fascia work to be fixed, we have electrical work to be performed on the first, second and third floors, and we have to have insulation wrapped up. Oh, and I start teaching a new class format next week and I have a 100 mile bike ride for Tour De Cure on 6/10. Yikes.

Basement update for May 2012

Some tasty brownies

Mary Grace loves these, William doesn't. But I keep losing the recipe, so I'm placing it here. 1/2 cup melted butter 1 cup white sugar 1/2 cup flour 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (a little less FTW) 1/4 tsp salt 1/4 tsp baking powder Add eggs, sugar and vanilla to butter, mix. Beat in flour, salt and baking powder. Pour batter into greased 8" square pan and bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. Cool for 15 minutes at room temperature and serve (preferably with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top!)

Cabinets installed!

Cabinets are in!

The kitchen.

The desk.

Painting has commenced!

The ceiling is installed (except for the panels I'll drop in myself once the lights are wired up) and we're starting with the painting.

If anyone is looking for a suspended ceiling or a swimming pool contractor, I highly recommend Ken Ferguson. Contact me for his contact information.

Another basement update

Sorry for the poor quality - This one was recorded from my phone for simplicity in uploading.



Ceiling contractors should be coming on Wednesday!

Kubuntu 11.10 KMail, Personal Information Manager issues

After *finally* upgrading to Kubuntu 11.10 recently, I had problems with the mail application "Personal Information Manager" aka, KMail startup.

I tracked down my problems to a failed migration, but there was no detailed log information available. I tried several times to cleanup the failed migration then migrate again with no luck.

Finally, I decided to skip the migration and the app would appear to startup then crash.

I figured this had something to do with the Akonadi changes that were the big feature of this release, so I played around with akonadiconsole and akonadictl. The console app tells what data sinks are present and I had many duplicates there that I cleaned up. I used akonadictl to control the tool with the stop and start parameters.

After restarting it, I observed some mysql errors during table creation. Thankfully, those message were very verbose and I was able to track the problem down to the fact that my MySQL installation has a password for the 'root' user.

I removed that password and restarted Akonadi again and things were looking up. After a bunch of configuration, things are getting back to normal with my kmail.

Next step - Importing my old mail files.

Basement update

OK, here's the latest update. Points to note:

Drywall all up except one sheet near the circuit breakerbox
Drwall mudding and sanding in progress
Windows are partially framed
Small fridge has been sold, chest freezer out of the way
Doors installed
Kitchen area ceiling removed

Meatball recipe

1 lb ground beef, organic of course.
2 eggs
3/4 cup breadcrumbs
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
1 tbsp basil
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
salt + pepper

2 tbsp olive oil

Mix it all up, form into balls.
Heat olive oil on medium or medium-high

Add meatballs to pan to sear, turning constantly to sear all sides, but not crisp any side (3-4 minutes).

Remove to paper towels when all sides are seared.

After excess oil has been absorbed by paper towel, add to sauce and cook for a long time.