CRTpunk: too soon?
(It is, of course, the next logical step after dieselpunk. If it doesn't exist yet I want credit for naming it.)
(It is, of course, the next logical step after dieselpunk. If it doesn't exist yet I want credit for naming it.)
Random amusement on a Saturday morning
Mar. 2nd, 2013 11:58 amThe local police department's social-media person is fond of posting historic photos and asking if people can identify where they were taken. This morning they posted a 1960s photo of an accident involving a car and a telephone pole that I concluded was only a few blocks from me, and said, "tell us as much as you can about this photograph."
So I biked over and found the date nail recording the year the telephone pole was put up, and replied with a photo of it:
I'm not sure this exactly qualifies as being an armchair detective any more, though.
So I biked over and found the date nail recording the year the telephone pole was put up, and replied with a photo of it:
I'm not sure this exactly qualifies as being an armchair detective any more, though.
So this has come up in a number of contexts and I figured I might as well just globally post the recipe once for everyone.
This is the canonical banana bread of my people, or at least of me -- it's what my mom always made when I was a child, and generally what I still make today. The recipe card I copied it off of says that it's from Southern Living magazine, probably in the late 1970s or very early 1980s; it has accreted annotations since then.
( Recipe behind cut-tag )
This is the canonical banana bread of my people, or at least of me -- it's what my mom always made when I was a child, and generally what I still make today. The recipe card I copied it off of says that it's from Southern Living magazine, probably in the late 1970s or very early 1980s; it has accreted annotations since then.
( Recipe behind cut-tag )
So, a while back, I posted a very simple mushroom soup recipe, which basically involved boiling lots of mushrooms in about enough vegetable broth to cover, and then pureeing.
It turns out that if you take that and add tomato paste and some appropriate spices, you get a really tasty pasta sauce that has a lot of the characteristics of a bolognese while being vegetarian (and enough of its own thing to not be just fake-meat-sauce). And it's even friendly to vegetarians who don't like the texture of mushrooms because it's all pureed and stuff.
(![[livejournal.com profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chinders said it tasted exactly like Chef Boyardee, oddly. Speaking of whom, did you know that Chef Boiardi -- who founded the Chef Boyardee food line and was its namesake -- directed catering at President Wilson's wedding?)
It turns out that if you take that and add tomato paste and some appropriate spices, you get a really tasty pasta sauce that has a lot of the characteristics of a bolognese while being vegetarian (and enough of its own thing to not be just fake-meat-sauce). And it's even friendly to vegetarians who don't like the texture of mushrooms because it's all pureed and stuff.
(
chinders said it tasted exactly like Chef Boyardee, oddly. Speaking of whom, did you know that Chef Boiardi -- who founded the Chef Boyardee food line and was its namesake -- directed catering at President Wilson's wedding?)Saint Harridan Kickstarter project
This is an example of one of the really nifty sorts of things that Kickstarter is making possible. Saint Harridan is a line of clothing -- specifically, a line of formal suits, for women, that are styled as men's suits rather than the traditionally "feminine" styling of basically everything that's available for women today that's not custom-made.
They're priced like a good man's suit; from what I can tell on the page, they're of the quality of a good man's suit. (They have real pockets!) But designed to fit women, rather than just happening to.
Also, their models are astoundingly attractive in a not-traditionally-feminine way, which I suspect many of you may appreciate.
Anyhow, they're well past their funding minimum, so this is definitely a going thing -- but if you want in on the first round, you've got until tomorrow evening before it's done.
This is an example of one of the really nifty sorts of things that Kickstarter is making possible. Saint Harridan is a line of clothing -- specifically, a line of formal suits, for women, that are styled as men's suits rather than the traditionally "feminine" styling of basically everything that's available for women today that's not custom-made.
They're priced like a good man's suit; from what I can tell on the page, they're of the quality of a good man's suit. (They have real pockets!) But designed to fit women, rather than just happening to.
Also, their models are astoundingly attractive in a not-traditionally-feminine way, which I suspect many of you may appreciate.
Anyhow, they're well past their funding minimum, so this is definitely a going thing -- but if you want in on the first round, you've got until tomorrow evening before it's done.
