Natasha D'Souza

When I worked for a start-up,  the challenges of funding and recruiting the right talent were very apparent.  It’s very simple, how do you get funds when the economy is on a down slide?  How do you recruit the right talent when you have a budget of zero $.

Startup Addict is a social network that addresses this issue.  It’s an online community for people to fund startups, recruit talent, sell goods and network.

I will let you know how it goes.  Follow the updates on EyeSee.

A friend of mine made monkey bread a few months ago and I wondered what it was all about.  A quick Google search came up with all sorts of combinations’ of this bread and it looked yummie.  I gave it s whirl.  Not being too crazy about processed food I was not too keen on using frozin dinner roll dough.  So I looked to see if there was one for the breadmaker.  I found one on Family Oven for Monkey Bread.

But just before I came across this recipe I found another one on Evite with a banana, chocolate chip, caramel sauce.  So I combined both.

Dough Ingredients

1 cup water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons margarine, softened
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Other Ingredients

1/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Banana Caramel Sauce Ingredients

1¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (or 1 12-ounce bag)
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon cinnaon
1 stick butter
4 ripe bananas, pureed
¾ cup brown sugar
¾ cup chopped pumpkin and sunflower seeds

How To

1. Place ingredients in the pan in the following order water, flour, sugar, margarine, cinnamon, salt, yeast.  Make sure that no liquid comes in contact with the yeast.
2. Select dough cycle and press start.  The dough cycle typically takes about 2 hours
3. When dough is complete, place dough on floured surface and knead 10 to 12 times
4. Divide dough into 40 pieces about 1 inch chunks
5. Preheat oven to 350°
6. Push a few chocolate chips inside each dough chunk, pinch close with fingers.
7. Give each a quick roll between the palms of your hands to form a round shape
8. In a bowl mix sugar and cinnamon (other ingredients)
9. Roll chunk in the cinnamon and sugar mixture
10. Mash bananas
11. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until foamy, about 1 minute
12. Add in banana puree and stir until combined
13. Add brown sugar and stir to dissolve, then let boil for about 1 minute
14. Spray bundt pan with non-stick spray
15. Pour one third of banana-caramel sauce in bottom of pan, then sprinkle with ¼ cup each of chocolate chips and seeds
16. Arrange balls in a single layer in bundt pan
17. Pour another third of banana-caramel sauce over, and sprinkle with ½ cup of chocolate chips and ¼ cup seeds
18. Arrange second layer of balls on top, and pour remaining sauce, chocolate chips and walnuts on top
19. Bake for 35 minutes, then let cool for 15 minutes.

YUMMIE!!!!

Things I would do differently next time

I would melt the butter and then put it in the blender with the bananas.  I mashed the bananas so they were lumpy which resulted in a very thick caramel sauce.  I would then put it back in the pan and add the brown sugar and heat for 1 minute.

Instead of coating the chunks in the cinnamon and sugar mixture I would coat each chunk in the caramel sauce. Instead of layering the caramel sauce.

I would place the seeds and chocolate chips at the bottom of the pan to start off.  Then I would roll the caramel dipped chunk into the chip/seed mixture.

If there are left overs, heat up your share in the microwave, it’s best when it’s warm and the chocolate melted.

Hope you try it out,  Enjoy.

Schwag is always a challenge for companies, you want it to be unique, effective and reasonably priced.  Some of the common items are pens and t-shirst.  So here are a few t-shirts and what I think about them.

FaveQuest came out with this t-shirt.  I like it because it’s very simple and the color is very appealing.

This is Freshbooks first round of t-shirts and it’s plain white.  What’s really interesting is the humour that went into it.  Freshbooks is a time tracking and invoicing tool for self employed consultants.  Typically these people work from home hence the tie.  There is another version for women however don’t have it.

My all time favourite though is the one I got last night from Digital Ottawa.  Well it’s the first time I have EVER, EVER, received a woman schwag t-shirt!!!!!  I am soo excited, thanks Tamey.

I attended a FUN event at The Code Factory.  FUN is Fellowship Unity Networking for Tech Women.  It was great to network with fellow women engineers and techies.  BTW there was a token guy in the group : )  This event was called “Don’t Dread the Wine List”, you guessed right it was wine tasting. The presentation was by an Engineer who was studying to be a Sommelier, how cool is that.

We tried 4 different types of wines

• Segura Viudas Cava Brut Reserva NV Spain – sparkling white
• Cave Spring Dry Reisling 2007, Ontario – medium white
• Santa Barbara Salice Salentino 2005, Italy – medium red
• RH Phillips Night Harvest Shiraz 2005, California – full red

There were quite a few yummie appetizers to go with the wines.  I learnt a lot about wine and how to determine the taste.  We had great suggestions on what to serve with these wines.  So no more white wine with fish and red wine with meat.  It turns out that a sparkling white wine goes very well with KFC, who would have known.

