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My decorators article is in top ten articles for the year on Linux Magazine
(verb) hesitate, waver, waffle -- (pause or hold back in uncertainty or unwillingness; "Authorities hesitate to quote exact figures") — Read more on WordNet
Top 10 things you must read about VMware’s VMotion technology
The Evening Echo seller on Patrick’s Street, Cork, has been selling the evening paper for longer than I care to remember. I took a shot of him back in 2005 and he’s still there, braving wet and cold and every other sort of weather.
PS. shot on Saturday while on a hastily organised photowalk with AJ.
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Tags: Black and White, Candid, Canon 40D, Cork, Cork Photos, Ireland, Irish photos, irishblogs, People, Photography, Photos, Sigma 10-20, St Patrick's Street, Street, Urban
What’s Hot on Github - November 2008
What's Hot on Github is a monthly post highlighting interesting projects that are new or updated this month, within the Ruby community that are hosted on Github. Github has become an extremely popular place for Ruby and Rails developers to congregate lately, so I wanted to list some of the new projects, and some of the updated ones, that I have found interesting and that are too small for their own blog post.
A special thanks this month goes to the Rails Rumble team as they made some great suggestions based on what people had used for their applications.
Have any projects to add or want to recommend a project for next month's post? Please leave a comment.
Congratulations to the Winners of 1Password!
And the winner is: #myArray[winnerIndex]#
When I originally took this photo in Chicago (on La Salle, near the CBOT) it was a snapshot of a film crew. I took a few more shots of the crew but I was intrigued by the camera. Panaflex, what’s the specs on that then? Turns out it’s a product of Panavision, you know, that name that’s in practically every American film’s credits? Interesting history too although how they consider that big lump small enough to be handheld is beyond me!
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Review: Estância Churrascaria (Austin, TX)
Posted by johngl
What the heck is an Estância Churrascaria? Is that a thing or a place?
It’s a place and they call themselves a “Brazilian Steak House”. I think they are wrong. I would peg them as a Brazilian Meat House. And better yet, a true “all you can eat” one. One price, over a dozen different meat preparations, all served to you by enthusiastic swordsmen with very sharp knives.
These aren’t really swords, but close enough. They certainly skewer lots of meat with them.
The person who seated us explained the rules — they are pretty simple: eat as much as you want, take as long as you want. How can you screw this up?
But, since we Americans can be a pretty stupid lot at times, they give you these handy little cards:
If you are ready for meat, flip up the green side. There will be swordsman at your side in about three seconds. You’ll have a plate full of food within a minute. If you are happily eating away and don’t wish to be bothered, you flip up the red side. This works pretty well unless your plate is empty. The red side is a mere suggestion if your plate is devoid of food stuffs. How dare you sit in this place with an empty plate?
So, now we knew the rules. Time for some fun!
We opened up with a couple of Caipirinhas (kay-peer-reen-ya). That is a Brazilian drink, not a food. It is made with Cachaça (ka-sha-sa), a distillate of sugar cane juice. Do not confuse this with rum. You will be hunted down and stabbed. Repeatedly. I put in the pronunciation guides for you newbies. Veteran Alcoholians already know this stuff.
Oddly enough, this place actually has a spectacular (all you can eat) twenty-five item salad bar, too. It includes hearts of palm (this is the heart of the cabbage palm tree), artichoke bottoms (large ones), asparagus (very tender), fresh mozzarella balls (that is a cheese, not a body part), sun dried tomatoes, and some more usual salad fixins. We munched on “salad” while we drank our Caipirinhas.
Our shiny, clean, and empty plates arrived. We still had the red side up. Then, these very friendly (sword wielding) guys showed up.
That guy in the middle (or someone who looked a lot like him) is the guy you really need to say yes to. He is wielding the Picanha. I now know why God invented sirloin. This stuff just melts in your mouth. I had about three helpings that were all perfectly cooked. I ordered a glass of Malbec to go with it.
On the left is that killer sirloin (Picanha), in the center, a beef tenderloin chunk wrapped in bacon, and on the right, pork ribs (Costela de Porco). It was like I died and went to heaven. My father would have loved this place.
My next plate looked a lot like this:
Again, the sirloin on the left, beef with garlic in the center, and a pork tenderloin breaded with Parmesan cheese (Lombo de Porco)
Then the guys came out with this beautifully grilled Filet Mignon:
Did I stop here? Hell no! I had a little turkey, some Linguica sausage, and some leg of lamb (cordiero) as well.
About the only thing I can complain about is that the leg of lamb was over-salted. I love lamb, so I was greatly disappointed by this, but hey, I am not on a low sodium diet or anything, it was just too salty for me. Salt junkies might think it was perfect.
Do you think this is enough food? Hardly. There were sides that came with the plates, too.
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On the left is fried bananas, then some dressing with walnuts and raisins, and finally, some fried polenta cakes. Not shown are the garlic mashed potatoes which were attacked and eaten in short order. The bananas went amazingly well with the pork/Parmesan thingy.
Were we done yet? Nope. There was still dessert. By this time, the three of us were pretty maxed out. We went with a fresh strawberry ice cream topped with Crème de Cassis.
So, what did I think of the place? Well, although a few of the meats weren’t done exactly as I like things prepared, the quality of the other meats, the novelty, the ambiance, the enthusiasm (these folks really do want you to eat!), and the selection more than make up for it. I did eat for two solid hours. While not a cheap place to eat, this is a great spot to go to with several boisterous friends. Will I give the place another shot?
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Posted by johngl
To begin with, don’t be afraid. Degustation is simply a food-snobby term that connotes a careful and appreciative tasting of foods and beverages and focuses on the the sense of taste, high culinary art, and like-minded company. For some, this kind of terminology may instill worries of being fed the strange and the offal. For others, the word epitomizes the best that culinary artists have to offer.