World's simplest mushroom soup recipe
Nov. 22nd, 2012 12:22 pmAccidentially discovered while making a stuffing precursor:
Astoundingly tasty for its simplicity; I now want to try it as actual soup, with a bit of cream added.
- One basket sliced mushrooms
- 3 cups or so of water
- One tea ball full of chopped fresh rosemary (probably optional)
- One heaping teaspoon Penzey's vegetable broth base
Astoundingly tasty for its simplicity; I now want to try it as actual soup, with a bit of cream added.
baratron was lamenting in a recent entry that you can't lock comments on an LJ post without also disappearing all the ones that already exist.It turns out, however, that you can now do that. (I think it's a relatively recent addition that nobody noticed because it didn't tick off half of the userbase.) Edit the entry, and change the "Allow Comments" setting to "Locked". This is documented as the second bullet point under "Changing Comment Settings on this FAQ entry.
Dreamwidth doesn't support this yet, but I'm going to go file a feature request as soon as I post this. I'm not sure what happens if you set comments on a LiveJournal post to "locked" and then import the post into Dreamwidth.
A couple of happy shopping moments.
Oct. 13th, 2012 08:34 pmFirst, a story of shopping in the future that we seem to have, in that "how is it that we take this stuff for granted?" kind of way.
A few evenings ago, I was pondering a particularly dirty pan, and how the nylon pan-scraper of![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tiger_spot's would be handy for cleaning it, and how it would be nice to have one of my own -- but I'd never seen one at a kitchenware store. So, I poked around a bit online....
Meanwhile, somewhere in the midwest (Michigan, I think), there's a little tiny startup that was founded just a few months ago, selling environmentally-conscious kitchenware because that's what the founder is passionate about. Among other things, they sell little bamboo pan-scrapers, for about the same price as the plastic ones, and because they're trying to encourage business, they're offering free shipping on any size order.
So I ordered a couple of pan-scrapers and a bamboo spoon for good measure, and a couple of days later a box showed up with the pan-scrapers and spoon and a high-quality fabric shopping bag and a personalized thank-you note.
I think this is pretty awesome. Twenty years ago, maybe they could have tried a little ad in "Sunset" magazine and a mail-away-for catalog, and if green kitchenware was my passion too I'd have sent away for it -- but this was just a "I'd like a little pan-scraper" whim.
And I of course I highly recommend the company -- Green Kitchenware. They're still running the free-shipping promotion, and have a small-but-thoughtful range of pans and bamboo spoons and things.
...
Second, I was just realizing, as I was getting on my bike at 8:15pm to go get some local organic orange juice, how incredibly well-supplied we are here with grocery stores. Now, some of this is that my baseline is growing up on a farm 15 minutes away from a small market attached to a gas station, and 30 minutes from the nearest real grocery, but even so.
A mile in one direction, there's a large Safeway (major supermarket chain); there's another one a mile and a half the other direction. I get boxed goods and a few other things there.
Across the street from one of the Safeways is The Milk Pail, which started as a drive-through dairy store (!) in the 1960s and now has hundreds of kinds of cheese from all over the place, and high-quality fresh produce that's both as good as and as cheap as the local farmer's market. That's where I usually buy milk and cheese and veggies and fruits.
A half-mile past the Milk Pail is Dittmer's, which is an actual real butcher shop that specializes in sausages and smoked meats, and as one would expect, does really good stuff in that line.
So that takes care of the large shopping trips. (Well, that and Penzey's about 15 miles away for spices, and the specialty Indian groceries around, and such. And of course the weekly farmer's market a mile away.)
For the "it's 8pm and we need orange juice for tomorrow and some handmade ice cream would be nice too" trips, there's the new Ava's Downtown Market a half-mile away and open late -- and that's another "person following his dream" story; a Mexican fellow recently bought what used to be the local Asian market to open his own grocery, and it still carries a lot of the Asian specialty stuff as well as local produce and ice cream and orange juice and things. And even closer, there's also the California Street Market literally just around the block, which I've previously described as a non-chain 7-11 from a universe in which people cook, so it mostly has basic ingredients rather than mostly snack food.
And that's just the ones I know about. As I say, it's pretty incredible.
