Triangle Spring

Vacation Ideas for 2009

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:28:46 PST

If I continue to be employed this year, 2009 seems to be an opportune time to take advantage of some price arbitrage for vacation purposes. (Ok, so it's not really "arbitrage" since I'm not making riskless profit with no cash outlay.)

Iceland is the most obvious option, being that it was so prominently in the news. Meng recently came from New Zealand and said that currency rates there were also quite favorable.

Let's take a look at some potential destinations and their currency related discounts versus the dollar:

Iceland: 1.7X, 41% discount (trending unfavorably)
New Zealand: 1.55X, 35% discount (trending favorably)
South Korea: 1.49X, 32.8% discount (trending favorably)
Australia: 1.41X, 29% discount (trending favorably)
Sweeden: 1.35X, 26% discount (trending favorably)
South Africa: 1.32X, 24% discount (trending flat)

Pan Fried Gnocchi

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:05:25 PDT

Bought some fresh gnocchi from the farmer's market last saturday. I've been eating it in thirds. Last night I just boiled it, tossing it in butter and garlic afterwards.

Tonight, I tried letting it pan fry in that butter and garlic until brown on both sides. It was quite tasty.

Pickled Long Beans

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:32:48 PDT

We found long beans at the farmers' market yesterday, so I bought some with the intent to pickle them. I called my mom and got her recipe, which she estimated for the 2 quart container that I was using as follows:

4 tbs salt
Small amount of sugar (I used 1/2 tbs)
1 quart water
Hot pepper, preferably fresh (I used what the Whole Foods' checkout guy thought were Serrano's. The item was unlabeled in the produce aisle)
Szechuan peppercorns (mine are really old, so I used what probably looks like an excessive amount)
Enough vodka to fill the gap after long beans are added

My mom warned me that the first batch was not likely to be that good, since it'll take time for the sourness to develop. (The sugar is mostly there to speed fermentation, supposedly.) This batch should be "ready" in 2-3 days, at which point I should taste for saltiness. (The amount of salt should be enough that it's adequately salty in 2-3 days, but also not too salty after that same amount of time.)

It could take 2-3 batches before the correct sourness develops. Additional vodka, water, garlic, and peppers can be added as the liquid is depleted over time. The container should hopefully have a 1-way valve property of letting air escape while prevent air from entering. Chinese pickle jars have a "moat" of water around circumference of the opening that one puts an overturned bowl into, which creates a 1-way air seal. I used a glass Bodum jar I saw in BBB that has an angled silicone seal that may have a similar property. If it doesn't, I may experience a lid rocket.

More to come in a few days...

Spicy Chicken Sous Vide

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:18:46 PDT

I made some Szechuan dry fried beef for Rourke and Jen on Saturday, but it turned out that I made it way too spicy. We kind of stared at it all night, occasionally daring to take a piece and then being punished for it.

Pondering what to do with it, I made a chicken thigh sous vide, with a marinade/sauce of just the leftover beef, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, and sugar. Sous vide is really quite miraculous; 1 hour at 165-170, and it's like the chicken has been marinated and poached. (It's the first time I made use of the Ziploc vacuum sealer for this purpose. It worked quite well, no issues with have to squeeze air out of the bag after submerging it. The bag just sunk.)

I took the meat out, seared it, mixed the marinade with some corn starch, and then poured it back into the pan.

Heathen that I am, I have no rice in the house, so I ate it over egg noodles. It was pretty spicy, but quite edible and tasty. I love sous vide, it's so foolproof (well, with an alarmed thermometer in the water). Dunk it, and walk away. I got one heli flight in while waiting.

The Best Wedding Cake Ever

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:17:50 PDT

I've had to pass the crown of Best Wedding Cake Ever to Dave and Cynthia.

2 different layers: one layer of chocolate cake with a coffee liqueur creme for a tiramisu-like experience, one layer of the BEST CARROT CAKE EVER with bits of pear, spices, and some kind of liqueur that I couldn't recognize but amplified the whole taste. And, of course, no fondant. Another amazing thing about this cake is that it was somehow rich, but not heavy. I easily went back for seconds (and would've gone for more, but the carrot layer was smaller and they ran out). Those, who know me, know that I generally hate cake.

One commonality between this cake and Rourke and Jen's cake(the previous title holder) is that there will be no future cakes from the same source. Yes, sad news for all of those with future wedding cake needs.

Funny how the best cakes ever will never return; their secrets, forever lost.

Olive Bread

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 10:48:56 PDT

Starting with this Country Style French Bread recipe, I'm going to add olives and maybe some other spices, and modify it to have a bit more whole wheat (using white wheat flour):

For the Sponge Starter:

1 cup cool-lukewarm water, preferably spring water (90 to 100°F)
1/2 teaspoon active dry or instant yeast
162 grams unbleached bread flour
35 grams white or traditional whole wheat flour

For the Dough (modified):

All of the sponge starter (above)
1 cup lukewarm water, preferably spring water (100 to 115°F)
3/4 teaspoon active dry or 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
200 grams unbleached bread flour
250 grams white whole wheat flour
20 grams vital wheat gluten
1 tablespoon kosher salt
50 grams unbleached bread flour for variations in consistency
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon milk powder

I seem to have misplaced my camera... where oh where is it...

Full of Woe

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Wed, 30 May 2007 18:34:22 PDT

For Christmas, Rourke got me a subscription to The Economist, and I've been loving it. What really amuses me is the writing style, a kind of mix of journalism and editorial with a sharp bite to it.

Take, for example, this short piece titled "Full of woe" about how Britain ranked low on a survey of children's well-being among wealthy nations:

SEX, booze and horrid friends: those three evils dragged Britain's youngsters to the bottom of a “child well-being” index published this week by UNICEF. The UN agency ranked 21 rich countries on everything from babies' birth-weight to how often children chat to their parents. The Netherlands came top, followed by those infernal Scandinavians, who always seem to do well in such contests, and a raft of Catholics. Britain brought up the rear, standing shoulder to shoulder with America.

