Nerdy Ponderings

Stupid Hackers

2007-10-09T06:09:28Z

There's this online comic I read. It's stupid. It's smutty (well, it has a lot of boobs in it). It only updates a few times a year. But it amuses me. It serves no higher purpose, but on the other hand, it does no real harm.

It's a medieval comic about this gal who tricks a demon gal and they go off on an adventure together. The lesbian undertones don't excite me or anything but it has amusing moments and out of curiosity, I do check in on it from time to time to see where this story is headed.

Anyhow, the page has been hacked and replaced with the following absurd message:

While All Islam World regard with reverence to your prophet and address him as Hz. ISA A.S ( Christ ) ( putting a holy prefix in front of his name ),
You keep abusing, Islam’s almighty Prophet with disgusting and disgraceful cartoons using excuses of freedom of speech.
No doubt, Hz. Isa ( Christ ) would dislike and hate your nation.

Be God’s Curse On You !

I'm not going to provide a link because these guys deserve no more hits than they will get as it is.

But I'm so confused. What does this comic have to do with Mohammed? It's not a religious parody or anything. Yes, the comic has naked boobs in it, but why would Mohammed care if there is a comic online with naked boobs in it? Was he such a hateful man that he sought out things to find offense in? Why does the Turkish cyber-army, or whatever they call themselves, care about a comic that doesn't depict anything Islamic whatsoever?

And how dare the artist have the freedom of speech? Sheesh.

Furthermore, I don't know the first thing about what religion the artist is, so how do these hackers even know he's christian? I think he's from Sweden, so he probably is, but that's hardly proof. I suspect they have a lot of different religions there.

And is it just me, or does it seem unlikely that Jesus would "dislike and hate" Sweden because a Swedish guy likes to draw a silly comic with boobs in it? Admittedly, I never met the guy, but the way people talk about him, it really doesn't sound like the way he would be.

I could picture Jesus saying, "My son, I am disappointed in you, why do you waste your talent drawing this?" I don't know if he would actually say that, but I can picture it, can't you? I can't, however, picture Jesus saying, "How dare you draw this comic! I dislike and hate your country!" Well, not unless he's gotten a lot grumpier since his crucifiction, I guess. But seriously, I think being dead for a couple thousand years would give you some perspective. I doubt it would make you hate whole countries because of boobs.

Sheesh. If that was all it took to make Jesus hate a country, then what country would he like? Is there any place in the world where every citizen is so perfect and pious that they've never done anything more objectionable than draw some boobs?

Hell, I suspect teenage boys have been drawing boobs in the dirt and giggling ever since the species evolved enough to be able to comprehend a symbolic representation!

So, to Fredrik KT Andersson, I say, "I'm really sorry that this happened to you. You really deserve to be treated better than this."

And to the Turks, I say, "Lighten up!" For heaven's sake, I can understand being upset about those people who dare to criticize any belief you hold dear, but what are you accomplishing by lashing out at those who did you no harm? How do you think such actions will affect others? Will this make others look at your religion and think, "That's the religion for me?"

Optimization

2007-09-23T06:47:33Z

Ky had to dance today in Santa Clara (and she was wonderful), but that left me a lot of time sitting around with the laptop while she rehearsed.

So, I did some more work on my color filtering program. I reversed the table and increased its size to minimize calculations. That brought the processing time for my badge image down from 692s to 59.6s. Yay!

Then I rewrote the filter calculations in C instead of Python. Python is much easier to develop in, but it will never run as fast as C code. I'm still processing the image file in Python, but with the math done in C, I've reduced the processing time from 59.6s to 4.7s.

I'd like it to go faster, of course, but I can live with 4.7s. Besides, the only way I'd get any faster than that would be to dig directly into the image data in C and I'd really rather not. To do that, I'd have to interface directly with an image library in C instead of letting Python do it. It's hard to say how much speed that would buy me, but I'm certain it would take a lot more effort.

Anyhow, it's been a long day and I'll be glad to crash.

Ky still has no PC. They managed to extract her license key from her hard drive and reinstall Windows, but they suspect the motherboard still has a problem which caused the crash in the first place, so they'll order a new one on Monday. It sucks that she's down all this time, but the good news is that she's unlikely to have lost any data and the repairs should all be under warranty. Yay!

Holy Crap, It Worked!

2007-09-21T04:52:30Z

For a while now, Ky has been plagued by a rather annoying problem; namely, our printer likes to make things sepia toned.

