Sunday February 28th there was a one day show in Toronto at the Metro Convention Centre., put on by Hobbystar.  It was in a smaller room that was packed with local dealers and tables with artists.  I was at this event last year in the same room and experienced the same issue: everything is packed too tightly!  They’re keeping the legal aisle way space but dealers have items for sale so a row now has people searching bins on both sides so you can’t get by.  Add in two rows …

Picked up a Super Micro P8SCT motherboard for practically nothing and had it sitting in my pile of spare components for a few years.  I recently decided to set up a new Windows Home Server and wanted to press this motherboard into service since it has four SATA ports: they’re only SATA 1.5 but since the storage will all be accessed over my network that’s not a concern.
It’s a low end ATX server board supporting one P4 CPU, four DDR2 DIMMs, two 10/100/1000 NICs  and one PCI-X slot.  The CPU …

I came across two new online book sellers, or at least new to me.
The Book Depository ships the items from their warehouse in Gloucester, United Kingdom within 48 hours free worldwide.  Their prices are comparable to Amazon and with free shipping it’s hard to go wrong if you don’t meet Amazon’s $39 minimum for free shipping.  They also have over 11000 free eBooks.
Abe Books deals in used and rare books: items you’re not going to find at Amazon or The Book Depository.  A huge selection makes them a great choice …

Steam is a great service: log in on any PC and play the games you’ve paid for.  The only downside is the download; modern games are between one and five gigabytes, which makes for a long download.  Or after you reformat your system and go to start playing games but have to wait a day for Steam to download them all again.
Luckily steam has a backup feature: right click on your game in the Steam Games menu and select “backup games files”.

You’ll be prompted for a location: I’m saving my …

I was making chicken roulades stuffed with smoked pork loin and Gouda this week and was concerned with them keeping their shape.  I pounded out the chicken breasts between pieces of plastic wrap until they were quite thin, then put the ham and cheese inside and rolled them.  I then wrapped each roulade in the same plastic wrap and made a tight bundle by twisting the ends, then chilled in the refrigerator for a few hours.

After unwrapping them and breading in flour, egg and panko bread crumbs they cooked in …