Sardine Paratha Rolls

 I made this two days ago for supper but only manage to update today. Yesterday's Iftar menu was very simple because kids wanted to have KFC with Nasi Lemak and I had dinner with some friends after cooking my family their chosen menu (Fried Kuey Tiaw, Nasi Lemak & Prawn Sambal - accompanied with KFC). By the time I came back from dinner I was too tired to update my blog. As my time is so limited especially in Ramadhan, I can only update one menu one night. Therefore tonite's menu will be shared in later days.... Also apology to blog friends as I may not able to blogwalk as much as I like during Ramadhan.

I saw earlier on, many people made egg paratha rolls so it gave me an idea to use up the sardine filling leftover from Fried Sardine Buns that I made on the day.

By: Roz@HomeKreation
Recipe is for one roll, you can multiply for the amount you want 
INGREDIENTS:
1 Instant Parathas (I used Kawanku) 
1 Egg
Salt & Pepper
1 tbsp Sardine Filling
1 tbsp Butter/Margarine
Mayonnaise and Chilli Sauce

METHOD:
1. Cook paratha on a hot griddle until crispy both side.
Place it on a plate.
2. Beat egg, salt & pepper with fork.
3. I used leftover sardine filling from making sardine buns.
To make the filling, mashed some canned sardine & mix with chopped onion & chilli, lime juice & salt.
4. Heat up butter on a griddle.
Above slow fire, spread quickly the beaten egg and top with sardine filling.
Place the cooked paratha on it (make sure the egg is not yet harden otherwise it will not stick).
5. Flip it into a plate.
Squeeze mayonnaise & chilli sauce over the egg surface and roll.
Slice into smaller piece if you like..... nyummmmy!!
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BAHASA MALAYSIA VERSION

Bulan2 pose ni kalau lapar tengah malam, buat lah Paratha Roll ni, senang tapi tersangat sedap & mengenyangkan. Ni menu 2 hari lepas, kelmarin kita bz tak sempat nak update blog sbb keluar dinner dgn kekawan buka pose kat hotel... tapi kan Along lebih suka makanan kat rumah walaupun menu yg simple jer....hehe.

Ada nampak sebelum ni ramai kekawan yg buat paratha telur (tapi tak sempat nak search resipi sbb nak buat cepat), tapi Along letak sardin & respi main hentam jer. ok lah, meh nengok respi yg Along buat....

By: AlongRoz@HomeKreation

Resepi untuk sebiji roll, kalau nak byk buat lah banyak mana pun.

BAHAN2:

1 keping Instant Parathas (Along guna Kawanku) 

1 bj Telur

Garam & Lada Sulah

1 sb Inti Sardin

1 sb Butter/Majerin

Mayonnaise & Sos Cili

BAHAN2:

1. Masak paratha atas kuali leper sehingga garing di kedua2 bahagian atas & bawah.

Angka & ketepikan dahulu.

2. Pukul telur, garam & lada sulah dgn garfu.

3. Along cuma guna inti sardin lebih dari buat bun.

Untuk buat filling mudah: Hancurkan seketoi sardin & campurkan dgn bwg besar yg di dadu, cili hiris, jus limau & garam.

4. Panaskan butter atas kuali leper.

Kecilkan api & ratakan telur dan sardin.

Letakkan sekeping roti paratha tadi (pastikan buat ini dgn cepat sebelum telur masak supaya ia melekat pd roti).

5. Terbalikkan ke dlm pinggan.

Picitkan mayonis & sos cili dan gulung.

Kalau suka, potong kecil sebelum di hidangkan.

