Yes I Have One

Burns Night Toast to the Lads and Lassies

2012-01-29T07:05:00.000-05:00

It was more difficult to find examples of these traditional Burns supper toasts than I would have thought so I'm adding mine to the Internets. The gathering is a rather tame one and the tone of the toasts reflects this. Don't be surprise if parts sound familiar since I borrowed a sentence or two from just about every other toast I could find.

A Toast To the Lasses:

Thank you to the Daughters of Scotland for such a festive evening. It is always nice to see so many familiar faces and to meet a few new ones.

I hope I can meet the high expectations of those of you with actual SCOTS Blood running through your veins.
Unfortunately mine is mostly SCOTCH.

There was a touch of the rooster about Burns.
He loved many and fortunately for us he wrote about his affairs.

He was "Well Versed" on the topic of women you might say.

He so aptly describes the feeling of love in "A Red, Red Rose" .

O, my love is like the melody,
That is sweetly played in tune.

And on Devotion he wrote touchingly in John Anderson My Jo about the journey of a couple through life:

We climbed the hill together,
And many a jolly day, John,
We have had with one another;

Now we must totter down, John,
And hand in hand we will go,
And sleep together at the foot,

but Burns knew well the realities of dealing with the Lassies. Tam O Shanter for example:

And getting full (drunk) and mighty happy,
We think not on the long Scots miles,
The bogs, pools, breaches and stiles,
That lie between us and our home,
Where sits our sulky, sullen wife,
Gathering her forehead like a gathering storm,
Nursing her anger to keep it warm.

Undoubtedly one of my wife's ancestors.

My own observation is that: Whatever you give a Woman, they will make it greater

Give her a a House, She'll give you a Home
Give her Groceries, She'll give you a Meal
Give her a smile, She'll give you her heart.

And that' Gentlemen, is why I'm not going to give the Lassies any crap.

Gentlemen, raise your glasses for a toast.

I could find no finer words than those written by Burns himself.

"Auld Nature swears the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes;
Her apprentice hand she tried on man,
And then She made the lasses!"

To the Lasses!

Response from the Lassies:

Good evening everyone and thank you dear husband for being so lovely about us Lassies.
Unfortunately it falls to me to lower the tone and talk about men.

Now Honored Burns was a rascal with a silver tongue.
And I am sure all the men here tonight have been suitably broken and are much tamer.

Burn's himself wrote:

There was, indeed, in far less polished days,
A time, when rough rude Man had naughty ways:
Would swagger, swear, get drunk, kick up a riot,
No, even thus invade a lady's quiet!
Now, thank our stars! these Gothic times are fled;
Now, well-bred men - and you are all well-bred -
Most justly think (and we are much the gainers)
Such conduct neither spirit, wit, nor manners.

Thankfully men have moved on from the gothic days.

I find it hard to imagine men more swaggering, swearing, or drunken than today,
but evidently it is true.

Burns was such a rascal that I think it fair to call him inconstant, unimaginative, and arrogant.
But he was also humorous and a romantic.
And my husband was correct that we lasses do our best with what we're given.

And so I'll finish with
Burn's description of perfect harmony between a man and women:

We will build a little, little house,
And we will live like king and queen,
So blithe and merry as we will be,
When you sit by the wheel at evening!

To the Laddies.

MURA CMS, ORM and ormcfclocation

2011-12-16T11:43:00.005-05:00

So I've started to get a handle on ORM in Coldfusion but now I want to integrate it with MURA. I started to integrate it as a stand alone application but then discovered MURA is one step ahead and now provides the ormcfclocation setting for plugins. So I'll go back next week and consider moving the app into a plugin setting.

Configuring Coldfusion ORM application to use multiple data sources

2011-12-14T14:04:00.001-05:00

Adobe Documentation on how to connect multiple databases in ORM. This is something new in 9.01. Thank You Adobe!!!

Coldfusion 9, ORM, Inserting Null Values

2011-12-13T15:10:00.000-05:00

I have a little app to write and I decided to use the opportunity to learn some ORM. I use the same form when I add or edit an item. The only difference is that edited values have a pre-set ID identity field / column.

The problem I ran into was when I submitted the form as an "ADD" the field was empty. I set the ID to an empty string and when I tried to save it got the error

The value '' cannot be converted to a number.