Just 43% of British children were willing to describe their peers as “kind and helpful”—the lowest of any country (the nicest kids are in Switzerland, where 81% agreed with this). It gets worse: despite finding their peers so vile, British teens were all too willing to jump into bed with them. By the age of 15, 38% had had sex—the highest of the sample. This may be because they were also much the drunkest, and the third-biggest cannabis smokers (just behind the cheery Swiss).

Such colorful presentation of relatively dry statistics makes the large quantity of data-driven articles almost qualify as entertainment.

Speed White Batter Bread

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 22:35:20 PST

Dave asked in a comment how long the bread took from start to finish. I was actually pretty prompt with the postings, having posted the recipe and the plan a little prior to starting work, and posting the conclusion right afterwards. I'd say probably a total of 3 hours. I did, however, run out and go catalogue some stuff at Winebank during the first rising, so that lengthened the time more than necessary.

After eating a dinner of ramen, dried fruit, and corn nuts in the office and coming home late, I decided to see how fast I could bake a loaf of bread. Plus, I wanted to try putting in the correct amount of olive oil and increasing the vital wheat gluten by 5 grams.

The result? I cut out the two risings and poured the batter directly into the mini loaf pan. I let it rise until it formed a dome over the top of the pan while heating up the oven. Total time, about one hour and 45 minutes. About 45 minutes of rising and 30 minutes of baking. There was also some IM distraction, so with maximum efficiency, I think it could be done in 90 minutes total and only 15 minutes of actual work.

The bread was okay (definitely less oily) but the texture was noticeably less fine. There were large variations in the size of the air bubbles with some really big ones and some smaller ones, compared to the previous attempt which had uniformly fine texture. What the texture really reminded me of mass-produced store-bought pre-sliced bread. I think less oil and more gluten are definitely winners. Single-rising produces an okay loaf, but not nearly has "homemade" feeling as a double rise.

White Batter Bread Results

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 17:59:08 PST

Came out surprisingly good given that I made an error and put in 2 tablespoons of olive oil instead of 2 teaspoons.

I was afraid alternatively that I'd used too much vital wheat gluten (too chewy) or would make the loaf too dense as per some of the complaints about the recipe in the forum. Fortunately, it came out really light and not too tough. I could actually use a little more gluten, maybe 5 more grams.

This mini-loaf is worthy of taking to Rourke & Jen's tonight.

White Batter Bread

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 14:24:51 PST

Recipe reduced to mini-loaf size:

INGREDIENTS

3/4 teaspoon active dry yeast
1/3 cup and 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
2 teaspoons white sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
130 grams sifted all-purpose flour
10 g vital wheat gluten
2 teaspoons olive oil

DIRECTIONS

Mix together shortening, sugar, salt, yeast, vital wheat gluten, 30 grams flour. Add warm water and beat by hand about 300 strokes, or 3 minutes, with an electric mixer. Add remaining flour (100 grams), scraping bowl often, and mix all together until smooth.
Cover with a clean cloth and let rise until doubled in volume.
Stir dough down gently, and spoon into a lightly greased 9x5 inch loaf pan (the batter should be sticky). Pat down with floured hands to help shape. Cover again, and let rise for about 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
Bake for about 45 minutes. Place on a cooling rack.

I modified the recipe to use 2 teaspoons of olive oil rather than 2 teaspoons of shortening (which i don't have). Also added in the wheat gluten.

Forum postings indicate that the loaf ends up pretty dense, so I'm hoping I can lighten it up. Another possibility is adding in some powdered milk to soften the though if it seems tough.

More New Anime

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:20:10 PST

Wow... there are a lot of promising shows this season. Here are some more that I investigated this weekend.

Ghost Hunt
This show is based on a series of novels written by Ono Fuyumi, who also wrote Twelve Kingdoms. However, the tone is really completely different; it takes place in a high school and is somewhat more light hearted. Taniyama Mai is a ordinary student who gets roped in to be the assistant of Shibuya Kazuya, a "ghost hunter" hired by the school to investigate paranormal activity regarding some construction. But Kazuya, with his tech-heavy psychic researcher style, is not the only one called in on the job. A miko, an Australian Catholic exorcist, and a Japanese medium are on the scene as well. With their various and sometimes conflicting styles, they proceed to try to solve a ghostly mystery that seems to increasingly become more dangerous. The character designs are pretty, but also pretty standard; nothing really innovative. From the first episode, the show seems to draw its strength from the character interaction between Mai and Kazuya, as well as between the different groups of paranormal investigators who are cooperative but have very different methodologies. If they do it well, this show might be interesting and worth watching. If not, it could be boring like Gakkou no Kaidan. More episodes are in order.

Sokou no Strain
The comment in this show's ANN entry said "A science fictional adaptation loosely based on the novel A Little Princess." I've never read A Little Princess, but I would be surprised if it had as much death as in this show. The setting is basically that humans have spread out across space using near-light speed propulsion (subject to relativistic effects). These space faring humans are divided into two factions, Union and Deague. Sara Werec, the main character, is on the Union side and is training to be a mecha pilot to go fight on the front lines, 130 light years away. She is motivated to do so because years ago, her older brother, Ralph, left to do the same thing. Given long distances, becoming a pilot and joining him on the front is the only way she can ever see him again. The first episode is extremely action packed. She and her 3 teammates are on the cusp of graduating and heading to the front. They're filled with hope and potential. They play around, have a little romance, and are a fun bunch. Then, the Deague stage a mysterious sneak attack and without fanfare, Sara's comrades are all killed. Sara herself is shocked to discover that her own brother seems to have somehow led the sneak attack in a traitorous and seemingly physics-defying appearance. While this episode was quite engrossing, the series seems to be structured to have a really punchy first episode, followed by a reset and more standard story development in the remainder of the series. Not a bad plan for drawing viewers in, but that means I will need to watch more episodes to decide if this show is any good. I hope that this is actually a good mecha show with a female lead (which there seem to be very few of) rather than a dating sim in disguise. Oh, and some spoilers about A Little Princess might be helpful for me to understand what that ANN comment was getting at.