A few evenings ago, I was pondering a particularly dirty pan, and how the nylon pan-scraper of
tiger_spot's would be handy for cleaning it, and how it would be nice to have one of my own -- but I'd never seen one at a kitchenware store. So, I poked around a bit online....Meanwhile, somewhere in the midwest (Michigan, I think), there's a little tiny startup that was founded just a few months ago, selling environmentally-conscious kitchenware because that's what the founder is passionate about. Among other things, they sell little bamboo pan-scrapers, for about the same price as the plastic ones, and because they're trying to encourage business, they're offering free shipping on any size order.
So I ordered a couple of pan-scrapers and a bamboo spoon for good measure, and a couple of days later a box showed up with the pan-scrapers and spoon and a high-quality fabric shopping bag and a personalized thank-you note.
I think this is pretty awesome. Twenty years ago, maybe they could have tried a little ad in "Sunset" magazine and a mail-away-for catalog, and if green kitchenware was my passion too I'd have sent away for it -- but this was just a "I'd like a little pan-scraper" whim.
And I of course I highly recommend the company -- Green Kitchenware. They're still running the free-shipping promotion, and have a small-but-thoughtful range of pans and bamboo spoons and things.
...
Second, I was just realizing, as I was getting on my bike at 8:15pm to go get some local organic orange juice, how incredibly well-supplied we are here with grocery stores. Now, some of this is that my baseline is growing up on a farm 15 minutes away from a small market attached to a gas station, and 30 minutes from the nearest real grocery, but even so.
A mile in one direction, there's a large Safeway (major supermarket chain); there's another one a mile and a half the other direction. I get boxed goods and a few other things there.
Across the street from one of the Safeways is The Milk Pail, which started as a drive-through dairy store (!) in the 1960s and now has hundreds of kinds of cheese from all over the place, and high-quality fresh produce that's both as good as and as cheap as the local farmer's market. That's where I usually buy milk and cheese and veggies and fruits.
A half-mile past the Milk Pail is Dittmer's, which is an actual real butcher shop that specializes in sausages and smoked meats, and as one would expect, does really good stuff in that line.
So that takes care of the large shopping trips. (Well, that and Penzey's about 15 miles away for spices, and the specialty Indian groceries around, and such. And of course the weekly farmer's market a mile away.)
For the "it's 8pm and we need orange juice for tomorrow and some handmade ice cream would be nice too" trips, there's the new Ava's Downtown Market a half-mile away and open late -- and that's another "person following his dream" story; a Mexican fellow recently bought what used to be the local Asian market to open his own grocery, and it still carries a lot of the Asian specialty stuff as well as local produce and ice cream and orange juice and things. And even closer, there's also the California Street Market literally just around the block, which I've previously described as a non-chain 7-11 from a universe in which people cook, so it mostly has basic ingredients rather than mostly snack food.
And that's just the ones I know about. As I say, it's pretty incredible.
Random things in old archives
Sep. 1st, 2012 03:47 pmI happened to be going through some old archives this afternoon, and came across some bookmark files.
Most of the links in my bookmark file from 2000 are dead. Some aren't, though.
Also, based on "date added" data in the 2002 bookmark file, I started reading Schlock Mercenary on March 30th, 2001 -- making it by far the longest run of webcomic that I've read. (I started reading Ozy and Millie in January 2001, but it ended. And although Sluggy Freelance is still going, it went strange and I stopped reading it a very long time ago.)
So now you know.
Most of the links in my bookmark file from 2000 are dead. Some aren't, though.
Also, based on "date added" data in the 2002 bookmark file, I started reading Schlock Mercenary on March 30th, 2001 -- making it by far the longest run of webcomic that I've read. (I started reading Ozy and Millie in January 2001, but it ended. And although Sluggy Freelance is still going, it went strange and I stopped reading it a very long time ago.)
So now you know.
Update: My server is back up.
Jun. 30th, 2012 08:10 pmAnd working fine, in that "plug it in and it starts ticking away like it's supposed to" sort of way.
Not bad for eight years old.
Not bad for eight years old.
AKICILJ/DW: Patching knees of blue jeans?
