Spanish pie, yummy yummy!

Its the weekend so I removed my software development hat and I put on my chefs hat. I love to prepare meals for the people I care about and now I am going to share one of my favorite recipes, Spanish pie:

For this meal I use:

• White wheat flour (1 cup)
• Corn flour (1 cup)
• Fresh yeast (25 grams)
• Warm water (for the yeast to rise)
•  Yogurt (2 cups)
• Spinach (1/2 a kilo)
• White cows cheese (300 grams)
• Oil (1/2 a cup)
• Salt (1 small spoon)
• Sugar (1 large spoon)

The most important thing about this recipe is to bring all the products to room temperature before preparation. This means take everything out of the fridge at least 2 hours before starting the meal.

First chop the spinach into peaces and put it under hot water. The water will soften the spinach so it will be easier to put it in the mixture later on. Leave the chopped spinach to dry and put the yeast to rise. For best results mix the yeast with warm but not hot water, salt and sugar and leave it in a lidded pot for 20-30 minutes.

In the meantime grate the cheese or chop it into small cubes depending on personal preferences. I love large chunks of cheese in the pie so I prefer to chop it. If you like you can also put chopped mushrooms or chopped smoked  ham according to taste. Split the whites from the yolks and beat them separately with a hand mixer. Beat until the whites form thick white foam like structure and the yolks form creamy structure. At the end add in the yolks into the whites and mix everything together.

When the yeast has risen, start preparing the dough by mixing in the flours together in a large bowl. Add the yeast and stir in. Put the yogurt and the oil in the dough and stir again. Remember everything needs to be stirred in well for this recipe to work! Finally add the beaten eggs, the spinach and the cheese. Stir again.

When the mixture is evened, put it into a pan and bake 40 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius in a preheated oven. I use a round pan with a 40 centimeter diameter for best results.

After the pie is baked leave it 20 minutes to cool and then serve with cream cheese or even better with tzatziki salad.

Bon appetit, and I hope you enjoy the meal as much as I do.   

JUGMK Java 7 presentation

Today I attended the JUGMK Java 7 presentation which held place in the City Fair business center. The event was well organised thanks to the Macedonia JUG and the sponsors Seavus and Netcetera.
It started with a brief presentation of the history of JUGMK given by Ice Panov. He pointed out the beginnings of the Java User Group in Macedonia which was founded as an NGO in February 2008. It was a result of the enthusiastic work of several Java developers whose effort led to a fully functional group which today organizes both informal meetings and formal technical sessions. He pointed out the JUGMK presence on the Java2Days in Sofia this year as well as the new event called Summer of Code in which newbies can get hands on experience with the Java programming language.
The second part of the presentation was held by Simon Ritter, a java evangelist who pointed out the new path that Java is taking under the guidance of Oracle. He stated that Sun and Oracle are very different companies but have one thing in common: Both companies want to see Java everywhere in the software market. In the presentation he pointed out the problems that led to the delay of Java 7 and how Oracle resolved them by excluding Apache from the Java decision making committee. The decision was tough he said but eventually it led to unlocking of the JSR committees and the release of Java 7.
In the next part of the presentation Simon pointed out the new features in Java 7 which include switch statements with strings, proper closing of streams within the try block, the Path class which complements the File class, the JLayer decorator for components and many more.
In the closing part of his speech he stated that the major changes are coming in java 8 which will include closures and modularity.
After more than two hours the presentation ended and the attendees were invited to a glass of beer which we of course never refuse. All in all this was a time well spent and I plan to attend more JUGMK events in the future.

Ninite, a time saver service after a fresh Windows install

So you had to format your PC and reinstall Windows again. After completing the windows installation and installing the needed drivers you end up with a bare bones PC which is not really usable for anything.
But do not despair, Ninite comes to the rescue. With just a couple of clicks one can have all the essential software installed:
Step one: select web browsers, messaging clients and media players:

My browsers of choice are Google chrome for its speed and sleek design and Firefox for its customizability with the wide array of plug ins available.
Skype and MSN are my favorite chat clients, I use the first one mostly for work and the second one exclusively for pleasure.
VLC is a must on every PC that should play media files. It plays virtually every media file without any need for codecs.
I prefer Winamp for mp3 files because of its look and its ability to handle playlists.

Step two: select runtimes, imaging, document managers and antivirus software:

Flash, Java and .Net are a must on every PC so its better to install them immediately.
For documents management I prefer not to pay to Microsoft so I use LibreOffice which is enough for my needs. For pdf I prefer Foxit Reader to Adobe reader because it is smaller and faster. PDF creator is what I use to generate ready to print pdf documents from anything.
From the available free protection software I chose Avast as one of the best protection solutions, accompanied by Spybot which is used only to run on demand scans (It is faster and it detects more threats than Avast).

Step three: select file-sharing, utilities, compression and antivirus software:

For torrents I use uTorrent because it is the best client available for windows. It gives me complete control of everything torrent-related.
The essential utilities every Windows PC must have are:
ImgBurn - don't let the look of this application fool you, the GUI may be bad but it is absolutely the best free software for burning disks.
Revo - This piece of software removes everything that the typical windows uninstaller leaves behind.
CCleaner - This program removes all the useless crap that piles up after a prolonged usage of a windows OS.
Winrar is a must for every PC, it deals with all compression stuff effortlessly.

As a bonus I recommend installing TotalCommander for better file management options.

I hope that this post will help you with the Windows installation.

Trouble installing Windows 7 on an Acer Aspire One Netbook

My girlfriend recently bought an Acer Aspire One Netbook. The device came with Meego operating system installed which although looked really nice did not soothe her needs because she needs a Microsoft OS for some programs from work.
My first idea was to install windows XP because she is familiar with it and we had an available iso image for it. I used unetBootin to create the bootable disk from an iso image. After the disk was created the BIOS settings on the netbook were changed so that the first boot device was the usb drive.
The installation went smooth and windows XP was running in no time.
After installing windows XP I faced a major problem: There were no drivers available for the netbook for XP! The drivers were windows 7 only. So back to the drawing board...
I had to install Windows 7 but creating a bootable usb was no longer an option because the USB i have is 3,7GB and the iso image for windows 7 is 3.8 GB. I had to revert to something else.
Luckily daemon tools came to the rescue!
First I split the windows 7 iso to two separate files using winrar and transferred them to the netbook.
I unrarred the image on the netbook.
I mounted the image with daemon tools.
The installation process begun.
I created another partition for the needs of the new operating system and pointed the installer to it.
From here everything was smooth.
In about an hour and a half I had a netbook running windows 7.
After the installation finished I used ninite to install everything I need on it in one click.
After a days work my girlfriend's netbook was running windows 7 and I got a nice surprise for a job well done!