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Bondbug

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Everything posted by Bondbug

  1. If it is good stuff then just drink it like an alternative to malt whisky. Or you may try to develop it as Armagnac which is similar but suits my taste better. I think it may only be a question of what wood is used for ageing. I use it for cherry brandy; which is just what it says, pricked cherries, sugar, brandy. Do not stone the cherries...chuck them in a jar, cover with brandy, add sugar, close jar, leave for about 6 months shaking occasionally to prevent sugar settling on bottom. We have also been introduced to Brandy Butter for Xmas. The person who told us used it with Xmas pudding, apparently a southern English variant. We stuck to our white sauce flamed with rum, but found the Brandy sauce good for other things. It would be a pity to use good stuff for cooking, but it has many traditional uses in the kitchen....hic. P S I remember now that my buddies for curling in Perth (the Scottish one) used to drink brandy and lemonade as a long drink...which always struck me as somewhat sacriligeous for a Scot.
  2. Bondbug

    Amiga

    Taken a long time to get moving on this one, thanks Chattius. I have WinUAE, and am currently waiting for a plugin reader for the old 3.5 discs though I am not sure if I need it or even if I can make it work. However it was an Amiga500 game that first hooked me back in1990, and as with so many games the first version was the best.....more game and less fancy graphics. I just hope that it is not just another hope unfulfilled.
  3. Dandelions ... how I would love to, but in France it would be an offence against their gastronomy. They have "pissenlit" festivals here. Sorry but that is the correct French name for dandelions.
  4. Great. Found our German dictionary, and we can fill in a fair bit of time on this diagram.. The last diagram I remember of multi-use of a raw material was I think for Petroleum. My wife knows a little German, but not enough. Love the drawing though....do you have a rough date for it? Our main problem is how to use the wood ash from the oven. The garden is fast becoming neat potash.. We don't compost enough to mix it with, and I am sure that wood ash does not have the range of uses that are shown for bones.
  5. Aw heck. First thing I saw when I arrived was this topic. Thought it was new and it drew me like like pollen to a bee.......and it was nearly 10 years ago!! But it is always a pleasure to read through some of Chattius' topics, with the fantastic illustrations. I didn't used to look back, but with Covid it is not easy to look forward.
  6. Ah well, here goes, how is my day. In general terms....boring, tedious. But then we qualify as free-range old folks. In lock-down, in a small village, our day is much the same as always, minus the choir practices which are almost our entire social life. No commerce in the village, just a very good bar/restaurant which we almost never use...we could almost spit into it from our front door. We have a second home down south in the Pyrenees foothills. Sounds posh but is in fact a symptom of poverty as it costs less than the more commercially based holidays. “Holidays” consist of working on the maintenance of the house and land down there, and going to the village bar to watch rugby on their TV. We enjoy it, but for now the jungle will be taking over and the dormice will be building their nest in the house. Tough innit. So here we are locked-down. I have spoken to 3 people, other than wife, in these recent weeks. The bin men pass every 2 weeks, a minimum of post arrives in the letter box, wife goes shopping on Monday mornings. It would drive some bonkers. So...hmmm... today? Got up, had breakfast, did washing up. Mopped wine spill from floor, cut block of parmesan cheese into smaller portions, cleaned freezer in the barn so wife can restock it, cleaned a large plastic tray to store empty picture frames till needed, filled jug with red wine for midday meal, spent a few minutes in Dark Matters, had meal. Afternoon will be a problem. Normally I spend