Bill Farmer

Vegetables cooked in olive oil

This method can be used for cooking any selection of vegetables, the trick is to layer them with the slowest cooking, like green beans, carrots, and other root veg at the bottom of the pan, and the faster cooking, like broccoli, cabbage and spinach on top. A layer of sliced onions in the bottom of the pan melts down and steams the veg above.

Ingredients

• Sliced onions
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Whatever green veg is to hand
• Olive oil

Method

1. Cover the bottom of a medium saucepan with oil
2. Place a layer of sliced onions on the bottom
3. Layer sliced carrots, potatoes, and green veg in the pan
4. Put on a low heat for about 20 minutes with the lid on until the veg is cooked to taste

Slow cooked ox cheek

Ox cheek is a tasty cut of beef, but it contains tough connective tissue which melts away when slow cooked.

Ingredients

• Ox cheek
• 4-6 chopped onions
• 3-4 large carrots
• Olive oil
• Black pepper
• Bay leaves

Method

1. Put ox cheek in slow cooker and set to high heat
2. Put a couple of bay leaves in the pot, grind black pepper over the meat and pour some olive oil over it
3. Surround the meat with chopped onions and chopped carrots
4. Put on the lid and allow to cook for a while
5. When bubbling melted down onion and meat juices become visible around the meat, turn the heat down to low
6. Allow to cook for 4-5 hours
7. Enjoy with potatoes and green veg

Handling run time changes in Android

Two articles, Handling Configuration Changes and Handling Configuration Changes with Fragments recommend the use of fragments to retain data and background tasks in Android during the life of an app. There are two problems with this:

• An android fragment is quite a complex heavyweight object to use just for retaining data and possibly a background task, and the fragment management is not simple.
• Fragments are not retained if the associated activity is discarded by calling finish().

A simpler and less complex solution is to use a static singleton, mentioned here in a different context: Setting Up a RequestQueue. This is quite simple to implement, like this:

Using Emacs as an IDE

I had to learn Emacs on Unix many years ago as it was at that time the only development environment for Smallworld Magik. Having learnt it, I have stuck with it as it provides a consistent platform for editing source code and building applications in as many computer languages and platforms as I have used and many more I haven’t. It is the only source code editor I have used that always gets the indentation and syntax highlighting right.

Upgrading a Moto G

I got myself a refurbished Moto G phone a while ago. It came with Android Kitkat 4.4.4, complete with Moto bloat. I had already put Cyanogenmod on my tablet, so I installed Cyanogenmod 11, android 4.4.4 on it, in accordance with the instructions on the wiki, no problem. That got rid of the bloat and allows fine control of app snooping via Privacy Guard in the settings.

When I first installed Cyanogenmod, I had to use an unofficial build, as an official build for Kitkat 4.4.4 wasn’t available. Now there are six official builds available, including two for Marshmallow. I tried to upgrade to Lollipop using the built in upgrade system, but failed I think it complained about the bootloader.