By this, I don't mean that when you print things out, you only get colors that range from tan to brown; but I mean that each color moves a little closer to brown than it should be. Reds print a little more yellow than they should; yellows print a little more red, and blues print a little darker.

The end result is that if she scans something she's drawn and then makes a print, the end result, although nice-looking, doesn't have colors that match the original.

Image editor programs let you adjust colors, but applying this as a fix turns out to be a lot harder than you would expect! Typical filters let you increase the saturation, darken the image, or boost the contrast; but how do you tell the filter to lighten the blues, make the reds less yellow and make the yellows less red? The filters just aren't made to do that.

So, I've been thinking about this problem for a while and it seems to me that if you have an original image (let's call it "O"), and the scanner changes the color a bit (function S) and the printer changes the colors some more (function P) then the duplicated image would be P(S(O)).

Logically, if you had a function I that inverted the effect of P & S, such that O = I(P(S(O))) then you could apply that filter to the image before printing and the color-adjusted output would look right.

But how do you calculate function I?

To try and solve this, I wrote a program that generated an image file with some 5000 evenly-spaced color swatches. I printed out the file and then scanned the print out. Then, I wrote a program that mapped the original colors to the scanned colors and yet another program that searched through the mapping to reverse the process.

In other words, this last program is I such that I(S(P(X))) = X. I realize that this isn't quite the same as I(P(S(O))) = O, but my hopes were that functions P & S would be linear enough that their order could be reversed without a major impact.

Long story short (too late, I know), it actually works. I unfiltered a scanned version of my Rot badge (Bleah! On the screen it is all cyan.) and printed it out and was amazed just how close the new version matched the original. It's not perfect, but the difference is day-and-night.

Currently, the code has a couple drawbacks. First off, I did a lot of the color conversion manually, so I would need to automate a lot of stuff before anyone else could try it out. Secondly, my search algorith is slow. Actually, the search is pretty efficient, but when you repeat it 10 million times over the pixes in a high-res image, well, you're looking at a lot of time. Clearly I'm going to need to precalculate the color reversals so I won't actually have to search when I'm filtering.

Once I've done that, I guess I'll make it an open source project and give it to the world.

Anyone interested in helping?

Prediction

2007-09-02T15:46:18Z

I woke up this morning at 7am in a panic. The dream had been very clear, very precise. This very morning, at 8:30am, a terrible personal tragedy would befall me.

Over the next hour and a half, I watched the clock closely, nervously.

Finally, after what seemed like a year, the clock read 8:30 and it dawned on me what had happened. I collapsed to the floor, crushed by reality, keenly aware of the terrible loss I would have to bear forever, from this day forward.

My dreams are NOT prophetic.

/sob

Hooray for Effective Terrorists!

2007-08-30T23:41:21Z

Today, CNN announced that the Taliban released the remainder of the South Korean hostages they had been holding. As you may recall, they had been holding on to these poor gals until their demands were met:

* Some money (the exact amount was not reported)
* The release of Taliban prisoners (the exact number was not reported)
* The withdrawal of all 200 South Korean troops from Afghanistan

Appearently the terrorists caved on the first two demands. They returned the prisoners without getting any cash or prisoners exchanged.

The terrorists did, however, manage to convince the Koreans to pull out their troops from the area. Personally, I think this was a bad move by Seoul as it emboldens other terrorists by showing them the process works, but I guess they figure if they're leaving then it won't be their problem.

Oh... did I mention that these 200 troops were non-combat? Yeah, I guess I didn't! You see these troops were medical and engineering support... you know, the guys who were trying to improve day-to-day life in Afghanistan, help out the locals, and what-not.

Anyhow, so a big congrats needs to go out to the Taliban for killing a few innocent people, traumatizing some others, and accomplishing their goals of dragging their country back a little farther to the stone age where people can live in daily misery. Wahoo!

Using Multiple Inheritance to Organize Constants

2006-08-03T18:58:18Z

Although the values of your constants don't change while your program is running, they DO have a tendency to change from time to time. Product numbers change. New devices get supported. Sometimes we even change the identifiers which distinguish one type of data block from another.

Change is inevitable, and every good programmer knows this. If you like to leave constants sprinkled throughout your code, then you better hope that you've moved to a new state and changed your cellphone number before those constants need to be changed!