some time with Podgie on one of the games we both enjoy, which, as Lotro has somewhat sickened us, is at present Vanguard which a small bunch of heroes is valiantly bringing back into life. EQ2 is an option, but for now we are supporting the Vanguard effort. BUT... aha...lock-down has changed things. Podgie's wife now gets Wednesday and Thursday instead of Saturday and Sunday....so for Podgie today (Wednesday) is Saturday, and, as his wife once put it, he cannot come out to play. Options for me are …. garden (but it is raining), making progress with concreting the rest of the barn floor (but I cannot get out to get the materials), finishing clearing long term rubbish out of the barn (but the “tip” for which most of it is destined is closed down and in any case the trip for me is forbidden), fiddling about on the PC.....while the wife disappears upstairs into the upper floor bedroom/workroom, for cross-stitch or her only computer games..Colonization and Settlers, both in the original and best versions. Podgie did remind me of Neverwinter Nights, again the original. I spent a lot of time with that game what seems a lifetime ago. In particular the design option. I designed a pretty large game, thinking that Viv (wife) might enjoy it, full of enigma-like quests and problems and minimum hack'n. Almost finished when the computer crashed and I lost the lot, together with the heart to restart. But Podgie did tell me of a brothel which I didn't remember, so I restarted. But after the initial pleasures of old memories it has already palled a bit. I have the brothel key but have not investigated any further!! Can I summon up the enthousiasm to look at the design option again? So I am sitting writing a post for Dark Matters to bore you out of your scalps. This evening will be “family time” (fanfare of trumpets, small French village style). Either a) Scrabble, b) old TV series on youtube, currently “Rosemary & Thyme” and Dr Finlay (rofl) or Murdoch if we could only find a reliable source for series 10 onwards, or c) Viv takes free reign to hunt up archaelogical type contributions. I fear that this evening it is the latter option. I always loved Time Team, largely for the characters and the production style..... but everything seems to have been done to death now So...you tell me friends....how is my day:)
  7. why don't you lot make your own pizzas and put whatever you like in them. It's a doddle, as long as you have a plate/dish that is oven-worthy. Old misery has spoken.
  8. Love your Elizzy. Same 3 wheel base as my old Bondbug. A pig to drive on snowy roads with that single front wheel sliding around between the wheel tracks, and being so low you get an interesting (and blinding) waterfall effect when the heavy goods go by in wet weather. But ah such fun. As for good old Corona, it seems that 2/3 of parents here in France are not happy to have their kids back to school in May. As for us, the main threat seems to come from the packaging when we do the weekly shop. But the garden is getting to be oh so tidy looking and it at least seems healthy.
  9. Thanks Timo, I eventually got it sorted. None of the above worked, nor did the many keys found on a web search.................BUT, and I hate to confess it, I found the original receipt and code in a heap of old Junk I was sorting for the bin. Now safely filed with XPPro and W8 - perhaps, with my wishy-washy old brain it would be safer to put them in a bank vault.
  10. Good to hear from you again. I am not around much myself and have just spotted this. Hang in there friend. If Podgie can keep going ......
  11. Part of the problem is that they stopped selling/providing keys for W7 long ago. As you may have noticed, I am no expert.. Could you explain what you mean by "Just to be sure, it has been completely wiped so there's no way to run a keyfinder or smt like that?". Keyfinder:) Is that possible? What is annoying me is that I have been through this problem before but a few years back. I have no record of what I did and the old grey matter is so shrivelled up these days as to be a complete blank. Good to talk to you again. Seems a long time.
