How to run eWallet on a linux PC?

Long time ago I wrote a blog post on eWallet titled Password galore. I still use eWallet on a daily basis and recently I was on mission to find if eWallet could be run on a linux PC - recently I migrated a couple of old Pentium III PCs to Fedora PCs at home hence was on a mission

Looking at iLium Software web site I see that they support Windows/Mobile/iTouch/iPhone, but no Linux. But I use eWallet on flash drive every day (use U3 version) and it struck me that I could run it on a linux PC if I had wine installed (as eWallet is portable meaning none of the information is written on windows registry during runtime)

For folks not familiar with wine

Wine is a translation layer (a program loader) capable of running Windows applications on Linux and other POSIX compatible operating systems.

I have successfully tested eWallet on Fedora 5 and Fedora 9 and you will need wine installed prior to installing eWallet.

• To begin with, install wine - instructions available at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/AndreasBierfert/Wine
• Download eWallet (Windows PC version) from http://www.iliumsoft.com/site/ew/ew_trial.php

• Open up a shell and start installing eWallet using wine

• Follow the installation instructions and have eWallet installed on your linux PC.
• To invoke eWallet, run eWallet.exe using wine again. I had mine installed under .wine/drive_c/Program Files/Ilium Software/eWallet/ and I invoked it using

wine .wine/drive_c/Program Files/Ilium Software/eWallet/eWallet.exe

• Once successfully installed, you could use your Windows name/key pair (emailed upon purchasing eWallet software) to register eWallet on your linux PC.

As you could it was really easy to install eWallet on a Fedora system. I bet it should easy on any Linux system irrespective of the linux flavor

Drop me a note (using the comment window below) if you need any help with installing eWallet on a linux PC.

Chapati dough for bread machine

For quite some time now I have been wanting to try the pasta cycle on my bread machine. Convinced my other half that we could try making Chapati dough on bread machine and glad that I did

You might wonder why make Chapati dough using bread maker while you can use your hands to make the dough. True, you can make the traditional method to make your Chapati dough but if you need real soft Chapatis (even using the regular wheat flour) then this is definitely for you.

Ingredients: for 5 chapatis
1 cup wheat flour - we used Hodgson Mill’s white whole wheat flour
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon oil
1/3 cup milk

Preparation:

• Place all the ingredients in the bread pan and select the pasta cycle

• Depending on the consistency of the dough add in milk/flour - we always have a  bit of trouble with our bread machine to handle 1 cup flour.

• As you could see in the picture, the dough is all “separated” out and needs help in making into a lump
• In general pasta cycle is about 20 minutes and at about 15 minutes through the cycle add in few drops of oil to the dough - this helps to maintain moisture in the dough.

• Once the pasta cycle is done, wrap the dough in a plastic wrap and set it until its ready to be rolled into Chapatis.

• When ready to be rolled, roll the dough as you would do to make Chapatis.

 

You can view other recipes from my blog by clicking here.

I heard

Here are links to few interesting articles that I have heard on the radio and read on the web over the past 2 weeks.

 

God wants you to be rich: 5 faith-based rules
Quite witty article on MarketWatch.com -
link

 

 

Off-Shore drilling - Pluses & Minuses
We all hear more and more about off-shore drilling these days. Couple of weeks ago there was an interesting audio documentary on Science Friday program on NPR. This documentary covers realities of offshore oil drilling.

How much oil might there be?
When would it be available?
And what other consequences might offshore drilling have?

You can listen to the audio commentary from this link - no you don’t need a fancy iPOd for listening
http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200807185

 

ONQI - Coming to a grocery store near you
Reading a nutrition label doesn’t have to be a rocket science - that’s the whole idea behind the ONQI - Overall Nutritional Quality Index.

The Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI) is an algorithm designed to generate a single, summative score for the “overall nutritional quality” of a food based on its micro nutrient and macro nutrient composition and several other of its nutritional properties (e.g., energy density).

The ONQI enables the “average shopper” to choose foods on the basis of overall nutritional quality with the ease and fidelity of top nutrition experts.
http://www.griffinhealth.org/Research/ONQIpages/FAQs.aspx

KUSELAN/KATHANAYAKUDU movies in St.Louis

STLtamilmovies is screening Super * Rajini’s tamil movie Kuselan in St. Louis. You can watch the movie trailer here.

