Category: Informative

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Easter Bun Recipe (easy one)

This is Jo Seagers easy Easter bun recipe. Im all for simple and easy, and this seems to be it!

4t dried active yeast (15g)
1¼ C warm water, at bath  temperature
2t sugar
7 C white high-grade flour, or 3½ C white and 3½ C wholemeal
1½ t salt
¼ C caster sugar
¾ C raisins or sultanas
½ C currants
½ C chopped crystalised peel  (75g)
2T cinnamon
2T mixed spice
2C warm milk (500 ml), at bath  temperature
75g melted butter
1 egg, beaten

For the crosses

¾ C flour
¾ C water

For the glaze

¼ C sugar
2 T water

Method

In a bowl combine the yeast,  warm water and sugar.  Leave in a warm place until the mixture becomes frothy  (approx 15 minutes).

In a large mixing bowl combine all the dry  ingredients and fruit. Make a well in the middle and pour in the warm milk,  melted butter, beaten egg and yeast mixture. Mix well  then turn the dough out onto a floured bench and knead  the mixture. I find it will  take at least 10 minutes (200  times).

Divide dough into 30 pieces and roll into buns. Place on two baking trays sprayed with non-stick baking spray, cover with  cling film or a clean tea towel and leave in a warm place (hot water cupboard) until the buns have doubled in size, approximately one hour.

Preheat oven to 220 [Degree] C. For the crosses, place flour and cold water in a small Ziploc bag, seal and squish it  together to form a sticky  paste.Snip one corner of the  bag and pipe out crosses on to the buns. Bake for about  20 minutes.

Mix the caster sugar and water glaze and brush over the hot cross buns as they come out of the oven. Cool on a wire rack. Makes 30.

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Turning your Cell Phone into an Access Point

So i got an iPod Touch 32Gb the other day. I got sick of waiting for  a 64GB model.

I had the choice of iPhone which is 16GB (found the Cricket iPhone APN settings already) and nowhere near big enough, or iPod Touch which is big enough but has no GPS or Phone. Other than the wireless it has no way of accessing internet if im in the middle of nowhere. I figure i had a perfectly good phone (Nokia E65, all the features, but none of the size!).

So last night i was thinking, my cellphone has WIFI …. if i can turn my Cellphone into an ad-hoc access point then I can route the iPod Touch through it … so i promptly went hunting about on the net and stumbled across joiku.

So i grabbed the free version to test it, and low and behold it works brilliantly. Then i setup the iPod to use it and it fails … turns out it has a Proxy and needs to proxy things.

So I looked about online and found that to setup the proxy on the Ipod Touch I had to click on Settings -> Wifi -> Connection Name (the blue arrow) -> scroll down to proxy and make it ‘Auto’

Then in the box below this put in http://192.168.2.1/wpad.dat – for some reason it doesnt pick this up.

So i tried manual. That doesnt work either. So now im at the frustration point. I wasnt going to pay for the good version if I couldnt even get the light version. Why did i need a proxy in the first place? that seems a pretty silly way to go about doing things. After a couple of days messing about with this I decided there must be a better option, If there wasnt I would have to write my own.

I googled about for a better solution, and found http://walkinghotspot.com/

Paid the $25USD, it sent me a URL and emailed me a pin number to use so i could download it. I went to the URL (which was just http://walkinghotspot.com/s60 ) and i was able to download without using my reg code. Needless to say this frustrated me somewhat having paid for it and any old person could download it.

So i sat down and installed it on the phone, got a tad confused with the strange setup it has, but worked it out eventually. After many hours i kept getting “connection error #2 please check network settings”. So i kept going over and over every single setting i had for both phone and connections.

Another day of frustration goes by (ok i have a day job so i cant spare more than a couple hours on things like this). So at Lunch I gave the installer to husband (hey it didnt ask for a pin number yet!), and he installed it. He also has an E65 phone (yeah yeah we are both geeks), and fairly good technical knowledge.

He starts it up, and away it goes … and it connects!! … and then asks for registration code , which we didnt have at that time  (we were in the middle of the shopping area).

So i figured if it worked on his phone, and not mine, i must have some setting wrong. So i sat down this evening with both phones side by side going through every single setting. They were all identical. grrr! I was about to fully reset my phone at this point, but I had to go out and take my youngest son to the school dance.

The oldest was texting me asking for money so i text the bank seeing what my balence was (I still had to go shopping yet). Bugger, i got the ‘you have no credit’. I was on my way shopping anyway, so i grabbed more credit ….. and then of course it hit me! DUH! it didnt work because i had no friggen credit! im such a fool!

So i promptly went home,  and tried again, same error … I got this 2 more times, then moves the phone to a different angle and tried again … it promptly logged in!

I then registered with the key they gave me, and now my ipod Touch is able to access internet using the Cell Phone as an access point.

So my main issues would be that Joiku is garbage and makes you use some proxy, I need to make sure i put money on my phone (i get free calling to family, and dont really use it otherwise so i forget), and that I live in the edge of a small town with no decent coverage 🙂

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R4 Road Race Update

A few months back as a bunch of us cyclists were talking about doing the R4 road race on Vorb. A couple of people mentioned that Plunket hadnt been paid for voleneering last year as marshalls. I queried this because I didnt know marshalls got paid (usually its just donated time of injured cyclists or partners or other groups). But apparently they do a great deed of asking groups like Plunket and pay them money. The actual marsalls get nothing, and the money goes to charity (this is a good thing yes?).

Anyway, I was a little concerned as the race had been at least 10 months beforehand, for them not to get the money immediatly and it was a charity kinda irked me a tad. Clearly I wasnt the only one as a few other cyclists made noises about a boycott.

I emailed the guys running the race to clarify on the friday morning. I had no reply until the monday late, and the reply was as such

“Someone, shame they can’t front there own name, has got the wrong end of the stick.
Plunket have been paid and hopefully are part of our event this year.”

I posted the response on the forum to which the reply was from several people, their Names and such and they were happy to voice themselves.

And then this gem …

“my name is Lorien I am happy to front with my name, though as i race under the name vecor vector I’m probably better known by that name.
When I posted my comment on Friday, Plunket had not received their payment, since then a cheque has arrived. I’m sure the organisers are aware of what is need for them to be involved again this year.”

So clearly saw the forum thread, crapped themselfs, and paid up. I kinda thought this was amusing, i guess the job got done in the end so no biggie. But now apparently the local newspaper has an article …

news2

But in all seriousness, the race is an excellent race. My only gripe is that its really shitty coming into the Whakatane township over that bridge and round the round about fighting with cars the entire way!

(update: you can find the article online here http://www.whakatanebeacon.co.nz/cms/news/2009/04/art10004552.php )