My blog has been moved to ariya.ofilabs.com.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

hey, you! keep it clean!

Keep Clean

(the beauty of configurable desktop environment)

puzzle

Just for fun, I told one guy:

You know what? The number of CVS commits from KDE developers has dropped to zero since months.

And surely he was surprised:

Ah, really? I thought they are working hard for KDE 4 or something like that...

This bloke apparently did not get it :-)

Monday, October 16, 2006

the glassy nuance

Another visually appealed style I would like to feature is Polyester from mart. It joins another interesting KDE styles with also interesting names (remember Liquid, Keramik, Plastik?). Polyester has a matching window decoration and some choices of color schemes.

The distinct look of this style is the glass rendering of push buttons, combo box, tab bar, menu bar, list view header, and even window titlebar. Nice, isn't it?

Polyester

Saturday, October 14, 2006

buon appetito

Tagliatelle with Bolognese sauce and parmesan cheese? C'mon, that you can get easily in a ristorante next door. Let's make something new. Here is tagliatelle with orak-arik or scrambled vegetables.

tagliatelle with orak arik

This dish can be prepared easily. Basically just stir fry chopped vegetables (use anything you can imagine) in medium heated oil with onions, shallots, garlic, chilli and quite amount of pepper. Then scramble the eggs (leave out for the pure vegetarian version). Add Italian-style tomato sauce and then serve everything together. For the European version, of course you can still have the parmesan cheese.

And happy birthday KDE!

Saturday, October 07, 2006

too many lines will kill you

Serenity by Maxilys is a unique style in a sense that the widgets do not have the common bevels used to give the 3-d illusion. Instead, almost everything is painted with a kind of color gradient.

Serenity

Another interesting point in this style is some different variants of the progress bar:

Senerity progress bar

If you're on SUSE, use Smart to install Serenity from standard Guru channel.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

take back the fish

No doubt I love fish. Since many Europeans will eat fish on Friday, here is another one: ikan bumbu kecap or fish in soy sauce.

ikan bumbu kecap

The irresistible sauce is an ancient secret. Long time ago it was revealed to me by my mother, who got it from her grandmother, who somehow (so I was told) got it from her ancestor. Basically you heat a little amount of oil, throw in lots of fresh garlic slices and after some time, add the sweet soy sauce until you get the unmistakable smell. Add some chili, chopped onions, and ginger to taste. Beware though (very much like coding), the algorithm looks ridiculously trivial but the implementation can be horrible.

The fish is simply fried. When it is ready, pour over the prepared sauce. Few additional drops of tomate sauce is also harmless. Make sure this makes your mouth water, and then serve!

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

ubiquitous snack

Still not bored with my cuisine mumbo-jumbo? Here is another one: pisang goreng or banana fritters. This lovely snack can be found virtually anywhere in my country with virtually zero effort. But, it is also easy to make, probably with virtually no skill at all.

Na, isst du noch oder kochst du schon? :-)

pisang goreng

rediscover your dessert

Agar-agar - made from algae - is always good for dessert. For the European readers (from planetkde.org), in case you don't know it yet, you can get this from most asian shops or order it online. A small package of 9 g agar powder should be enough for the whole family. Add slices of fruits, pour some milk and few drops of honey to taste. In hot days (like fews weeks ago in Germany), put some ice cubes. Enjoy!

agar agar

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

fish-n-tasty

Pepes ikan is always tasty. The fish is wrapped in banana leaves (here in Europe, fall back to aluminium foil) and then steamed for some time (see the complete recipe). It is not difficult to prepare, and any fresh fish will do just fine. Delicious!

pepes ikan

yummy and fresh

Still have some vegetables in the fridge? Then prepare gado-gado (something you'd miss it quickly when you're abroad), vegetable salad served with peanut sauce. It does not follow a strict recipe, so should be very easy. If you are really in hurry, peanut butter may even help. And for the vegetarian version, just leave out the boiled eggs.

gado gado