Sunday Dinner in Bowls

Dinner tonight was French Onion Soup and pan seared Alaskan halibut over curried black beans and corn.

I use the weights but I am including volumes as well.

Instructions

Notes

• Like all breads, allow it to cool completely before cutting. Fresh baked bread smells delicious and the tempation to cut right in is great, but letting fully cool to the core allows the starch matrix to set completely. If you cut warm bread the starches will bind together and the bread near the cut and possibly the whole loaf will be gummy and pastey. If the crust is too crispy for your taste, brush with butter or olive oil soon as its out of the oven.
• If you do not have a stand mixer I highly recommend you look into the No Kneading Bread methods. If time is on your side you can make some excellent breads with no special equipment and no real effort by using time as a tool. More info and videos here at Breadtopia.
• Finally, remember that nothing makes better bread than making bread often.  As the yeast balance in your kitchen changes with more frequent bread making the crust and texture of your breads will get better and better.

Almost Done

]]> http://blog.techfun.org/2010/02/whole-wheat-molasses-bread/feed/ 0 http://blog.techfun.org/2010/02/the-ever-precient-matt-groening/ http://blog.techfun.org/2010/02/the-ever-precient-matt-groening/#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 03:26:04 +0000 JD Thomas http://blog.techfun.org/?p=2076 As usual, Matt Groening was 1000 years too late in describing the 31st century world in his wonderful Futurama animated series. This video (after Comedy Central’s advert) is a debate for Earth President in season two’s “A Head in the Polls” episode in which Richard Nixon manages to seize power. Did you know Wikipedia has an entire Politics in Futurama section?

The election race for President of Earth is in full swing, with two clones as candidates and the Planet Express crew registers to vote. Meanwhile, a mining disaster on Titan sends the price of titanium through the roof, and Bender seizes the opportunity to make a quick buck by pawning his 40% titanium body.

As a head with a pile of cash, Bender begins enjoying his new lifestyle. During a trip to the Hall of Presidents in the New New York Head Museum, Richard Nixon’s head ruins Bender’s illusions about the glamor of a life without a body. The next day Bender heads off to the pawn shop to retrieve his body, but it has been sold. Later, Nixon’s head announces its candidacy for President of Earth, using Bender’s body to escape a constitutional provision that “nobody can be elected more than twice”.

[Fry and Leela are watching a debate. The candidates are clones, they use the same tone of voice and body movements for each other's short speech]
Jack Johnson: It’s time for someone who has the courage to stand up and say,
[slams his fist on the podium]
Jack Johnson: I’m against those things that everybody hates!
John Jackson: Now, I respect my opponent. I think he’s a good man. But quite frankly…
[slams his fist on the podium]
John Jackson: I agree with everything he just said.

February 6th, 2010 Snow Storm Dinner

Mother is still visiting and we have a 3-4 foot snow drift in front of the house so we stayed in and cooked.

I made pan seared lemon garlic chicken breasts, broccoli rabe sautéed in olive oil and tossed with roasted garlic puree and white balsamic, and oven roasted fingerlings – some Yukon golds, red bliss, and PEI purples.

Everyone seemed to like it.

February-2010-Storm-010

This is from around noon on February 6th after about 16 hours of snow. Took this from the porch looking east down towards the Delaware River.

This is all very light and fluffy but if we get any sleet or freezing rain on top of this the added weight on top of the snow will take down lines and branches,

February 2010 Storm - So Far

My first try at snow with the new Canon. It seems to be more interested in focusing on flakes than on the scene as a whole.

I love neon and if you are ever in Center City Philly and want to see what is probably the largest and densest assortment of neon, be sure to check out the Filbert St. side of Reading Terminal Market.

I wish we still built things to last like this old train station.

This is the view towards Center City from the top of the parking garage between 29th and 30th on Arch St.

I didn’t have a tripod but the railing around the roof worked pretty well.

I wish I could say the same for the far right conservative groups, but I cannot.  Since the election, many of these “Real Americans”  seem more determined than ever to overwhelm the minds and pocketbooks of their readers.

The Craziest of the Crazy

One company that provides e-mail lists for Conservatives with money to spend on email marketing is Conservative Action Alerts, the brainchild of Lititz, PA based Diener Consultants, Inc. It seems that at least half of all conservative mailings I get come through them and ALL of the most insane are passing through their servers.