Take this for example…
Smoked Duck Diablos with Red Chile Glaze: Applewood smoked bacon wrapped around shards of duck breast, jicama, figs, and jalapeños engulfed with the red chile glaze.
Does this look like something bad? I think Chefs Jeff Blank and Robert Rhoades, both of Hudson’s on the Bend, suffered a stroke of genius whilst creating this recipe. What’s a bit out of the ordinary is that this recipe is one of dozens in a collection from 20 top Texas chefs contained in a newly-released interactive cookbook, Plate & Vine, made available through the friendly folks at The Wine and Food Foundation of Texas. It is worth the price of admission just to get this recipe.
In fact, recipes for the entire menu at this Villa Dixon gathering came right out of this cookbook. And what a meal it was…
We opened with (Abacus and Jasper’s) Chef/Owner Kent Rathbun’s Maytag Blue Cheese Potato Chips:
It was tough to get a clean shot with everyone’s fingers in the way, but this dip is made with Iowa’s excellent contribution to the cheese world, the one and only Maytag Blue Cheese blended with heavy cream. To say this was rich is an understatement. A 2007 Bisson Prosecco Colli Trevigiani IGT helped us cut through all that fat.
And now for some brief messages:
Message 1: While at this intimate gathering of eight, I got to know a fellow blogger, Steffen Pelz. His site is Pelz on Wine. He writes about, uhhh, wine (duh!) and his no-nonsense approach is really quite refreshing. Be sure and check out his notes on the wines we sampled at this Villa Dixon event. I greatly look forward to future collaborations with him as his experience and depth of knowledge on wine goes way beyond my own. To keep things simple, his site is available via my blogroll, too.
Message 2: Many of the wine pairing recommendations were provided by Devin Broglie, Texas’ Best Sommelier for 2006 (as determined by a panel of nationally recognized Master Sommeliers). As the evening progressed, other wines magically appeared in our glassware (how does that happen?). I will put Devin’s initials (DB) by the wines he originally recommended.
Thank you. Now back to the regularly scheduled programming…
Where was I? Yes, the chips. Well, after we ripped through the chips, a plate of those Duck Diablo thingies managed to last about three minutes. Pictured here, my friend Billy Jack urges me, rather, taunts me, with the very last one:
Come on, you know you want it! (Fingers courtesy of Dr. B.J. Stanbery)
I think if Dr. Dixon had made a hundred of these, I still would have gone for the last one. My taste buds were doing a happy dance: sweet, spicy, salty. Then the crunchy, chewy texture…just add wine and smile. The wine paired with this dish, a 2002 Domaine Fourrier Vougeot 1er Cru Les Petits Vougeots (DB), turned out to be one of the best pairings of the evening making this appetizer simply sensational.
Soup’s on!
Roasted Butternut Squash & Chorizo Soup with Crawfish “Croutons”
The legendary Gage Hotel’s (Marathon, TX) Executive Chef Paul Peterson’s offering of the Roasted Butternut Squash soup had several of us calling out “Road trip!” (Yup, it is time to saddle up the SUV and high-tail it over to Marathon). In the photo above, a dollop of crème fraîche is deposited atop of some fresh-fried crawfish croutons.
Dr. Dixon is frying up those Louisiana crawdads, golden brown and delcious
I am really a little surprised that we had some croutons left, given the mad rush to eat them on their own. A 1995 Luneau-Papin Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine Le L D’Or matched up with these crunchy little guys a little too well and it took everything in me to keep from scarfing these things down.
Anyway, the dish managed to get to the table intact. And just look at that beautiful place setting! .
The butternut squash and chorizo blend had an amazingly smooth and creamy texture. The spices in the sausage contributed a nice zesty touch. The crawdaddy croutons added a good bit of crunchy texture and the crème fraîche brought some tangyness to the party. The wine, a 2002 Bertrand Ambroise Ladoix Les Grechons 1er Cru (DB), had a steely edge to it and cleared the taste buds of residual fat.
Next course, please.
Chef/owner Jason Dady of San Antonio’s Lodge Restaurant of Castle Hills provided the recipe for the next item on the menu: Diver Scallop Carpaccio. This awesome and deceptively simple creation just happened to be doused in an heirloom tomato butter sauce. I could have just drank down that sauce all by itself (and died of a heart attack later — and been happy about it).
Served with young salad greens, the scallops were literally melt-in-your-mouth tender. The acid from the heirloom tomato reduction kept things lively. Watching this dish come together was a treat.
Start with some amazing looking diver scallops and slice them up…
Arrange the scallops on each plate and pour over the piping hot heirloom tomato reduction and butter mixture. Add some salad greens and you’ve created a magnificent dish! Naturally, you have take the time (in advance) to hunt down the elusive heirlooms and create the reduction :-). It sure looked easy.
The wine originally paired with this dish was a 2002 Kistler Chardonnay Cuvée Cathleen (DB). It too had some buttery components, but, personally, I preferred the 1998 Mathern Norheimer Kirschheck Riesling Spätlese that Steffen provided. There was a rather lively discussion about the complementary aspects of the Chardonnay versus the contrasting aspects of the Riesling. I considered the Reisling as a dressing for the salad, helping to cut through all that butter in which the scallops were bathing. Great fun!
And now for something completely different.
Braised Pork with Cardamon, Serrano Peppers, and Sweet Potatoes
Chef Bruce Auden, owner of San Antonio’s Biga on the Banks, provided the recipe that seemed to bring a little of Morocco to Central Texas. With a full compliment of Middle Eastern flair, the flavorings made for one of the best sweet potatoes I have ever eaten. The richly seasoned pork was really quite good and I think the serrano peppers added more sweetness than heat. This was really quite a change for me and my palate as I don’t normally cook these types of recipes at home. It might be time to correct that deficiency.
Before having this dish, the mere thought of pairing a wine with something this spice-laden would have probably made my head explode, so I am quite happy that this was done for me. The 2001 Bodega Abel Mendoza Rioja Jarrarte (DB) was a great pairing. Hindsight being what it is, my life is much simpler now. With food like this, I will just think Rioja.
