Mmmmm Meatball Bean Soup!

My wife and I are on a diet, and I wanted to make something that was low in calories, and high in iron. I also wanted some ground beef (a rare treat on a low calorie diet). This turned out fantastic. I’d cook it again even if I wasn’t on a diet.. I’d just have seconds. Enjoy.

    Ingredients

    1 lb lean ground beef
    2 tsp dried thyme
    1 tsp each salt, pepper
    ½-teaspoon ground cumin
    4 cloves garlic, minced
    2 tsp vegetable oil
    1 cup chopped onion
    2 cups beef broth
    2 cans (15 ounce) black beans, rinsed and drained (substitute with any canned bean as desired).
    1 cup diced peeled potato
    1 can (14 ounce) diced tomatoes
    ¼ to ½ teaspoon Louisiana hot sauce
    2 green onions, sliced

    In a bowl combine beef, 2 cloves minced garlic, thyme and ½ tsp each of salt and pepper; roll into approx 1 tbsp balls.

    In a skillet or large sauce pan, heat oil over medium-high heat; brown meatballs, in batches as necessary, turning often, for about 5 minutes. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towel. Drain fat from pan.

    In skillet/sauce pan bring the onion, remaining garlic and ½ cup broth to a boil. Reduce head; cover and simmer for 6-8 minutes or until onion is tender. Stir in the beans, potato, remaining tsp of thyme, cumin and remaining broth; return to boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 20-25 minutes or until potatoes are tender.

    Stir in tomatoes and hot sauce; heat through. Sprinkle with green onions.

    Yield: 6 servings Approx 300 cal per serving.

I just read on a friend’s lj that Palladium games, makers of the RIFTS, Robotech, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Role-Playing games, have suffered between $850,000 to 1.3 million in losses due to embezzlement.

This, combined with losses taken producing a RIFTS game for the Nokia N-gage, as well as stalling in the production of the RIFTS movie, and a general lull in the demand for RPGs has created an environment

Kevin Siembieda has posted an open letter to the public asking for financial support to get his company through the year. To generate this support he is selling a numbered art print of Palladium’s cast of characters from their various games.

    “- I, Kevin Siembieda, will draw a special, pencil drawing with key characters from our entire game line to be made into a simple, black and white, toned piece of artwork, 11 x 14 inches, printed on a good quality paper.

    - Each print will be hand signed by me. I’ll indicate which number that print is (i.e. #1, 2, 100, 1000, 2010, etc.). I don’t know how many there will be in the end; I pray for thousands!

    - EVERYONE who purchases the print will see their names appear in the back pages of a major book listed as “Heroes of the Megaverse®!”

    - The print will sell for $50.00 plus shipping and materials (envelope, protective cardboard, etc.), probably about $2.00-$5.00 by regular first class mail.

    - We need those sales NOW!!! If 4,000 or 5,000 people all order that darn print within a month or two, it should give us the money we need to get back on our feet! Without a shot in the arm of some big cash, and fast, I fear Palladium is gone. That kind of jump start should carry us through the year and should enable us to do the other things we need to do to keep the company going for years to come!”

Buy a print and support a company that has entertained so many, and continues to exercise the creativity and intellect of youth and adults alike.

Here is a link to buy a print.

Here is a link to the lj where I heard about this.

Most “free” music delivered via the internet is either illegal or disappointing. Last.fm is neither. The concept is streaming audio based on community and user feedback.

To sum up the service:

- You sign up, and download their free streaming audio player.

- At this point you can search for bands you listen to and tag them based on genre.

- At any time on any bands page you can choose to preview music by the artist (a 30 second sample). Better yet listen to similiar artist radio, which plays music by the artist or(obviously) music by similiar artists. You can even listen to artist fan radio which plays music that people who have tagged the artist like.

- As an added bonus, you can also listen to radio stations based on tags. If you feel like listening to nothing but japanese pop, or 80s this feature can be pretty handy.

- My favourite feature – In the radio tab you can create a custom radio station by entering examples of the bands you feel like listening to.

