Notes In The Margin

I have a WRT54G, the ancient 2.2 version of the hardware, back before there was an L edition. I've been running the Sveasoft Alchemy firmware on it for years and years. I don't even remember when I installed it.

Yeah, I know, there are some folks with ideological reasons why I shouldn't run Sveasoft. Whatever. That's not the point.

Anyways, for the last few months, we've had to reset the device on a nearly daily basis, otherwise the DHCP server just stops handing out addresses.

This weekend, we got fed up, and I downloaded the latest firmware from Linksys/Cisco. It seems to have all the same features as the Sveasoft firmware I was running. Or, at least, if it's missing any, it's ones I wasn't using. Presumably I could run a ssh server on it, so that I could ssh in and ... um ... do something ... I'm not sure why I would want to do that, actually.

Anyways, we haven't had that problem since we did that, and it makes me wonder, not for the first time, how it is that software can suddenly take it into its mind, after years and years of functioning correctly, to just suddenly quit.

So strange.

We spent most of yesterday afternoon making dinner - tandoori chicken, chapatis, and aloo gobi. Although we usually make tandoori chicken with a mix, yesterday we made it from scratch, which is always better, and a lot more fun.

There are lots of recipes online for tandoori chicken, but none of them are quite what I remember from a cookbook I used to have, but seem to have misplaced in some dark corner.

So we took several of the recipes as inspiration, and came up with something all our own. Like all good recipes, I'm not entirely sure what I put in it. Yoghurt, fresh-pressed garlic, grated fresh ginger, cumin, cardamon, coriander, black pepper, cloves, cayenne, garam masala that we already had, and lots of chopped cilantro. As to the quantities of each, I really couldn't say. Which is a shame, because it was some of the best I've ever made.

We'll have to try that again some day. Maybe that time I'll write down the amounts. But, realistically, I doubt that I will.

The aloo gobi recipe is the one that's at the end of the "Bend it like Beckham" DVD.

The chapatis are my own interpretation of the technique that my brother taught me.

Maybe we'll make it for you next time you visit.

And, while I'm at it, here's another teaser from The Jungle Book - Maxims of Baloo.

I've started recording the second part of The Jungle Book. I think I might just spend the whole day on this. Here's a teaser: Hunting Song of the Seeonee Pack.

This is the first of three installments of The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. I expect that it will be many moons before I get the next one done, but I've been sitting on this one, unedited, for several months, and Ruth has been asking for it.

Ruth, if it's too big to download, I'll give you a CD when you get here.

Jungle Book, Chapter 1 - Mowgli's Brothers. (45 Minutes, 41MB)