On to the next course. Yes, another one.
The Stoneleigh Hotel’s Bolla Restaurant in Dallas was really quite lucky to snag Exec Chef David Bull away from the Driskill Hotel here in Austin. Dallas is richer for it and Austin has lost a great talent. However, all is not lost, we still have a few of his recipes.
David Bull’s Chicken & Pancetta Cacciatore
Apparently, this recipe got altered right near the delivery point by a suggestion from one the attendees. No fears, you can augment it right in the software and add your pasta ingredient. Unfortunately, as yet, users can’t upload their changes so others can take advantage of it. I think it is a natural. It is just a matter of time.
As for the actual delivery, the pasta was a really brilliant addition and rounded out the Cacciatore very nicely, perhaps being the best chicken cacciatore I have ever had. We had a 1999 Feudi di San Gregorio Taurasi Riserva Piano Di Montevergine (DB) with this dish but I highly recommend viewing Steffen’s assessment of some of the other wines we had with this dish. It is truly great wine reading.
And finally, it is time for dessert. I know, this has probably been one of the longest posts I have ever written, but it was well worth it. This was one of the best dinner events I have ever attended. Best of all, the only thing I wound up doing was chopping some cilantro and carrying a few plates. Of course, if every recipe you are preparing is conceived by world class chef, how can you go wrong?
So, dessert. An offering by Chef Rebecca Rather of Rather Sweet Bakery & Café in Fredericksburg, TX really takes the cake. But, who’d a thunk that a Syrah would be a dessert wine? By the way, those are BJ’s fingers taunting me again. I had already had two of these amazingly rich and gooey brownies and there he was, calling out to my inner child: It’s OK, you can have another one.
The wine was an amazing pairing: 1995 Araujo Estate Syrah Eisele Vineyard. There wasn’t a planned pairing for this dessert, so we were just going with the flow. What a flow it was.
In closing, don’t let any preconceived notions of degustation deter you from having a truly great gathering. Just run with it, okay?
Many thanks to Diane and Earl Dixon for hosting this wonderful event and special thanks to Earl for his preparations. His execution of these recipes was truly amazing.
Again, for those interested in the wines we had at this dinner, visit Pelz on Wine. For those interested in the food, go here and try your hand at some of these recipes. As the proud owner of more than 175 cookbooks, I am looking forward to watching this collection of recipes grow without taking more of my shelf space.
Kiyosaki/Maloney Financial Predictions Revisited
From December 2006:
The yen is now 95 to the dollar.
Iran and perhaps China are in the process of switching reserves to gold.
Mmhhmm.
Installing Fedora 10 on a MacBook
This guide will help you through all the steps necessary for installing Fedora 10 on a MacBook Santa Rosa. This guide is currently aimed at Fedora 10 x86_64 but will also work on i386 version (adjust as necessary). Most of the steps equally apply to pre-Santa Rosa models too.
These instructions will work with the MacBook 3,1 (Late 2007) and newer but will NOT work with the new aluminium MacBooks since they have different hardware (especially the graphics card). These instructions are not suitable for the MacBook Pro either!!
This guide is based largely around my previous guide for Fedora 8, and again much credit goes to the people who created the original Ubuntu wiki guide.
There are a few things that need fixing (covered in detail below) but the following all work "out of the box" with Fedora 10: video/graphics, compiz effects, firewire, CD/DVD reading and writing, function keys (brightness, volume etc), sound, and ethernet. Even the new "plymouth" graphical boot screen works fine once activated.
I have yet to try the infrared or connecting an external monitor. Everything else works with the tweaks described below, except for suspend and hibernate which seem generally pretty broken in F10 (as it was in F9 too).
If you're new to installing Linux then these steps should help you. If you're an old hand then skip below to view the post-installation steps necessary to fix the things that don't "just work".
Note: The wireless on the MacBook doesn't work out of the box in Fedora, so you're going to need an ethernet internet connection available until we get round to fixing the wireless later in this guide.
It is very important now to update your Fedora installation to the latest packages using yum. To do so:
su -
yum updateOnce yum has finished updating, reboot, and then do a yum update again. Repeat this process until yum finds no more packages to update.
The MacBook comes with a Broadcom 4328 wireless chipset. This is not supported by default in Fedora 10 and there are two options to make it work: using ndiswrapper and Windows drivers or using the new official Broadcom STA wireless driver. In this guide we will use the official Broadcom driver because it is easier and more reliable.
1) Enable the rpmfusion non-free repository.
The broadcom-wl and wl-kmod RPMs that we need are in the rpmfusion.org non-free repository which also requires the rpmfusion.org free repository. To enable these repos in Fedora simply do this:
su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm'2) Update and install the driver package
Now that you have the appropriate repository enabled, to install the driver package we first ensure that we have the latest updates and then install the "broadcom-wl" package which will bring with it the required "kmod-wl" package:
su -
yum update
yum install broadcom-wlThat's all there is to it. At this stage you may need to reboot in order to enable the new driver and any new kernel that was installed during the update. For more details or if you have any difficulties see this post.
When future kernels are released a simple "yum update" command should install the new kernel and also pull in the updated Broadcom driver for that new kernel.
They did something weird (clever?) with the latest xorg-server to make it automatically configure itself and so in F10 there is no /etc/X11/xorg.conf by default. This sounds great but in reality it means that you can't tweak any of the settings without recreating the xorg.conf so I'm not really sure what they've achieved here.
Anyway, to get the touchpad working properly you need a xorg.conf so here's how to create a nice one that works properly:
su -
yum install system-config-display
system-config-displayJust accept the defaults and then hit "OK". This should have created the wonderful /etc/X11/xorg.conf that we love so much. Now we need to adjust it to allow us to right/middle click with the one-button touchpad.
