Renault 4 GTL (model 1987)

Here is another 1/43 scale model. This is Renault 4 GTL, late version. This was a very popular car in former Yugoslavia. Originally French, but I believe it was made in Slovenia.

This one has more plastic, but fairly realistic for a 1/43 model.

The level of details really brings back memories. What was fun about this car is the umbrella like shifter. Fairly easy to drive and very versatile small car. Although, it was small and light the "boxy" line and the fifth door made this car very useful for moving people and stuff. Not a powerful engine, but extremely economic.

The plastic grill at the front was late model type deal. On this model the doors and hood cannot be opened. On real ones it was fun how small the engine was under the hood. Wish I could have a real one. Especially with today's oil prices.

Frame for Pastel (Milan Uzelac)

My neighbors got married recently. We ordered a pastel drawing of a horse from Novi Sad, Yugoslavia. The artist's name is Milan Uzelac and he is very well known in Vojvodina and whole of former Yugoslavia.

We ordered the frame to be cut, and 2mm non-reflective glass. It was amazing to see how it turned into an extremely nice piece once we assembled the frame. Whenever I assemble a large frame like this, with glass and all, I like to put little metal corner deals that hold the thing in place in addition to nails.

Trick is to maintain the gaps in the corners closed. Our neighbors loved the painting as well as lots of their friends. Not needed to explain that Texans have a thing for horses, too.

This one I got for my high school graduation (back in 80s). My parents brought it to USA when they were visiting. Also a pastel, and it came with dismantled frame. We bought non-reflective glass and assembled it back here. It is a center piece above our fireplace.

Milan Uzelac is definitively one of my favorite artists from Novi Sad, Serbia. Not only that he does great pastels, oils, and water colors, he is a great friend and a lovely company to talk to.

Perfect Cup of Coffee: Turkish Coffee

Intro
I am a coffee lover. Pretty much any form or type. I typically don't drink it very sweet and really like coffee for coffee taste. This entry is on how the coffee used to be (and I believe still is) made in former Yugoslavia. I heard of variety of "new" names (Serbian, Bosnian, Domestic, ...) it all kind of comes down to a same thing. I have friends from Macedonia, Greece, Kosovo and they all made it and served it the same way (talk about the differences).

Tools

• Coffee pot
• Teaspoon
• Coffee mill/grinder
• Cup ans saucer

Ingredients

• Water
• Coffee beans (I tried all kind of brands, ended up liking cheap Kroger called "Spotlight" the best)
• Little sugar
  

Preparation

• Put the beans into the grinder. You can also used the electric coffee grinder. The deal is that for Turkish coffee you need very fine ground, almost like dust.

• You can put little bit of sugar into the water. Wait for water to boil.

• Once you have the boiling water, remove some into the cup. Put around one teaspoon of ground coffee per cup into the coffee pot.

• Mix well and put back on the range to get it "rise" (observe the video). Be careful cause this is the part when it usually gets all over the place.
  

• You can repeat the "rise" cycle 2-3 times. Be careful, every next time the coffee will rise much faster.

• When done add the spare water back into the pot.

• Traditionally (for former Yugoslavia) served in small cups with saucers. Sugar cubes served on the saucers for sweetening the coffee or dipping into the coffee (yummy).

Offering it to "locals"
My friend from USA usually have an issue with coffee being put directly into the boiling water (no filter involved). The fact that coffee is fine ground and after some times it all settles at the bottom of the cup resolves all the issues. This coffee has that "real" and rich taste and you drink it slowly in small sips. It is in a way similar to espresso (by taste, not preparation).

We enjoy it on a regular basic here in America.

Here is the deal I got on eBay. Says "Jugoslavija" on the side. Unfortunately, it is only for display. I believe it is aluminum or something, not a real thing like you can get in Bosnia. Still nice reminder...

Traditional Lamb ("Razanj")

Do not call animal lover societies... first of all, these are not dogs... secondly, the lamb was already dead (came frozen all the way from New Zealand).


These were prepared by "experts" from former Yugoslavia. This is a traditional way of preparing lamb. Usually, you prepare them like this when for some festive occasion such as birthday, birth of a child, or any times when you expect large number of guests. We had 4-5 families together and had perfect weather for adventure like this one.

