A Good Imagination and a Pile of Junk

I figure I should post these on the blog because….well… because I can’t think of a good reason not to. For those of you less technically inclined, you might wanna skip this one. I will not be held responsible for any resulting narcoleptic episodes you experience otherwise.

There are a few things I’m having trouble with, generally relating to OS-X programming environments, but I may digress. If you know the answer to any of these, could you post a comment or email it to me that I may share the wealth? Thanks. (Note that I am pursuing these elsewhere as well.) Here goes:

• Can I, in any reasonable port of emacs or xemacs, with carbon, X support, or native terminal mode, map the “apple” key to “Meta”? It’s the single biggest obstacle preventing me from using the mac as a programming environment.
• Is there a solid procedural doc for installation of perl 5.8.n on OS X that results in everything behaving all nice nice? I’m not averse to the full package rebuild, but nothing seems to find anything and the package/library directories are walking all over each other.
• Same damn thing with fink. It professes to work… until I start trying to install fink packages off the command line.
• How about Tk? It’d be quite nice to build python/perl/Tcl interface apps. (Would this be a native Carbonized Tk or one for the X port made available by Apple?)

Err… I thought there was more, but that’ll do for now.

Because if it makes you fall out of your chair laughing, it’s worth posting, regardless of guidelines. Thanks to Doc for the headline of the month.

I struck brain!.

BBC: Man dies after drilling head.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

Social Darwinism at work.

Some time ago there was a great post over on Kuro5hin titled How to make Bread. Anyway, among the comments was a recipe for beer-batter bread. Yesterday I whipped it together (or a subtle variant) and it was AWESOME! It was easy as could be, took next to no time, and the result was (and still is) delightful.

Here’s my version, which is a subtle deviation from the recipe given.

• 3 cups unbleached all-purpose.
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 bottle fairly dark beer. (I used a 12 ounce bottle of dark St. Pauli Girl
• 1/4 stick of butter

Then…

1. Mix dry ingredients.
2. melt butter
3. Make sure oven is preheated to 375 (ish)
4. add beer and quickly mix as little as reasonable (it’ll be REALLY lumpy, but everything will be at least wet).
5. dump it into a 5″x9″, spread it out a bit.
6. brush butter over top, dump the rest in the pan.

The recipe said bake for 35-40 minutes but I found that (even with an over thermometer) a full hour was almost enough.

The important trick is to mix quickly, but not to over mix. You’ll get this really lumpy concoction that’ll be just fine. You are NOT looking for the kind of thorough ingredient distribution you want in yeast breads, you’re looking for liquid coverage of the dry ingredients. The chemical reaction that’s going to give you your crumb (the beer and the baking powder) starts as soon as those two ingredients touch. You want as much of that reaction to happen in the oven as possible, so it’s vital to get it in there quickly.

This will give you a very hearty sweet heavy bread, with a lingering taste of beer (which, even as someone who finds beer a fundamentally foul substance, I found quite pleasant). The quality of the crust is really quite amazing. It’s very crunchy, but you won’t hurt your teeth on it. Quite delicious.

If you make this, or a variant of it. PLEASE do two things:

1. go link to the original author (at kuro5hin, not me) and give him credit for the post.
2. let me know how it turns out and if you changed it, what you did. I’d love to try variations of this

If left to my own devices (not that anybody’s stopping me other than some internal barometer) I’d cross-post something close to every story from “USS Clueless”. Here’s a block of stuff I’ve been reading this afternoon (having had a really liver-punishing weekend thusfar)

So these are links to some particularly juicy bits from the last couple days over there. The links that don’t point to http://denbeste.nu/ are one-offs from his site, but deserved their own mention.

• http://michaeltotten.blogspot.com/2003_04_20_michaeltotten_archive.html#200204243
• http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/04/Toothandtail.shtml (some nice information about tooth and tail ratios and the modernization of military)
• http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/04/TheStateDepartment.shtml (Interesting revelations (well, revelations to me anyway) about the subjectivity of the State Department.)
• http://theweeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/594ifgdy.asp (Trite timeline of UN blathering matched with discoveries in Iraq)
• http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/04/TheYomKippurwar.shtml
• http://denbeste.nu/external/deAtkine01.html (mentioned in “TheYomKippurwar” post, but worth it’s own mention. Titled “Why Arabs Lose Wars”)

Have fun

Now I remember why I don’t drink so much. Ughhh.