All of this comes at you in 128KBps quality. And all for free. The site also has lots of community tools that may be worth checking out. I’ve found about 12 cds I want to buy, and 3 new bands I love since I started using this service yesterday. Too bad I can’t afford any of them.

These days it’s hard to get me excited about up-coming video games. The most exciting game I can think of that came out in the last 6 months is “shadow of the colossus,” and I can’t think of even one really new-concept title for the PC in the last year/year-and-a-half. This game looks amazing. I watched the entire movie in awe at the scope of it. Check it out:

Well, I got myself an old Sega Dreamcast for about 30 bucks the other day. It came with 2 controllers, a lightgun and a couple of memory cards as well as a couple dozen games. What a fricken deal! The dreamcast has some great titles that just can’t get ignored. My personal favourites:

-The light gun games (There are only 3). Especially House of the Dead 2, and Confidential Mission.

-Jet Grind Radio: A Japanese version of Tony Hawk. The object: Rollar blade around putting up graffiti tags and busting up rival gangs. Try and avoid the police, attack helicopters, tanks, and swat teams. This was one of the first games to use cell-shading, and the first one to do a good job of it.

-Crazy Taxi(1 and 2): Drive around frantically trying to get fares before the clock runs out.

For a small price, this system is giving me hours of retro-gaming fun.

I have an older PIII450 I’ve had lying around that I decided to install Mandriva on. I’ve delved a bit into the linux world before, but it’s been so long that I can’t remember squat. Luckily I have the one page linux manual.

The install was pretty easy actually. If you follow the directions you can turn a windows machine into a dual-boot linux machine. One thing: Make sure you install the development tools. You will probably need them at some point to compile software for your distribution or a new kernal. The install took about 25 minutes, but as soon it was done everything worked fine, and the computer was capable of its primary task: surfing the net.

Right after install I had some issues with how sluggish the ol’ pIII was running using the default KDE GUI. After consulting the guys at the BBr Unix/Linux forum I decided to switch to fluxbox, which is a variation on blackbox. The fluxbox site had a package to compile that I had problems with because I was missing “x windows” development stuff. Eventually I brokedown and used an RPM(basically a self-installing file) that someone on BBr showed me at http://www.rpmfind.net .

This was all a good warm-up for the new system I just put together. Sometime this week I have to update the nvidia drivers, and install RTCW:ET.

Well, I managed to get done about 25% of my COMP 200 course. I did the first assignment and quiz and got 100% on both! At work I’m planning on finishing my first course project which has something to do with making an Access database. This means I have to learn Access. The university provides tutorials, so I don’t think it will be a problem. Here are the tutorials if anyone feels like learning Microsoft Access.

Well, I’ve been contemplating getting a second computer to mess around with. Nothing fancy, just something I can install linux on and use to browse the internet on my second monitor while I play Counter-strike:Source on the other. I’ve been meaning to use linux more, and I think a second system would be just the trick. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, so I turned to my old friend Ebay.

So far, here’s what I’ve got:

C $51.19 Athlon XP 2000+ Palomino AGOGA stepping
C $63.73 MAXTOR 80GB ULTRA ATA 100/133 IDE HARD DRIVE
C $28.91 512mb ECC PC2100 ram INFINEON matched pair
C $38.00 Gigabyte GA7N400 Socket A motherboard.
Current Total: $134.09

My biggest regret is the hard-drive so far. I could have saved about 20 bucks if I had been paying attention. I have a cd-burner that isn’t being used that I’m going to throw in, and an old GForce Ti4200. the board has onboard sound and lan. The only thing I have to get now is a case/psu(Which, oddly enough, will bet the most expensive component).

The funny thing is that the Gigabyte board I got for my “cheapie” computer is better than my main rig’s board (Asus A7N8X). It has 1 more ram-slot, takes SATA.

So now I just have to buy a case/psu and wait for everything to come in the mail. I’m really torn between getting the cheapest case I can find or one that I can use forever that is easy to work inside of.

This post is mirrored on both my wordpress blog and my livejournal blog. The comments aren’t mirrored though, because I’m not that good yet.