Apr. 6th, 2012 01:42 pmI've noticed something, now that I've had a dozen or so years of not outgrowing my blue jeans: They all wear out in the same pattern. There's a diagonal fold that goes out to the left knee, and eventually it wears through and there's a small diagonal hole there, and if I use the jeans at all actively after that, soon thereafter there is a large crosswise rip across the front of the left knee.
This wasn't a problem for a while; my jeans were getting generally worn and faded out of "good clothes" usefulness faster than the knees were ripping through once I started wearing them for "old clothes" uses. But then I started exercising on climbing walls, and that changed very quickly -- I have at least a half-dozen jeans that would be great for climbing except that they've got a big rip across the knee, and a couple of pairs of good jeans that I don't want to subject to abrasive stuccoed walls.
I tried simply sewing up the rips, pinching them together and stitching across the gap. This works for a week or three, but then pretty quickly pulls the crosswise threads out and there's a hole again.
So, those of you with experience in the ways of fabric: What's the right way to repair a large rip in the knee of a pair of jeans? I don't really care about aesthetics, but I do want something that I can use actively and which won't rip out.
This wasn't a problem for a while; my jeans were getting generally worn and faded out of "good clothes" usefulness faster than the knees were ripping through once I started wearing them for "old clothes" uses. But then I started exercising on climbing walls, and that changed very quickly -- I have at least a half-dozen jeans that would be great for climbing except that they've got a big rip across the knee, and a couple of pairs of good jeans that I don't want to subject to abrasive stuccoed walls.
I tried simply sewing up the rips, pinching them together and stitching across the gap. This works for a week or three, but then pretty quickly pulls the crosswise threads out and there's a hole again.
So, those of you with experience in the ways of fabric: What's the right way to repair a large rip in the knee of a pair of jeans? I don't really care about aesthetics, but I do want something that I can use actively and which won't rip out.
What will the future think?
Apr. 5th, 2012 08:09 pmSo, nanotech (as oft envisioned in science fiction) is boring; the laws of Thermodynamics have very clear things to say, and when we get around to asking, they will say them and that will be that. But the scientifictional trope of mind uploading, where a person walks into a disassembler and shortly thereafter there is an artificial intelligence that contains the memories and personality of the disassembled person and is a continuation of their consciousness, that is a bit more of an interesting question.
Thus, a poll. In however many hundreds of years, when this technology is feasible, what will people think of our current undoubtably-quaint portrayals in science fiction? As illustrated by examples of formerly-science-fictional technologies that are now possible.
[Poll #1831646]
Thus, a poll. In however many hundreds of years, when this technology is feasible, what will people think of our current undoubtably-quaint portrayals in science fiction? As illustrated by examples of formerly-science-fictional technologies that are now possible.
[Poll #1831646]
AKICILJ: floormats for standing desks?
Mar. 23rd, 2012 06:54 pm(I posted this on Google+, but I figure I should post it here as well....)
I'm thinking about rearranging my office to make more use of the standing desk that I have.
Any suggestions for an ideal floormat to use to stand on for this? Best would be something that is reasonably cat-proof, and I expect to be using it barefoot rather than in shoes.
Also, it would be nice if it doesn't break if I put a stool on it, since I sometimes use a stool to sit at my standing desk, but of course I could just move the floormat out of the way first.
I'm thinking about rearranging my office to make more use of the standing desk that I have.
Any suggestions for an ideal floormat to use to stand on for this? Best would be something that is reasonably cat-proof, and I expect to be using it barefoot rather than in shoes.
Also, it would be nice if it doesn't break if I put a stool on it, since I sometimes use a stool to sit at my standing desk, but of course I could just move the floormat out of the way first.
So, I've been having occasional issues with Microsoft Word on my laptop -- the main symptom being that the latest service pack update wouldn't successfully install. But today it decided to crash when I tried to start it and open a file. Earlier today, I gave up and found a PDF version of the same file, and then later it worked.
Just now, though, I needed to edit the file so a PDF wouldn't work, and I got a little frustrated, so I tried re-opening it several times in annoyance. And each time it barely started loading the file and then crashed.