I have always listened to some pretty weird shit. From my “alternative/new wave” days …well… back in the day when I was a DJ at college (WTSC 91.5, coming to you with the power of 7 fairly decent lightbulbs) through my world music phases (which started with the Mickey Hart percussion stuff and continues to this day with the Buddha Bar series and flies off into the stratosphere from there.)

“Of course” I listen to a whole lot else. I’ve recently rediscovered NWA, De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, etc. A couple days ago I mentioned Tatu, and The Cowboy Junkies remain one of my all time faves.

My Jazz education is coming far too slowly for my liking. Part of that is my insistance on live music, which I can’t really afford to see right now.

Classical stuff is slow in coming, mostly because I have nobody to bounce things off of, though I have my favorites (thanks to Douglas Hofstadter I understand a facet of what is possible.)

But truly creative examples of musical and vocal composition and performance are rare. I think it exists in all genres (indeed my guess is that musical genre as well as literary genre is defined by such creative departures and crystalized by the “sincere flattery” of the same. But I digress, per usual.)

I uncovered an album in my collection that I hadn’t listened to for some time but decided to put on as merely background music. Ha! I should know better. My absorption is nearly complete (after all I am writing this.)

That album is Bobby McFerrin’s “Circlesongs” (yes, the “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” Bobby McFerrin.) It’s a vocal and percussion wonder. Subtly jazzy. The album consists of 8 songs titled, innocuously enough: Circlesong One through Circlesong Eight. It’s an extremely easy album to listen to.

There’s nothing but vocals and some very very light body percussion (and even that only exists on one or two of the tunes.)

It’s well composed, brilliantly executed and impossibly evocative of a startling range of human emotions. Especially given the clincher.

There’s not a single word spoken or sung on the album, in any language.

Not one.

Ok. I’ve been getting requests for this in meatspace and online. Whenever people hear about it they wanna know: “Mad William Flint… How do you make homemade marshmallows?” Well, I’ll tell ya. Long before anybody had the faintest idea this blog existed, I posted the recipe, along with the original reference. My recipe, as all my recipes, is a bit of a deviation from the one I pulled out of the book. So you’ll have to settle for the original. This’ll do the trick, certainly. http://radio.weblogs.com/0108194/2002/10/14.html

Now, on to bigger and better things. I’ve been working on my bread alot lately. My plain ole’ white bread is pretty damn good, so I’ve started working on refining the crust & crumb, and doing things a bit more interesting. There was a great post over on Kuro5hin (actually this one) about bread with some WONDERFUl recipes in the comments (as is usually the case with kuro5hin, the comments in total are better than the original.) The links provided there spun out into a bigillion places on the internet, which makes me nuts.

And that’s part of my problem (Apparently I can’t have a friggin blog post without a “problem” lately.) There’s too much information and I’ve no way to distill it. Hell, even collecting it is a problem. Search engines don’t do the trick because keyword relevance isn’t a very accurate measure of distilling signal to noise ratios in text. It’s great for answering pointed questions when you suspect that someone else has asked pretty much the same question. But to say “tell me about baking bread” you really have to get weird with your search criteria. And even then, there’s no guarantee you’ll actually learn anything.

So if there are any fledgling bakers out there, or more well established ones, who are interested in sharing techniques in public or behind the scenes (I’m not broadbanding my research until I’m happy with the results.) Let me know. I’m interested in collaborating more widely on baking R&D.

At the moment I’m converting my recipes into weight measurement and baker’s percentages as I’ve just bought a scale. Besides, the two batches of country white I’m working on are about ready to go in, so I’ve gotta stop here.

All of a sudden, things aren’t so bad.

I called.

Haven’t been posting as much as I’d like. Just feeling pretty far underneath my life at the moment.

It’s kinda heavy

Learn Web Technologies at W3Schools.com. Lately I’ve been contacted by several folks who are pretty much new to the web. It’s exciting to see new folks coming online and asking questions. Here’s a site that helps folks learn such things as XML, DOM, SOAP, and other letter-type technologies. And if you are even an expert in these areas, I still guarantee you’ll learn something new. [CogWorks News]

What’s the point of all this?.

Like many bloggers, I’ve been wondering what the purpose of my weblog should be. And I’m currently focused on two issues. First, i want to tell stories here. Good stories, stories that make you laugh, and stories that make you think. I know that I have a long way to go on this, but there’s nothing like real experience to help me improve.