  12. A bit more up to date than my Amiga problem last year, but not much you may say. Out of date as usual, but someone may have a polite and useful suggestion. This concerns Windows 7. OK when you have finished rolling about laughing …. We keep an old set up with Windows 7 and XPPro. I have legitimate disks for XPPro, W7 and W8. For technical reasonsI cannot update this PC set up to W8, which would be a preferred solution. Recently I had problems and had to reinstall W7. Unfortunately the installation disk, which I believe is legal, is Windows 7 Home Premium, and “Intended for distribution with a refurbished PC” and was given to me, funnily enough, long time ago when the PC was refurbished. Unfortunately it has no key code with it for activation. So we are constantly pestered for activation (as if they cared now) for a PC which is only very rarely connected to the internet, and we constantly suffer inerference and even blockage. I can find no Windows Help service which cares for anything before W10. Does anyone here know how to deal with this and rid us of constant inbuilt pestering
  13. Nothing in walking distance here, we have to use car, and carry a little filled-in form with why we are out, where we are going, etc. Usually I collect milk in a 3 ltr churn from the farm, but am not sure if that qualifies. Literature I read said that bins were still being emptied but not recyling material. Bin men did not come by. Dunno what is going on. We do the shopping once a week, and otherwise stay home - and write daft posts in fori (?) Oh, and we try to play Vanguard on line but that is certainly only food for the dedicated
  14. There you go again Gogo "Its here again... Sheppard's Pie!... we call it by it's venerable name here Pate Chinois... " I never did understand what you mean by z"Sheppards Pie" and now I am even more confused. In English English these pies are usually named after the meat or its Producer? Shepherd's - mutton, Cottage - beef, Game - game (oddly enough). My late son-in-law was called Sheppard but he was no cook. "Chinois" really? I have seen Middle Easterners chasing an escaped sheep down a back street in Paris for their couscous royale. I know that forum members have been at you for as long as I can remember about this naming of yours, but I can't recall any convincing explanation. Just what is it that you are referring to ....er pal, ...or is it now ex-pal?
  15. Well well, I notice that Chattius can't even note his birthday without making an interesting story of it. One reason that I came to sit in here” earlier was to look through some of his pre-Wiki posts He hasn't changed. I always thought that a selection of his posts here should be gathered together as a separate collection. However, to our muttons as they seem to say here. Dinner today was a sort of upgraded Sunday dinner. Sunday dinner being something we observe religiously even though there are only two of us to enjoy it these days. It is a heavily French-influenced format these days. Starter (hors d'oeuvre which is a meal in itself here), main course, cheese (to prolong the red wine), desert (usually more substantial than the French buy-in-from-the-supermarket thing and often with custard). Timotheus may remember “what's for pud ma?”. We do not buy wines from the supermarket, but from vinyards we visit where we can taste and select, never expensive as our budget is a max. of 4 euros/litre. We have found a “viticulteur” in the Gers department with a very acceptable “cubi” red table wine for under 2 euros? Cubi = cubitainer, 10, 20, 30 litre containers to be filled at the vinyard. Wines here usually have the “cépage” given, that being the name of the grape(s) used. We like our reds fairly substantial in colour and taste, and have found the wines of the south of France very much to our liking, rather than the perhaps more sophisticated wines elsewhere. There are still vinyards which grow older, less well-known grapes, like Tannat, Ginseng, Abu Riou, and many others, less commercially viable in large quantities, but with real taste. So to what was in effect a fairly simple and inexpensive meal. Sauvignon white and cheese straws for apperitif; avocado prawns for starter; quail (poor little things) for main course, with veg and a sauce and red wine; cheese and biscuits (not bread); and pud with cream and a sweet white wine. The veg was fennel and potatoes, par boiled then transferred to the oven with cheese on top. The pud was a light sandwich base with rasps on top and whipped cream from the top of the milk which we fetch twice a week from a farm in a 3 ltr churn. I don't know how much of this you understand. The language is English English and a bit out of date. What I wanted to ask Chattius about is the cooking and presentation of quail. Our choice was something of a trip down memory lane. In our courting days, when I was working and much better off, we used to stop, on our way from Glasgow to Hartlepool, at a little pub/restaurant called The Milecastle, about half way along the Roman Wall (Hadrian's). There he always had draught cider and quail, real countryside quail not the farmed stuff, and he had an incredibly powerful dark brown sauce which also appeared with his cheeseboard !! It was always a feature of this drive, even later when our wee daughter was able to brag that she ate 2 whole chicken there (never seen such tiny chicken, perhaps they were camouflaged quail) Anyway...Chattius, how would you deal with quail:) And for old times sake we have the bread oven working tomorrow.......is your village effort still going strong? Time for a walk, but I am not sure what the new corona restrictions allow.
  16. Hi gogo the years keep ticking over. I remember well when George Washington said to me.....er....I forget ....oh well it doesn't matter now. As to dinner I was about to post in the Inglenook in the hopes of finding Chattius supervising his little garden... as I need his advice.