FLAG
This show's style definitely targets an older audience. It uses more "mature" character designs (smaller eyes, larger lips), less emotive voice acting, and more subdued pacing. The setting is close to modern day, a UN military operation in some middle-eastern country. The main character Shirasu Saeko, a photojournalist made famous during this war because of a picture she took titled "Flag" when the UN force liberated the capital city. Now, the UN has called her back as the official photographer for the deployment of a new type of weapon, a mecha, that will be used to bring about a final binding cease-fire. The pacing is very subdued, almost like a recap, with heavy narration by one of Saeko's friends, a video cameraman, who is not with her but gives commentary as if these events are in the past (which they may be). Surprisingly enough, this show makes 3 for 3 in new shows that I've watched that are worth continued investigation and were not completely wretched right off the bat. Something about this show reminds me of Speed Grapher, although it could just be the camera motif and nothing specifically meaningful.

Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto
Well, that was a complicated start. So, like the title implies, this show occurs during the last days of the shogunate prior to the Meiji Revolution. (This period seems to get disproportionate coverage considering how short it is relative to say, the whole Heian era). The main character seems to be a man of few words, having probably spoken under 10 words the whole episode (although I was cooking at the same time so I could've missed some lines). There's a some name dropping of folks like Sakamoto Ryoma and Katsu Kaishu, some sword fighting action, and some seemingly supernatural events; plus, some imperialistic westerners armed with pistols thrown in for good measure. The episode was actually pretty interesting, although it was so all-over-the-place that I couldn't get a sense of where the show is going. Another show that's going to need more investigation before its fate can be determined.

Hanoka
Weird. Not exactly a new series. Apparently this show was televised, but is entirely animated in Flash as size 5-minute shorts. While the animation does seem to push the limits of Flash, it really can't compare to the animation in any ordinary show. The color details are high-budget is, but the movement is distinctly off. The settings seems to be some kind of futuristic war where the side which the viewer is observing is losing but has one final secret weapon being rushed into service. It seems likely that this secret weapon is some girl equipped with weaponry a la SaiKano, but there's no way to be sure. Given how downright painful the graphics are to watch, I probably won't be proceeding any further, despite the very short amount of attention required.

Sweet Valerian
This is a morning short, like Mini Moni Yarunoda Pyon or Mini Moni The Documents. Kanoko, Pop, and Kate are magical girls who, when transformed, form the Relaxation Combat Team Valerian, a team of human-sized bipedal rabbits. Their enemies are the Stress Team, a bunch of short guys who fly around in a UFO with a big "su" on it and seek out stressed out individuals to transform into stress monsters. The Valerian post-transformation battle cry is "Come forth, Seratonin. Appear, Dopamine!" (Valerian is an herb that, like St. John's Wort, has antidepressant properties). Interestingly enough, CLAMP did the character concepts. I wonder if this morning 5-minute time slot is reserved for only the fluffiest of content, since this show is just about on par with Yarunoda Pyon when it comes to serious content. (On par being, totally devoid.) Still, for what it is and the short commitment, this show is pretty amusing.

New Anime

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 23:17:00 PST

A new season has started, and there are new shows to examine. One good thing about really recent stuff is the forced pacing; it's impossible to get too engrossed and go through a ton of episodes in one stroke.

Pumpkin Scissors
Watched the first 2 episodes. A long WWII-themed war between nations has ended. Some find the opportunity to use their violent skills for personal benefit irresistible, some find it difficult to readjust to peace-time, and still others have found ways to exercise their sense of justice despite the lack of overt warfare. Alice is the leader of the Pumpkin Scissors war relief unit, traveling across the nation, generally righting wrongs. She is driven by an (over)zealous sense of justice (think Amelia from Slayers) and utterly optimistic. Roland is a former member of the 901-ATT (anti tank trooper) squad, drifting aimlessly until he meets up with the Pumpkin Scissors. He's a one-man tank destroying freak of nature, but otherwise huge, quiet and shy. Together, they encounter various bad guys left over from the war, who tend to have tanks for some reason. No problem though, Roland is good at destroying them. The character focus is on the contrast between Alice and Roland's personalities. The military supporting cast is very FMA-ish. Although the OP song is really cheesy, there is character and story potential here, but also the risk of being bad-guy-of-the-week. I'll keep watching this one.

Code Geass
Watched the first episode. Sunrise mecha show with CLAMP character designs and an amusing dose of anti-Americanism. Japan has been invaded and taken over by the "worlds only superpower", the brutal New Britannia Empire, which "coincidentally" occupies the geographic area of the modern United States. Employing mecha, the New Britannia Empire, Japan is now known only as "Area 11" and under military occupation. In an odd twist, the angry (and kind of sadistic) main character randomly gets involved in some top-secret "thing" being transported by the military, but rather than getting control of a mecha, he gets supernatural mind control powers. However, he has grown up hating the empire and I'm sure he'll use his new found powers to get some mecha and blow away some bad guys while enduring a heavy dose of angst. These Sunrise shows have often failed to be interesting enough to hold my long term attention, but the combination of CLAMP designs and bad "Americans" warrants more viewing.

Red Garden
Watched the first two episodes. Gonzo animation about girls attending an elite New York City high school who get embroiled in some kind of weird, possibly supernatural, suspense/mystery. This show exudes high budget, and although it's hard to tell where the story is going, there seems to be a lot of potential. Plus, all that NYC action. The wilderness in ep. 1 is almost certainly Central Park, since the Roosevelt Island tram depicted in the same episode gets off at 59th and 2nd. The school is a little trickier, since it requires subjective interpretation over how "elite" it is. The "Oniisama E" feel of this school would seem to indicate that the writers intended the school to be high up on the eliteness scale (although I would doubt any school in the NYC area would really be like that). Also, given the depictions of school life, it seems unlikely to be a parochial school. If that's the case, the school is probably one of the Ivy Prep schools, or possibly the Hunter College High School, which is selective and highly ranked. Only 3 of the Ivy Prep schools are in Manhattan. Dalton and Hunter are on the upper east side, Trinity is in the Wall Street area, and Collegiate is on the upper west side. None of these schools is particularly close to the tram, although the semi-warehouse district and water view might make Trinity the most likely candidate. This show is definitely worth more watching.