Second, I’ve been thinking about the difference between bloggers who are very prolific, and bloggers who simply forward on other weblog content. And I’ve come to the conclusion that both are worthy approaches. Commentary, either sparse or flowing, is the information source, while logs of interesting websites are information routers. Jon Udell wrote about this just last week. Reading his perspective helped me crystalize my own.

So in the short term, I’ll be posting about various things as I think they merit routing, and I’ll comment on things when I have something additional to say. As I approach the ending of my UoPhx studies, I’m looking forward to having more time to comment as well as route.

[deeje.com]

I have long been a fan of the full spectrum of music. Everything. However I have what seem to some to be hellworthy weaknesses.

One of those is cheesy chick singles. I also have a weakness for the Russian language. Combine these two and I am in deep deep trouble. I just found out about Tatu. *gulp*

Get this. They’re a pair of Russian singers (well… perhaps insofar as Milli Vanilli were singers) who make out on stage as a gimick. Now I’m all for a pair of recently turned 18 year old Russian girls making out on stage between stanzae. (Alas, they have boyfriends in real-life. But shh.)

Now, as I’m someone who doesn’t watch TV I’ve not seen their videos, or anything like that. So don’t get all excited. However! I heard their stuff on the radio, and subsequently …err… obtained a sample and am hooked. Not to the single “All The Things She Said” which you may or may not have heard… but to the techno “Robot” which is in Russian. I really do listen to it repetitively. It’s a shame.

I just added their albums to my amazon wish list just in case :-P.

I’m seriously considering learning Russian so that I could sing along.

I really am a pretty simple creature.

Apropos of nothing (well other than my post of a few days ago) this pisses me off to no end. How I’m supposed to take the news ever as seriously as I’ve taken it until this point I’ve no idea. To say NOTHING of the opinions are derived from it

Could someone justify this to me? Aside from buying one today to read it for myself, why should I ever buy a New York Times again?

I don’t mind a dissenting opinion. I know I’ve no secret understanding of the truth of the world that makes me above collecting more information. But to read in the New York Times of all places not “whups we were wrong” but “Oh yeah… about that. See, we were lying the whole time. Yeah. But don’t be mad though, it wasn’t just us!”

“Journalistic Integrity” now with a comfortable lead the #1 spot on the list of most blatant oxymorons.

For about a week I’ve been getting an entry in the referrer log that says “Not Your Business”. I didn’t think much of it until I saw it mentioned on a couple other blogs (too lazy to find them, send me a link and I’ll update.)

Usually it was amidst too many hits for me to sort through. Today though, I’ve only got 5 hits thusfar in the day, so I hit my site statistics and found an couple entries with no referrer. One of them was from a subdomain of inktomisearch.com. So my guess is that it’s just the search bot of inktomi. Why they’d put a goofy referrer entry instead of just leaving it out I’ve got no idea.

Nothing to see here. Just thought I’d offer that in case other people can cross-reference my data and see if that’s really the case.

Today was a mulligan. Just a complete waste of time. I woke up at about 8:30/9:00 turned on all my machines, sat down, and started to play a computer game. It’s now midnight.

I stopped to eat some ramen.

Now it’s time to take a shower and wind down. (?)

I want a do-over.

I’ve been baking bread for close to two years now. And as far as basic breads I’m doing pretty well. Well enough in fact that I’m not really excited about potato breads or cheese bread. Not the basic stuff anyway.

Not being content to just start with something a LITTLE more complex I’ve decided to tackle bagels. It’ll actually be my 4th attempt, the one I’m doing today. The first 3 were disasters. Edible disasters, but disasters nonetheless.

I’ve found a couple references to using potato water in the dough, so I’ve given that a try, as well has having added a few eggs and a bit of oil to the mix. The dough kneaded really well and is in the fridge for a good 12-18 hours retarding/rising.

What I figure I’ll do is make bagel bread until I’m happy with the taste and consistency of the dough, then I’ll worry more about actually forming and poaching the bagels. One thing at a time.

Wish me luck. If I turn out something interesting I’ll post the recipe… insofar as I can remember it ;-)

UPDATE: Experiment #4…

Result: Bad bread.




However!

http://homecooking.about.com/library/archive/blbread26.htm

http://csmweb2.emcweb.com/durable/2001/01/10/fp21s1-csm.shtml

http://www.thomas-langens.de/cookbook/bagels.html

http://www.breadrecipe.com/directory/2562.asp

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~mjw/recipes/bread/bagel-coll.html

As I’ve no doubt mentioned more than once, Steven Den Beste (of “USS Clueless” fame) is probably my favorite writer/blogger on the web.