Five Tiers of 2012 Presidential Picks

As we get close to next week's August 11 Washington Examiner/Fox News Iowa debates, now the 3rd round of GOP Presidential debates, and having observed the behavior of the various candidates over the jejune debt ceiling compromise fiasco, I am better formulating whom I would vote for in an abundant choice of Presidential candidates.  I remain uncommitted as to whom I would vote for, but instead grouped the candidates into tiers by preference as of this moment as follows:

(Tier 1) Ron Paul, Gary Johnson
(Tier 2) Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, Donald Trump
(Tier 3) Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain
(Tier 4) Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty
(Tier 5) Thaddeus McCotter, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, John Bolton

Tier 1 candidates are stone-sober debt cutters.  I don't worry about them being neo-cons who are willing to cut everything but the military industrial complex.  They have great track records of providing leadership in dealing with our economy.  They read the Constitution and abide by it.  They represent my preferred candidates.

Tier 2 candidates have much truth in their positions.  They tend to be aggressive fighters who will get things done in getting our economy back on course.  This group has extraordinary charisma and enthusiasm that will lend them towards success.

Tier 3 are candidates who have the potential to do a fine job.  I'm sure they would do much good and they strike me as having a high degree of personal integrity which we could sure use in a POTUS.

Tier 4 and Tier 5 candidates would really need to couple a person like a Tier 1 or Tier 2 in a presidential ticket to really get me enthused about their POTUS prospects.  To be clear, I'd strongly take any of the five tiers over a Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton; I am after all talking about a presidential GOP primary. 

What are your thoughts?

On the new monolithic architecture

(Cross-posted to bennugd-wii and themostsearched blogs).
I've been wanting to write this post for quite some time now. I feel it's time to share some of my thoughts about how the monolithic version of BennuGD is designed.
If you've followed the bennugd-wii blog since it began, you may already know that the current design is the third iteration of the monolithic version of BennuGD. This article is obviously about the current design.


Why do we need a monolithic version of BennuGD?
Some of you might know that one of the main design goals of BennuGD after forking Fenix was to become modular so, why do we need a monolithic approach?
Well, even if the modular approach seems to have many advantages over a monolithic one, not all the systems support it. BennuGD relies heavily on dynamic libraries (dlls if you're on Windows, so files if you're in most Unix-like systems or dylibs if you're on OSX) and the operating system provides a way of dealing with them.
In most systems, that way is called libdl and it works really well. If you look inside your system you'll realize that there are literally thousands of dynamic libraries lying there, so the system works.
In other -usually smaller- systems we don't have that system nor any other equivalent one and it turns out that some of those systems are particularly interesting for us in the game-making world* so we must find a way to avoid that limitation while conserving as much of the modular design as possible. 

But that makes loading libraries that weren't compiled in impossible, doesn't it?

Yep, that's why I call the design monolithic. It would be perfectly possible/pretty easy to create a design based on the current one that combined both ideas by including some modules inside the main binary and loaded others from external module files, but I didn't bother to create it as I don't feel it makes much sense.



How does BennuGD handle modules?
In trying to understand how to bypass the limitation, we must first understand how BennuGD works with the modules.
This is -roughly- what happens when you ask BennuGD to import a module (let's use mod_video as an example):

1. BennuGD will look for a file that follows the system naming convention for dynamic libraries in a set of pre-defined directories in your system. For example, in Windows BennuGD would first look for mod_video.dll in the current working directory. Let's imagine the file is found there.
2. BennuGD asks the system to load the library and quits if it finds any errors.
3. It asks the system for a list of symbols that define compose it. For example, mod_video_constants_def** would be an array containing the constants defined by the library and mod_video_functions_exports would be an array of the functions that the module provides. There are many more that the libraries can define and they're all completely optional.
4. Based on the info gathered from mod_video.dll and the rest of the modules BennuGD creates a table with all the information they provide and goes on to compile your code taking that information into account.

So, how to bypass that process?

Well, the best way I could think of when creating the monolithic approach is to construct that table of symbols by hand when creating the BennuGD binaries and compile all their functionality inside the interpreter. Obviously I also had to change the code that performed steps 1-3 so that instead of looking for the symbols in the actual module files it looks for them in the array. As a result when the library loader module is asked to load a module it looks for the library in the array and returns its position in the array (it literally returns a number: look for this library's symbols in the nth row in the array).