D.Gray-man
Watched the first two episodes. 1800's-ish setting involving a supernatural struggle between the devilish "Earl of the Millenium" and an organization of "exorcists" dedicated to prevent the destruction of the world. So far, the story is reasonably interesting and holds together, although this could definitely change. What this show really has going for it is the really pretty character designs and some pretty interesting (yet grotesque) designs for the Earl's minions. The overall structure of the show seems to definitely ride the TYPE-MOON "eye candy gothic" wave (e.g. Fate Stay/Night or Tsukihime), but is, so far, a far less boring tale. I'm so far sucked in for at least a few more episodes.

Naan Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 10:25:11 PDT

Based on Naan Recipe II, the ingredients are:

2/3 cup warm water
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 teaspoon white sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour (1/2 pound)
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup ghee (4 tablespoons / 2 oz / 57 g melted butter)
2 tablespoons plain yogurt
2 teaspoons kalonji (onion seed)

I'm going to try going with a AB-style sponge starter instead of just proofing the yeast in sugar water.

Whisk the water with the yeast and sugar until the yeast is dissolved. Add 3 ounces of flour. Cover and let stand in a cool place for a few hours.
Sift remaining 5 ounces flour and salt three times into a large bowl add the yeast mixture, half of the ghee and all the yogurt. Mix into a soft dough then knead on a floured surface for about 5 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic. Place the dough in a large greased bowl, cover and let stand in a warm place for 1 1/2 hours or until the dough is doubled in size .
Punch down dough then knead for 5 minutes. Divide dough into 6 pieces. Roll each piece out into 8 inch round naans.
Cover an oven tray with foil and grease the foil. Brush the naan with a little of the remaining ghee and sprinkle with some of the kalonji. Cook naan one at a time under a very hot grill for about 2 minutes on each side or until puffed and just browned.

Challah Results

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 12:52:19 PDT

So, as per my previous post, I made challah. I decided to try to make it sweeter so that it could be eaten w/o adulteration by adding some honey and chopped prunes into it.

I prepared the dough as indicated in the recipe. Added the honey in during the initial mixing process, then set the dough aside to rise. During the first rise, I chopped some prunes up using my hand blender's chopper accessory, and then soaked the chopped pieces in water to plump them. This turned out to be an error in order. The soaked prune pieces got really waterlogged rather than plump, and carried too much water with them into the dough. Plus, they were chopped too fine so they lacked texture. I should've plumped whole prunes and then chopped them with a knife by hand.

After adding the watery prune mass into the dough, the dough got really wet and sticky, so I had to knead it out a bit by hand with more flour to get it back into shape. Then, I manually rolled and stretched it into one long snake that I looped around into a round loaf. Then, the second rising, an egg wash, and into the oven.

Overall, the challah came out edible, but not as great as I had hoped in a number of respects. Problems were:

Not as sweet as I wanted probably due to overwashing of prunes and not enough honey
Loaf much tougher than I wanted

I have two suspects for why the loaf was too tough:

Too much kneading (especially after watching the "Dr. Strangeloaf" episode of Good Eats)
Mistake where I used 100% bread flour instead of the specified mix of AP and bread flour

AB took the dough out of the hook while it was much wetter than mine. I added flour until the dough was much less sticky, although I was still in the bounds of the recipe. Both of my suspected errors would lead to too much gluten formation, which would lead to a tougher loaf.

I also was able to consume only 1/3rd of the loaf, part with dinner and part as french toast the following morning. Then I had to leave town and froze the unconsumed portion. It remains to be seen whether or not it will survive the cold.

Random Wines in Iowa

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 17:49:58 PDT

Had dinner at this small "world bistro" place in downtown Iowa City. These guys had reasonably priced ($4) half glasses on their wine list. (Half the price of a full glass! Who would've thought!) I was pleased to see the Leitz Dragonstone Riesling on the list (I never normally see any wines I recognize anywhere), but they didn't have it by the glass.

Artazuri, Garnacha, unknown vintage
Deep, inky red (or it couldve been the lighting. But definitely darker than Pinot). Meaty start, but bold and long fruity middle and finish. Not much of a nose though. Interesting varietal, but probably wouldn't buy a whole bottle of it.

St. Urbans-hof Riesling, unknown vintage
Very citrusy. Slightly floral start, then acid (I love acid), then a grapefruity and slightly efervescent finish. Pleasantly sweet. Very solid, especially what must be a reasonable bottle price. Definitely the same-day crowd pleaser buy option. I got a bottle of Christoffel at Whole Foods in Seattle for a bbq w/ Greg-Lillian-Dave-Cynthia. Forgot to record the details. A little too sweet (it was a spatlese) compared to acid for me, and too much petrol-minerality to be broadly pleasing. This riesling would've been a better pick.

The food at this place was also pretty good. The onion soup was not at the limit of my salt tolerance like it is at most restaurants (and I have pretty salty tastes), and the steak salad I ordered medium-rare actually came medium-rare! The gelato for dessert was kind of bad though, it was full of ice crystals and was slightly gritty, as if it had melted and refrozen. Oh well, almost perfect.

Challah Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 17:15:37 PDT

While I mull over what I want to do about baguettes, I want to try out other kinds of bread. I've gotten 2 requests: naan from Jerry and challah from Ben. Two in one weekend seems like a bit too much work, but since Rosh Hashanah starts today, it seems like challah is in order.

