Oven chips

Much as you search the cookery books, it's impossible to find any recipe, advice or serving suggestions for this the king and queen of foods. Delia, Nigel and the River Café have missed something surely, and left the market wide open to us here. Chip connoiseurs might helicopter over (for that is how one gets there doesnt one) to the Priory Bay Hotel. At this up-priced hotel they'd heart attack over the servings of chips - four potato sticks arranged in a square on the plate. Goodness me. The steely atmosphere of this place is something to behold: customers eat in fear of the staff feeling perhaps that they found England at its best. Our meal ended cheerily: we'd ridiculed them so much they rushed us the bill to get us away. I'll never know why the bill didn't include all the drinks we'd had. I hope it was because they had just forgot.








Pic: Fries need no introduction - a junk food cliché.





If chips are hot, Terminal Services are cool

Windows XP Pro (and Windows 2000 Server) features a neat way of connecting to a computer remotely and using them from another machine. If you've a network, with a network point in the kitchen, you can operate your main computer with quite adequate performance as your chips are being cooked. If you've a wireless setup (eg an access point plugged into a hub and a wireless card in a laptop) you can even do this from the bathroom. And if you've a CE machine (eg big screen types are best - Jornada 680; Samsung Izzi Pro, Compaq) the result is so much more awesome: here's a tiny machine controlling an XP desktop.




'Remote Desktop Sharing' (also k/a Terminal Services) is very good value when the controlling computer (or client) is very low spec. If you have a Windows CE device, you 'run' Windows XP, and all that sails on it. Put the wireless card in the device, launch the Terminal Client and log on. (The client is pre-installed on HPC 2000 devices such as the Jornada 700 series. Others like the HP/C 3.00 will also work but they just need the client to be installed first). Launch IE and you're surfing the net or checking your bank account. Even scripting, Java, and Shockwave work a treat.


How to do it

On Windows XP Pro, right click My Computer, go to Remote and make sure you've allowed Remote Sharing (two items to click). If necessary install the Terminal Client (hpcrdp.exe from microsoft) on the CE device. Active Sync will start and do the install work. Log-off to the XP sign-on screen because XP will only let you run one instance of itself. Launch the Terminal Client, enter the network name of the XP machine (or more reliably on older CE, its IP address) and enter your logon details. Smile - your computer, and your chips, are ready.

Windows 2000 Server has had this for years. It has the serious advantage that you can be logged onto the server machine and the CE machine at the same time. Either that's true or we're clever by fluke.