And then something interesting happened. A dialog box came up saying, "It looks like Office is crashing repeatedly. Would you like to run Office Diagnostics?" So, I clicked "yes", and it did a bit of checking, and it eventually reported that there were some setup errors, and it had fixed them. (It also reported that there was a RAM error, but the help on that suggested that if there were also other errors that had been fixed, I should re-run the tests to see if it went away -- which seemed a bit odd, but they did indeed go away when I re-ran them.)
After that, it seems to be working fine.
I have to say I'm impressed. Problems like this will show up in software this complicated [1], but this seems to be a fairly effective way of dealing with it -- and I didn't even have to go looking for it; it was just there when I needed it.
So, I highly recommend the Office Diagnostics thingy, if your Office install is acting weird -- it's in the programs menu under "Microsoft Office Tools".
[1] "UNIX systems generally have a good, though not impeccable, record for software reliability. The typical period between software crashes (depending somewhat on how much tinkering with the system has been going on recently) is well over a fortnight of continuous operation." --Dennis M. Ritchie, 1978
Just now, though, I needed to edit the file so a PDF wouldn't work, and I got a little frustrated, so I tried re-opening it several times in annoyance. And each time it barely started loading the file and then crashed.
And then something interesting happened. A dialog box came up saying, "It looks like Office is crashing repeatedly. Would you like to run Office Diagnostics?" So, I clicked "yes", and it did a bit of checking, and it eventually reported that there were some setup errors, and it had fixed them. (It also reported that there was a RAM error, but the help on that suggested that if there were also other errors that had been fixed, I should re-run the tests to see if it went away -- which seemed a bit odd, but they did indeed go away when I re-ran them.)
After that, it seems to be working fine.
I have to say I'm impressed. Problems like this will show up in software this complicated [1], but this seems to be a fairly effective way of dealing with it -- and I didn't even have to go looking for it; it was just there when I needed it.
So, I highly recommend the Office Diagnostics thingy, if your Office install is acting weird -- it's in the programs menu under "Microsoft Office Tools".
[1] "UNIX systems generally have a good, though not impeccable, record for software reliability. The typical period between software crashes (depending somewhat on how much tinkering with the system has been going on recently) is well over a fortnight of continuous operation." --Dennis M. Ritchie, 1978
Speaking of recipes....
Nov. 22nd, 2011 09:09 pmI was reading my grandfather's recipe for spaghetti sauce -- which makes over 3 gallons, judging by what goes into it -- and thinking, "Only four ingredients? I was sure it was more complicated than that!" The four ingredients, for the record, are four large cans of tomato puree, and some hamburger, pepperoni, and sausage.
Then I actually read the directions, which involve frying an onion in olive oil, making meatballs with the hamburger and bread crumbs, eggs, salt, pepper, garlic salt, et cetera., and realized: Those are not the ingredients in the sense of everything that goes into the sauce. Those are just the things that you need to buy. Everything else is just stuff that Granddad would have automatically had around the kitchen, like the knives and hot water from the tap.
Then I actually read the directions, which involve frying an onion in olive oil, making meatballs with the hamburger and bread crumbs, eggs, salt, pepper, garlic salt, et cetera., and realized: Those are not the ingredients in the sense of everything that goes into the sauce. Those are just the things that you need to buy. Everything else is just stuff that Granddad would have automatically had around the kitchen, like the knives and hot water from the tap.
Things I have cooked today.
Nov. 21st, 2011 08:33 pmI've been cooking a couple of things this evening for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, at my mom's farmhouse in Virginia. The farmhouse is these days mostly rented out on weekends for retreats or families in town for graduations or on summer weeks for vacationers, and thus the kitchen is not the best organized and nothing is at all where I remember it being. But it's workable.
Here's what I cooked, with recipes and descriptions.
( Sweet potato pie )
( Cranberry relish )
Here's what I cooked, with recipes and descriptions.
( Sweet potato pie )
( Cranberry relish )
Dennis Ritchie, 1941-2011
Oct. 12th, 2011 10:24 pmIt's not being a good week for leading computer pioneers; Dennis Ritchie is gone.
As Denton Gentry said of Kernighan and Ritchie's book on the C programming language, "Its terseness was a continuing theme in the work of Dennis Ritchie; it says exactly what needs to be said, and nothing more."