I'm gonna go with a self-proclaimed "Ultimate Challah" recipe from cnn.com, halved to be just one loaf. The 6-braided loaf described on that page seemed a bit too challenging, but I seem to have been offered a way out from this recipe which indicates that Rosh Hashanah challah should be formed into a round shape.

Halving and converting the recipe to weights I'll have:

1/2 scant tablespoon (1/2 package) active dry yeast
7/8 cups lukewarm water
1/8 to 3/8 cups sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2.5 large eggs
2.5 cups bread flour (12.5 ounces, 354 grams)
1.75 cups AP flour (8.75 ounces, 248 grams)
1/2 tablespoon salt
Optional: 1/4 cup honey
Optional: 1/4 cup raisins

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Add the sugar and the oil and mix well with a whisk or a wooden spoon. Beat in 2 of the eggs, 1 at a time; then gradually stir in the bread flour, 1 cup (5 oz) of the all-purpose flour, and the salt. When you have a dough that holds together, it is ready for kneading.
To knead by hand, place the dough on a lightly floured surface. Knead well, using the heels of your hands to press the dough away and your fingers to bring it back. Continue, turning the dough, for about 10 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and elastic, adding the remaining .75 cups (3.75 oz) of all-purpose flour or as needed.

To knead by machine in an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook, knead for 5 minutes on medium speed, or until smooth. You can also process half the dough at a time in a food processor fitted with the steel blade; process for about 1 minute.
After kneading, place all the dough in a large oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rest in a warm place for 1 hour, until almost doubled in size. You can also put the dough in an oven that has been warmed to 150 degrees for a few minutes and then turned off.
When the dough is almost doubled in size, remove it from the bowl and punch it down -- the rougher you are, the more the dough likes it. Return it to the bowl, cover it again and let it rise in a warm place for 30 minutes more. Or, if you have to go out, let the dough rise slowly in the refrigerator several hours or overnight and bring it to room temperature when ready to continue.
Form into a round
Let the challah loaves rise another hour, uncovered. Fifteen minutes before putting the loaves in the oven, beat the remaining egg and brush it gently over them. Five minutes later, lightly brush them again. Then sprinkle with poppy or sesame seeds and let dry a few minutes.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake the loaves on the middle rack of the oven for 10 minutes. Then reduce the temperature to 375 degrees and bake for 30 minutes more. Turn off the oven and leave the loaves in 5 minutes longer to get a dark-golden crust. Remove and cool on a rack.

Self-Spreading Media

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 18:20:39 PDT

A little over 8 years ago, Greg and I made an AMV for the Otakon AMV contest. Our prime purpose in making this AMV was to win. We determined a category that would best favor our effort; a song and theme that would be the most likely to win the maximum votes. We placed second in our category. After the whole contest was done, the whole thing was pretty much gone and forgotten.

These were the days before divx and any kind of Internet-based video delivery. Although we used all-digital non-linear editing to create the video, nobody but me had the original video file. The other contest entrants received copies of our AMV on VHS, and that was about the limit of our distribution. Hard drive space was expensive and fragile and over the years, I lost just about all the digital media related to this project.

But, somehow, our Evangelion clone-themed AMV did not fade and die.

I first got a hint of this in 2004 when it turned out that some current CJASers had actually seen this video somehow. But just this morning, Jerry discovered a version of our video on YouTube. Turns out there are at least 3 copies of our video posted to YouTube (one with over 20,000 views), but most interesting to me, is that the one that Jerry found is not a digitized-from-VHS version.

Someone completely re-mastered the version with identical music cuts, and effects, but with new high-quality footage.

That's a lot of effort. We once considered doing this ourselves, but lacked adequate motivation. This person obviously has the skills to be making his own AMVs, but instead decided to remake ours. In the part where we did our own animation, this fan traced and re-animated the cut. He even used his retraced version of this animation as his profile image at animemusicvideos.org and credited us by name.

And, this guy is from Sweeden. The global power of the Internet.

Subtly Snapping Phones in Half

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 20:05:03 PDT

There was an article on Slashdot yesterday about fake home videos on YouTube that are actually ad campaigns or depict fictitious activities. One video hi lighted was of a smiling woman easily snapping a Samsung cell phone in half while saying "Samsung handset, easy to break at one try!"

The underlying article was kind of interesting, but it was this Samsung handset example that really caught my attention. Such vivid imagery represents some very powerful yet very subtle manipulation. If there's anything that I've learned from the various literature that I've read is that these sorts of things are inescapably influential on the decisions we make. A viewer of this video will make an almost unconscious connection between the brand/device and the concept of "easy to break." And, almost counter intuitively, the most susceptible people would be the ones who say "oh, what an obvious attempt at manipulation! I won't fall prey to that." and then promptly put it out of their minds.

Robert Cialdini's "Influence" teaches about the subtle and inescapable effects of various kinds of influence tactics. The implication from the book is that rather than try to ignore or forget the manipulative event, the only way to combat it is to acknowledge its irresistable effect. Then, when a decision arises where the incident might be relevant, one would consciously remember the influencing factor and then deliberately use analytical techniques (e.g. focusing purely on quantitative qualities) to mitigate the bias. I expect there's probably an expiration so by the time you forget to remember, the influence is probably gone as well.

Bread Results

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 18:34:26 PDT

Updated 9/19/2006, 8:30AM - Added last paragraph about how the leftovers got consumed and what they tasted like

So, in our last episode, recall the plan was for 3 versions of the same baguette recipe: short ferment, normal ferment, long ferment. The goal was to hold all other variables constant and explore the role of fermentation alone.

On Friday night, I assembled 1 baguette's worth of dough in my kitchen, bundled it up, and then put it through the prescribed first rising in my network closet, which turned out to be a perfect 80 degrees F.

Four hours and two punch-downs later, I put it in the fridge to rise slowly overnight.

The next day, I got up and made a batch of dough large enough for the remaining 2 baguettes, put that dough straight into the fridge, and then left for 2 hours to run errands.