You want to use fire wood for this

Buying a frozen one from New Zealand had advantages of getting the whole lamb pretty much all cleaned up and ready for roasting. The only thing to do is to "install it" on tho the long pole (thank you Home Depot) and properly salt it.

You have to keep turning it and you do not want to burn it from the outside. It takes around three hours, so you need a good company, and good idea is to take turns. Kids also liked to participate.


The meat prepared this way is delicious. Traditionally served with salad and home made bread. It goes great with horseradish sauce.

Nice Short Bicycle Ride

Tour de Texas

Well, not really. More like exploring the neighborhood.

We got some additional equipment such as small pump, spare tubes, tools. We took a short ride down the highway and then took a country road.

Getting of the highway on to the country road was a nice change especially because there was not much cars.

Going "far" from home (check the water tower in the back ... still visible)

You can tell by her face that she is getting little tired. This was our fifth mile.

This is the spot we had an accident with 400 pound hog few months ago. We looked around to see if we can find the remains and pay the respect, but nothing was there. Nature took care of it.

Little bridge on the way. You never notice these things when you drive 50-60 miles an hour.

We had a beautiful day. But it started getting warm.

Going back the same way. Next time we will check an alternative route. There is a small lake that is very close to our today's route.

Local bank just opened a new branch in our neighborhood. They were throwing a block party so we got a chance to try their barbecue and got some other refreshments. After 10-15 miles of riding I got to appreciate Texas sausage on the stick. My daughter won a shirt.

Coming home with gifts from bank's party. Did not tell them I bank at another bank. But block party is party, you got to do what you got to do.

In Search for Perfect Bread (Part 5)

Quick and Easy to Make!

This is not the perfect bread, but is very easy and quick to make. It is very similar to "Village People Bread" ("Seljacka Pogaca"), but is made with self rising flour.


Ingredients

• Around 4 cups of self rising flours
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• 1 teaspoon (or less) of salt
• 1 teaspoon of oil or butter
• 1 cup or little bit more of warm water

Preparation

Put the ingredients together and knead for 3-5 minutes until the dough gets the nice feel to it. When the dough is done, oil the baking pan and sprinkle it with flour. Spread the dough to cover the bottom of the baking pan. We use pizza cutter to make 4-5 cuts in the dough. Sprinkle the top with the salt (if you like it salty). We love the sea salt on it. Preheat the oven to 400F and bake for about 35-45 minutes. Wait till it gets that light golden brown color. No need to wait for dough to rise.

Another "specimen" of the same thing. I added little more vegetable oil. It helped during kneading. This one I sprinkled with flour at the top.

I got a hang of it. It takes me 7-8 minutes to prepare it, and another 35 minutes to bake.

Quick Look at the Trees

Live Oak

Wiping Willow

Mexican Fan Palm

Wiping Willow (Gold)

Chinese Elm

Hybrid Poplar

Autumn Purple Ash

Stir Fry Dinner

Hmmm... yummy stuff. Pretty much followed the recipe from the older post. We used top sirloin and little bit of plum butter (jam) instead of brown sugar in the sauce.

Another Member of Our Cycling Team

My youngest one (two) finally got a grip on pedaling. For a while she would be pushing herself left and right up and down, but today she finally started doing it. First backwards, then forwards. The fun thing was when she started doing it she was doing it... she kept riding for about half an hour.

Retro Moment - Prehistoric on Atari ST Emulator (hatari)

Don't get me wrong... not saying that some of the new games are not that good, but you got to love some of the classics. My four year one enjoys the good old "platforms". He is getting a hold of the keys and got to tell the "hatari" emulator under Ubuntu is great. I love the full screen mode...


My "retro expert" here also enjoys typing programs on TRS-80 Model 102 (in the picture at the right) and Laser 5s.

"Kodak Moment" - Mr. Lizzard

Look at this guy resting on the window of my kids' bathroom. He was pretty cool and posed for few shots like this...

In Search for Perfect Bread (Part IV) - Seljacka Pogaca

Village People Bread ("Seljacka Pogaca")

This is supposed to be simple and raw. And it is.