Here is the opening of the letter.  To read the while thing go to the image on Flickr.

Dear Fellow American,

We are suing Barack Hussein Obama to force him to release his ACTUALbirth certificate, to force him to PROVEif he is eligible to serve as President of the United States…

Before I give you the latest news on our lawsuits, would you, FIRST, please, sign the enclosed CITIZEN’S DEMAND TO BARACK OBAMA, and return it to me today. Your Petition demands that Mr. Obama:

1) Order his lawyers to cease their legal attacks on
the United States Justice Foundation (USJF); and,

2) Immediately release his real birth certificate
to prove whether he is a “natural born citizen”
of the United States.

You can often spot these things instantly by the way they never, ever, ever call him by his title. It is always Mr. Obama, or the full “Barack Hussein Obama”. Also, not the immediate mental disconnect formed when the organization demands the right to use our publicly funded judicial system to pursue their goals while at the same time they are asking their “opponent” to forsake his own Constitutional rights to defend himself using that same judicial system. Farther along in the message they seem to take pride in sucking harder on the public teat by challenging a legal decision through the more expensive (to the public) appeal system.

Whatever you do, never ever try to point out this logical disconnect.   I am not sure what would happen but I suspect it would be akin to waking a sleepwalker and if 1970s-1990s TV and movies have taught us nothing, waking a sleepwalker is bad news and if you let them go about their business much hilarity will ensue.

Fringe from the Start

This organization – United States Justice Foundation – has quite a past.  Before jumping on the back of the Birther movement and going along for the lucrative ride on the dime of frightened Americans, they were involved in other bizarre and weirdly quaint movements and agendas.  This is from their own website at http://usjf.net/?page_id=1198 (yeah – they are using WordPress and nobody told them about the value of SEO friendly permalinks.)

Cases We’ve Represented

• 1979 — White v. Northern Louisiana Legal Assistance Corporation — Provided attorney and all related costs for reverse discrimination lawsuit.
• 1979-1981 — John Doe v. William French Smith — Provided attorney and all court costs and expenses in the U.S. District Court to deport Iranians illegally residing in the U.S.
• 1979 — Brian R. Weber v. Kaiser Alumimum & Chemical Corporation and the United States Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO — Filed friend of the court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Mr. Weber’s attack on reverse discrimination.
• 1982 — Rovert J. Bell v. Nashua — Provided partial funding for taxpayer lawsuit challenging City of Nashua, New Hampshire’s refusal to adopt or allow public vote on an intiative petition to limit the city’s imposition of taxes.
• 1992 — Nordlinger v. Hahn — Filed friend of the court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the successful defense of California’s Proposition 13, the property tax limitation measure, against an attempt to have it invalidated.
• 1993 — Anderson v. Green — Filed friend of court briefs with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court to defend California law restricting welfare grants for new arrivals.
• 1994 — Boehner v. Anderson — Filed friend of court brief in the lawsuit to bar the congressional pay raise enacted in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
• 1994 — U.S. Term Limits, et.al. v. Thornton, et.al. — Filed friend of the court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of term limits legislation in four cases combined for hearing.
• 1994 — Clinton Health Care Task Force — Served FOIA requests on nine federal departments and agencies seeking all information in their possession, and their employees, concerning the proposed health care plan, have advisedthe American Association of Physicians and Surgeons in their litigation on this subject.
• 1994-1996 — Alvarado, et. al. v. City of San Jose, et. al. — Represented plaintiffs in suit challeging the use by the city of San Jose, California of $1 million in taxpayer funds to purchase and install on public land a statue of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl.
• 1994-1997 — Ray Helen Jones v. Southern University — Funding lawsuit against all-black university for discrimination against women in employment policies.
• 1995-1996 — Carlin, et.al v. San Diego Unified School District — Represented intervenor parents in desegregation case challenging school district’s use of $48 million per year in special funding.
• 1996 — Western/California Ltd., et.al. v. Dry Creek Elementary School District — Filed friend of the court brief in support of legal challenge to the action of the a school district levying excessive fees against a developer to finance school construction.