You can have a look at that table here; lines 119 and on.

There are two symbol arrays there
It turns out that the BennuGD compiler and the interpreter need slightly different symbols: the compiler doesn't really care about what your program does as long as it is written correctly and therefore it only cares about the symbols that define how a correctly-written program should look like. So it needs to know how a function should be called (which is the function name, what type of/how many arguments it accepts) but it doesn't care at all about what it does.
The interpreter, in the other hand, needs to know everything about what that function does when called.
There are, also, symbols that both parts need to know about (which are a particular libraries' dependencies, for example) and others that are only useful to the interpreter and therefore I chose to split the list of symbols in two: one with the symbols only needed by the interpreter and another one with the symbols useful to both the compiler and the interpreter.


Defining the actual symbols
If you have a look at the code linked above, you'll find that the symbols themselves are not defined in that file but are included from another file called mod_video_symbols.h.
That file doesn't exist in upstream BennuGD and it explicitly declares the the symbols required by the BennuGD compiler and tells the C compiler what the names of the rest of the symbols are and that they're complete declaration will come from somewhere else (hence the extern word in the declaration after the #else clause).
You can see that the last column in the functions list is set to 0 when compiling BGDC. That column should tell BennuGD what C function to call when the user calls that  BennuGD function. As I said, the compiler doesn't care about what that function does and therefore we don't need to declare it. If we did declare it we'd have to compile all the code for all the modules into BGDC, too. There are other more complex reasons to not try to compile all the module code into BGDC, too. 


When compiling the module code, the symbols come from mod_video.c which is the unmodified module file from upstream.


So you're writing the symbols many times!
Yes. The issue would be very easily solvable if I were the main author of BennuGD and that was how the second iteration of the architecture worked.
Unfortunately that meant that any patch from upstream takes a lot of work to be integrated as ALL the symbol-defining files had to be modified by hand: when a change came from upstream I had to locate the exact line where that change was done and apply it by hand into my code. Taking into account that each patch might contain hundreds of changes split across multiple files, that made maintaining the project a huge task even if we forgot that the main goal of the project was not to create a monolithic build of BennuGD but to create a port of BennuGD to a set of new platforms, which meant quite a bit of work by itself.
Right now I can just drop the files from the upstream version of BennuGD into my source tree and upload the code to the SVN server. I still have to be careful with the patches to supoprt platforms not available upstream (Wii, PSP, iOS & Android) but this new way of working makes things much simpler than before.


Advantages of this approach
To start, DCBs compiled with upstream BennuGD work just fine -endianess issues aside- in the monolithic builds and vice-versa.
The modular approach isn't gone. Even if the modules are all inside the binaries, they won't get loaded until you actually import them. This saves memory in some systems and from the user's point of view it's transparent: both architectures behave consistently to him.
My code is prepared to be compiled as either a monolithic build or the normal BennuGD modular structure so you can compile both from the same source code.




So that's pretty much it, hope to hear your thoughts in the comments and hope I made it clear in case it's useful to anybody.


* Consoles like the Wii or the PSP don't support it and other systems like the iPhone do support it but Apple seems to be very restrictive about the use of dynamic library loading in third party applications.
** That's why you cannot just rename your modules, BennuGD would then look for the wrong symbols.

Manti Temple

I hope my readers will permit me a brief personal indulgence.  Last week I attended a family reunion to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of my parents.

Here is a photo of them before me and my siblings gave them gray hair.  Congratulations, Mom and Dad!

Part of the reunion included a session at the Manti Temple and, of course, some great photo opportunities.  Instead of inundating you with the 400 photos I took, I will only post the best 20 or so.  Here goes it.

If you have a chance to go to this temple, be sure to ask one of the workers to show you the spiral staircases that are in the two West corners.  They are amazing, as is the whole building.  What a monument to the faith and dedication of the pioneer builders.  They did all this without the wonderful tools, power equipment, vehicles and technology we have today.