First, add the following line to the "ServerLayout" section:
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad" "CorePointer"Now, create a new InputDevice section as follows:
Section "InputDevice"
# updated 2008-11-27
# use command "synclient -m 1" to see raw output
# common stuff
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
# not using edge scrolling
Option "HorizEdgeScroll" "0"
Option "VertEdgeScroll" "0"
# use two finger scrolling
Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1"
Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "0" # set to 1 if you want horizontal scrolling
# scroll speed, lower is faster
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "10"
Option "VertScrollDelta" "10"
# minimum pressure motion factor
Option "PressureMotionMinZ" "10"
# touch and untouch thresholds, higher numbers if you like to push hard
Option "FingerLow" "10"
Option "FingerHigh" "20" # change to 30 or 40 if you like
# borders based on output from synclient
Option "LeftEdge" "20"
Option "RightEdge" "1200"
Option "TopEdge" "20"
Option "BottomEdge" "370"
# speeds, smaller number for a slower mouse
Option "MinSpeed" "0.8" # 0.5 is very slow, 1.5 is very fast
Option "MaxSpeed" "1.2" # up to 1.5 works ok
Option "AccelFactor" "0.10"
# tap times, change to suit your tapping habits
Option "MaxTapMove" "100"
Option "MaxTapTime" "100"
Option "MaxDoubleTapTime" "200"
# don't change these or two finger tap stops working
Option "TapButton2" "3"
Option "TapButton3" "2"
# must be commented out or normal tapping wont work
#Option "TapButton1" "0"
# enable multi-finger clicking
Option "ClickFinger1" "1"
Option "ClickFinger2" "3"
Option "ClickFinger3" "2"
# needed for disabled while typing fix
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
EndSection
Save the file and now log out and back in again. You should now be able to right-click by using a two finger tap on the touchpad and middle-click by using a three finger tap. You can also right-click by holding two fingers on the touchpad and clicking the button, and middle-click by holding three fingers and clicking the button.
For reference, here is my complete xorg.conf file.
The placement and sensitivity of the MacBook touchpad means that it is prone to moving your cursor while you're typing which is very annoying. We can fix this:
To disable the touchpad while typing use this command:
syndaemon -i 1 -dThis disables the touchpad for 1 second after you type something. This works well but if you go back and forth a lot it can be a hassle to wait that one second. NOTE you can use ".5" for half a seconf instead and it works much better.
Alternatively,
syndaemon -t -dThis disables tapping motions but not movement while typing.
Both work fine, and the one that works best for you will likely be determined by the type of computing you do. Try them both and decide for yourself.
Once you've found the one you want to use, add it as an application to start in your gnome session.
First of all, you will need a copy of the firmware from Apple. You can either download this here, or copy it from a Mac OS X partition. While the latter is usually preferred I can't guarantee that the firmware distributed with your MacBook will be supported, so sometimes its easier just to download it.
To acquire the firmware, save the file AppleUSBVideoSupport to your home directory. Next, we need to convert the AppleUSBVideoSupport to a useable firmware file. The isight-firmware-tools will do this for us so we need to install that package:
su -c "yum install isight-firmware-tools"Now, finally, we can convert the AppleUSBVideoSupport to a useable firmware file. From your home directory where you downloaded the AppleUSBVideoSupport file:
su -c ift-extract --apple-driver AppleUSBVideoSupportReboot and your webcam should be fully functionally. Test it with Cheese, Ekiga, or Skype2.
Bluetooth works out of the box but due to some kernel bug it needs to be enabled properly first.
Edit /etc/sysconfig/bluetooth and make sure it says 'HID2HCI_ENABLE=true'.
That'll fix it on subsequent reboots. For now, just run '/sbin/hid2hci' as root.
The applesmc kernel module is not loaded by default - I guess this is a bug. The correct way to load a module on boot in Fedora 10 is to create a .modules file in /etc/sysconfig/modules/ - here is how to do it for applesmc:
su -
gedit /etc/sysconfig/modules/applesmc.modulesPaste the following into the file:
#!/bin/sh
if [ ! -d /sys/devices/platform/applesmc.768 ] ; then
exec /sbin/modprobe applesmc >/dev/null 2>&1
fiSave and exit, then change the file permissions as follows:
chmod 755 /etc/sysconfig/modules/applesmc.modulesOn next boot the applesmc module will load. Meanwhile, just do "modprobe applesmc" as root.
To activate the plymouth graphical boot you must edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and add your framebuffer resolution at the end of the kernel line. For the MacBook with Intel graphics the resolution that works is "0x318". So, become root and edit the kernel line to look something like this:
title Fedora (2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64 ro root=UUID=afb18b52-bfdf-49aa-95f0-234d3013f87d rhgb quiet vga=0x318
initrd /initrd-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.x86_64.imgBy default only the solar and text themes are installed. To add additional plymouth themes type:
su -
yum install plymouth-plugin-{fade-in,pulser,spinfinity}Now you can try any theme you want like shown below, just replace pluginname with one of the following: solar, fade-in, pulser, spinfinity, text:
su -
plymouth-set-default-plugin pluginname
/usr/libexec/plymouth/plymouth-update-initrdAfter that just reboot your computer to enjoy a lovely graphical boot.
Now your MacBook hardware should be fully functional so it is time to get busy adding the software you want and tweaking the system to your needs. This guide by Mauriat Miranda is a great place to look for details of how to install common media players, codecs and fonts. For the native 64bit flash plugin see this post.
Have fun!
Wordpress default theme 1024 wide
I love the Wordpress default theme based on the famous Kubrick theme but it has two problems in my eyes:
I am lazy so looked around for a version that fixed these issues but couldn't find one. So, I took a few minutes to make some adjustments and solve these two problems. The result, that you're looking at now, is an exact replica of the default Wordpress theme but enlarged for viewing at 1024 pixels and with sidebars on pages and posts. Other than that it is identical - and even the dynamic colour changing header image still works.