The Letter

There is nothing else I can say about this email from Gary Kreep, Executive Director of United States Justice Foundation entitled “CITIZEN’S DEMAND TO BARACK OBAMA!!” (caps and bangs in the original) that will prepare you so please click on the photo below and read it in all its bizarre and wonderful exuberance.

While reading, try to remember that ordinary American citizens sat down at their computers or desks and coughed up $10 or $25 or however much they could afford and sent it in to the person behind the prose and his foundation.  This person in turn cashed those checks or accepted those credit card donations (if the idea that Great Aunt Edna might be paying upwards of 30% interest on her donation since she put it on her Visa does not make you sick to your stomach then you have no soul) and used the money to pay Conservative Action Alerts to send out this plea for cash disguised as “news”.

Behold the Crazy (click to go read the big version)

Video: Isn’t the birther movement really about racism?

There are many many ways to access Twitter ranging from command line tools all the way up to slick Adobe Air applications like TweetDeck.   If Adobe made a decent 64bit Linux version of TweetDeck I would still be using it and have never discovered my current favorite Twitter “client”, Brizzly.

I use Twitter from three different PC’s on a regular basis and while I can do all kinds if fun synchronization stuff ranging from using Dropbox to  rsync to unison to sshfs to keep my settings and preferences all in sync across the machines but that really gets to be a pain and I started looking at a purely cloud based solution.   Because  I had absolutely no use for Twitter when I did not have an active Internet connection, this seemed an ideal situation where a hosted application would be perfectly fine.  The fact that I would be accessing it from 32bit and 64bit Linux as well as from the occasional Windows machine meant that a web based solution that worked fine in Firefox or Chrome would give me the best results.

I knew I hated the limitations of the actual Twitter.com site so I started asking for opinions from others on Twitter .    I ended up using TwitHive.com for a while.  TwitHive is @yongsu’s valiant attempt to bring many of the features first popularized in TweetDeck to a web browser.  Its ability to create “Channels” (think Columns in TweetDeck and later Lists on Twitter itself).  TwitHive is a very nice, simple, and effective tool but I would mainly recommend it to people who are happy with a heavy client like TweetDeck  and just need occasional access to Twitter while away from their main PC.

Brizzly Bear

During that time I had a few friend’s taking part in Brizzly’s private beta.  They all seemed to like it so I signed up for an Invite and one soon arrived.   I created my account and linked my Twitter and Facebook accounts (in much the same way as in the TweetDeck client).  When I first got it all set up I have to say I was unimpressed.  It looked much like the normal Twitter interface with the iconic Twitter bird replaced with a teddy bear in bird drag (see right).

Brizzly Bar

Within two hours my attitude had changed and I have been hooked ever since.  Now many other clients do some of what Brizzly does.  You can click a TwitPic.com or Yfrog.com link in TweetDeck and see the photo, and there are several other clients that will expand links created through URL shorteners like Bit.ly and TinyURL.com.   Brizzly does all that and more.   In addition to the known image hosts like TwitPic and Yfrog, Brizzly checks ALL links for likely image destinations and will show them inline as shown in the video above.  It also grabs the embed code for links to YouTube.com videos and lets you watch them in place.

Brizzly also makes it very easy to get to everything that matters to me via the bar on the left.   I follow 177  people (as of right this minute) and it is not overwhelming in Brizzly.  I also like the fact that the Direct messages come up in more of an Instant Messenger style interface and off to the side so you can DM with someone without hiding your main tweets.

I thought I would miss my old columns in TweetDeck but the addition of Twitter’s Lists in combination with Saved Searches took care of that lack.

So, all in all, if you are happy with your way of using Twitter on a computer (Mobile devices are different) then more power to you, but if you are new to Twitter or you tried it once and didn’t like it or “get” it, please give Brizzly a try.

]]> http://blog.techfun.org/2010/01/brizzly-the-faces-of-twitter/feed/ 2 http://blog.techfun.org/2010/01/internet-rule-30/ http://blog.techfun.org/2010/01/internet-rule-30/#comments Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:24:40 +0000 JD Thomas http://blog.techfun.org/?p=2001 The rules of the Internet are to be ignored at your own peril. And an important clarification.

Rule #30. There are NO girls on the internet.