He’s got an entry over there that came up today about network press bias in international reporting. Specifically he’s talking about the CNN fiasco, but he applies the case a bit more broadly. Here’s the link: http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/04/CNNBrouhaha.shtml

Ordinarily I wouldn’t link to things like this any more. But it’s so very germane to the discussion that began in the comment section of my last post that I thought it best to bring it up.

What he doesn’t seem to mention is how drastically the self-censoring of CNN, having become a primary television news network may have slanted the opinions of it’s viewers. Again, this seems like it should be an obvious consideration, but whenever I write something that seems obvious I get positive feedback, so who knows. (negative thoughtful feedback == positive feedback as far as I’m concerned. I don’t give a rats ass if you agree with me as long as you think about it.)

If over the past 12 years CNN has watered-down the severity of the situation in Iraq, does it not stand to reason that the public opinion of that situation is going to be pulled in the same white-washed direction?

This is purely educated conjecture of course. But it did strike me that an account of the Hussain leadership over the past 10 years diluted as it seems to have been by accounts of the recent CNN confessionals would account for a significant disparity in the answers to the question “Is humanity served by the armed removal from power of Saddam Hussain?” by those people who use CNN as a primary news source.

I find myself in the atypical (though increasingly common, by anecdotal evidence) position of not watching television. Wholesale. I just don’t do it. Not network, not cable, not South Park (as much as I love it) not HBO, CNN, MTV, nothing. My reasons aren’t particularly noble, but they don’t change the fact. AS SUCH, when I catch news shows while I’m elsewhere I am appalled at how little information is conveyed, the spin put on it, what’s being selectively reported or not reported at all, etc.

I wonder what effect that has had on my perspective with regards to any of a dozen dozen issues. My prejudice is that my thoughts are much closer to being my own. But the only thing I can say with any actual strength of conviction is that they don’t belong to television.

My real questions here I suppose:

1. How much power do we grant to the media or other forces outside ourselves, to determine or change our opinion?
2. Do we or can we know?
3. And is it in our power to expose ourselves to networks with such a vested interest in viewership while retaining our autonomy?

(Even as I type that I feel it misses the mark subtly but importantly. Do you see it? I’m missing something I’m sure.)

The truth, IMNSHO, is ghastly. I posed the questions so it’s only fair…

1. In the American style of wanting to be parented by government and media, we semi-consciously grant the media VAST power over our opinions.
2. The scope of this abdication of thought is almost certainly beyond our understanding, subjective as we are.
3. No. just no. The power of repetitive marketing has been proven time and time again. Marx said “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” It is not within our power to be exposed to these forces in any strength without being directly moved by them. This is entirely over and above our willingness to do so, as mentioned a few lines above.

Dogma tagging.

Mitch Ratcliffe: Invisible Dogmas. A long, very thoughtful piece. The penultimate paragraph:

Simply put, the source of dogmas is our own laziness about addressing systemic issues in our organizations and in recording the reasons we do things within a company. We opt, for instance, for ÒcollaborationÓ software to make people collaborate instead of teaching them to work together respectfully and constructively. We fail to appreciate how these tools change the requirements when hiring new employees, and often blame the employees when they fail to thrive in the stunted learning environments weÕve created. If management wants to take credit for success, the institutionalization of critical thinking about our choices of information tools is absolutely essential to the role of a manager in the information age.

Lot of stuff to respond to there. But no time. Maybe later. Tomorrow, probably.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

Build a Simple Microcontroller Programmer. I’m fairly new to hobby electronics, and I’m also pretty dumb. I was also able to build a simple programmer for AVR series microcontrollers over the weekend. Whether you’ve got a fancy robotics project in mind or whether you just want to have some blinking lights on your desktop, this is a project you can do (even if it’s your first project) and have fun doing - and all for around $10 US. [kuro5hin.org]

Sourdough Success!. I have been working for nearly two months now on a top-secret1 bread project. Previously known only as “Frisco,” the few details that did leak out were sketchy at best. Stories of mutating biological agents, smelly goop, and some reports of initial failure left bread analysts stymied, puzzled, and frankly, worried. But at last the truth can be revealed. I have been making sourdough. And at last, I have succeeded! [Insert evil laughter here.] [kuro5hin.org]