I submitted the theme to Wordpress for publication but meanwhile you can download it here (if you like!).
The Sweetest Orange Juice Ever
Posted by johngl
One of my favorite food items are oranges and the best time to get juice oranges is right about…now!
What makes them juice oranges?
Note that these have seeds (actually called pips). Seedless oranges, or what we sometimes call navel oranges are the kind most folks eat out of hand. Oddly, nearly every single navel orange is genetically identical to the first one discovered in 1820 at a monastery in Brazil. These are actually a mutation of the seeded orange and must be propagated via cuttings. Two cuttings from the one parent tree made it to California, and the rest is history.
Now, back to these juice oranges. They have a very thin outer layer and a much thinner pith (the white stuff just under the surface of the skin). This makes them tough to peel, but ideal for juicing.
Yep, believe it or not, this is what a real, honest to goodness tree-ripened orange looks like. None of this fancy artificial looking bright orange stuff here. These are more yellow than orange and were organically grown in South Texas. I found them at the Farmers’ Market in South Austin and if I hadn’t juiced these babies myself, I wouldn’t have believed that orange juice could ever be that sweet. It was like they were injected with simple syrup.
I know oranges. I lived in Florida for about seven years and actually hand-picked oranges, grapefruit, lemons, and limes that used to grow in groves as far north as Orange Lake, FL. (I very quickly found out that orange trees have some very nasty thorns, too) My all time favorite spot was just a few miles from my house, off a main highway, and down a narrow lane lined with huge live oaks covered in Spanish moss. There were a few older folks that lived in mobile homes on that lane and they all had orange trees in their front yards. In December and January, these folks would put up signs proclaiming that oranges were $2 per (paper) grocery sack full. It was an honor system kind of thing and you just dropped the two bucks into a box that was nailed to a post. To a native Iowan, who never tasted a real tree-ripened orange before moving South, this was unbelievable. I went down there, heavy work gloves in hand, nearly every day until they ran out of oranges. They had grapefruit, too, but this post is about oranges. Every winter, I would anxiously await the signs to go up, driving down the lane over the Thanksgiving holiday to size up that year’s crop.
While I was down in Daytona just a few weeks ago, the most glorious one and I took a drive to Alachua to visit some very dear friends. I was pleasantly surprised to see that right there, about 30 feet from the front door, was a heavily laden Satsuma orange tree and the fruit was just beginning to turn. Naturally, I ate one of the riper ones, but they needed just a little more time on the tree. I did bring the seeds back and one actually sprouted, so we’ll see if makes it. I will let you know in a future post.
Anyway, before I start pining for the old homestead in McIntosh, I better get back to the juicing.
It takes three oranges to make a real glass of orange juice. This old Salton Juicer that I picked up at Target over a decade ago is still going strong. I looked it up on eBay and found one there for $10. This isn’t one of those $200 Champion-Style We-Can-Get-Juice-Out-of-a-Brick units, but it has worked for me, rather noisily, for many years. It’ll juice veggies and other fruits, too, but generally, I keep the citrus juicer attachment resident.
I love the foamy head the juicer puts on the top. That frothy, air-laden, whipped up juice is as light as a feather and allows for your nose to take in all that totally amazing citrusy goodness. You just have to slurp it off. The more noise you make, the better.
So, if you have a hankering for some organic orange juice from tree ripened fruit, be prepared to dig deeply into your wallet. The $2/sack days are long gone. But since this is an annual treat, feel free to splurge a bit. If you are in Austin, head on down to the Sunset Valley Farmers’ Market and they will be happy to fix you right up! I will probably be back there again this morning.
No bums on seats in this cafe in Maidenhead in the UK.
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Tags: cafe, Canon 10-22, Canon 40D, chairs, irishblogs, Maidenhead, Photography, Photos, restaurant, seats, Signs, street furniture, table, United Kingdom, UrbanFirst off, happy turkey day. I sincerely hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, surrounded by family and loved ones, and that the food was good. Such was the case for myself and my child this year, and that alone is worth giving thanks for.
Now, listen: your book of fairy tales is stupid. I won't criticize the historical parts of your mythology - I happen to personally believe in the historical fact of a rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth and that he had a lot of very important things to say. But I will for sure criticize your drooling insistence that every word penned in that book of fairy tales before and since is true. Grow the fuck up. Paul was the victim of a head injury, and even if you ignore that, the best that can be said about him was that he was sincerely trying to stop people from slaughtering each other - suffice to say the mysticism he inserted into the New Testament had nothing to do with the facts on the ground when Jesus walked the earth, and everything to do with the political realities of Paul's day.
I could go on a long rant here, and might someday, but suffice to say this: if you sincerely believe the universe is only six thousand years old, not only do I have zero respect for you, but I think you've been successfully gamed. Anyone who could fall for such patent and obvious horseshit can be led to believe anything, and I'd not be surprised to hear that you'd been talked into putting on a suicide vest after that. Seriously, it's the logical progression of brainwashing: back in the seventies, it was lethal kool-aid. Now the religious whack-jobs murder people.
Happy Holidays! Remember, Jesus hates the church that stole his name!
Daring Bakers November: Delicious Caramel
This month’s recipe was Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Icing courtesy of Shuna Fish Lydon, as published on Bay Area Bites.
Sounds tasty, right? The recipe involved a great deal of butter, sugar, and making your own caramel syrup to be used as part of the cake.
Since Rich’s birthday is November 9th, I decided that this cake would make a good birthday cake. After all, how hard can making your own caramel be?
Yeah, actually the process of making your own caramel isn’t too bad, if you aren’t picky about the color or the depth of flavour, and as long as you are careful not to get any of it on you while it is cooking. I was fine on the safety part, but not so fine on the color part. Mine was a bit too light, and hardened way too easily. Guess I need much more practice making caramel, huh? Next time I’ll closely follow David Lebovitz’s tips for caramel making.