I met a lot of very interesting women and the wine tasting was a blast.  I look forward to the other events.

I just heard about Bymug and am really thrilled.  This is a social group that is called Bytowne Mac users group serving the Byward Market and downtown core.

The Bytown Mac User Group (ByMUG) is a free membership social Mac-based user group located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The meetings take place on the first Sunday of every month at a local eatery/pub called Patty Bolands.

When: Sunday, December 7th at 1:00 PM

Where: Patty Bolands Pub (101 Clarence Street)

Time: 1:00 PM

Discussion will be

Dave will introduce Growl (www.growl.info/)

Andrew will run through iMovie ‘08 (www.apple.com/ilife/imovie/)

Glenda will demo using the mysterious Mail-Merge in Microsoft Word (www.microsoft.com/mac/products/word2008/), 2008 for Mac

Afterwards, there are the questions & answers, discussions about Mac-related news, as well as software and web site suggestions.

Looking forward to attending.

Another DemoCamp is on next week.  It looks like everyone is busy innovating and turning their ideas into products.

When:  Monday, December 1 2008

Time: 6-9pm

Where: The Velvet Room, 2-621 York Street

Here’s the line up

• Dex – a business relationship management tool for professionals & small businesses
• ChoiceBot for e-Retailers v2.0 – decision-assisting tool for shopping sites that allows shoppers to figure out which TV, car, washing machine, etc. to buy in under 2 minutes.
• Patient Pre-Registration – Infonium Inc. – allows patients to pre-register for their hospital visit over the web
• UniqueHomeSites – Base 10 Inc. – single property web site providor for real estate professionals. Ex: www.123uniquestreet.com
• Incogna Image Search – an image search engine that looks at the pixels in every image it indexes

The usual to register.

I just found about MUGOO and am totally excited about it.  So what am I talking about?

It’s “The Macintosh User Group of Ottawa”.  They are a volunteer organization that promotes and supports the use of Apple Macintosh computers.

They generally meet on the last Monday of every month.

Here are the details of the next meeting.

When: Nov. 24th

Time: 7:30-10:00pm

Where:  Nepean Public Library (inside Ben Franklin Place), Meeting Room 1B

The topic of discussion is

• Introductions & “call for December 8th Show & Tell”
• What’s New to You
• MUGOO Executive Election
• TidBits “In Control” Promo & Giveaway with LeRoy Lees
• Kodak Zi6 (economy ‘HD’ video) with Paul Timmins
• PhoneView with Glen Sharp
• Accessing “US only” web sites from Canada for free with Paul Timmins
• Your favourite Mac oriented podcasts

I am going to see what it’s all about.

Last night the much anticipated snow finally arrived.? The great big fluffy flakes came down with big gusts of wind.

I was just settling down to my session on the comuter.? The usual read blogs, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter or just catchup on what’s going on out there.

None of this happened as with the big wind came the power outage.? I thought nothing of it until I tried my computer, phone, dvd player ….

• computer battery died
• no internet connection
• no phone
• no movies on portable dvd player, battery died
• no power at the gym
• no power at the coffee shop
• saving cell for emergencies

What was I supposed to do?? It’s was too early to go to bed?

This is when I realized that my life revolves around technology that all depends on power from the outlet or batteries.? A lot of my spare time is spent using such technologies.

This was the time to get back to basics

• had a snowball fight
• built a mini snowman
• read a book by candle light

What would you do if you had no power?

The Code Factory is launching their lunch and learn series for September and it looks to be very interesting.

The three streams are

1. Am there doing that
2. Been there done that
3. Monks from Away

The speaker looks very interesting ….

• Tuesday, September 9th, “Am there doing that” Matt Roberts – JohnyVoIP
• Thursday, September 11th, “Been there done that” Greg Bell – Lumenera
• Wednesday, September 17th, “Monks from away” Mark Blevis – Electric Sky
• Tuesday, September 23rd, “Am there doing that” Aydin Mirzaee – Chide.it
• Thursday, September 25th,”Been there done that” Scott Lake – Shopify, Start-up Ottawa

I have noted these dates and hope to make it to all these events.

Software Freedom Day is celebrated worldwide by people showing off free open source software.? We will be celebrating in Ottawa

When: September 20th 2008

Time:? 10am-3pm

Where: Carleton University

So if you have an open source project/product to talk about, this is your stage.