This  rule is about girls not women.  And should be modified to show that ‘There are NO girls on the Internet at a place and time when it actually matters if they are a guy or girl.”

A S L?

Rules of the Internet (ROI dot com edition)

i. You can’t the square root of a negative integer.
-8. combo breaker i am the combo breaker. the combo breaker is the law and the law is the law so who say you? combo breaker or combo breaker? combo breaker combo! breaker! combo breaker! so its now or never!
-7. /b/ is not your friend. No exceptions.
-6. LOL NEGATIVE
-5. No moar negative rules.
-4. Rule 210. must be followed or you are breaking rule 100. No exceptions.
-3. Every rule above 100 must be followed. No exceptions.
-2. Never cuss any canadians.
-1. Rule 0 does not exist.
0. There are no rules after 0.
1. Do not talk about /b/
2. Do NOT talk about /b/
2.1337. You can’t edit rule 2, newfags. 2.13337. By editing rule 2 you will never have sex in your life. EVER. No exceptions.
3. We are Anonymous.
3.14159265358979323846… . Expect us.
4. Anonymous is legion.
5. Anonymous does not forgive, Anonymous does not forget.
6. Anonymous can be a horrible, senseless, uncaring monster.
7. Anonymous is still able to deliver.
8. There are no real rules about posting.
9. There are no real rules about moderation either — enjoy your ban.
10. If you enjoy any rival sites — DON’T.
11. All your carefully picked arguments can easily be ignored.
12. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
13. Anything you say can be turned into something else. – fixed
14. Do not argue with trolls — it means that they win.
15. The harder you try, the harder you will fail.
16. If you fail in epic proportions, it may just become a winning failure.
17. Every win fails eventually.
18. Everything that can be labeled, can be hated.
19. The more you hate it, the stronger it gets.
20. Nothing is to be taken seriously.
21. Original content is original only for a few seconds before getting old.
22. Copypasta is made to ruin every last bit of originality.
23. Copypasta is made to ruin every last bit of originality.
24. Every repost is always a repost of a repost.
25. Relation to the original topic decreases with every single post.
26. Any topic can be turned into something totally unrelated.
27. Always question a person’s sexual preferences without any real reason.
28. Always question a person’s gender – just in case it’s really a man.
29. On the internet, all girls are men, and all kids are undercover FBI agents.
30. There are NO girls on the internet.
31. TITS or GTFO – the choice is yours.
32. You must have pictures to prove your statements.
33. Lurk moar — it’s never enough.
34. There is porn of it, no exceptions.
35. If no porn is found of it, it will be made.
36. There will always be more fucked up shit than what you just saw.
37. You can not divide by zero (just because the calculator says so).
38. No real limits of any kind apply here — not even the sky
39. CAPSLOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL.
40. EVEN WITH CRUISE CONTROL YOU STILL HAVE TO STEER.
41. Desu isn’t funny. Seriously guys. It’s worse than Chuck Norris jokes.
42. Nothing is Sacred.
43. The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt it.
44. Even one positive comment about Japanese things can make you a weeaboo.
45. When one sees a lion, one must get into the car
46. There is furry porn of it. No exceptions.
47. The pool is always closed due to AIDS (and stingrays, which also have AIDS).
48. A cat is fine too.
49. One cat leads to another.
50. Another cat leads to Zippo Cat.

Read the other 200 or so at Actual rules

Rush Limbaugh via Wikimedia Commons

• Remember how upset you were when Rush Limbaugh accused Michael J. Fox of “acting” when he displayed normal Parkinson’s disease symptoms?
• Remember how you felt when you heard him refer to the sexual abuse of UNCONVICTED prisoners atAbu Ghraib as “It’s sort of like hazing, a fraternity prank. Sort of like that kind of fun.” one day and then said “I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some steam off?” the next?
• Remember how in 1995 he said “Too many whites are getting away with drug use…Too many whites are getting away with drug sales…The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too.” and then in 2005 he kept his job and expected the ACLU to protect his civil rights after admitting “I am addicted to prescription pain medication.”?
• If you have been paying attention long enough you may even recall when he called women who supported the law of that land granting women control of their bodies feminazis.

