Sally’s Kitchen & Stuff

Part of the benefit of my job is that I get to update the system however I want. This time I want to get myself as far away from Microsoft as possible. The only thing I’m not allowed to change is my OS - networking would be too much of an issue - but all else can go. I’m the Jane-of-all-trades person at work, so I also have to think of doing EVERYTHING with the computer.

Since we’re a non-profit-charitable organization, the more money we can save on software, the better. But doesn’t that apply to ANY organization?

• Microsoft Office can be entirely replaced by StarOffice, or OpenOffice. Both support native word formats, and StarOffice base supports 11 different formats including MySQL as well as Access. Oh, the possibilities… StarOffice will only put you back $100, and OpenOffice, a whooping $0. MS Office? $500. Ouch.
• Windows Media Player - Use Winamp, and free codecs instead. There’s also VLC if you like to stream.
• Are you a graphic designer? Used to photoshop? You can always use theGIMP with GimpShop. GimpShop basically move menus and effect names around and rename them so that it feels like photoshop. It even has a plugins registry.
• It’s hard to find an alternative to Adobe Illustrator, but there are some. Try Inkscape. It’s not hard to learn at all, and it saves to the W3C SVG format. Skencil’s been around for
  a while, and can open native illustrator files. It’s about as easy (har
  har) to use as illustrator. The development version IS available for
  XP.
• Desktop publishing tools? Use QuarkXPress? I wish Scribus works in windows, and with any luck, it might soon have a windows port. For now, there is always PagePlus.
• Do you need vector based clipart? Check the Open Clipart Library. You can even submit requests!
• For stock photos, take a look at the Webmaster’s Eldorado. The downisde? It hasn’t been updated since 2000, but it does have some good stuff. There are over 19,000 photos.
• It’s a good idea to check Wikipedia’s list of Public Domain Image Resources.
• For other content, take a look at Wikipedia’s List of Open Content Projects.
• Making some screenshots? Hello can capture part of a screen, but if you want a dedicated screenshot capture program, there’s nothing quite like the Clipper. It used to be free, now it costs 7.50 EU. Still really cheap. If you’d rather use freeware, give X-Shot a try.
• Ripping CDs? Use CDEX. It does the job just as well, if not better, than other commercial software.
• Doing some *cough* video capture? Virtual VCR will do it.
• Need to clean up the captured videos? Get VirtualDub.
• Now you want to edit them? Get Jahshaka. Save yourself $1000.
• For basic image storage and manipulation, there’s Picasa. To share, there’s Hello and Flickr. I just wish the two would work together. If only you can get Picasa plugins!
• Use an online calendar to keep track of your schedule. Yahoo has a great calendar - I’ve been using it since…since…I don’t remember. If you don’t like to use yahoo (down with commercialism!) then you can try the webCalendar. Yahoo Calendar supports syncing - to my pocketPC, specifically, which is why I use it. Ditch outlook altogther; you won’t miss it.
• Use GMAIL for email. Forget about using a client altogether. If you must use a client, use Thunderbird.
• Get Firefox. For me, it’s my newsreader, webpage tester, gmail client, weatherstation and web browser rolled up together. Add Adblock and you’re good to go.
• Store your bookmarks online either using del.icio.us (if you like to share your findings) or yahoo bookmarks. Yahoo just bought del.icio.us, so the service should stablilize over the next little while. You can also SYNC your bookmarks between del.icio.us and firefox using foxylicious.
• Doing some CD burning? CDBurnerXP Pro kicks nero to the curb. If you have this, by the way, you can ditch CDEX. CDBurnerXP Pro will also rip CDs, write isos, convert bin/cue files, and print CD covers.
• Setting up an online gallery? Try JAlbum. It’s free, it supports skins so you can make a gallery that matches your page’s look. It’s more configurable than the built in "export to web" in Picasa.
• Got roped into authoring your company’s website? Use NVU. It costs nothing. Need to implement an editor so the boss can update those calendar pages? Try TinyMCE.
• They want a drop down menu too? Fear not. Here’s a few.
• Want to create PDF files without getting Acrobat? There’s always FreePDF.
• Offline Browsing? Use HttTrack.
• For personal accounting, get Grisbi. For small business, often TinyBA is enough. You can use TurboCash for point-of-sale.
• Lastly, for goodness sake, if you’re going to use Windows XP, get yourself some PowerToys.

The adjustment period is much shorter than you think. Most of these are quite intuitive and easy to learn - aside from accounting software. It seems there are simply no intuitive way to do accounting.

Made it to the semifinals. Still crossing my fingers. :p

Here’s the Flickr Photo Stream, if you guys are interested in taking a look.

