End of an Era.

Giovanni came to South Africa some 45 years ago [1]. He was one of the first people to cut my hair, at Salon Etna, on Thibault Square in Cape Town (my grandmother worked next door, in the Medical Centre).

Over the years Giovanni became a Cape Town landmark, to the point of briefly appearing in a Vodacom advertisement (13 seconds in).

Well, I went there this morning, and Giovanni is now called Eleanor… he retired in May, sold the place to her. She tells me he still checks in every week, and that one of the two barber’s chairs is on loan from him (he imported four chairs from Japan, waybackwhen, and vowed to give one chair to each of his sons and to keep one chair to himself [2], leaving Eleanor with a solitary chair — she will have to make a plan sometime).

Anyway, I shall toast the memories of his haircuts at sundowners tomorrow.

[1] My father can tell the story in the comments if he feels like it [3].

[2] Pieter can tell the story in the comments if he feels like it.

[3] Pieter can help my father figure out how to :-)

2009-07-16 by Farting around 0

My twin brother came by for a visit

S6301409r

His name is James and he’s been building satellites  in Surrey for more than a decade.

And he’s not really my brother, people just mistook him for that at my (first) wedding, which is pretty much when I saw him last.

Anywayz, sounds like he might be coming back to SA, but that would still put him 1500km north of me… at least I’ll see him slightly more often :-) Also, he can collect the six huge boxes of crap he stored at my place before he left.

2009-07-09 by Farting around 2

It’s like power-assisted chess

The TDi Golf I drive has been giving starting hassles. The auto-electrician gave it a clean bill of health, and the agents changed a fuel filter and said it was fine. Still, it doesn’t always start in the mornings. After charging the battery for half an hour everything’s fine, so I suspect an intermittent charging system.

Meanwhile, last week Friday, Tanya phoned to say her car (Opel Astra Classic) won’t start. Jumped it off the Golf and it started easily. Made a note that I need to take the car for a new battery next week Monday (being, today).

So this morning Tanya says I’d better check that all the cars start. Opel, dead. Golf, dead.

So the trusty Rand-Lover gets started up. Hmmm, cables won’t reach. Reverse out the front gate, turn around, reverse in, wire up Opel, get that started.

OK, now the Golf is on the front lawn. And it’s too heavy for Tanya & me to push. Land-Rover out the front gate, around and in the other gate, bit of back-and-forth, get the Golf started.

I proceed to bugger off to work with the Opel, except around the first circle I realise that my work keys are still in the Golf. So I turn around, and the Opel dies. It has an electrical power steering pump, see, and the sharp turn with the engine cold and idling slowly was just too much for the system.

So I call Tanya to bring the Golf, jump start the Opel…

2009-06-08 by Farting around 6

A Tale of two Quiches

On the left, Liz’ Self-Crusting Corn Quiche (thanks, Stuart, appreciated) and on the right, Brigid’s Bacon Cheddar Quiche.

Two quiches, because we have a vegetarian in the family.

For the corn quiche, I used two mielies, microwaved for a few minutes. I also nuked the potatoes at the same time. Next time, I’ll caramelise the onion (make that “onions” — I’ll use two).

Of course, I can’t improve on Brigid’s recipe, what’s to improve on a recipe that uses a pound of bacon and a cup of cream? (I don’t know where to get half-and-half. I had cream left over. So there. Deal with it, arteries, deal). The crust is commercial puff pastry, and it works well.

2009-05-28 by Foooooood 1

Chicken soup with a soul

A.K.A. Mexican Chili, lime and chicken soup, straight from Lex Culinaria.

A while ago (actually, months ago) I cooked up a pot of chicken stock. I’d saved the leftover bones and bits from braai-ed marinaded flat chickens, three of them. Flat chickens are cheap and lekker, and the leftover bits make great stock.

I defrosted the pot (yea, I stuck the whole pot in the freezer, I was out of containers…) of stock, used it for the mushroom soup. There was about a litre left over, so last night I tried Lex’ recipe.

And it rocks.

A while ago (actually, months ago) I bought a polystyrene tray of mixed chillies. Yes, I stuck it in the freezer too. Gotta love a deep freeze. Out of this I pulled what looks a bit like a pimento, but completely round, and a little yellow triangular thing which looks a bit like a Santa Fe, but which might be Praire Fire, according to Chile Head. Gads, I need a book on identifying chillies. I also bought, last weekend, a long yellow something that tastes more like a sweet pepper than a chilli. Anyway, used half of one, half of the other, and the whole yellow thing, because Tanya also wanted some soup, and she’s not as accustomed to the hot stuff as I am. Removed the pips, of course.

For the rest, pretty much followed the recipe.

Now I need to try to propagate chillies from once frozen seeds. Because I really liked the taste of this mix.

2009-05-27 by Foooooood 0

Soup evening

We invited some people over, and with winter fast setting in, soup was on the menu.

Tanya felt like a mushroom soup, and I thought to make Irish Potato Soup with Bacon and Vegetables again (I found some more leftover turkey stock, yay!). But then Viv (visitor from PE) suggested three bean soup. So I climbed into the pantry cupboard and emerged with butter beans, small white beans, black eye beans, red speckled beans, and fava beans. OK, five bean soup then.