Movie information: KUSELAN
Super * Rajini, Nayanthara, Meena, Vadivelu, Pasupathy, Sneha, Kushboo

Where/When:
Wherenberg St. Charles 18 Cine, 1830 First Capitol Dr, St. Charles. 63303
Aug 1st Friday @8.30 PM
Aug 2nd Saturday - 2.00 PM, and 6.00 PM
Aug 3rd  Sunday   - 3.00 PM

Ticket information:
Adult : $15
Kids (age 3-12) : $8

Ticket information:
Adult : $15
Kids (age 3-12) : $8

Tickets:
www.stltamilmovies.com Sendil ( 636.386.8992)
www.sulekha.com
Seema Enterprises, Suvidha, Spice Bazar

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Movie information: KATHANAYAKUDU

Super * Rajini, Nayanthara, Jagabathi Babu, Meena, Sunil

Where/When:
Wherenberg St. Charles 18 Cine, 1830 First Capitol Dr, St. Charles. 63303
Aug 1st Friday @9.30 PM
Aug 2nd Saturday - 3.00 PM, and 7.00 PM

Ticket information:
All ages (above 3) : $12

Tickets:
www.stltamilmovies.com Sendil ( 636.386.8992)
www.sulekha.com
Seema Enterprises, Suvidha, Spice Bazar

For more upcoming tamil movies in St.Louis area visit http://stltamilmovies.com/

Healthy Granola Bar

We have been making these granola bars for almost every week now and these bars come handy for a healthy evening snack or for breakfast on the run

Took a basic recipe for a granola bar and changed it quiet a bit to make it healthy - that is the good thing about making these granola bars, you don’t always have to add the same dried fruits/nuts. You could always change it based on what is available in your pantry or what suits your mood

Ingredients:
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup all purpose flour
4 tablespoons oat bran
2 tablespoons flax meal
1 tablespoon unsweetened coco powder
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup wheat germ
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/3 cup brown sugar

½ cup raisins
½ cup dates
¼ cup dried cranberries
½ cup chopped walnuts
½ cup dark chocolate chips

½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup honey
1 egg

Preparation:

• In a large bowl, stir together all the dry ingredients - oats, flour, oat bran, flax meal, coco powder, salt, wheat germ, ground cinnamon, brown sugar, raisins, dates, cranberries, and walnuts.
• In a separate bowl mix together vegetable oil, honey, and egg.
• Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and mix it by hand until you don’t see any dry mixture - it’s kind of a messy job but it’s well worth it
• In the mean time preheat oven to 350 C and spray with baking spray on a jelly roll pan aka flat baking pan.
• Pour the hand mixed mixture on the baking pan and press it evenly.
• Bake it for about 25 minutes and cool it completely.
• When cooled turn it out into a cutting board and cut into desired size bars.

You can view other recipes from my blog by clicking here.

How to transplant a banana plant/tree?

It is about 2 years now since we have been growing this small banana plant on a container - got this from a good friend of us living here in St. Louis. I think this is Hawaiian/tropical banana tree and so far it has survived couple of winters - since it is container grown it has been real easy to move inside house during cold winder months. But lately I have been noticing that it has overgrown for its container and there is even a baby banana plant - definitely it needs transplanting (to a bigger pot).

After moving the plant from the saucer, I noticed that the roots of banana plant has started creeping out through the drain holes and definitely a sign that the plant needs transplanting.

Typically we don’t like growing plants in plastic containers/pots but for tropical plants that needs to be moved inside the house during cold winter months we do prefer plastic pots as these don’t weigh much and could be easily cut for transplanting as well.

Before cutting the pot I spent few minutes in pulling out the roots from the drain holes - I did manage to pull out the roots off the drain holes without causing much damage

Next step was to cut the pot and pull out the plant - though I could have pulled out the plant off the container, I didn’t want to mess with the roots

Lots of roots and good sign that the plant is healthy and sure needs a bigger home

Next step was to prepare the soil - I mixed in garden soil, peat (retains moisture in the soil and loosens up the soil), 1 teaspoon of Epsom salt (natural mineral - real cheap @Walgreens and can be used as fertilizer when preparing soil), and blood meal (improves nitrogen content of the soil).

Before packing the pot with the soil, I added pebble stones so that water could drain easily - this is something that could always be done on container gardening. Adding pebbles/rocks to the bottom of pot, helps drain water easily there by preventing root rot.

Elsewhere on the web I read that banana plant could be propagated by carefully cutting off the baby plants (aka suckers/pups)  using a sharp spade from its mother rhizome. So I carefully cut off the baby plant from its mother and got them moved to 2 separate pots.

Now I have 2 banana plants

Here is a picture of banana plants after transplanting.