Pumpkin Pie Brownie (Pai Labu Coklat)

 As promise, I'm sharing this lovely pie that I made on the 1st day Ramadhan. Such a nice combination of Pumpkin Chocolate Brownie and Pumpkin Custard topping. My children & hubby enjoyed having this as dessert.

2nd day Ramadhan menu: we had starter - Fried Sardine Buns (recipe courtesy of Nor@Secubit Garam which has become our family regular menu) and main course - Fried-Chicken Rice (made this so many times already & become our family favourite menu). For supper I made Pratha Sardine Rolls, which I will share in the next opportunity. There was only short time after returning from work to prepare for Iftar, so I was kind of lazy to snap the photos especially those I have posted already earlier on....

 Now, back to the recipe...........

By: Roz@HomeKreation
Source: link
Recipe is retyped and simplified by HomeKreation
Size: 9" Round Springform
INGREDIENTS: 
Brownie layer: 
1 cup Pureed Pumpkin
3/4 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
3/4 cup Flour
1/4 cup Cocoa Powder
1 tbs Tapioca Flour (or Cornflour)
1/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Salt
4 oz Bittersweet Chocolate - melted 
Pumpkin pie layer: 
1 cup Pureed Pumpkin
2 tbs Tapioca Flour (or Cornflour)
1/2 cup Milk
1/3 cup Sugar
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
1/4 tsp Ground Ginger*
1/4 tsp Ground Cinnamon*
pinch Ground Nutmeg*
pinch Ground Allspice*  (* HomeKreation: I skipped) 
Decoration: 

A handful of Chocolate Chips

METHOD:

1. Preheat oven at 180C.

Grease and line tin with parchment paper.

2. Mix brownie ingredients in the order listed above.

Spread into the springform.

3. Mix all the pumpkin pie ingredients.

Spread carefully on top of the brownie layer, leaving a bit of space at the edge.

4. Bake for 30 min until the pumpkin layer looks fairly firm (a little jiggling is okay).

Cool for 20 min and chill for 2 hours.

5. Decorate with chocolate chips when serve.
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BAHASA MALAYSIA VERSION

Cara yang mudah untuk menikmati labu selain dari kuih-muih tradisional.

By: AlongRoz@HomeKreation

Source: link

Alihbahasa oleh HomeKreation

Saiz: 9" Bulat / Springform

BAHAN2:

Lapisan Brownie:
1 cwn Pureed Pumpkin

3/4 cwn Gula
1/4 cwn Minyak Sayur
1 st Vanilla Essence
3/4 cwn Tepung
1/4 cwn Serbuk Koko
1 sb Tepung Ubikayu / Jagung
1/4 st Baking Soda
1/4 st Garam
4 oz Bittersweet Chocolate - cairkan 

Lapisan Pai Labu: 

1 cwn Labu puri
2 tbs Tepung Ubikayu / Jagung
1/2 cwn Susu
1/3 cwn Gula
1 st Vanilla Essence
1/4 st Serbuk Halia*
1/4 st Serbuk Kayu Manis*
pinch Serbuk Pala*
pinch Serbuk Allspice* (* HomeKreation: tak bubuh) 

Hiasan: 

Segenggam Coklat Cip

CARA2:

1. Panaskan oven @ 180C.

Minyakkan & lapiskan tin dgn parchment paper.

2. Campurkan bhn2 brownie mengikut turutan senarai di atas.

Ratakan ke dlm tin.

3. Campurkan bhn2 pai labu sehingga sebati.

Ratakan ke atas lapisan brownie dgn hati2 & jangan sampai sehingga tepi keliling kek.

4. Bakar 30 min sehingga lapisan labu tidak melekat bila di sentuh di permukaan nya (takpa kalau sedikit goey2).

Sejukkan 20 min & sejukkan dlm petisejuk selama 2 jam.