That time of year is coming, so here’s some stuff I think is worth buying:

1. The IPOD nano. I’ve never really been that interested in the IPod, but the nano may make a convert yet. My biggest problem with the IPod has always been the hard drive that it uses for storage. You see, one of the major appeals for me, as far as MP3 players go, is that they were originally solid-state with no moving parts. This feature was appealing to me because that meant no skipping songs, and no parts to wear out. The IPod HD was something destined to fail. With up to 4GB of storage, the nano can hold something like 3 days of music. Some people say that IPods are all over-priced. I think that the IPod interface, and the fact it auto-syncs with I-tunes make it worth it. I don’t own one of these myself, but if I did I’d probably buy the Logitech Wireless Music system for it.

2. Now if you think that loved one will want more space, and don’t mind the fact that it’s a HD player, you should check out the iaudio X5. This beauty has a 14 hour battery life, a 20-30GB HD, and a reasonable price. It also has two things that the big IPOD doesn’t:

-An FM tuner,
- And VIDEO!

Pretty cool I think. I’ve read some complaints about the interface, but most agree that if you take the time to learn it you can navigate pretty fast.

3. I got a Sony PSP on my birthday and loved it. Even though it is expensive compared to a Nintendo DS, it is definitely in a different league as well. I’d say that the PSP is targeting an older audience than Nintendo. I fell in love with the PSP when I was in Costco one day and saw them on display. I was very impressed with the screen. Even then, I wasn’t completely taken by the PSP until I found out you can run homebrew. Since the 1.0 firmware got exploited and Wipeout Pure was used to access a web-browser, homebrew for the psp has only gotten stronger. There is a ton of information out there on running dozens of emulators on the PSP. These include emulators for SNES, Gameboy, MAME, Turbo Graphics 16, NES and a slew of others (including SCUMM the lucas-arts engine). On top of that there are dozens of other homebrew aps from e-book readers, to media players, to organizers.

Unfortunately if you want to get a lot of mods, you are going to need to buy a bigger Memory Stick Pro DUO. I have a 256MB card, which is starting to feel small. Even without all of the mods, hacks and homebrew software, the PSP is a very capably video player. I often bring an hour of TV with me on my PSP (I could bring more but my card is pretty small). This is the perfect toy for someone who loves playing with ROMS and tech toys. The best games out there for this puppy are Ridge Racer (racing), Lumines (Puzzle), Metal Gear (Turn based card game), and Burnout Legends (Racing).

This post is mirrored on both my wordpress blog and my livejournal blog. The comments aren’t mirrored though, because I’m not that good yet.

I’ve decided to start posting some of my favourite recipes. I know that when I was a bachelor I didn’t cook nearly as much as I should have. It’s always handy to know how to cook. This simple recipe was given to me by a friend a number of years ago. I THINK it was the first thing I ever cooked for my wife. This recipe, like all recipes that I’ll put up, is simple but effective. I keep my instructions as simple as possible.

Tools Needed:

- Skillet or deep frying pan
- cheese grater (not needed if you have grated cheese)
- Good knife for chopping (Optional)
- a big serving spoon
- A flipper

Ingredients:

- Tablespoon of vegi or olive oil
- 1 Jar of salsa
- 4 boneless/skinless chicken breasts
- 1 onion(optional)
- 1 green pepper(optional)
- 3 or 4 cups of shredded mozzarella
- 2 Cups rice.

1. On a medium to high-medium element, add oil to skillet and add chicken breasts. Cook until cooked. If unsure, cut into a breast(juices should be clear, and inside shouldn’t be pink).

2. Add salsa to skillet and simmer for a half hour. Chop onion and green pepper up if desired, and add to mix.

3. While simmering, prepare 2 Cups of rice as per directions. (Basically 2 cups water for every 1 cup rice. Bring water to boil/ Add rice/reduce to min and cover for 20 minutes/remove from element and let stand for 10 min).

4. Top skillet contents with mozzarella and let melt.

5. Serve skillet contents on a bed of rice. I recommend using a big spoon to serve the breasts so that they keep a layer of salsa and cheese on top of them, and then use the spoon to snag a portion of salsa for the uncovered rice.