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Category: Household Tutorials

This category is random tutorials and descriptions of ways to make life easier running a household, dealing with bills, electricity and gas providers and other necessary evils of domestic life that take up your time, energy and life.

BFC – Ballarat Fried Chicken. The dirty rat Vs Dirty Bird.

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WP_20170709_18_24_50_ProBallarat Fried Chicken. The Name pretty much says it all.This is no ripoff of of the dirty bird’s secret spices- its a whole new original effort, tangy and spicy, inside and out, with marinaded tenderized chicken, encrusted in a crispy and spicy coating.

Easy as pie to make at home- and takes very little effort or skill thankfully.

Yes, there is salad in this pic, but that’s 100% optional.

The differing point in this recipe is the use of breakfast cereal biscuits for a very coarse and crispy crumb finish, mixed with delicious spices.

Crushed weetbix, becasue of its sharp and angular crumbs achievesa very good, and thick adhesion to the chicken meat- far superior to traditional breadcrumbs as the edges stick into the meat quite nicely.

Key Ingredients:

  • 3 Large chicken breasts
  • 7+ bricks of Weetbix or budget equivalent
  • Cup of corn flour
  • 2 Eggs
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 500ml rice bran oil for frying

Suggested Special equipment:

  • Steak griddle pan (ridged base)

Spice & marinade ingredients:

  • 3 Dried chillies
  • 1 large lemon
  • 3 colour grinding pepper
  • Sea salt
  • Sesame Oil
  • Sesame Seeds
  • Cooking rice wine (sake)
  • Centuries ahead Mexican spice mix (Salt, onion, oregano, chilli, garlic, thyme, cumin)
  • Centuries ahead Pepper steak spice mix (unknown composition)

Suggested salad:

  • handful Leafy green fancy salad mix
  • half of a slightly underripe pear
  • 8 cherry tomatoes
  • Salt + pepper (on tomatoes)
  • liberal shaving of Gran padano hard Italian cheese
  • small handful of black grapes.
  • splash of balsamic vinegar

Method:

Step #1- meat preparation & marination

  1. Cut chicken breasts thinly into 3cm wide strips (or larger if so desired) and tenderise lightly with a mallet
  2. Place chicken meat in a large bowl with a tightly fitting lid
  3. Cut lemon, squeeze juice onto bowl of meat, stir gently.
  4. slice skin of 1/2 of the lemon thinly, then dice vigorously, add to bowl
  5. dice chillies, add to bowl
  6. add spice mixes to desired strength
  7. introduce 4 tablespoons of sesame oil to bowl
  8. add sesame seeds
  9. splash in rice wine / sake
  10. stir meat gently, ensuring spices sesame seeds, and lemon pieces are distributed evenly
  11. cover, and place in fridge for 30mins +

step #2 Preparation of batter & crumb, frying.

  1. Break two eggs into a cup, and whisk with a fork to break and mix white & yolks, add milk to thin.
  2. Add in salt, pepper & spice mix to taste.
  3. Pour spicy egg batter mix into a large, shallow dinner plate or bowl
  4. Crush weetbix biscuits by hand in fists into a shallow dish- mix of fine and course pieces is best.
  5. Mix cup of corn flour with wheat biscuit crumbs, and add spices, salt, pepper to taste.
  6. Dip marinaded chicken meat into egg mix, then transfer to crumb plate
  7. Pat crumbs firmly into the marinaded, battered chicken.
  8. Pour rice bran oil into steak griddle pan till 1cm deep over high point of ridges.WP_20170709_18_06_52_Pro
    1. Griddle pan is best for shallow frying- the ridges discourage sticking, and ensure good oil coverage on bottom of chicken pieces.
    2. Shallow frying is ideal, as care needs to be taken to ensure crumb does not fall off chicken pieces.
  9. Use tongs to carefully hand shallow fry each chicken piece.
  10. Place chicken pieces on absorbent paper toweling after cooking to ensure a crisp and less oily finished product- pat dry with paper on the top side also.
  11. The finished product shudl be golden, crispy, spicy and delicious
    1. great on it’s own with a dipping sauce, or cut up, in a salad, if you are feeling guilty and bloated after eating most of the chicken straight from the pan once its cool enough to bear

 

Folding@Home FAHclient.exe access denied; FahCore_21.exe bug fix (Windows 10)

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For those that don’t know folding at home is a distributed processing computer network which provides computing power for health research projects in the field of protein science, and is run by Stanford university.

http://folding.stanford.edu/

Applications for this science range from cancer research, to alzheimers, and debilitating, terminal genetic diseases such as Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and even mad cow disease.

People all over the world for the last 15 years or so have donated their spare computing power, available on home computers, corporate servers and even gaming devices  in some cases.

These generous donations from the general public amount to an incredible amount of money in terms of hardware costs, internet bandwidth, and power consumption costs, plus time and effort of donors to configure and maintain their computers to run the folding at home software in a stable fashion, and make charitable contributions.

Folding at home currently supports both CPU and GPU (graphics card- AMD and NVIDIA) processing of scientific research.

Shortly after installing folding at home, and beginning to compete work units, I noticed a problem with the GPU- the required core file (the application that runs the GPU as a processing unit for folding at home) FahCore_21.exe and FahCore_a4.exe were having an issue shortly after downloading from the Stanford university website. : access is denied.

