'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

Today I wanted to get at some data on an old Ericsson T39m cellphone I used to use. Unfortunately, sometime over the past year or two the battery has completely failed (and has swollen quite alarmingly), and this particular phone won't power up unless the battery is present. The variable PSU only has a fixed choice of voltages, none of which are near the ~3.5V that a Li-Ion battery puts out (and in any case I only seem to have one crocodile clip lead so I can't connect it up).

But... what I do have is a Bus Pirate!



Here, I've connected the 3.3V rail of the Bus Pirate to the battery terminals on the T39m. The Bus Pirate probably won't be able to sustain the current draw for an actual phone call, but it can certainly supply enough for the phone to boot:



Success! And a full strength signal too (that's old-school GSM frontend design for you - none of this "you're holding it wrong" rubbish). Aside from the zeroed clock and the dead SIM, the rest of the phone works fine and I was able to extract the data I wanted.

I promised elemnar some time ago that I'd post a pasta/mozzarella/tomato recipe I found a while back. Here's the original destructions, taken from the back of a packet of Tesco's pasta:


Spirali with buffalo mozzarella and basil

Serves 4. Cooking time 25-30 minutes.

300g spirali pasta
250g buffalo mozzarella, cut into chunks
300ml passata
4tbsps extra virgin olive oil
30g basil leaves, torn
70g Parmesan cheese, grated

Pre-heat the oven to 200°C
Boil the pasta for 5 minutes, drain and return the pasta back to the pan and combines with the mozzarella, passata, extra virgin olive oil and basil. Season with sea salt and black pepper.
Transfer the pasta to a lightly greased ovenproof dish. Sprinkle the top with a layer of grated Parmesan and place in the oven for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned.
Serve immediately with a green salad


As always, I made a few changes when cooking it. To begin with I did my usual halving of the ingredients to make it fit the ceramic dish I've got, giving me one portion for today and a second that I'll fridge for tomorrow (give it a few minutes in the microwave to reheat). I also used ordinary mozzarella (buffalo mozzarella is unobtainium around here) and dried basil. And finally, since I didn't have any passata I used half a carton of chopped tomatoes. That actually worked out quite well, which is handy as I usually have a few cartons/tins of chopped tomatoes in the cupboard - they keep for ages and come in handy for several recipes.

It's been a tad windy the past day or two round here...



If you look carefully, you'll spot that this is the second time that this tree has suffered from the weather. Poor tree!

And finally, daily photo!

Today the family ended up doing a spontaneous outing to Arundel, wherein after pottering round the town we continued up the hill and into Arundel park. There we passed the curious Hiorne Tower before following a chalk track down the hill and doubling back towards Swanbourne Lake. The path heads through an odd landscape - it's as if there's far too much land there, with the rolling hills and curving tracks. One almost expects the Riders of Rohan to crest one of the hills and thunder down the valley.

I've a whole collection of photos that may appear one day, but the one that caught my eye for today's post is of the small white blobs of sheep, up on the far side of the valley.

Last year, I tried growing sunflowers, but none of the seeds sprouted. This year, however...

The Not Another Bill packages are a feat of cardboard engineering, with a single sheet that thanks to an angled pair of folds forms a cuboid from a rectangle. A side-effect of this folding is that there is an outside, an inside, and a third side between two layers.

It was amusing to discover that this extra side was not merely blank, but held hidden messages...

( Hidden messages )

And with that, that's your month of photos!

Again, two posts for the price of two!

( Yesterday )

( Today's photos )

Because what is the Internet for, if not for cat photos?

( Cat photos! )

Another delayed photo post!

Something that struck me while copying photos off various cameras the other day was just how things have changed with memory cards. On the left is a 64MB SmartMedia card that's the highest capacity supported by the aging Olympus camera (128MB SmartMedia cards did exist, but were poorly supported). Next is a 2GB SD card that I picked up about 5 years ago mainly for use with the Wii. Finally, there's an 8GB microSD card from my phone.



It's not escaped my notice that the card with the largest capacity is physically the smallest. Interestingly the SmartMedia card is thinner, but that's because inside a SD or microSD card there's actually *two* chips stacked on top of each other: the actual flash memory, and a surprisingly powerful microcontroller to handle the SD interface.