Unix and C were written for mainframes decades ago, when the idea of talking to a computer with something other than punched cards was still reasonably novel. And yet, the inventors of Unix created something that is inescapably foundational in computing today, from iDevices and Android phones (and even ski goggles!) to the DoD's largest supercomputers -- because they got the programming interface right, or at least right enough and simple enough; pointers and file-open and fork. And C is even more broadly foundational than that.
Let me restate that, to avoid understating it. If you have any modern device that does more than the very barest bit of digital processing, there are pieces of that system -- probably the core, critical pieces -- that are written using pieces of programming interface that Dennis Ritchie and a small number of colleagues designed.
As Denton Gentry said of Kernighan and Ritchie's book on the C programming language, "Its terseness was a continuing theme in the work of Dennis Ritchie; it says exactly what needs to be said, and nothing more."
Unix and C were written for mainframes decades ago, when the idea of talking to a computer with something other than punched cards was still reasonably novel. And yet, the inventors of Unix created something that is inescapably foundational in computing today, from iDevices and Android phones (and even ski goggles!) to the DoD's largest supercomputers -- because they got the programming interface right, or at least right enough and simple enough; pointers and file-open and fork. And C is even more broadly foundational than that.
Let me restate that, to avoid understating it. If you have any modern device that does more than the very barest bit of digital processing, there are pieces of that system -- probably the core, critical pieces -- that are written using pieces of programming interface that Dennis Ritchie and a small number of colleagues designed.
People may need to be aware of this....
Aug. 29th, 2011 06:51 pmThe Tattúínárdǿla Saga: If Star Wars Were an Icelandic Saga.
Pretty much what it says on the tin. That link is to an outline and detailed historical notes on the text; at the bottom of the page is a link to where the author has gone on to spin out the actual saga texts.
Pretty much what it says on the tin. That link is to an outline and detailed historical notes on the text; at the bottom of the page is a link to where the author has gone on to spin out the actual saga texts.
Not actually an adventure per se
Aug. 25th, 2011 03:39 pmAlthough it looks rather like one. I left home a bit over an hour ago, driving a car with a bike rack on it and my bike on the bike rack, and I just now returned on foot carrying my bike helmet and a large bag of vegetables.
In which embedded systems are strange.
Aug. 14th, 2011 09:54 amI was connecting my laptop up to its docking station yesterday for the first time in a while, and I forgot to hook up the power cable to the docking station first.
Thus, my laptop went through the usual BIOS bootup, and then put up a text screen saying approximately, "Your docking station has no power. Press F1 to shut down."
So, I pushed the power button to turn off the computer, plugged in the power cable, and tried again. This time, I didn't even get a BIOS bootup -- just a character-screen cursor in the top left, and a locked-up computer. A few repeats of disconnecting the laptop from the docking station showed that something was definitely weird-wrong: Outside of the docking station, the computer would boot fine. Connected to the docking station, it would lock up.
The solution turned out to be simple, in one of the sorts of ways that only makes sense in a very twisted sort of logic: I unplugged the docking station, connected the laptop to it, and booted it -- which got me back to the "Press F1 to shut down" error screen, at which point I pressed F1 rather than using the power button. Once I'd done that, the docking station cleared out whatever unfinished quest was confusing it, and when I plugged the power cable back in and rebooted the laptop, things worked just fine.
Thus, my laptop went through the usual BIOS bootup, and then put up a text screen saying approximately, "Your docking station has no power. Press F1 to shut down."
So, I pushed the power button to turn off the computer, plugged in the power cable, and tried again. This time, I didn't even get a BIOS bootup -- just a character-screen cursor in the top left, and a locked-up computer. A few repeats of disconnecting the laptop from the docking station showed that something was definitely weird-wrong: Outside of the docking station, the computer would boot fine. Connected to the docking station, it would lock up.
The solution turned out to be simple, in one of the sorts of ways that only makes sense in a very twisted sort of logic: I unplugged the docking station, connected the laptop to it, and booted it -- which got me back to the "Press F1 to shut down" error screen, at which point I pressed F1 rather than using the power button. Once I'd done that, the docking station cleared out whatever unfinished quest was confusing it, and when I plugged the power cable back in and rebooted the laptop, things worked just fine.