How to fix??

FahCore_21 access is denied failing

FIrstly, I looked at the firewall issues that could be stopping the FahClient program communicating with the outside world.

The following list of applications need to be enabled as authorized in the windows 10 firewall to ensure folding at home can run properly: fahclient.exe, FAHCoreWrapper.exe, FAHViewer.exe, FAHControl.exe, Core_21.exe

Its also a good idea to pin these apps to the start menu for easy access too- it doesnt happen by default when undertaking the standard install!

The core file may be different, depending on the age of your system and GPU / graphics card- (mine is an ancient dinosaur by comparison to modern gaming beast rigs) core i5 CPU + NVIDIA fermi GT 430 graphics GPU.

Fahclient folding@home windows firewall settings

Some of these folding at home client and core files can be a little tricky to find- their default direcotry locations are hidden in the rather hotchpotch file structure of windows 10 or windows 7

The main client and other key applications default file path is fairly easy to find on windows 10:

  • fahclient.exe default file path: C:\Program Files (x86)\FAHClient
    • This program controls the CPU calculations (folds proteins)
  • FAHCoreWrapper.exe default file path: C:\Program Files (x86)\FAHClient
    • This program allows GPU to be used for calculations too.
  • FAHViewer.exe default file path: C:\Program Files (x86)\FAHClient
    • This app visualises the protein folding itself you are undertaking, and renders a map showing the worldwide distribution of donors
  • FAHControl.exe default file path: C:\Program Files (x86)\FAHClient
    • Instead of using the web control to configure your client’s behaviur, login etc, (http://folding.stanford.edu/client/) you can use a local program instead.

The core files for the GPU processor are in a couple different possible locations:

Typically only under windows 7 – program data

C:\ProgramData\FAHClient\cores\fahwebx.stanford.edu\cores\Win32\AMD64\NVIDIA\Fermi\Core_21.fah\Core_21.exe

on WINDOWS 10 – the appdata roaming folder under your user account
C:\Users\insertyourwindowsusernamehere\AppData\Roaming\FAHClient\cores\fahwebx.stanford.edu\cores\Win32\AMD64\NVIDIA\Fermi\Core_21.fah\Core_21.exe

 

win 10 location of FahCore_21_exe for firewall allow

The last possible problem stopping the folding at home client from running properly is administrative privileges. Though your account might have administrative privileges, you may need to specify to use them when the F@H client is started- this can be set via the peoperties of the application file.

FahClient run as administrator settings

You will need to navigate to the file’s location in the file system and right click on it to change the default running preferences.

Check the box “run this program as administrator” and hit apply.

After all this is done, the access denied error on folding at home should be fixed.

 

The Laundry King- laundromat Ballarat & black hill

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DWP_20170422_17_49_04_Prouring a period when I had no working clothes washing appliance, and was pondering and researching which one to buy next, I discovered a surprisingly clean and convenient place to wash and dry your clothes just up the road, at 100 Simpson street, ballarat, victoria, 3350 just on the corner of walker street “The Laundry King”

http://www.thelaundryking.com.au/

This little cottage business has sprung up quite recently, and the facilities are sparkling new, clean and reliable.

They also offer FREE wifi internet access that is UNLIMITED so you can watch a movie on your phone or laptop while your clothes wash or dry.

The machines are all coin operated, so you just need to bring a handful of $1 coins with you as some dirty rotten bogan stole the change machine recently… (the golf house hotel pokie machine room down the road is a good source of gold though if you need notes changed.)

If anything goes wrong, you can contact the owners on 0428 233 330

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The location is a bit odd- a strange little orphaned line of disparate, unrelated shops exists on a lonely corner, seemingly in the middle of suburban nowhere.

Laundry king shares its complex with a “business broker” that never seems to be open, and a little hairdresser.

WP_20170422_17_48_13_ProThe washing machines are brand spanking new, and seem to be cleaned down and disinfected by one of the rather lovely co-owners a couple times a day with very powerful, but environmentally friendly products. (I know this from the smell, and the distinct lack of a sky high feeling and brain damage when I have been in the building when the cleaning is done.

A wash costs between $4 and $8, Depending on the size of the machine selected.

The HUGE one to the right is the blanket/doona capable jumbo washer, and the cycles on all machines seem to take a very speedy half hour to complete.

A big line of very fast gas dryers occupies the other side, and a surprisingly large number of people come in during winter to use them- they are quite cost effective, as a few dollars will dry quite a swag of clothes, which would cost a kings ransom in electricity at home to do, not to mention the fire risk.

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Recorded CCTV from every corner of the building, plus outside, also discourages clothes thefts, and creeps from stealing underwear for very unsavoury purposes that might make you shudder.

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Family friendly, they have even set up a play pen with a few toys for bored kids, plus FREE wifi for the BIG kids to play on.

The name “Laundry King” seemed at first to have no relation to the owners at all.. but looking more closely, and seeing relationships with Blueprint consulting group, and Yardparty, both of which are run by Kieren King- I wonder if he is one of the owners, and the gorgeous red-headed lady who cleans the machines is his wife… The website is registered in his name after all, along with his sole trader ABN 86476836930

 

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