The cake itself, however, turned out quite lovely. As you can see from the picture, I baked it in an angel food cake pan, which resulted in what appeared to be a giant donut once iced with the delicious browned butter and salted caramel icing and dusted with cinnamon sugar. I think this made it an even better birthday cake myself. Rich’s reaction was essentially ‘You made me a giant donut? Awesome!’.
Knowing the cake would be pretty sweet, I decided to serve it with an apple compote spiced with cardamom and nutmeg. It was pretty tasty, if I do say so myself. The compote was also good on waffles the next day for breakfast.
The recipes for the cake, caramel sauce, and icing are all available directly from Shuna on the Bay Area Bites blog. The recipe for the apple compote I will post below.
Apple Cardamom Compote
Ingredients
* 2 cups water
* 1/3 cup sugar
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 tablespoon good rum
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
* 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* Pinch salt
* 8 large apples, peeled, cored, and cubed
Directions
In a large saucepan, combine the water, sugar, vanilla, rum, spices and salt and bring to a boil. Boil gently until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture thickens slightly, about 5 minutes. Add the apples and return to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the apples are very tender and the mixture thickens, about 20 minutes.
Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature before serving.
Thanks to this month’s hosts: Dolores of Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity, Alex, aka Brownie of the Blondie and Brownie duo, and Jenny of Foray into Food. Awesome choice, guys!
If you’d like to see more versions of the cake, simply go to the Daring Bakers Blogroll!
Last night I finished watching No End In Sight, an eye-opening expose on how the war in Iraq has really been conducted. The film has won accolades at Sundance and from various other organizations. Highly recommended.
And tonight I stumbled across this clip on YouTube:
Succinct, sharp, and an interesting bit of synchronicity. The War Corporatocracy of the United States.
(Oddly the Knife Party video fails to mention Wolfowitz, who seems to be one of the chief architects of what has become neo-con PNAC.
for an excellent summary of Wolfey’s role.)
I would have to agree with the Knife Party clip though: What was once a cabal of radical thinking within the Republican party has been shifting, for many years, possibly by design, from ideology to economic necessity, and from economic necessity to political policy. Eat your heart out, Orwell.
Now that the most overt members of the cabal are ostensibly out of power again, what new policies will the corporatocracy be cooking up behind closed doors? How will they re-re-take power, I wonder?
In the meantime, as Wall Street slides ever further into collapse, I am eager to see what the Obama administration does with the neo-con’s deficit-funded military juggernaut. And how, or if, it can depressurize the Middle East vacuum begotten by our years of War Corporatism.
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Using state with FormEncode and TG’s validate decorator
I believe I figured out a way to reduce a few redundant lines from my controller methods. I’m looking for opinions about whether this is a wise idea.
At the top of nearly every method in my controllers, I look up the current user and the hospital this user belongs to, sort of like this:
@expose('.templates.m1')
def m1(self):
u = identity.current.user
hospital = u.hospital
Anyhow, I realized I can offload this irritating work to a validator that uses a state factory. Now my method looks like this:
@expose('.templates.m1')
@validate(validators=LookupSchema(), state_factory=my_state_factory)
def m1(self, u=None, hospital=None):
So now all my methods get called with those values already set up. I have to make u and hospital keyword parameters, because otherwise TG will try to pull their values out of the URL.
Here’s how it works. First I make my_state_factory that builds an object that has those values:
def my_state_factory():
class StateBlob(object):
pass
sb = StateBlob()
sb.u = identity.current.user
sb.hospital = u.hospital
return sb
Now the LookupSchema extracts those values out of the state blob object and adds them to the dictionary of values:
from formencode.schema import Schema, SimpleFormValidator
@SimpleFormValidator
def f(value_dict, state, validator):
value_dict['u'] = state.u
value_dict['hospital'] = state.hospital
class LookupSchema(Schema):
allow_extra_fields = True # otherwise, it fusses about self ?!?!?
chained_validators = [f]
So the benefit of all this is that some repetitive code is now just defined in a single place. Also, I’m getting more comfortable with the internals of FormEncode and the TG validate decorator.
Pretty soon, my controllers will be some really skinny methods. All the calculations of new variables based on the original parameters will happen outside the controller. The controller will just handle picking the right template.
RubyConf 2008 Videos Coming Online
At RubyConf 2008, other than giving his own Scaling Ruby talk, Gregg Pollack of EnvyCasts was hard at work getting summaries of all of the presentations from the speakers. In RubyConf 2008 in 90 Seconds you get a fast-fire summary of the summaries. In RubyConf in 31 Minutes you get a more complete record - good viewing for anyone who didn't attend the conference as it gives you a good idea of what's on the Ruby community's mind.
One of the coolest features of RubyConf in 31 Minutes is that it's hosted on Viddler, which has allowed Gregg to tag and comment on the video so that you can see who's speaking and how to watch their full presentation as you're watching them give the summary!
If you want to see the full presentation videos, you can, thanks to Confreaks who filmed most of the presentations given. Approximately half of the videos are up so far (I count 35). This isn't the time or place to go through them all but some particular highlights are:
Don't expect to see the talk Giles was meant to be giving though, as he was unfairly banned for "inciting violence" by posting a tongue-in-cheek blog post - if you want see a suggestion of the greatness that would have prevailed, watch his excellent RubyFringe presentation instead.
Support from: 1st Easy offers UK Rails hosting (dedicated and shared) running Phusion Passenger (mod_rails) and LAMP stack. If you want to get to know us first, or simply want to evaluate the performance of your Rails applications running on Passenger, we'll arrange a trial hosting account for you (full technical support included!)
Technical events and unsuitable content
Last night at SLUG I attended my second technical talk featuring projected slides of scantily clad women (the first was at the Open Source Developers' Conference in 2006, see the presenter's account of it and also my jam). I wrote something quite long about this tonight and have thought better of publishing, at least at the moment.