I returned from errands, unglazed quarry tiles in hand (more on this later), and divided the dough from that morning. Half went back into the fridge, the other half went into the network closet for its first rising. More errands.

Then, I took the fridge dough (short and long ferment batches) out and set it out to return to room temperature. Quarry tiles got rinsed off and set into the oven (6 each on 2 shelves), which got set to 500 degrees to preheat.

After the dough had been out for an hour, I got the medium ferment batch from the network closet and shaped each batch into a loaf. The instructions for loaf shaping were kind of cryptic, so I sort of did some folding, but mostly pushed, pulled, and stretched. For some reason, the medium ferment batch was really springy and hard to shape. I also accidentally re-kneaded the medium ferment batch even though the directions said to try to keep the large bubbles intact. The short and long ferment batches stretched really easily and held their shape and I was able to get them much longer (too long really). The loaves then rose for 40 minutes and went into the oven.

Now things get strange. The recipe calls for regular oven, 500 degrees for 12 minutes, then 400 degrees for 30. However, after 12 minutes, the loaves were clearly done. My guess is that the recipe expected the oven's temperature to really drop during loading, whereas the stored heat from my quarry tiles retained most of the heat. Thus, much faster baking. I'll have to take this into account and do a tile vs. no tile experiment at some later point.

My dough shaping skills are weak, so the loaves came out all kinds of misshapen as the pictures show. (Ignore the car keys and the hard core leveling yardstick thing. They're an artifact of the errands I was running and have no relation to the bread making process.)

The final taste results were kind of hard to interpret. All the loaves came out way crusty even though I used no crust development techniques (e.g. pans of water or misting). The short and long ferment loaves were noticeably denser than the medium ferment batch. The short ferment loaf tasted kind of flat, like a water cracker. The medium and long ones seemed also a little flat, but perhaps a bit more flavor. It was actually pretty hard to tell them apart, particularly since the crust caramelization had some really strong taste. I wonder if I didn't let them sit at room temperature long enough. I probably should have let them re-acclimate in the network closet rather than on the kitchen counter.

The loaves were consumed with a variety of toppings I got, a Wensleydale (which I've only heard of in Wallace & Grommit and never tasted before), Brie, some cultured butter, and Nutella. The Wensleydale was very dry and had signs of long aging. It tasted like a long aged cheddar with a smoky or ashy taste added in. The Brie was too cold and didn't taste like anything. Also had some of the Grapeleaf Pinot with the bread, which was also too cold (but got to be the first resident of my new Pek). What I really could've gone for is some of my Bordeaux futures brought back from the future, but I'll have to wait until I'm 40 for that stuff (2 more years until I even see the bottles).

We finished about half of each loaf of bread and I consumed the remainder over the next 2 days mainly by slicing them into small pieces and toasting them until crunchy in my microwave-grill. Some I ate with cheese, some I stir fried in with some leftover stir fry. The medium-ferment loaf got eaten first(next morning) and tasted cracker-like. The short-ferment loaf got stir fried the next evening and was overwhelmed by the accompanying flavors. The long-ferment loaf got eaten the evening after with cheese (like the short-ferment one) and definitely had a noticeably present bread flavor. However since the long-ferment loaf was eaten a full 48 hours after baking, it's unclear how that flavor (positive) formed.

So what's next:

Tile vs. No-tile
Loaf shapes (including loaf pans of different types: ceramic vs. silicone vs. aluminum)
All-purpose instead of bread flour (I used an unbleached flour that was labelled "great for bread" instead of all-purpose flour. If this was actually bread flour, that means that it had more gluten protein than AP. This probably makes a difference since this recipe called for AP and cake flour. Since cake flour is virtually gluten-free, the overall mix has less gluten than AP by itself. Thus if I was using bread flour, I almost certainly had too much gluten for the recipe.)
Micro-additives like milk, yogurt, sugar, oil, or egg which should change the texture significantly
Macro-additives like olives, fruits, or nuts
Whole wheat flour
Potato flour
Naan

So many variations, so little time...

Bread Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:42:56 PDT

Since I was a wee lad, I've liked baking bread. However, preparing bread is a time consuming process involving various rising and punching, and my travel-heavy lifestyle makes it difficult to practice. Plus, I've never really taken the time to study the various aspects of preparation that give bread different kinds of flavor. But due to some random good luck, I'm gonna be in town from today and over the weekend!

Before I get into various kinds of additives, I want to get a handle on the basic taste of unadulterated bread. So first, some research:

Simple: http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/bread_satori.htm
Detailed: http://www.baking911.com/bread/101_intro.htm

I'm not a huge fan of sourdough, I greatly prefer the taste of sweet French rolls and baguettes. So, I'm going to investigate various yeast doughs, where fermentation seems to be the key difference. Being that I don't want to hunt down a lot of different kinds of yeast, I'm going to stick with the garden-variety powdered kind found easily in the supermarket and experiment with different fermentation methods. Meaning that out of the basic ingredients (flour, water, yeast, salt, kneading, time) I'm going to be mainly experimenting with time and keep the other variables constant.

According to that baking911 site, the basic yeast rising lifecycle for a bread is:

First rise (unshaped lump)
Shape into loaf
Second rise
Bake

If using instant powdered yeast, this can be reduced to:

Shape into loaf
Rise
Bake

A cold-rise can be added by allowing either the first or the second rise to occur in the refrigerator. If performing the first rise cold, the dough should return to room temperature before punching it down for the second rise. The duration of a rise varies, and is generally calibrated to whatever it takes for the volume to double.

I'm going to go with a basic French baguette recipe (convenient because it doesn't require loaf pans) and divide it into several smaller loaves with different rising procedures:

Stock recipe:

First rise: 4 hours (with a punchdown at 2 hour and 3 hour marks)
Second rise: 40 minutes

Long fermentation test

First rise: 4 hours + overnight in refrigerator (punchdown at 2 hour mark and before refrigerating)
Second rise: 40 minutes

Short fermentation test

Second rise: 1.5 hours

Need a warm place to rise, I'll either use a warm oven or maybe the network closet.

