OK, well not quite free, but this is a tactic that we have used previously when money has been tight at Christmas – and believe me when we say that it has actually saved us money every month.

If you have a teenager, then you’ll likely know the frustration of constantly forking out cash for mobile phone top-ups.  On average we were forking out £10-£15 a week to keep our lovely DD in contact with her friends and as Christmas approached the obligatory request for a new touchscreen or Blackberry was received.  So we decided to look around at the contract deals and found that a decent deal could be had for way less than the £50-£60 a month we were spending and what was even better was that we could actually track the usage of the phone online and therefore control the monthly bills.  So anyway – back to the reason for the post…..

Carphone Warehouse are currently offering a deal whereby you get a free handset, including HTC and Blackberry options and up to £200 worth of shopping vouchers when you get the phone – so that’s no money down and a new phone  for your darling teen and up to £200 in your pocket to finish the Christmas shop, or at least enough to start the festive booze shop!

You can find the deal here.

This post will be absolute techno-babble for most of my readers and if you don’t understand the title then it’s probably best that you skip the rest….  I’ll post something with a wider audience appeal soon, however I needed to document these steps for my own future use (as my memory sucks!) and hopefully someone may also find this post useful!

That said, I like to play around with web development and have a myriad of projects on my little Ubuntu 11.04 LAMP “server” and until today I’ve used subdirectories to separate my individual projects, however this has lead to problems in the past when deploying a site from the development environment to the big www.  So now I’m moving to subdomains

After an hour of Google-ing I cobbled together a simple solution that works for me.  I work primarily from a Windows XP machine which has an entry in the hosts file that points the domain “dev” to the linux box.   Rather than carry on using http://dev/holiday/ to access my new photo site I wanted to use http://holiday.dev/ – so here is how I did it…

The first thing to do is to add an entry for the new “host” into your Windows hosts file, which can be found in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc  (assuming that your install is based on C:\Windows).

Open the hosts file with notepad and add a new entry for your subdomain.   If you are running Windows 7 then you will need to run Notepad as an Administrator.

As you can see my Ubuntu servers’ IP address is 192.168.0.206 and its hostname is dev - all that I need to do to enable the new subdomain from my Windows PC is to duplicate the existing record and changed the host name to  holiday.dev 

The next step is to create a new host record on the Ubuntu machine – to do this enter the following into the Ubuntu console (noting that you should use your own subdomain here):

gksudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/holiday

And when prompted with a blank document enter:

<VirtualHost *:80>
	DocumentRoot /var/www/holiday/
	ServerName holiday.dev

	<Directory /var/www/holiday/>
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews Includes
		AllowOverride AuthConfig FileInfo
		Order allow,deny
		Allow from all
	</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Save the document and all that is left to do is to create the symlinks in sites-enabled to allow the site  to be served with the following command:

sudo a2ensite holiday

And a quick restart of apache with the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

and you are good to go!

I regularly watch foodie videos and have just stumbled across an absolutely awesome video of one of the great French masters, Pépin that I just had to post!

I just wish I could de-bone a chicken as quickly and neatly as that…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAekQ5fzfGM

Technique is definitely a dying art!

I’m adding this one to my to-do list for next summer -- perfect picnic food.

Those of you who have seen both Star Wars and Snatch are in for a treat with this excellent video mashup.  Enter Bricktop as Darth Vader and be prepared to be entertained.

Warning:  This video is Not Safe For Work and should probably carry and 18 rating!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDKiQfBs9lo

I’ve been moaning for months and months (if not years) about my current set of kitchen knives.  My early Sabatier knife block set is now around 15 years old and has been so used and abused that the steel has worn smooth!

I still remember finding them for the bargain price of £150 in a sale and being called insane for wasting* so much money on a set of knives but, boy, have they served me well.

I know that I could probably just buy a new steel and get them sharpened and they would probably last another 15 years (the boning knife is still exceedingly sharp despite constant abuse) but it doesn’t stop me window shopping for a new set.  And I think I’ve found my next dream kitchen purchase.

You may ask why is it a dream kitchen purchase, well at £485 for a 6 knife set there’s little hope of them gracing my kitchen anytime soon

Ladies & Gentlemen, I give you the Wusthof Classic Ikon 6 Piece Knife Set.

(Click for more info and to purchase if you are feeling rich! appreciate the finer things)

The set comprises 9cm paring, 14cm tomato, 16cm Slicer, 17cm Santoku, 20cm Cooks and 20cm Bread knives and a rather nice looking block – an absolute steal if you ask me!

Not normally one to name drop, but these knives are favoured by many celebrity chefs, including Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver.  You can also check out the Wusthof site for more info @ http://www.wuesthof.de/en/ – Oooh, they also do a 9 knife set in the same range @ £692!!!