It was made of:
Angel food cake (I wanted an artificially organic look, like critters from the old super mario games;
A whole pound of marshmellows (Melted down with sugar to make most of the surfaces)
Purple Tentacle was made of gumpaste. It’s a mixture of sugar, dextrose, cornstarch, and syrup. It’s basically a lump of sugar.
Whipped icing. Basically heavy cream and stabilizer, with various colors.

I’ll give the lowdown on "how it’s made" - including "making of" photos, almost every step - when the contest is over.

Well, that was interseting. Onto other subjects…

…I just entered a "gingerbread-inspired" house to a contest, where the criteria is to be GEEKY. I believe I fit the description. I blieve my house does too.

I’ll be sure to post those photos come 28th when the contest is over. *crossing my fingers*

Targus Link

Oldie but a goodie. Yup. I do have those BOSE headphones in my wish list, but who has the money to shell out $399 for a pair of headphones? (Canadian dollars…For Americans I believe it is $299) The targus ones are great value, considering that they’re relatively cheap at $35-50, depending on where you get it, and that they are active noise cancellation headphones.

The only drawback is that they take AA batteries…but you already have a set of these, right?

An iRiver H120. It’s discontinued. You can’t find it at bestbuy, or the SourceCC. You can’t find it on Craigslist either. I’ve looked. The only place where you can really get one nowadays is Ebay.ca. It is, by far, the only iPod killer I care to ever own.

Sure, it’s not as cute as an ipod. It doesn’t look as "simple" and as "clean" as an iPod.  The controls are not as "intuitive" or "user-friendly." Well, I’ve always been a PC girl, so this is FINE for me. In electronics, one should always put function over form. If it’s really ugly and it must stand in your living room? Well, that’s what an opague door on an entertainment system is for.

Specs:

20GB of internal storage - drool.

Up to 16 hours of battery life - drool.

Supports MP3, WMA, ASF, OGG and WAV music files - somebody said OGG. I’m in.

Ultra-fast USB 2.0 transfers (up to 40 times faster than USB 1.0) - oh my. That just goes to show how old this player is, and how it is STILL cool.

Integrated FM tuner - You can record from it. Good call for trying to find out what song that is later.
Intuitive music navigation - not really. It’s sort of geekish instead of podish.

Real-time MP3 encoding (no PC required) - meow.

Store or transfer files of any type - 20gb portable harddrive, anyone?

Line-in and Line-out jacks - line-in. Why would I get an mp3 player with no line-in? Reason why I don’t want an ipod.

Optical input and output - stereo out to an amp … who needs special "docks"?
Built in Voice Recorder - one button operation.

One drawback - this thing is 60(W) X 19(D) X 105(H)mm, so it’s about the size of an old JVC compact walkman. Still, small enough to slip into a shirt pocket. And it comes in natural BLACK.

Why they ever discontinued this baby is beyond me.

All these steps are FREE.

1. Get some music. What format is it? We need some mp3s, onstant bitrate. Rip/Convert with CDEX. VBRs will NOT do.

2. Get some hosting. I use myfilehut.com. Upload your file.

3. Get the mp3 player . Unzip it to a temporary directory on your harddrive. Here’s a link to the page of the file.

4. Open the mp3player.xml file in notepad/textpad.

5. So here’s what SHOULD be in your xml file
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<player showDisplay="yes" showPlaylist="yes" autoStart="yes">
    <song path="ABSOLUTE PATH TO MP3 FILE" title="Title of song" />
    <song path="ABSOLUTE PATH TO MP3 FILE" title="Title of song" />
</player>

Change the purple text to links to YOUR file. Got another song? Copy and paste the line.

In myfilehut, you can go into "my files" and right click on any of your files then > copy link location, to get the absolute path.

Try not to put any surprising characters in the title. Stuff like %$*&^#~ could POTENTIALLY screw it up.

6. Upload all the "mp3player" files. Note: the mp3s and mp3 player files must reside on the SAME server.

7. Link it via your profile.

In friendster, use My Profile > edit profile > customize > embed media box. Copy the whole chunk in, and change the purple text to the links to your files.

<embed allowScriptAccess="never"
src="ABSOLUTE LINK TO YOUR mp3player.swf file"
align="middle" menu="false" quality="high" bgcolor="Transparent"
width="270" height="270" name="index" allowScriptAccess="never"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"
pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"
flashvars="playlist=ABSOLUTE LINK TO YOUR mp3player.xml file" />

Notes.

• If you’re using other servers, make sure it’s FAST or tells you that it supports streaming. If it’s too slow, it shows an N%N error.
• If the mp3 file sounds "chipmunky," re-encode it with CDEX so that it’s Constant Bit Rate.
• Absolute links point to INTERNET addresses, not your computer. It starts with "http://" not "c:\" If you have backslashes "\" in the filename, we’ve got a problem.
• You can check all your absolute paths by using them as an url. Copy and paste it into the address bar, press enter. If it works, it’s not broken.
• Don’t leave out the "/" at the end of the tag, if you’re an html wannabe monkey, you might be tempted to. It’s xml, and we need to escape closing every tag by "/". If you leave it out, it won’t work.