Stay tuned!

Fundamental Attribution Error

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:42:51 PDT

In "The Tipping Point," Gladwell cites a variety of different studies and concepts that he summarizes in support of his theses. In two chapters, he talks about the power of context on perception and decision making. One psychological phenomenon he cites is the fundamental attribution error.

Take some people and have them watch two groups of basketball players shooting baskets. One group tosses balls in a well lit court. The other in a dimly lit court. Obviously the ones in the dimly lit court perform more poorly. However, if you ask the onlookers to judge how good the players were, they will invariably say that the ones from the well-lit court were more skilled. Even if you tell the audience that the dimly lit court causes the players to perform more poorly, the watchers will still judge the well-lit court players to be more skilled.

The bias, even when explained, is inescapeable.

Humans, various studies have shown, are irresistably drawn to explain people's behvaior based upon fundamental attributes (e.g. a person's character or skills) rather than environmental effects (e.g. weather, temperature, lighting conditions). Even with prior warning and explanation, we can't resist.

But I can't believe that we should just blindly give up, throwing up our hands and saying "oh well, I'm screwed. I can't make good decisions." There must be a way for the prepared mind to compensate to some degree.

One idea that came to mind comes from Robert Cialdini's book "Influence." The concept is that rather than resisiting or being (over-)confident and saying "ok, I understand and am immune," we can compensate by acknowleding our bias and realize that no matter what we do, our gut intuition will be wrong in these cases. That acknowledgement should hopefully then focus us onto other guideposts (like some kind of quantitivative benchmark) to lean on, away from our unreliable impressions.

The Rule of 150

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 11:40:54 PDT

I picked up the book "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell 2 weeks ago and found it to be a very entertaining and quick read. So, I followed up last week and bought his earlier book, "The Tipping Point." Gladwell writes for the New Yorker and that magazine style of writing comes through in the book, making each chapter a very engaging tale of its own.

There is actually so much engaging info in these books that it's hard to absorb it all. It's very entertaining to read, but it goes so quickly that I need to review in order to actually internalize the info. So, I'm going to try writing about it, bit by bit, and see if I can remember various topics better as I go along. I left "Blink" at home this week, so today's post is from "The Tipping Point."

In one chapter, he talks about social behavior in humans and primates. It turns out that there is evidence to indicate that the main driver for our large brain size (and intelligence) is social relationships. Look at primate community behavior, there is a pretty consistent relationship between social group size and brain size. This has some interesting ramifications for modern human social interactions because if you look at the group size/brain size curve for primates and extrapolate the relationship to humans, the group size you get for our brain size is 150 people.

The hypothesis here is that as a function of our evolution, our brains are wired to effectively manage social relationships that include up to about 150 people. Gladwell then investigates this 150 person number in modern communities and social structures (e.g. companies) and finds that this "magic number" comes up often. In one example, he looks at the W. L. Gore corporation, makers of Gore-Tex and other high-tech products. Their company is designed around the rule of 150. The story is that during the growth of the company, they found that the largest effective size of a slice of the business (e.g. marketing, manufacturing, sales all rolled together for a given product or segment) was around 150. So, they organized their company around this principle, having buildings designed to house exactly 150 people and organizing the business into self-contained 150-person units. They find that there is remarkable alignment and performance in their business when the manufacturing people and the sales people are wrapped together in the same social unit.

Solid Toiletries

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:18:08 PDT

I awoke the morning of August 10th to an e-mail from a co-worker warning us not to carry any liquids onto any flights we may have that day. Thus, I was forewarned and saved from potentially delay-inducing errors. (All delays are the enemy! Travelling every week, they really add up.) Thus begins the saga of no-liquids traveling.

By traveling back to basically the same place 3 weeks in a row, I've managed to postpone the problem of toothpaste and moisturizer (I use hotel-provided shampoo and conditioner) but, inevitably, I will have to face the problem. Fortunately, some comments to Rourke over the weekend about how there must be solid toiletries out there somewhere (and if not, market forces would quickly move into adjust) caused him to go out and do most of the research for me. (I also am not important enough to have a secretary make 43 identical toiletry kits and mail them out strategically across the country.) Thanks Rourke!

The one remaining item is moisturizer, since he doesn't seem to use any. Fortunately, a page dedicated to the topic was close at hand (a quick google for "solid moisturizer") and it seems like an unscented stick of Surgeon's Skin Secret is my best bet.

I'm also a little torn about toothpaste. Hotels have tiny tubes of toothpaste easily available at the check-in desk. However, the toothpaste that the EWR Sheraton had was some of the nastiest I've ever used. I'm not sure if I could stand using that toothpaste 3-5 days a week. The a solid alternative is tooth powder, a really old school product. But there are some potential problems with this plan. One is that these powders all seem to be excruciating natural and contain no fluoride. Another is an amusing comment from the FlyerTalk forum that reads:

Had my first tooth powder experience after arriving in GRU with no security issues in sfo or ord. It reinforces my belief in rational markets. There is a reason, absent of TSA, that of the 100 sku spaces alotted for tooth pastes, gels, and powders, only one is set aside for powders. Do not buy tooth powder stock unless you think the TSA ban is permanent.

Not exactly a glowing endorsement. Rourke says I should just use the hotel toothpaste. I probably will get a little tooth powder to carry around as a backup and generally rely on hotel-provided toothpaste.

Technical Sarcasm

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 09:47:22 PDT

I just read an interesting article in ACM Queue magazine (ACM is the professional organization for CS people) railing against "silver bullets" in software development, tools or practices that are supposed to solve all difficulties and magically make projects successful. Unfortunately, there is no easy way out and the author expresses his frustration that after years or experience, people don't seem to understand that.