5. Hiaskan dgn coklat cip apabila menghidang.

Bubur Pedas (Again2) - Menu First Ramadhan

 This is a must menu in Sarawak during Ramadhan. It can either be eaten just as such or with rice and other dishes. It requires a lot of preparation and ingredients and managed to make this because I took half day leave yesterday. (UPDATE: I forgot to mention earlier that the Bubur Pedas bumbu that I used was a gift from my lovely friend Norj. She said she ordered from Kuching. Indeed it tasted very nice with strong aroma. Thanks Norj cayang, nanti kalau ada kasi lagi ya....hehe).

Apart from Bubur Pedas I made Cucur Udang (on request fr hubby & kids) and Pumpkin Pie Brownie. Will share Pumpkin Pie Brownie recipe later when I can find more time.

 I've posted this earlier here & here before. Anyway, herewith BM translation with slight modification.

By: AlongRoz@HomeKreation
BAHAN2:

1 bungkus Bumbu Bubur Pedas

300g Daging Lembu / Ayam - potong kecil2

200g Kulit Lembu / Tendon - potong kecil & rebus ehingga lembut

200g Udang (optional)

5 sb Cilli Pes

5 ulas Bwg Merah*

3 ulas Bwg Putih*

1cm Belacan* (* tumbuk) 
1" Halia - ketuk 
1 mangkuk besar Santan

1 keping Sayur Tahu Kering**

Cendawan Kering**

Kulat Hitam** (** rendam sehingga kembang & potong kecil2)

Sayur Midin***

Putik Jagung***

Kcg Panjang***

Terung***

1 biji Kentang***

Karot***

1-2 helai Daun Kunyit***

Daun Singkel***

Daun Kesum*** (*** hiris halus / potong kecil) 
4 sb Minyak

Garam

CARA2:

1. Panaskan minyak & tumis bhn2 tumbuk*, pes cili & halia sehingga wangi.

Masukkan bumbu & kacau sebentar.

Masukkan daging/ayam & masak sehingga empuk.

Masukkan santan & biarkan menggelegak.

Masukkan garam & sayuran yg agak keras - masak sehingga lembut.

Masukkan sayuran yg lain & masak sehingga sebati rasa.

2. Hidangkan untuk di nikmati begitu sahaja ataupun dgn nasi & lauk-pauk lain.

NOTA:
Bumbu Bubur Pedas tu di buat daripada beras yg di goreng dgn rempah dan kemudian di kisar kasar. Ia nya memberi haruman dan perisa yg unik kepada Bubur Pedas dan juga amat mengenyangkan.

Assorted vegetables used for making Bubur Pedas (I forgot to buy carrot, so less colorful)

CEOs and Organizational Models

by Virgil R. Carter

As a CEO (or aspiring CEO), have you reached the conclusion that understanding your organizational model can help you reach more effective (and satisfying) leadership? The 2010 study of CEOs by Booz & Company, reported in Strategy+Business, sheds some light on the subject. I know, we’re in the non-profit sector, but we want to expand our awareness and learning as much as possible don’t we? How much applies to your situation?

This year’s findings identify four categories of organizations and management:

1. Holding: Distinguished by an arms-length approach to managing subsidiary activities. CEOs have a minimal degree of involvement in operational decisions. CEOs focus on “portfolio management”, while second-tier executives run daily business.

2. Strategic Management: CEOs and other senior executives are engaged in strategy development with subsidiary leaders, who have the accountability for business operations.

3. Active Management: CEOs and senior executives participate with close guidance and expertise, but leave direct operational management up to subsidiary units.

4. Operationally Involved: While execution remains within the subsidiary area, CEOs and senior executives play key roles in cross-unit capabilities, expertise, human resources and strategic decision making.

According to the Booz study, the organizational model clearly appears to influence CEO experience and tenure in the position. For example, the tenure in operationally involved organizations was markedly shorter and riskier. By comparison, the tenure of a CEO in a holding organization was a third longer than a CEO of an operationally involved organization. In addition, the study indicated that CEOs in operationally involved organizations are much more likely to depart during their first four years. For the full study, click here.