However, in brief, a couple of things for event organisers. First, it is apparently necessary for Free Software events who don't wish to have sexualised material shown at the conference (and neither OSDC or SLUG do, as far as I know: neither the sponsors of OSDC nor the hosts of SLUG were impressed with what happened at their respective events) to warn their speakers of this. Here's something you could adapt:
[Event name] is an all-ages event, attended by people of different cultural backgrounds and sensitivities. Please make sure your talk and slides are not likely to offend or upset people unnecessarily: particularly we require that no sexual material and nothing targeting people on the basis of age, religion, race, gender, sexuality or ability appears in your talk or slides.
Second, it would be good for chairs to be aware of how to react: being unable to seize the moment is common in anything to do with inappropriate behaviour, because of lack of experience. Something like the following would work from the chair:
The reason you need to end the presentation is that otherwise the audience is stuck in the very uncomfortable position of needing to continue responding to a talk after seeing both out-of-line material and seeing an intervention about it. The speaker is also likely to be embarrassed and off-put.
Note that the audience should not be expected to demonstrate openly that they feel uncomfortable before you intervene: they have far less power than the chair or conference organisers do. Don't ask them for their opinion of the material that you've already decided is inappropriate (and don't let the speaker ask them either). It's pretty uncomfortable to be asked to identify yourself as someone who was just offended, it's seen as a weakness. Also, don't assume that children or women or homosexual people etc were necessarily the only ones who were upset: for example some heterosexual men find hetero-male oriented sexual material distasteful when used in technical talks too. Just apologise to the audience as a whole.
Thanksgiving Leftovers: Turkey Soup
Posted by johngl
So, it is the day after the big event. You’ve survived another onslaught. Congratulations!
The family has cleaned up the kitchen, done the dishes, and gone back from whence they came (We can dream, can’t we?) and those goofy turkey emblazoned plates your grandmother gave you are put away, not to be seen again until this time next year.
You probably had at least two turkey sandwiches for a late supper last night, so you’re certainly not going there again today. Hmmm. What to do, what to do?
Why not soup? It’s warm, it’s yummy, and best of all, it is easy!
Last night, if you were smart, you picked the remaining flesh of that fat bird and stuck the carcass in a big pot along with some celery, carrots, and onions, filled the pot with water and let it cook all night. Now you have this amazing turkey stock to work with.
If you weren’t smart, you can use some chicken stock. If you were semi-smart, you still have the carcass left and you can throw that in to the (canned or boxed) chicken stock and cook it for a half hour or so to at least get some of the goody out of it. Cook it longer if you have the time.
Season appropriately with salt, pepper, and chile piquin powder. If you don’t have the chili pequin powder yet, use some cayenne. It adds a nice little bite.
So, now that you have that delicious stock, all you have to do today is strain it, add some noodles, and add those cubed up bird pieces.
Those dark pieces are from the “back oysters,” those delicious pieces of fowl flesh that hardly anyone seems to know even exist.
I used some really tiny egg noodles this time around. They only take about three minutes to hydrate. (I said it was a fast soup, didn’t I?) You can use whatever noodle you have around. If all you have is say, vermicelli, you can even break those up into small pieces and use that.
Oh, one more thing, just before serving, grate in some Parmesan cheese…
Don’t be shy with this stuff. It not only helps thicken things up, but it adds a salty-nuttiness thing that helps to make this a hearty meal.
So, with the family gone, the house is all yours again. Cuddle up with a warm bowl of turkey soup, a nice wine, and just say, “Ahhh!” You’re back in your happy place…at least until Christmas.
(verb) whisk -- (move somewhere quickly; "The President was whisked away in his limo") — Read more on WordNet
A lighthouse stands guard near Baltimore in Co Cork.
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Tags: Baltimore, Black and White, Canon 40D, Cork, Cork Photos, countryside, Ireland, Irish photos, irishblogs, Landscape, lighthouse, People, Photography, Photos, Sigma 18-200 Twitter Updates for 2008-11-27
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Project idea for Linux desktops: backup creation
In the course of writing my talk for SLUG tonight, the following idea occurred to me.
Scenario: I am a desktop/laptop user without cron/commandline fu (caution to people picking this entry up without knowing me: I am not actually a desktop/laptop user without cron/commandline foo: I am fully fu-ed up and just pretending). I want to backup my stuff. I don't want pain. So, I buy a big external hard drive. I plug it in. Up pops a helper/notification/whatever saying "would you like to use this drive as a backup drive?" I select 'Yes', do as little configuration as I can humanly get away with, and it is now my backup drive. Every time I plug it in in future, a (non-system destroyingly intensive) backup begins. I do not have to even contemplate anything named 'udev' or any commandline tool whose name begins with 'r'.
Obviously there needs to be a nice easy way to do partial restores too in the event that I accidentally delete my desktop. In the event of media failure, I should be able to pop in a new internal hard drive, boot from a LiveCD and be invited to plug in my backup drive if I have one, and the system is then restored to the new hard drive... and already know about the backup disk for ongoing backups!
Random things that would be nice:
Time Machine for MacOS (which I was only aware of by name before just now, when I wrote most of this entry and then went and looked at it) seems to be more or less the equivalent of this, and has some other desirable features:
I don't care so much about the visualisation of my system as it changes over time, but what the hell, it sounds cool anyway.
llvmruby: A Compiler Toolkit Available to Rubyists
If you've ever investigated how to build your own compiler, you might be familiar with LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine), a "compiler infrastructure" that makes it easy(ish) to create virtual machines, code generators, and optimizers of your own. It also has its own intermediate representation language that's architecture independent and the instruction sets and typing system available are similarly language independent. In theory, if you want to build your own programming language and a compiler for it, LLVM will get you most of the way.
llvmruby is an attempt to bring LLVM's power into the grasp of Rubyists. LLVM is typically used from C++, but llvmruby lets you use the LLVM compiler infrastructure directly from the Ruby interpreter. It's still pretty new and only a subset of LLVM is currently usable, but it's under semi-active development by Tom Bagby, and as well as a blog, there's also a Github repository you can check out.