From the friendster discussion board…

Corri/
Keep roses in ice cold LEMONADE. It keeps them alive longer and if they’re looking somewhat wilted, it makes them look fresher.

Shawna/
Cut the bottoms off flowers every other day, and they’ll last much longer.
Give them warm water.
Lillies don’t like flower preservative.

Gad. I hate answering that question. The thing is, most of my friends in my age group are in the $20-40 per gift category. What I want runs into the hundreds. The only things on my list that are not expensive are books, and for some reason, nobody likes to get me books, since I have "too many." You can NEVER have too many books!

Here’s what I want for Christmas. Really.

• The Sleeptracker. It’s a watch, it tracks the hours you sleep, and it tells you when to wake up in order to not get TOO MUCH sleep.
• An 3G apple ipod. I don’t know where you can find one.. the old weird looking one. You might think it’s a piece of ####, but I can turn it into a 20G voice recording retro gaming linux running monster.
• An older PC with an ATI all-in-wonder card. I want a new DVR, but nobody’s going to have all the features I want. I’m going to have to build it.
• NDS with Nintendogs. In Pink please. (just kidding. ANYTHING BUT PINK please.)
• A nice pair of noise cancelling headphones. I don’t need an mp3 player. I use my pocket PC. For audiobooks. Needless to say, I don’t need to carry 30 gigs with me. Just 90 megs. But yeah, those are some headphones.
• A laptop to tinker with. It doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. I just want something to run Gentoo on. Something to play with, basically.
• A food processor.
• A lot, and I mean, A LOT, of books.

And if I don’t get it, I’ll just have to get thse things myself. :p

• Know thy oven. Sure, it SAYS 200, but that does not mean it’s 200. It could be 160, it could be 250. You just never know. Get one of those tinny inexpensive hanging oven thermometers and check out all the notches. How hot IS it when that dial says 200? In my compact oven at home, it’s actually 275. No wonder those cookies always burned when I first moved in.
• Don’t hurry. 375 does cook a roast faster, but 200 will give you a uniform medium rare in 4 hours. So you spend $80 on a prime rib - have some respect for it, will ya? An animal died for that hunk of beef. It deserves slow-roasting.
• Don’t use a meat thermometer. I don’t care if everybody swears by them, but if you want to be a roast-meister, learn to tell how much fat is in the meat by the marbling. Learn to tell how much bone there is by weight and size of bones. Learn to intuitively judge thickness/time ratio. If you’re a traditionalist like me when it comes to slow roasting, it should be perfect everytime regardless.
• Sear the outside EVERYTIME. Just because you’ve got that dial on broil it does not mean you’re searing the outside of the roast! In order for the outside caramelization to happen without losing half the juices of the meat, sear 4 minutes each side on medium heat in a heavy-bottomed pan.
• Don’t over season. If you’re going to salt it, use coarse salt and cracked pepper, and RUB with garlic, not COVER in garlic. None of that ground salt and pre-ground pepper. If you use pre-ground stuff, instead of helping to protect the roast in the oven, you’d just get a dry salting hunk of meat because the fine salt would draw moisture out.
• Practice DOES make perfect. Like grilling a steak and testing for doneness, roasting beef is no different. In the beginning, follow the charts. But eventually you’ll see that no chart can compete with experience and human intuition.

If you’re not allergic to it, that is. I buy organic peanut butter, which is the only peanut butter you SHOULD buy. If you’re getting the commercial kind, you’re feeding your heart transfat. In the manufacturing process of peanut butter, hydrogenated oil acts as a glue between the peanut butter solids and fats - that’s why commercial peanut butter doesn’t separate. If you go to a local market and get the shop-churned stuff, it does separate, but it’s nothing you can’t fix with the twirl of a butter knife.

Chunky peanut butter is great for cooking. It’s lower in fat, but melts on hot foods just as well as butter.

• Add a dollop of chunky PB to frozen spinach, and a little spoon of mayo as well.
  It’s the only way my bf will eat spinach, so maybe it’d even work on
  kids. Just add it during the cooking process.
• Satay dipping sauce: peanut butter, splash of milk, spoonful of flour, salt, sugar. The ingredients vary - play with it. Add spices. Add HOT spices.
• Brush chicken with peanut butter, then roll in breadcrumbs, and bake.
• Throw a spoonful of chunky PB in a stirfry.
• Use instead of coconut cream in a curry.
• Use PB instead of butter on corn and steamed vegetables.
• Serve over asparagus instead of hollandaise.

Be creative! Where else do you use butter?