There goes my $40 coupon

On one of my earlier blog post, I had mentioned about the $40.00 coupon I had received through the coupon box program. Last month I went shopping for a DTV converter box as these coupons does have an expiration date and is clearly marked on the card.

I found that most of the retailers carry just one model or 2. I went to Wal-mart and Radio shack and was able to find one for $49.99 - but they all seem to be made of plastic body and I wasn’t willing to spend my coupon/money on it. So went to circuit city and they had Zenith DTT900 Digital TV Converter Box which has a metal body.

It costs $10 more than that one(s) at Wal-mart and Radio sack but I was willing to pay extra $10 for Zenith DTT900 Digital TV Converter Box.

So got home and want to see if it works (or to be more precise want to see how far this will convert OTA digital signal).

We have a Panasonic analog TV - before connecting to a converter box it won’t pick any signal from my attic antenna antenna nor any indoor antenna, as we live about 40 miles away from St. Louis city. I decided to try with my trusty fishbone antenna (I use this to get OTA channels for my HDTV) for my initial setup

Hook up was pretty straight forward - you connect one end of coax cable to antenna/outlet and the other end to the converter box. Surprisingly the output from the converter box has RCA connectors

The output from the RCA connectors goes to the TV. One thing I was struggling with for a while (without reading the manual) was not receiving any signal on TV. Turns out I need to set my TV to channel 3 to watch “converted DTV” programs - similar to setting up a VCR.

The first time I powered on the converter box, it automatically started going through initial auto tuning process and setting up the channels. By the end of the set up, I am able to watch almost all the digital channels available in St. Louis area - though the quality is no where close to watching it on a HDTV but then again it’s just converted analog signal

Another good thing with this converter - I get program information like those one would receive on cable/satellite reception. I am guessing this is same with other digital converter boxes as well (?).

I am more than happy with my Zenith DTT900 converter box as we could watch more local channels and we are now ready for DTV changeover

More information on Zenith DTT900 converter box can be found here.

Hydrangea(s) in bloom

Finally after 3 years of planting our Hydrangea(s) have started to bloom. When we had bought it in fall 2005, it had blooms and we had planted them in a spot where it would get morning sunlight. The second year we didn’t see any bloom (though the plant looked very green and healthy). I had called in to Master Gardner’s (It’s a horticultural answer service provided by University of Missouri Extension) and the lady I had spoke to suggested, transplanting our Hydrangeas to a spot where it would get full sunlight and she gave some valuable suggestion on pruning.

So during spring 2007 we moved it to a spot where these would get full sunlight and we have started seeing blooms this year.

So if your Hydrangeas didn’t bloom

• Check to see if they get enough sunlight
• During spring pruning selectively prune out the dead stems.
• Don’t prune out all the old wood, since this is what will keep flowering as the new growth matures

 

Our next experiment with Hydrangeas is to feed the plant with coffee grounds to lower the pH of the soil thereby make it bloom in purple/blue

Better than Wonder Bread

If you like white bread then this bread recipe is for you - it is a white bread with some good stuff and tastes a lot better than Wonder Bread

I took a classic white bread recipe and made additions/omissions to the ingredients to make it a guilt free white bread

Ingredients: For 2 lb loaf
1 cup water
¼ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons white sugar
1½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon soy flour
1 tablespoon dry milk powder
2 tablespoons oat bran
2 tablespoons flax meal
1 teaspoon wheat germ
2½ cup bread flour
¼ cup whole wheat flour

• Put all the ingredients in the bread pan (follow the instructions on the manual) and select the dough cycle.
• During first rest period, check for consistency of the dough and add water/flour as necessary

• Preheat the oven to 350 C.
• When the dough cycle ends, empty the dough into a floured surface and shape it into a loaf and let it rise in a greased/floured loaf pan for about an hour.

• Bake the raised dough in the oven for 35 minutes.

• Let the bread cool for about an hour before slicing.

Tastes great with chicken tikka salad - more on that later

You can view other bread recipes from my blog by clicking here.

PLU code

The other day, health/fitness blog Mark’s daily apple had an interesting post titled Cracking the Code. We all see the PLU coded stickers on fresh produce at local grocery store - I was thinking it meant just for speeding the checkout process. But it has more to it.

Basically you start with counting the number of digits.

A four-digit number applies to conventionally grown produce, that is, those that were grown with pesticide and other chemical.
A five-digit code that has the first digit 9 applies to organically grown produce.
A five-digit code that has the first digit 8 applies only to genetically engineered items, such as seedless grapes.

You can read more on this article here
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/cracking-the-code/