  17. I just popped in for somewhere quiet to sit and contemplate my mispent youth, middle age and old age, and what the wife is busy cooking up in the kitchen, and your Kraterbeet looks about right for my purpose if I can find a space to sit. As a retired architect, town planner, conservationist, environmentalist etc etc., I am shocked to find that I have not met with this super little spot before and can't find an english name for it. I will ask wife when she emerges from the kitchen later.
  18. March 18th. OK kids. 91 today...I've got the key of the door, never been 91 before....etc. Chocolate cake for later. I will post a slice to those of you I know, er..
  19. I really cannot understand what is happening here. I have two correctly created starter usb, one for 32 bit, one for 64bit. I am using them on the relevant computers, but neither is responding correctly, one refusing to recognise the presence of Windows, the other which ignores the BIOS1st boot priority.. Please will someone pass the sledgehammer
  20. Are you really having problems getting sausage skins. Butchers here used to give miles and miles of them away for free. But since the EU in their wisdom produced rules which effectively closed down all the excellent small slaughter rooms that local butchers had, it has been more difficult. But our supermarkets are now selling them, more length that you could use in a lifetime for next to nothing. It is getting the end open and onto the nozzle of my sausage making pump-thing that nearly defeats my large hands.
  21. Thanks pal; Bonne Année and Meilleurs Voeux. Too late to wish it in English, but OK in France.
  22. Living in France I can still dish out Happy New Year greetings till the end of January, so in case I have not already done so...HAPPY NEW YEAR TO SID and THE BOSS. I just wish you would stop giving me a guilt complex about being healthy and too far away to be much use. You haven't mentioned the therapeutic value of intermittent spasms of Lotro, EQ2, and the reviving Vanguard but these are unfortunately not of much permanent value. Whatever else may be happening to you laddie, I know that the old grey matter is still very alive and well. Ciao
  23. The problem is that I cannot install Linux on my main PC as dual with W8.1.The Linux install does not recognise the presence of W8 and therefore does not offer the option to install alongside it for dual booting. I am also trying to install Linx 19 for dual booting on my laptop following a tutorial guide on youtube for that make of laptop. In this case I can open the BIOS but it does not offer the option of a usb boot. So there again I am blocked.
  24. No not Amiga this time but something more up to date. I ask here because I am more likely to get help than on the normal tech help sites which normally hand out advuce based on american stuff an rarely corresponds to my installation. So I have been wasting all my free time for 3 days trying to get Linux installed in a dual (triple in fact) set up with Windows 8.1. I followed tutorial stuff by English contriutors, and managed to get a booting up plug in done. I managed to find out that the PC (!!!!don(t laugh too loud you may hurt yourselves) is a 64 whereas the laptop I started trying to install on is a 32. I had trouble with BIOS on the laptop and eventually switched to the PC, where I managed to get the plug in to work. That took nearly 2 days, a lot of frustration and bad language. Note my highly technical jargon....and I am just coming to the point. I have 4 partitions on my PC, one for W8.1, one for general data, one for XPPro which I still use to access old musical scripting, and 1 of 125Gb now cleared and ready for Linux So I got the Linux demo up and clicked on Install Linux Mint, 19.3 in this case. But when I got to the crucial point where a dialog box should have said approx "we have detected the installation of W8.1" and then offered a set of installation options which included "Install Linux Mint alongside Windows....", what I actually got was "This computer has no detected operating systems" and the "install alongside" option was missing. Brick wall. Any suggestions or kindly comments to enable Linux to detect the operating systems already there, and offer the needed installation option. Perhaps it objects to being part of a 3some:) I will eventually delete W8.1 but can't do it just yet There was also a little note in the corner of the screen "this computer has only 64mb of disc space remaining". Extraordinary in the circumstances but PCs are full of nonsense, even though this one was overhauled and cleaned up a couple of days ago. Sorry Gogo, I always did rattle on too much. OK I could have said it all in a tenth of the space..........
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