*15 years later and I think I have proved that it was money well spent – You know who you are!!!!

I’ve never been good with purely vegetarian dishes -- I always want to add a bit of meat for texture and flavour!  However in an attempt to reduce my meat intake I knocked together this tasty, filling and more importantly healthy dish in under 15 minutes last night and more importantly I didn’t miss the meat at all!

For those of you on a Slimming World diet it should fit in perfectly as an evening meal on a green day.  It’s not a completely free meal, but as with most of my recipes each ingredient is optional, so feel free to add/remove bits to your hearts content!

The first thing you need to do is finely chop a red onion or two.  It does need to be fine, not chunky -- the rest of the veg makes up the chunky part of this recipe.  Here’s Gordon to show you how…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwGBt3V0yvc

If you are cooking alone then you’ll probably want to pre-chop all of your veg so read ahead, otherwise chop as you go with your cooking partner stiring as you go!

Once you have your finely chopped onion, put your wok or large pan on a low heat and add about a tablespoon of Olive Oil.

Once the oil starts to warm up add your onion and add a pinch of salt, which will not only bring out some of the flavour but also help stop it browning too quickly.  After a few minutes your onion should start to soften then a few cloves of finely chopped garlic to taste.

You’ll now want to get your linguini on as you start to add the rest of your veg.

Next, dice a courgette into 1-2cm chunks and add with a good grind of black pepper.  As you start adding the veg you may want to turn the heat up a little to keep the heat in the pan.

Next add your peppers -- I’ve used one red and green, again cut into 1-2cm chunks.

Now halve or quarter (depending on size) a handful of baby plum tomatos and toss them in and drain a tin of plum tomatoes, adding the juice to the pan.  Remove and dispose of the hard stalk ends and chop until the the tinned tomatoes are almost a pure, add to the mix!

Don’t forget to check your pasta at this point!  Now, this is important -- TASTE the vegetable mix and add seasoning as required.

Hopefully all is well and your pasta is only a few minutes away from being cooked so now halve 4-5 chesnut mushrooms then slice the halves finely -- I’m talking 2-3mm thick and add to the rest of the delicious vegetables.

Once the pasta is cooked, drain and add to the sauce, toss, serve with some freshly grated parmesan and enjoy!

How do you get people to pay attention to aircraft safety videos?

Air New Zealand appear to have the answer!  As part of their “Nothing to Hide” campaign they’ve released their “Bare Essentials of Safety” video, created for their domestic 737 services.

Enjoy…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Mq9HAE62Y

All of the people in the video are actual Air NZ Staff who volunteered to bare all.  Gotta love body paint!

Also -- behind the scenes:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnhVcD74i14

Normally I wouldn’t consider making a post whilst drunk…

BUT… I’ve just been alerted to a video on YouTube of my MOTHER and Aunty Gaynor,  singing There’s a Hole in my Hat, to the tune (almost) of There’s a Hole in my Bucket.  This was apparently due to an incident with a hat and a candle.  You’ll have to listen to the song for the explanation!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqdJUhg7QFA

Yes, that is the ladies room of the Holland House Hotel, Cardiff!

This has got to be one of my favourite types of recipes.  Simply chuck things into an oven proof dish, bung in the oven and serve with loads of rice and french bread!

There is no measuring, no weighing and virtually no stress – even those who profess to be unable to cook can make something that tastes great!

I had a pack of chicken legs left in the fridge that weren’t used at a BBQ and couldn’t be bothered to do anything fancy so I grabbed a couple of courgettes, a red, yellow and green pepper, a few small red onions and half a pack of baby plum tomatoes.  If I’d have had any olives, a handful would have gone down a treat too…  A glass of white wine, throw that in too! That’s why I love these kind of recipes – want a hint of garlic?  Throw in a lightly crushed clove or two!  There is no right or wrong way…

To make this work you must weigh nothing, simply cut all of the veg into similar size pieces, drizzle over some olive oil and add some sea salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper, mix and pop in a preheated oven at 375°F/190°C/Gas Mark 5 for roughly an hour.

Give everything a rough stir after about half an hour and when the timer pings, make sure the chicken is cooked through.  The easiest way is to use a temperature probe but if you don’t have one simply pierce the thickest piece of chicken near the joint and if the juices run clear – it’s ready!

Serve with some basmati rice, french bread and an ice cold bottle of Pinot, or whatever you want!

Have you set your facebook username yet?

They’ve been available for 4 hours now and I thought I’d rush to the laptop and grab /lyndon but, alas, someone more geeky that me already has…

So after much deliberation I grabbed /lyndonw.  So now my facebook profile ID matches my email address prefix and you can now find me @ http://www.facebook.com/lyndonw.  Which is much better than the default of http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=707200510!

Make sure you grab yours at http://www.facebook.com/username before you’re stuck with john.m8734!