• 3-4 cups of flour
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• little bit of vegetable oil (1 teaspoon)
• about a cup of warm water

Mix all the ingredients together and knead well for few minutes. Add flour or water if needed to get make the dough right. It takes about 4-5 minutes to make the dough. Oil the pan and sprinkle it with some flour. Spread the dough inside. Make few cuts through (I like using pizza cutter for that). Give it a gentle rub with some watter on your fingers and sprinkle some salt at the top. It bakes for about 45 minutes. Watch for the color. When baked, sprinkle some water on it, wrap it into cloth and let it cool on a wire rack.

It has little wild taste, but its yummy (and crunchy) and nice thing about it is it does not require long wait period for dough to rise.

I always like to check the bottom of the bread. I tells you how well baked it was. When the baking is done the bread should easily snap out of the pan.

This simple recipe probably goes way back. In Serbia (former Yugoslavia) it is called Seljacka Pogaca. A cool modification that can be done is use of self-rising flour and pretty much repeat the same recipe.

High Resolution Graphics on Commodore C64

Intro
I am reading this book "On The Edge - Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore" and enjoying the history of some of the coolest home computers ever. It was a wild ride for Commodore and people that were part of that history. C64 was my first computer when I was growing up. Anyhow, I did not have much input on C64 details at the time. I also got Simon's Basic cartridge so I did not have to learn all the PEEK and POKE tricks. Not that I did not know some.
I do have couple of Commodore 64s, but I find VICE emulator running on my Ubuntu Linux very useful. I occasionally enjoy some of the games. From time to time I explore some of the features I never played with. This entry is on how to set up high resolution graphics (calling 320x200 pixels high resolution, he he). There is whole shabazz of VIC II locations (control registers) and several options what can be done with the graphics. Not very impressive now, but quite powerful at the time. VIC II chip was probably one of the most important parts in the C64. Wish they did not screw up the fast serial lines and were not that much in a hurry and used better version of BASIC.

Program
I am checking the Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide. The following program combines info from its pages into a small demo plotting a line on the screen.
The program switches on the graphics mode. Sets the memory location for the bit map. Then, both the bit map memory area and the text area are set to clear the screen and define the colors for each 8x8 region on the screen. Finally, a routine for plotting a line is called.

Running the Program
The cool thing is that the C64 BASIC is so slow that you can see stuff happening before your eyes. Please note that VICE emulator does pretty good job on timings.

Once the graphics was turned on, there is this garbage on the screen. The two loops there are to POKE graphics memory to clear the screen. This takes several seconds to finish.
Second loop fills in the text memory and defines colors. This is little faster as we talking about 1000 locations as compared to 8000 locations of graphics bit map.

Finally, the last loop plots the line point by point. The subroutine for plotting the line starts at line 1000. The subroutine to plot individual dot starts at 2000.

Reference
http://www.devili.iki.fi/Computers/Commodore/C64/Programmers_Reference/page_iii.html

Commodore 64C

I lucked out on eBay and got me another old reliable 8-bit machine. It came in the original box with power supply and weird video cable. During first test with my TV box I use with my VGA monitor it seemed like it is black and white. When I finally tried it with my video cable the thing showed nice familiar blue picture.


It went through "standard" alcohol rubbing procedure and I had to super glue little plastic chip chip at rear corner. This was actually my first 64C that I opened. Have to admit it looks more like a finished product than my good old 64 (without C).

Have not had a chance to try it with disk drive yet. It is nice how a simple POKE can make you excited as compared to new PCs where it is really hard to get a feel what is going on (Vista 2GB Duo Core torture that takes 5 minutes to boot).

Solved: Sound Setup on Dell Vostro 1400 (Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Hardy Heron)

Intro
I have just installed 8.04 LTS Ubuntu on my Dell Vostro 1400 laptop. Everything went pretty smoothly. I had an issue with sound and internal mic.

Solution - Step 1

The trick is to do the following:
sudo alsamixer -V all

Move with cursors to the right and bring the Capture and Digital up to 100%.

Step 2
The next thing is to double click on the sound applet. In the Volume Control window, select Edit, then Preferences. Click on the checkboxes to select Capture, Digital, and Digital Input Source.


While still in Volume Control windows, switch to Options tab and select Digital Mic 1 as input source. After this, my internal mic started working with Skype and Sound Recorder. Step 2 might need to be repeated for each user.