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Published November 5, 2004 by lieven

A couple of months ago I spend some time modifying the WordPress ViewLevel
plugin slightly to include in this blog. At the time, the idea was
to restrict the readership of certain posts (such as info meant for
master-class students etc.). In the sidebar these posts are prepended by
a padlock sign (together with the appropriate view-level). In the main
window these posts do _not_ show up unless you are logged in and
have the fitting view-level.
I hope that this tool may also prove
useful to combat spam-comments. Ideally, a weblog should be configured
to accept any comments but if you have to remove a 100 or more link-spam
'comments' each morning to keep your blog poker-free you have to
play defensive. Unfortunately, WordPress is not very good at it. Sure,
one can opt to put all comments on hold, awaiting moderation but (1)
this is unpleasant for genuine comments and (2) one still has to remove
all spam-comments manually from the moderation-queue. In the end, I had
to close all posts for comments to be spared from poker-online and
texas-online rubbish.
However, I appreciate comments and
suggestions especially at a time when this weblog is changing. So, if
you are working in either non-commutative algebra or non-commutative
geometry and want to give your suggestions, please get yourself a login.
I know, I know, it is a hassle with all those nonsense passwords but if
you are accessing this weblog from just one computer you only have to
remember it once (I forgot my own password but can still post
here…). I will then raise your ViewLevel from the default 0 value
to at least 1 so that you can read and comment the padlocked posts. If
you then want to make a comment on other posts, please use a nearby
padlocked post.
Today, I ask for suggestions for a good LaTeX
book-style. At the moment my favourite is the CTAN
thesis-package but surely there are better packages out there!

again : this idea came to nothing!

sanglier (end)

Published November 4, 2004 by lieven

It is always rewarding to prepare a success guaranteed meal for a
large group, so we invited all people present at LeTravers at the
moment (12) for a sanglier-party on wednesday-evening.

Not
that there is so much reason to party given the outcome of the
US-elections. It is an insult to the rest of the world that a creature
who should be handed over and convicted by the International Criminal
Court for starting an illegal war can get himself re-elected. The
arrogance of an empire in decline…

It was another dry
but heavily clouded day and I spend most of it inside cooking. Perhaps
the last chance for cycling because today (thursday) it is raining
continuously. At the moment there is even thurder and lightning which
can be fairly impressive in mountanous regions. When it comes a bit
nearer all electricity will shut itself off automatically. Even with
this kind of weather the hunters go about their bizness, I just saw
one of them running with his gun on the road below (just 10 meters
away).

On a day like today there's not much to do but to sit by the
fireplace and read. I finished “Antwerp” by Nicholas
Royle. The book contains plenty of very detailed information on
Antwerp streets, building etc. which is all the more surprising as teh
author lives in Manchester. In the opening chapters he mentions two
watertowers near a railroad-bridge that I must have passed a 100 times
without noticing and only saw after reading the book… For these
details I did like the book, but I didn't get into the main plot
of the story much, so I'll give it a – in the sidebar when I get
back. At the moment I'm reading PD James' “The Murder
Room” which seems to take forever to get to the strating point
of the story, but who cares with this weather ?

But back to preparing sanglier and a few modifications to the
recipe I posted before. This time I marinated the meat for 24 hrs. in
half water/half wine, onions, garlic, carrots and herbs (oregano and
thyme). Afterwards I dried the meat and collected the juice and
vegetables in a saucepan and let it cook for 10 minutes and pulled the
mixer through it. Then I baked the wild boar in butter and garlic
until all pieces were nicely brown, poured red wine on it and the
mixed marinade. Then I let it stew for 2.5 hrs and 15 minutes before
serving I added mushrooms and a bit later some cream. The only thing I
regretted afterwards was overdoing the cream a bit, but nobody else
seemed to mind this too much.

sanglier (bis)

Published November 3, 2004 by lieven

Yesterday around noon the former head of the local hunting society
turned up with our reward : a huge piece of the 110kg wild boar they
shot the day before.

A reward partly for taking care of the
two lost hunting dogs the day before (one of them was his but he is
missing another two dogs at the moment so we are asked to watch out for
them) partly because the hunters have to pass 'our land'.

Each year there is a “fete des chasseurs” to thank all
local people allowingh free passage during the hunt but it is scheduled
later in the year and we are not around at that time (come to think of
it, why not this year?).

In a previous post (I'll add
links later, I do not want to waste too much time on this dial-up
connection) I mentioned that this is the only way to get wild boar meat
around here. This time there was no trade-off involved but he would
accept “un cannon” (a glass of wine, rose in his case) or
two if we insisted.

To our surprise he sais that he hadn't
eaten wild boar for over 20 years… It seems that having to slice
up the meat after the hunt isn't appetizing. Here is how they divide
the meat after the hunt : they slice the boars up into pieces (last
week-end they shot 14 op tem in Sablieres alone) and divide the parts
into more or less equal heaps (as many as the number of people taking
part in the hunt).

Then, one of them is blindfolded and when
the others point to a heap the blinfolded person has to call out a name.
This process takes a while and is accompanied with quantities of Pastis
or wine.

In previous years we got our meat nicely sliced up and packaged but
yesterday it was one huge lump of meat (probably a shoulder). So, I did
spend the better part of two hours slicing it up into pieces which is
pretty hard but indispensable work. I promised to prepare the boar by
wednesday evening (to be continued…).

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sanglier (end)

sanglier (bis)