The solution was simple, in my form processing I just did the following:

<cfif isnumeric(form.MeasureId)>
<cfset measures.setMeasureId(form.MeasureId) />
</cfif>

If no identity field is provided, it looks like ORM decides it's an insert.

Zojirushi Rice Cooker

2011-12-05T18:37:00.001-05:00

An early gift is our Zojirushi Micom Rice Cooker & Warmer NS-WAC10 rice cooker.

Zojirushi offers some recipes but with some reading it appears that just about any rice or grain can be cooked in it.

Tried this one tonight. I would recommend spicing it up a bit more with some cinnamon and clove.

Chick Peas and Rice.

1 medium onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 cups long grain brown rice, cooked

1 (16 ounce) can chickpeas, drained

1/2 cup water

2 tablespoons parsley, chopped (fresh)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

Directions:

Saute the onion and garlic in olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until tender.

Stir in the cooked rice and the remaining ingredients. Cover the skillet, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Scotland Powerpoint for elementary kids.

2011-11-15T07:28:00.001-05:00

My wife is speaking to several classes of elementary school children about Scotland so I made her a powerpoint as an aid. Scotland Powerpoint.

All Human Kind's space travels as of 2009

2011-11-08T07:14:00.003-05:00

Outstanding resource on Social Media

2011-10-25T14:40:00.001-05:00

Ed Bennett at University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) maintains a great blog about many issues facing social media.

http://ebennett.org/

Spread the word on Coldfusion and Mura

2011-10-24T13:12:00.003-05:00

Please take a few minutes to fill out this survey about Open Source CMS, and let them know about Mura CMS! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2011-OSCMS-Survey.

MURA CMS is used by GSA Office of Inspector General, the Social Security Administration, Food and Drug Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Senate, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Mura CMS Shared Hosting at www.murahosting.com.

2011-10-13T09:30:00.001-05:00

You can now get the best CMS out there in a shared environment.

Mura CMS Shared Hosting at www.murahosting.com.

Urchin UTM processing is reporting page views but not visitors or sessions

2011-09-28T08:17:00.002-05:00

Check cookies are being logged.

I knew this yesterday...

2011-09-22T21:00:00.003-05:00

Puzzling results from Cern, home of the LHC, have confounded physicists - because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484

Allow Time Machine to run after logout. FIXED?

2011-09-06T11:52:00.001-05:00

I just got a mac mini and time capsule. I set it up for my family with multiple user accounts. I was confused that the backups didn't work when I logged out. If your logged out your not making any changes but if you made a change and then logged out, you would want that backed up.

Anyhow, I think the solution is simple. Don't log out. Use Fast User Switching, this leaves you logged in. I haven't tested it but one of the options is the login screen on Fast User Switching and I suspect it leaves you logged in and all your processes running.

No 5.1 from Blu Ray on PS3?

2011-08-22T18:57:00.001-05:00

There's a bunch of stuff to know here. I'm no expert but here's what I've learned. Chances are you're trying to watch a DTS-HD sound track Blu Ray on equipment that only support Dolby Digital or you don't have the settings set correctly on the PS3.

It looks like there's 2 basic camps. Dolby Digital (DD) and DTS. These come in a number of flavors

DD is the oldest and was one of 2 required audio formats on DVD. So a lot of equipment will decode DD.

DTS is a little newer and is also sometimes available on DVDs.

The kicker appears that Blu Ray disks don't always have both DD and DTS but have one or the other. Even disks labeled Dolby Digital may only have certain tracks (like french) available as DD. Go to a website like Bluray.com to check what audio tracks are available.

Both DD and DTS are lossy. There are newer formats that technically better because they are lossless and they should degrade gracefully to their older formats.

To add to the twist there's PCM. PCM is not compress and requires HDMI cables. If you're using Optical, then the PS3 will down grade a 5.1 signal to stereo (I think).

Then there is the PS3 and it's settings. I'm not sure that older PS3's support all formats. The PS3 slim covers most if not all but there are some settings you need to get straight.

There's the Settings > Output which controls which cable the PS3 will use. Use the HDMI if you can, Optical next. When Using HDMI whatever is connected will talk with the PS3 and will automatically set it up. But at a minimum you probably want Dolby Digital and DTS checked.

Then there's Settings > Video Settings > BD/DVD Audio Output (HDMI and Optical). Try setting these to bitstream. If using Optical you might also want to try Bitsream Mixed if Bitsream doesn't work.

