Back in 2004 Bovril the meat extract drink/spread/stock changed to a non meat product, made from yeast extract like Marmite. This was due to international fears about BSE in meats from Britain, in blind taste tests, 10% didn’t notice any difference in taste, 40% preferred the original and 50% preferred the new product.

But this has all changed, they have reverted to using beef extract again after the European union lifted it’s ban on British beef products. Overall I preferred Marmite as a drink or spread and won’t miss the Bovril too much.

A few spoons of Marmite in the water that boils the rice for a risoto can be nice, or as a stock for any type of stew.

Meat is Murder

The new addition to my satellite receiver family (analog,technomate,nova-pci,digibox) is the baby Dreambox the DM500S. The big difference with the dreambox is that it runs on a Linux platform, so you can ftp files on to it or telnet into it or mount drives from a pc onto it. This allows for recording direct to hard disk and playing back onto the TV over an ethernet wire.

RSS feeds and Email can be read on screen, and software upgrades can be done over the internet. As a satellite receiver it’s top class with very fast channel changing and great reception on poor signals. It supports USALS which is handy for motorised setups. On the down side the power supply is external and can get quite hot, but it’s 12v DC so moblie use is made easier. Playback of mpeg over the ethernet is still causing me some problems but mp3 are fine, I tried to network this with mains ethernet adapters but at 14mbit they were not able to even transfer mp3s.

Images can be obtained for free to upgrade the Operating System but its a massive learning curve for a novice, but if you need a new OS on it you’d want to set aside a few hours, the advantages to other images is the ability to place Emulators and key files on the box to allow you see encrypted signals.

The Dreambox can tune into shoutcast MP3 streams and allows for you to search for streams with keywords like “Punk Radio” .
For me the ability to read RSS lists of latest satellite feeds and check email without having to print out reams of paper or to download transponder lists directly to the box is what make this a great receiver. My stupid Dell PC doesn’t have a rs232 DB9 serial COM port so I have to get a USB 2 Serial adapter for easy flashing of new images. Plus I’d like to start writing some shell script plugins to organise channel lists a bit better and do more two way communication (you can get an IR keyboard) maybe some AJAX styled news reader.

oh-my-god

i-like-you-so-much-better-when-you-are-naked

Found this while listening to Dandelion Radio, hadn’t heard it in years, probably last heard in Derek Byrnes house in Kilbarrack, his brother was a punk, it was 1983 and we were still mourning the death of Bob Marley with Legend on loop on the ghetto blaster, but the pop punk sounded good.