If you remember how you felt at any of those times, please try to go back in your mind and REALLY remember how it felt.

Remember how frustrated and upset you felt that the laws governing the public airways – through the repeal of a decades old FCC policy from 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was (in the Commission’s view) honest, equitable and balanced – granted Rush Limbaugh unfettered access to millions of Americans without guaranteeing access for an opposing view.

That FCC policy, put in place by the President who led us to victory over Germany and Japan in World War II, served the nation well during the massive post war boom in both population and national wealth. It stood until swept out the door with many other regulations when Ronald Reagan took office.

There is a reason Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Savage, Beck, and their compatriots consider Ronald Reagan to be a saint. The same general clearing away of regulatory power – wielded by civil servants on behalf of ordinary Americans – created the talk radio echo chamber over which Rush Limbaugh and his many imitators have reigned all these years. These are men who have become not just rich, but VERY rich, through Reagan’s ‘deregulatory pork’ handed down to the Republican party.

Now remembering all of that, you can still, stick to the high road.  I know you can.   It’s taken us a long time to get to where we are now after the nadir of the USA’s flirtation with corporate fascism in first half of the ‘Noughts’. Lets not slide back and end up down on that low road with the likes of Limbaugh.

Nobody expects you to send flowers or even wish him well and a speedy recovery – if he indeed is ill. But crowing about his misfortune and publicly wishing for his demise on Facebook, Twitter, or on-line is THEIR WAY, not ours.

Michael Widenius

Oracle is trying to buy Sun, and since Sun bought MySQL last year, Oracle would then own MySQL. With your support, there is a good chance that the EC from which Oracle needs approval could prevent this from happening or demand Oracle to change the terms for MySQL or give other guarantees to the users. Without your support, it might not. The EC is our last big hope now because the US government approved the deal while Europe is still worried about the effects.

Read more and act here.

A single image taken with a camera like my Android G1 can contain a lot of information as shown below:

EXIF Information from an Android G1 Photo

Removing EXIF Data in Ubuntu

This is a quick and easy way to remove EXIF data from JPG files from a Bash prompt in Ubuntu or other Debian derived versions of Linux.  This method will let you remove the EXIF date from all images in a directory.

First, install the jhead package via apt-get.  Open a terminal window and type:

sudo apt-get install jhead

After jhead is installed you may want to review all the ways you can use this powerful tool by typing:

man jhead

You can use jhead to add/remove/modify information in JPG files but for now, all we are going to do is strip out all the information from the file that is not needed to render the image itself.  This may be more than you feel you need but it will give you the most privacy that I know how to provide.

To remove all EXIF info from a single image just open a terminal window and type:

jhead -purejpg /path/to/image.jpg

You can also use wild cards so you can use:

jhead -purejpg /path/to/*.jpg

or

jhead -purejpg /path/to/*.JPG

Since the jhead tool only acts on jpeg files you can do an entire directory of files – regardless of the case of the file extension using xargs like this:

ls | xargs jhead -purejpg

from within the directory of photos.

The boy claims he did hear calls, but deliberately ignored them.

“Why didn’t you come out?” his father asked during the interview.

After a small silence, Falcon said he stayed hidden because he thought “we did this for a show“.
Another awkward silence followed, before his father said “yeah”, before asking his son again why he didn’t come out.

The CNN interviewer asked for clarification on Falcon’s remarks, but his father dodged the question.

via Hoax fears after Falcon Heene hid ‘for a show’ | The Australian.

Toffoli

Lauren Schenkman for Inside Science News Service reports that physicists Lev Levitin and Tommaso Toffoli at Boston University have declared a speed limit on computing, no matter how small components get.

Levitan

In the early 1980s, Levitin singled out a quantum elementary operation, the most basic task a quantum computer could carry out. In a paper published today in the journal Physical Review Letters, Levitin and Toffoli present an equation for the minimum sliver of time it takes for this elementary operation to occur. This establishes the speed limit for all possible computers.

“From a theorist’s perspective, it’s good to know that fundamental limits are there, sort of an absolute ceiling. You may say it’s disappointing that we can’t build infinitely fast computers, but as a picture of the world, if you have a theory of physics allows for infinitely fast computation, there could be a problem with that theory.” – Scott Aaronson, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology