• 1.5 to 2 lbs thick cut pork loin or chops, dredged in flour
• 2 tbps butter
• 1 lb sliced mushrooms
• 3 or 4 pieces of chopped garlic
• 1 medium sized onion, chopped
• 1.5 cups white wine or vermouth
• .5 cups water
• 2 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp rosemary
• 1/2 tsp sage
• Salt and pepper
• 1 lb egg noodles

Preheat the oven to 350F. Get the water for the egg noodles on.

Heat the butter over medium heat in a large oven-proof skillet/saute pan. Add the pork and saute until browned. Add the onions and mushrooms, saute until mostly cooked. Add the water, wine, salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, rosemary and sage and simmer a few minutes, stirring regularly.

Stir in the garlic and put the pan in the oven, stirring and turning the pork a few times. Remove the pork when the internal temp reads 155F, probably around 15 to 20 minutes depending on thickness.

Be sure to cook the egg noodles while the pork is in the oven.

After you remove the pork, cover it in foil and set aside. Reduce and thicken the remaining sauce over high heat on the stove, wisking in small amounts of flour to help thicken it.

Serve the pork over the egg noodles, covering with the mushroom wine sauce. This is a suprisingly tasty recipe for being so simple, and can handle a lot of variation in ingredients – try leeks, chicken, or maybe stirring in some sour cream at the very end of thickening the sauce.

Serves 4 generously.

In my experience customizing and deploying CMSs for clients, 99% of folks want a WYSIWYG editor, for good or ill. Usually good.

I’ve customized the FCKEditor for various projects, and I like:

• the way it uses “connectors” to allow for the integration of the WYSIWYG with in-site assets / resources and file uploads,
• that it generates clean HTML for the flexibility the WYSIWYG provides,
• and it’s good at not molesting any custom HTML you throw in.

So I’ve made a Radiant FCKEditor extension and put it on github.

See the readme for install instructions, requirements and other crap.

Features

• In-WYSIWYG file uploads and image placement,
• Spellchecking – provided aspell is installed,
• Radius-tag awareness – I did my best to tell FCKEditor to leave radius tags alone, even customizing the tags it should ignore at the PageType level,
• Works everywhere FCKEditor does,
• Implemented as a “filter”, allowing you to manage arbitrary numbers of page parts with it,
• You can dynamically add / remove it from page parts as you see fit.

The Future

• Create an admin tab to allow for editor toolbar customization,
• Integrate the link browser to allow for dirt-simple in-site linking,
• Offer optional integration with the page_attachments plugin for more logical file organization.

Get involved

Really! Drop me a line – dan @ endpoint dot com to discuss your ideas or make a fork, push your changes and send me a pull request. All reasonable offers accepted!

I have no idea if there’s a term to describe this kind of navigation, but I’ll use “flexmenu” as it’s what the excellent WebGUI CMS calls them, implemented via nested ul / li tags.

I like this method of site navigation as it gives a user the ability to see the entirety of the site along with the ability to zoom in / out easily and bounce between sub-sections.

As you drill down into the page hierarchy, the siblings of each page stay open. I’ll try to illustrate:

At the root, where “1” is the root.

  1.1
  *1.2* <-- User clicks this
  1.3
  1.4

Next:

   1.1
   1.2
     1.2.1
     1.2.2
     *1.2.3* <-- User clicks this
     1.2.4
     1.2.5
   1.3
   1.4

That opens up.

   1.1
   1.2
     1.2.1
     1.2.2
     1.2.3
       1.2.3.1 <-- leaf node
       1.2.3.2 <-- leaf node
       1.2.3.3 <-- leaf node
     1.2.4
     1.2.5
   1.3
   1.4

User clicks a completely separate part of the tree, and the 1.2 branch closes.

   1.1
   1.2
   *1.3* <-- User clicks here
     1.3.1
     1.3.2
     1.3.3
   1.4

This is implemented via two snippets- a container and a recursive snippet for each node:

Container Snippet

 <r:if_parent>
 <div id="left-column-nav">
 <r:find url="/">
   <ul>
     <r:snippet name="menu-line" />
   </ul>
 </r:find>
 </div>
 </r:if_parent>

Recursive Snippet, named “menu-line”

 <r:children:each>
   <li<r:if_self> class="active"</r:if_self>><r:link />
       <r:if_ancestor_or_self>
         <r:if_children>
           <ul>
             <r:snippet name="menu-line" />
           </ul>
         </r:if_children>
       </r:if_ancestor_or_self>
   </li>  
 </r:children:each>

To use an example from a real site, when at the page “/about/people/”, this navigation menu will yield HTML similar to:

<div id="left-column-nav">
  <ul>
    <li><a href="/about/">About</a>
      <ul>
        <li><a href="/about/goals/">Goals</a></li>  
        <li><a href="/about/history/">History</a></li>  
        <li><a href="/about/mission/">Mission</a></li>  
        <li class="active"><a href="/about/people/">People</a>
          <ul>
            <li><a href="/about/people/executive-committee-members/">Executive Committee Members</a></li>  
            <li><a href="/about/people/other-committees/">Other Committees</a></li>  
          </ul>
        </li>  
      </ul>
    </li>  
    <li><a href="/news/">News</a></li>  
    <li><a href="/programs/">Programs</a></li>  
    <li><a href="/publications/">Publications</a></li>  
    <li><a href="/resources/">Resources</a></li>  
    <li><a href="/morville-house/">Morville House</a></li>  
  </ul>
</div>

Nicely nested and easily styled via CSS.

No. Not with that processed “cheese food” crap. “Easy” as in “not difficult”.

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour. I prefer King Arthur White Whole Wheat
• 2 cups shredded firm cheese – sharp cheddar is a good choice
• 1 stick softened butter
• 2 tsp baking powder
• Dash salt
• 1/4 tsp cayenne
• 1/2 tsp mustard powder
• 1/4 tsp finely ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp rosemary

Process

Preheat your oven to 375. Mix everything together in a mixing bowl. Knead together until dough is smooth. It’ll be similar to sugar cookie dough.

Form into bite-sized pieces and place on an ungreased cookie sheet – forming the dough by pressing an amount about the size of a cherry tomato between your palms works well. Optionally – make an X in the flattened balls with a pastry cutter.

Bake 12 to 15 minutes until just starting to brown at the edges. Transfer to a rack to cool. Makes 2 to 3 dozen.

Notes

If you get the timing right, these’ll be slightly chewy and crispy. Incredible.

Do whatever you want with the herbs – this is just a combo I happen to like. I think cayenne and mustard powder are an excellent complement to sharp cheeses. There’s no rule about the cheese, either. Any strong-flavored cheese that can be grated would work fine.

These crackers are an excellent way to use up the odds-and-ends that seem to collect in the cheese drawer.

TrendMicro is suing BarracudaNetworks over the incredibly novel idea of scanning email for viruses (via the excellent open-source ClamAV ) on an SMTP server. To me, this is akin to suing someone for locking their doors at night. I mean, who could’ve ever thunk to scan email before it hits mailboxes? Unpossible.

Sigh. Add me to the list of sysadmins that think TrendMicro sucks and doesn’t deserve your money.