On the topic of LLVM, Miura Hideki has developed YARV2LLVM, a YARV (Ruby 1.9's VM) to LLVM translator. While it currently only accepts a tiny subset of Ruby, it's interesting because it uses LLVM's power to compiler YARV into very fast native code. The page is in Japanese, but one of Miura's early benchmarks is not hard to decipher.
Posted by johngl
I was doing some casual reading at Judy’s Kitchen yesterday and noticed her adapted recipe for Shrimp and Scallops with Grits. It reminded me of our recent trip to Daytona Beach Shores, where we had some wonderful dishes at Azure, a AAA Four Diamond establishment. Their edition of Shrimp and Grits looked like this (I didn’t want to steal Judy’s photo, so hope on over to her site to have a look-see):
Who knew that a lowly southern staple like grits (of all things) would move on up to the East Side?
I have been seeing grits everywhere lately. Not only did we encounter them in Daytona, but when we went up to Fort Worth to catch the Impressionists at the Kimball, I noticed several grits dishes on the menu at top-end fooderies.
Now I feel that I should give some grits-based dishes a try. Thanks, Judy!
(verb) overdose, o.d. -- (dose too heavily; "The rock star overdosed and was found dead in his hotel room") — Read more on WordNet
Some of the highways in Ireland aren’t quite up to international standards.
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Tags: Baltimore, Black and White, Canon 40D, Cork, Cork Photos, countryside, Ireland, Irish photos, irishblogs, Landscape, People, Photography, Photos, road, Sigma 18-200Happy Thanksgiving!
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MySQL 5.1 - General Release at last!
Open Source MIDI Control Surface
Wow, this month really got away from me. I can’t believe it’s nearly December!
Ever since Sugar High Friday ‘All that Glitters‘ was announced, I knew I wanted to participate, and I knew exactly what I wanted to make. These Peanut Blossom cookies are so simple but so tasty, and are a popular treat during the holidays. I mean really, what’s not to love? Peanuts, hershey’s kisses and a sprinkle of sparkly sugar on top. Yum!
For the dough I used Anna Olson’s ‘Ultimate Peanut Butter Cookie‘ recipe, which I’ll copy below. My modifications in order to make Peanut Blossoms are noted.
The Ultimate Peanut Butter Cookie
Yield: 24
* 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 1 egg
* 1 tsp vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
* 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1/4 tsp salt
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350° F.
Cream together butter and sugars until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla and stir in peanut butter.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt. Add to peanut butter mixture and blend in.
To make these cookies sparkle, roll dough into 1 inch balls and then roll each ball in some sugar. I recommend using fruit sugar, as it coats very nicely, but use whatever kind you like! Then, place dough balls on cookie sheet and flatten slightly with a fork, making a criss-cross pattern.
Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, until cookies just start to colour around the edges. Remove from pan immediately onto a cooling rack. While cookies are still hot, gentle press a hershey’s kiss into each one.
Thanks to Susan for hosting this month, and of course to Jennifer who started the whole Sugar High.
As the year draws to a close, many people find themselves a bit stressed out. Between end-of-year work deadlines and holiday shopping and commitments, many find themselves a bit overextended.
To relax, I recommend massage therapy, but I also think that fitness is a great way to decompress. In particular, most people I talk to find that yoga is very helpful for reducing stress and keeping them sane when their lives get really busy. On that note, here’s a quick profile of some of our local yoga studios (listed in alphabetical order).
Esther Myers - This studio is as much a local landmark as it is a yoga studio. Ether Myers opened the studio in 1979, and when she passed away in 2004, her students continued her work at her studio. Located near Dupont and Spadina (390 Dupont), they offer a large variety of classes and workshops.
Flow! Yoga and Wellness - Located at Dupont and Spadina and offering a variety of classes, including yoga, nia, pilates and tai chi. Their yoga classes are based primarily on classical Hatha.
Kula Yoga Toronto - Set to open December 6th. Located above Future Bakery (Bloor and Brunswick), they offer both hot and regular temperature yoga classes. According to their website, classes will be free the first week, so it might be worth checking out!
Octopus Gardens - An Ashtanga studio located at 440 Bloor West (at Howland, above Mel’s Diner). Quite well known but still has small class sizes. A good choice for someone who wants a cardio workout with their yoga class.
Vidya Institute - Located just a few blocks south of us at 232 Christie Street, they offer a variety of classes based on a traditional Hatha practice. Yoga for kids is also available in their regular schedule.
Yoga Therapy Toronto - A new studio located at Bloor and Clinton (just east of Christie), offering yoga and meditation classes. Their style of yoga is quite traditional; the teachers have spent a great deal of time training in India. Group and private sessions are both available.
As well, don’t forget that most fitness facilities/gyms offer yoga classes as part of their membership fees.
For the month of December, I will be taking a break from the Weekly Fitness Fun posts. However, I still encourage you all to contact me should you know of something great happening in our neighbourhood!
Sound setup on ASUS m2n-e SLI board (CM6501)
Audio has got to be one of the most frustrating parts of setting up Linux. It looks like finally the situation is improving with most distributions adopting pulseaudio as a middle layer. Still, getting sound working on my cheap ASUS M2N-E board proved to be difficult and I wasted way too much time tinkering with it. Hopefully this post will save someone from my misery.
The root of the problem seems to be how ALSA handles the CM6501 (C-Media Electronics USB audio) chip. Try as I might, there seems to be no way to get sound out of the lime colored connector. According to the manual that is either "Line Out" or "Front Speaker Out". I began to make progress after running:
speaker-test -c 6Aside from the lime connector being apparently dead, the channel mapping does not match the ASUS manual. In 4 channel mode:
| ALSA Channel | ALSA Name | Plug |
|---|---|---|
| 1/2 | Front | None |
| 3/4 | Rear | gray |