Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Credit card at petrol station?

There is a good news today! Referring to The Star - No credit card boycott

Government has decided that the banks, oil companies and dealers must resolve their issues and should not burden the public.

I would think that it's a matter of who's going to take one step back and sacrifice some profits.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

Another great firefox extension - Gmail Notifier

Gmail Notifier

After installation, this extension will display a small 'mail' icon on firefox's status bar. It shows brief information about your gmail mailbox and notify you when there's new mail arriving.

I won't be using this often, as I prefer email client, but this is still pretty cool. :D

Fasterfox - firefox extension

Fasterfox 0.7.0

I've tried this extension, and it seems to be working quite well. I'm trying it on Firefox 1.0.7, will try on 1.5beta as well. And yes, I'm still using firefox, once in a while ;)

It provides a few pre-set settings to boost speed, and you are also allowed to customize the settings (manually changing item by item). This is pretty useful, comparing to going through the long and never ending 'about:config'.

Friday, October 07, 2005

RED ALERT: Duplicated Blog at txthub

Yesterday night I noticed that my blog (partially) was posted on teethntusks.txthub.com as well.

I do NOT have an account with txthub and apparently my blog contents were being duplicated illegally to txthub.

I have emailed txthub support and hope that they would take necessary actions as soon as possible!

  

Opera browser

I used Opera during its early days in 1997, it was running fast on my
486 PC back then. It was also one of the few browsers that allowed me to
surf and listen to mp3s at the same time. It's responsive and sleek.

Here is a short article on its history:

Opera Version History

After a few years, it was still free but there was a banner ad. I switched to other browsers since then.

On Sep 20 2005, Opera eliminates its Ad banner and licensing fee, which is pretty much a good news to me, and I'm back using Opera, ver 8.5. My favourite browser once again.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Mushroom Bruschetta - First Attempt

If you start wondering what is Bruschetta, here's a short explanation:

[extracted from wikipedia]

Bruschetta is a food originating in central Italy. It consists of grilled bread rubbed with garlic and topped with extra-virgin olive oil, salt and and spicy red pepper. Variations may include toppings of tomato, vegetables and/or cheese.

It is worth noting that in Italian, bruschetta is pronounced "bru-SKET-ta," though in English-speaking countries it is commonly pronounced "bru-SHET-ta."


I stumbled upon a Mushroom Bruschetta recipe at this website: Mushroom bruschetta - MediterrAsian.com, it seems to be quite an easy recipe for me to make use of the extra virgin olive oil I bought, and so I tried.

It turns out pretty well, here my version of the recipe (simplified):

Ingredients:
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
8 pieces of shiitake mushroom
2 slices of thick hotel bread
1 clove garlic—peeled and cut in half diagonally
some bottled parsley herb
some black pepper

Methods:
1. Use 2 tablespoon of olive oil to fry the mushrooms under medium heat. Add some black pepper and parsley.
2. Toast the bread until golden and RUB one side of the bread with the cut side of garlic.
3. Drizzle 1 tablespoon of olive oil over the slices.
4. Spread the fried mushroom over the slices.
5. Voila!

Happy trying. I would add in bottled black olive and red pepper flakes on my next attempt :)