These settings aren't the "best" settings, these are just the most likely settings.

I run HDMI to my TV and optical from the TV to the audio system. The TV complains when receiving DTS signals because it doesn't support it. But I'm not using my TV's speakers so it doesn't matter. I'm not even sure why it complains since I have the speakers shut off in the menu but I suppose it could hurt the speakers or something so they warn me.

In the end, using bitstream you need to have something capable of decoding the audio track. Check your surround sound system to see what it supports. Check your source to make sure you know what your sending. And check your PS3 settings to make sure they all line up. Simple.

http://www.ecoustics.com/electronics/products/articles/464956.html

http://hd.engadget.com/2009/04/21/hd-101-how-to-use-dolby-truehd-and-dts-hd-with-your-ps3/

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/1064

AVCHD - iMovie 11 - Toast Titanium = BluRay

2011-08-05T08:08:00.015-05:00

Here's the workflow I use from a Sony HD AVCHD camera to Blu-Ray disk.

import from camera into iMovie without compression.
Create movie.
Share, Export Movie, 1080p
Wait while it exports
I'm using LG BE12 external blu-ray disc burner . While it's not recognized by the Mac, Toast does recognize it if it's turned on before toast is loaded.
Open Toast, create blu ray project and add the exported file
Click the edit button in Toast and the Video tab to check that chapters are being inserted every so often. Chapter markers don't seem to be exported or they are not imported or something.
I haven't figured out how to prevent Toast from re-encoding the exported movie. So it takes days to burn a 2 hour disc start to finish.

DONE

Spring Pics from the back yard.

2011-06-06T17:39:00.000-05:00

object 1991 VG

2011-05-05T20:43:00.000-05:00

1991 VG is a Near-Earth object discovered by James Scotti. Due to its unusual orbit and rapid variation in brightness, it might be alien in origin.

will return in 2017.

Am I Doing This Right?

2011-05-03T17:48:00.000-05:00

PSN OUTAGE

2011-04-22T20:34:00.000-05:00

PSN off line keeping millions of players out of the game. Sony has said little not helping the angst of when it will be back on line. Amazon also suffered an outage that appears to be unrelated.

Panabee

2011-04-20T07:27:00.000-05:00

Create creative Domain Names. Put in 2 words, get a list of suggestions.

OVEN FRIED SCALLOPS

2011-04-17T13:08:00.001-05:00

I couldn't find the recipe, but I think this is it.

1 lb. scallops
1/2 tsp. salt
Dash of pepper
Dash of paprika
Fine dry bread crumbs
1 egg, slightly beaten

Preheat oven to 400. (I also saw 500 for less time)

Wash scallops.

Dip in egg mixed.

Roll in bread crumbs which have been seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika.

Add some butter, olive oil, or spray bottom of baking dish and place scallops in a flat baking dish.

Bake in a hot oven of 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. They should be richly brown and crisp on the outside. (or 500 for 10 minutes?)

Serve with lemon wedges and tartar sauce.

Optional: add a little white wine to bottom of baking dish before cooking.

FBI reports aliens and disks

2011-04-12T22:07:00.000-05:00

disks, bodies, airforce reports, no smoking gun.

wallpapers

2011-04-10T12:22:00.002-05:00

http://wallbase.cc/toplist

Crock Pot Cuban Black Bean and Fish Soup

2011-03-26T14:00:00.001-05:00

2 15 oz cans black beans
2 (14 1/2 ounce) cans chicken broth
1 (14 1/2 ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 (4 ounce) can diced green chilies (or 10oz Rotel Tomato and Green Chiles)
8 ounces cod, cut into 1 inch pieces
1/2 cup onion, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried thyme
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Easy Low Carb Crock Pot Fish Gumbo

2011-03-21T17:54:00.000-05:00

1 lb. fish fillets
1 package (12-ounce) frozen shelled deveined cooked medium shrimp, rinsed
could add crab meat as well,
2 Tofurkey Italian sausage
2 beef bouillon cube
1 c. chopped onion or scallions or pearl onions
1 chopped green pepper
1 tbsp. parsley flakes
1 tbsp. minced garlic
1 tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. paprika
Dash cayenne or hot sauce
1 (1 lb.) can tomato wedges
1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce
1 (10 oz.) pkgs. cut okra,
1 cup uncooked wild long-grain rice
4 cups water
tsp lemon juice optional