In mid June, my laptop hard disk died. Suddenly, there was a flurry of disk I/O wait, then applications started to report errors trying to write anything.

With a 500GB 2.5" laptop disk lying around that was used for backup, I replaced the dead disk with this one.

I had an Ubuntu Server 14.04 CD lying around, and therefore did not bother to download Kubuntu 14.04.

My laptop's home directory is backed up daily via ssh to the server. So my data was safe.

Recently my laptop hard disk died suddenly, and I had an unused 2.5" laptop disk lying around, so I just put that in, and installed Ubuntu Linux LTS 14.04, then added the packages I needed.

However, using smartmontools, I found out that the not so new disk has unhealthy statistics, and did not want to risk down time on my main computer.

Here is another form of "you are the beneficiary of an unclaimed fund" scam. The name of the deceased rich person is Khalid. What a coincidence ...

From: Barrister Ebunie Johnson Nzewi

Good Day khalid,

This is to officially notify you on the unclaimed fund left by Mr.khalid, who was burnt to death with his entire family, in when their car collided with a trailer while they are coming back from a holiday in a resort off the town.

Attached are the slides from my presentation tonight at the KWLUG on how to flash a custom Android ROM (in this case OmniROM) on the Acer Iconia A500 tablet. The podcast is here.

The whole process was done without any Windows software. All was done from Linux.

• Getting a CPU ID using APX mode, then getting an SBK (Secure Boot Key) from that.
• Installing Timmy Dean's V4 Rollback.

If you have a slow cooker, cooking can be done with minimal preparation time, using cuts of meat that are often tough for other methods.

Note that food from the slow cooker does not look very appetizing if it is served as is. The taste and convinience, however make up for it. If you want, you can use garnishing to make the dish look better on the plates.

Ingredients

You do not need any cooking fat for this dish, which makes it the more healthy.

Fast, tasty and healthy is a rare combination. One thing I always looked for is tender and flavorful meat dishes. If it is dry or tough, it does not matter how it tastes.

One technique to make the meat tender, is to use a combination of pan grilling and steam sautee. This is the technique used by the late chef Pasquale Carpino to make a four course meal in less than 25 minutes!

Here, I describe this technique, combined with my own experimenting and variations of that technique.

Adding broth to many recipes is sometimes the most important key to their success. Of course, you can buy ready made broth in tetra pack, or cubes from any supermarket. However, you do not have control over the taste and unhealthy ingredients (e.g. fat and salt) when you do so.

Therefore, making broth of stock at home and freezing them into cubes is a good alternative, both for health and taste.

I tried out the Kobo Arc 10HD for a few days, because it went on sale for $199.99, down by $100 from the regular price.

As I write this, the price is down $20 further, to $179.99 at BestBuy.

Here is a quick review of the pros and cons. Note that I am not evaluating as an eReader, but rather as a regular tablet.

Pros