But what amuses me is his vividly sarcastic writing style, coming up with ridiculously concrete examples like:

Still reeling from the powerful implications of what I had read, I began to wonder if placement of any content in the context of XML would somehow lead people to believe it to be of hallowed or divine origin, and having some implicit warranty of accuracy or correctness. I decided to test this premise and composed an e-mail to my 12-year-old daughter, hoping to sway her on an opinion she has been very unwilling to yield upon many times in the past:
<sanctified_declaration>
  <addressee> Alanah </addressee>
  <message>
    Hi Sweetie, I really am not the weirdest Dad of all
    the kids in your school.
    Love, Dad.
  </message>
</sanctified_declaration>
I was optimistic that if she were to read this declaration within the context of XML, our long-standing dispute would finally get some resolution. Unfortunately, things did not work out as I had hoped, and my ploy served only to reinforce her unyielding position.

New Anime

noreply@blogger.com (me) — Tue, 30 May 2006 08:58:45 PDT

Well, a few weeks into another new season and there are, as usual, a lot of new shows. I decided last weekend, to pull a bunch of first episodes of new stuff and see if there was anything worth watching. As it turns out, some were good and some were really bad.

Ergo Proxy
Probably tied for my favorite show this season. It's one of those dystopian future/dysfunctional society sci-fi settings reminiscent of Texhnolyze. Like Texhnolyze, there are tons of mysteries and the viewer is left constantly guessing about how to piece together the various story elements. However, Texhnolyze's fatal flaw was that it was too confusing with too many character threads and every character knowing more about the world than the viewer (although I really like the genre, I never finished Texhnolyze). Ergo Proxy seems to avoid that trap by focusing in an a single main character who acts as the audience's tour guide and doesn't know more about the situation than we do. Plus, there's much less unnecessary beating and dismemberment. The art and production value are also both kickass.

xxxHolic
The other tie for favorite show this season. I liked the structure and stories in the manga this is based off of, and the anime doesn't disappoint, adding stylish artwork and very clever color schemes into the mix in a way that accents the plot and themes. The stories have a self-contained dramatic quality that is most reminiscent of Tokyo Babylon, as far as CLAMP works go, and is probably some of the best writing since TB as well. (Tsubasa Chronicle was an unfortunate disappointment that was like a watered down Card Captor Sakura but lacking all the stylish characters and personalities.)

RAY the Animation
Watched 1 full episode of this. It's a Black Jack spinoff about this girl that was saved by our favorite scarred doctor and grows up to be a brilliant wandering surgeon following in his footsteps. The problem is, while the show has the same serious medical drama tone of the Black Jack anime, RAY is full of weird gimmicks. Ray is not only a brilliant surgeon, but has x-ray eyes that she uses to dramatic medical effect. In episode 1, she is roped into performing surgery on a dying yakuza member by the director of a hospital. But for some reason, this director is a hulking bearded giant of a man with an eyepatch and a peg-leg who has staffed his hospital with ass-kicking martial arts expert nurses (who beat back a horde of yakuza who come to the hospital to interrupt the operation). Sure, Black Jack is sometimes a bit over-the-top, but this is ridiculous. Still, the structure of the show has potential and I'll give it 1 or 2 more eps to prove itself.

Demonbane
Zhang, being way far up on the anime-game tieup scene, would probably laugh at me for even considering watching this show. Needless to say, it sucked. Couldn't even get through the whole episode. By the time they introduce the 8th girl with huge breasts covering all the major fetishes after 10 minutes, I knew that there was no hope. Do not watch this show!

Tokko
Summaries seemed to indicate that is was a modern-day supernatural mystery show that had potential. Summaries did not say that this is a sis-con police fetish show. Not as unwatchable as Demonbane, although I didn't make it through the whole episode of this either. (I was interrupted by meal service on the plane and couldn't bring myself to come back to it.) While on one hand I feel like I should sit out the rest of the episode for completion, I don't know if I can. It certainly won't last past episode 1.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Cliche servicey high-school comedies are interminably boring to me. However after much positive buzz about this show (in particular a directive to watch at least 2 full episodes since ep 1 is strange and out-of-sequence), I was convinced to give it a shot and wasn't disappointed. Perhaps it's not everyone's cup of tea (Doris found it unexciting), but this show has a particular combination of wacky characters and wacky humor that totally cracks me up. I find this show quite creative, non-cliche, and very amusing. One could summarize this show as being about a wacky title character who ropes her schoolmate comrades into all sorts of crazy ventures, but then there are aliens, weird magic, and various apocalyptic scenarios that gum up the works.

Ouran High School Host Club
This one almost slipped under the radar, but a positive mention from Lawrence put it on my list. It's a shoujo high school comedy (thus non-servicey and with less familiar cliches) with an amusing premise. Prevalent in Japan and other parts of East Asia are "hostess bars" where female employees cozy up to male patrons to get them to buy larger volumes of watered down alcoholic beverages. The setting for this show is the reverse-gender concept at an elite private high school (and with tea instead of booze). I've seen two episodes of this. The first is really worth watching, even if you're not sold on the whole concept of this series. It's fast paced and full of wacky and amusing humor. The second ep. was also good, but hints that the series formula might end up being in the vein of CLAMP Campus Detectives (not that it's a bad thing, but the unique hook in CCD is that they were strangely mature elementary school kids which this show doesn't have). The art style is an kind of cute classic shoujo, kind of like Rose of Versailles or Onisama E, except cuter and non-angsty.

GITS: SAC2
So, this isn't new and I watched it for the first time quite a while ago. I just finished re-watching it because it's very plot and detail intense, and my first viewing had such long intervals between sequential episodes that I didn't get a lot of stuff. This show was really really good. What especially makes SAC2 worthwhile is that besides being a good political and covert-ops tale (like SAC), there is a lot of really good character drama and development in this series. There is considerable character build leading up to a strong climax in the last episode in addition to excellent plot build. Particularly exceptional is how multiple character punchlines as well as a strong plot punchline all coincide at the last episode in a way that was so well-built, that the multitude of events doesn't seem rushed, compressed, or forced. There's even time for an epilogue. Watch this show!