It is a Dell Studio XPS 9000, it runs an Intel Core i7 920 (2.66 GHz), 8 GB DDR3 dual channel SDRAM, 1000 GB Standard, nVidia GeForce GTX 260 1792MB, Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium, 64bit edition. What this means is basically a fast computer and plenty of storage. I have a lot of video that I watch through this video for my other site and this computer makes this job so much faster.
My other computer, this one was just a run of the mill home PC. It has been a great computer over the last 4 years and never really had any problems. That was until I played about with it.
I wanted to adjust the partitions or drives and after reading through Microsoft’s information I set about doing this. I had backed everything up before doing this as recommended.
A long story short, I screwed the boot system up, the computer wouldn’t boot. So today a trip to my computer guy, and my computer is now running Windows Vista 7, which seems a little slow to me. I also didn’t reinstall a lot of my older programmes but updated to the newest versions.
I have been doing a little tweaking, here and there. I had to uninstall the windows components as they were in Thai and just reinstall them from my own CD at home. I can read the Thai in Microsoft Word, but slowly. Now the computer is back to new, actually better than it was.
I have more storage on my C drive, removed a lot of crap and slowly reinstalling programmes from disks as I need them.
I uploaded some pictures to Flickr, to check all works well, and this happened much quicker than before.
It is getting cool here now; I don’t take many pictures of my cooking. I do cook often now, mostly vegetables that is accompanied by whatever I feel like on the night, be that fish, meat, egg or something that catches the eye when shopping.
The other night when chilly, savoury mince popped into my head. I had enough stuff at home so went about getting this all ready. I could have gone shopping and bought more ingredients but it was too cold to go out, maybe 13 or 14 degrees.
This was simply going to have, onion, garlic, carrot, a little cauliflower, pumpkin, canned tomatoes, tomato sauce with Worcestershire sauce, vegetable stock cube and mince. I would normally add mushrooms, potato, beans and more and my special ingredient which is a must, chilli. But my niece would be eating so this was left out.
Making savoury mince is really easy, once you have done the basic brown the onion and garlic, then add and brown the mince, it is as simple as tipping the rest of the ingredients in and stirring occasionally while it simmers for 20 or so minutes.
I had the rice cooker fired up, before coming to Thailand I had never used one. I cooked rice the old way of boiling in a pot. Never again, a rice cooker makes it too easy and perfect every time.
While letting the savoury mince simmer away, I checked in on Miss Benjawan. She was creating some artwork for school. This is a coarse piece of sandpaper and Ben used some oil pastels.
Pretty neat I thought.
I ventured out and stirred the savoury mince and added a little salt and pepper and some more tomato sauce.
Benjawan had finished her artwork and I liked it, very clever. I am a terrible artist, my drawings border on the side of being very special and something a young child creates.
The mince was also ready, and this went on top of a bed of Thai jasmine rice. It was delicious even though this could be biased. Benjawan had commented on how good it smelt cooking and was soon eating a bowl of mince and rice. She gave it a big thumbs up.
It only lasted two days before being consumed, Miss Noot and Benjawan had some the next day for lunch and I had some on toast. I am going to cook the special version this weekend.
So I am back blogging again, sorry to some for this. Now the PC is back better than new though Windows 7 is a little slow loading pages all is looking very good. I have promised to myself that I will do maintenance once a week to keep the computer running smoothly in the future. It has been good though, 4 years until I stuffed it up.
Brunty
3 comments:
Hey, I like the hotplate you use as your stove top. It looks far more neat and tidy than the propane burners you light with a match and control with a knob. Is it electric?
The mince looks very good, is that a cooker it's sitting on? Looks like a digital scale.
The painted flowers look beautiful...I can't even draw a straight line...was there a reason for them being painted on the sandpaper or was that just for effect?
Hi Amy. It is a ceramic hob. It is like having a stove from back home. I have two of them, this one heats to a temp of 240 degrees the other can heat to 360.
I also have the propane of gas burner but don't like using them inside.
Back home I had gas, the bottles were outside the house and it had what is called flame failure which simply meant if the flame went out the gas wouldn't continue to run.
The ceramic hobs are electric and although a little expensive are worth the investment.
Talen, as above it is a ceramic hob like you would have on your stoves back home, these are portible though which is great as when we cook outside an extension lead and you are cooking.
Ben is a talented at art as she draws really good pictures that are often in proportion but she never spends a lot of time doing art.
The sandpaper was simply for the oil pastels, are grabbed by the coarse paper and the effect is impressive.
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