Viv having fun.

I made a mushroom soup recipe from RecipeZaar, using brown, portbellini and button mushrooms, and it was good. I also had lots of mushrooms left over, supper tonight is Mushroom Bourguignon (which I’ve made before — highly recommended).

2009-05-25 by Foooooood 1

Fun with a Cisco 1600

(Long geeky post alert. You probably don’t want to read this unless your Cisco is dead and you got here via google or something).

A number of years ago (May 2005, to be exact) Tanya’s Cisco 1600 (diginet leased-line router) went funny after a power outage. I pulled in a favour, got a friend of a friend who works with these things to look at it — but he couldn’t fix it.

After much googling* I learnt that there’s a “cookie” in Non-Volatile RAM (NVRAM) which very few people know about since it’s factory-set. If NVRAM is wiped, you have a problem. You need to connect to the Cisco using the right kind of cable, a terminal program, and 9600,N,8,1.

If your cookie is cleared, no problem. If it is corrupt, though, you will need to calculate the password to be able to change the corrupted bits.

System Bootstrap, Version 11.1(7)AX [kuong (7)AX], EARLY DEPLOYMENT RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc2)
Copyright (c) 1994-1996 by cisco Systems, Inc.
First location in NVRAM fails ... cannot size NVRAM
Warning: monitor nvram area is corrupt ... using default values
Bad checksum on cookie structure, resorting to backup copy
Warning: Cookie information is corrupt
environment write to NVRAM failed
C1600 processor with 2048 Kbytes of main memory
(Here I hit Ctrl-Break)
monitor: command "boot" aborted due to user interrupt
rommon 1 > cookie
Bad checksum on cookie structure, resorting to backup copy
Warning: Cookie information is corrupt
cookie:
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
rommon 2 > priv
Password: (This would be 0000 for the above cookie, otherwise you need to calculate it)
Bad checksum on cookie structure, resorting to backup copy
Warning: Cookie information is corrupt
You now have access to the full set of monitor commands.
Warning: some commands will allow you to destroy your
configuration and/or system images and could render
the machine unbootable.
rommon 3 > cookie

View/alter bytes of serial cookie by field --
Input hex byte(s) or: CR -> skip field; ? -> list values
interfaces soc 0: 00    (unknown)
                > 01

vendor: 00    (unknown)
      > 01

ethernet Hw address: 00 00 00 00 00 00
                   > d5 aa 96 de aa eb (Anybody recognise this?)

processor: 00    (PAN)
         > 09

Hw rework: 00 00 00 00
         > 00 00 00 01

interfaces soc 1: 00    (unknown)
                > 02

unused 1: 00 00
        > 00 00

BCD-packed 8-digit serial #: 00 00 00 00
                           > 00 0d 8c f3

unused 2: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
        > 

capabilities (future): 00 00
                     > 

cookie version #: 00
                > 01

Now, you should be able to

rommon 4 > sync
rommon 5 > boot
program load complete, entry point: 0x4018060, size: 0x1da950

But instead what happened was

rommon 4 > sync
environment write to NVRAM failed

So I pulled the cover, found the 28HC64 8k x 8 CMOS EEPROM, bought a new EEPROM and a socket from Communica, performed the appropriate transplant, and all is now well.

Now here’s where a bit of black magic slips in. I had to do this the previous time, and after much struggling I found that I also had to do it this time. And I have no idea where this information comes from, but it’s in my notes from 2005.

The first time the router boots up, go

> enable
# configure terminal
(config)# config-register 0x2142
(config)# end
# write
# reload

And then repeat with the original 0x2102 value. Then proceed to configure the router. I didn’t do this, and all was well, except that the configuration interface would not accept “ip route” commands, and of course the router wouldn’t. Route, that is.

There. Now you know as much as I do. Ask if you need to know how to actually configure the router.

* Actually, “googling” is rather generic since I found this page via altavista, not google.

2009-05-21 by Geek 0

Thunderbolts and lightning!

We don’t get thunderstorms all that often in Cape Town. This morning was the exception. Lots and lots of thunder and lightning, catching all the weather predictions off guard.

And the sunrise was amazing.

2009-05-21 by Farting around 1

Sunday at home

Last Sunday I decided that I had to get my lazy bum in gear and finish the kitchen wiring.

Before and after. I built a 3 way multiplug into the appliance garage so we can leave the stuff plugged in, just pull it out to use it.

The plugpoint on the left is special. I originally bought it to use it in the bathroom, because hair dryers etc often have two pin plugs. But Tanya’s hair dryer has the “euro” connector that doesn’t fit into that socket. So I swapped a single socket into the bathroom and put this one here so that I can plug the wall-wart to charge the bamix.

All of this took longer than expected, and since I had been monopolising the kitchen the munchkins were hungry.

So Tamsyn made french toast. Using three eggs per person, so we had scrambled egg afterwards :-)

And we started a batch of ice cream but that will be the subject of another post.

Supper was my stoo on the left and vegetarian parsnip stew on the right. Both were great.

2009-05-19 by Foooooood House 1

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