Furthermore, the longer I program, the more constants I seem to use. Long gone are the days when I could toss a couple #define's in a .h file and call it good. As I near the end of my third decade as a programmer, I'm seeing that I want:

[1] all my constants in a single, easy-to-edit file;
[2] my constants to be organized in a hierarchical manner; and
[3] to be able to refer to them succinctly.

One surprisingly easy way to do all three of these things is to create a Const module and to put your constants in classes. Consider the following Python snippet:

# Const.py

class Category1:
    Const1 = Value1
    Const2 = Value2

class Category2:
    class SubCat1:
        Const3 = Value3
        Const4 = Value4
    class SubCat2:
        Const5 = Value5
        Const6 = Value6

Since by their nature, constants do not change, there's really not even a need to instantiate these classes. You could simply:

# Test1.py

import Const

print "Const1=%r" % Const.Category1.Const1
print "Const5=%r" % Const.Category2.SubCat2.Const5
print "Const6=%r" % Const.Category2.SubCat2.Const6

This gives me items [1] and [2] on my wishlist, but what about number [3]? Ah! Well here, my friends, is where the oft-neglected beauty of multiple inheritance wins the day. Today's last example shows how a modal dialog can access the constants it needs in a nice, succinct manner:

# Test2.py

import wx
import wx.xrc
import Const

class Test2Dialog(wx.Dialog, Const.Category1, Const.Category2.SubCat2):
    def __init__(self):
        self.PostCreate(wx.PreDialog())
    def ShowModal(self):
        wx.xrc.XRCCTRL(self, "CONST1").SetValue(self.Const1)
        wx.xrc.XRCCTRL(self, "CONST5").SetValue(self.Const5)
        wx.xrc.XRCCTRL(self, "CONST6").SetValue(self.Const6)
        return wx.Dialog.ShowModal(self)

We obviously don't care about the IS-A relationship that Test2Dialog gets from Const.Category1 and Const.Category2.SubCat2, but look at how simple it was to refer to the constants we needed once that relationship was established.

Please feel free to post your comments on the above.

A quick rant

2005-05-15T17:08:38Z

Yes, I know, I haven't posted in ages, but generally I don't have much to say. All the personal news from here in Southern Utah is generally covered well by my lovely wife, kyoht .

Today I feel the need to rant about the most recent middle-eastern outrage. Specifically, I'm talking about people calling for a jihad because some guards at Guantanamo disrespected the prisoners' copies of the Koran.

Hey! Knock it the fuck off.

When I was a kid, my sisters and I would torment each other by poking each other, or touching each other's prized teddy bear, or intentionally sitting too close to each other on a hot day... you name it. This is exactly the same thing!

I love books, I do! But a book is just pieces of paper with words printed on them. Your book is not your religion. It's just a book. A bully can take your bible, or koran, or whatever away from you, but they can't take away your beliefs. At least, if they can, you shouldn't let them. The bully is trying to piss you off and everyone knows that the way to beat a bully is not to give him the satisfaction.

And don't get all smug on me, you damn rednecks! Any of you who have been pissed off about flag burning should go hang your heads in shame too. A flag is just a piece of cloth. It is not your country. I love my country, but when people try to piss me off by burning the flag, I'm the one who gets the last laugh! Why? Because to me, America is not just a location. America is two things: freedom & capitalism. And these assholes with the matches are expressing themselves and buying stuff (a flag, a lighter, lighterfluid, whatever). That is exactly what I want to see them doing, buying stuff to express themselves. If it's their flag, then let them burn it!

And lastly, while I'm at it, let's touch real quickly on the whole Abu Ghraib scandal. I'm not defending the prison guards for being bullies, that certainly isn't acceptable, but for the love of gods, that's all it is. I've never formed a naked pyramid with my buddies, but I bet if I had pledged a frat', I would have! I will neither confirm nor deny whether I've been naked at the end of a pretty girl's dog leash, but I wouldn't blow it up to an international incident if someone out there produced photos of such an event. Settle down, people. Stop making a mountain out of a molehill. These assholes (the prisoners) killed a lot of people and committed some really heinous crimes. It's not the end of the world if some bullies made them do a few childish things.

So stop poking each other, touching each other's teddy bears, and sitting too close to each other. And if someone pokes you, touches your teddy bear, or sits too close to you, please be bigger than they are and just ignore them. Sure, try and fix the situation so it doesn't continue, but remember that it's just a poke, a touch, pieces of paper, some cloth, or a photo. It's not you, your beliefs, or your self-respect.

Wedding Photos

2004-09-21T16:39:12Z

Hey all!

I know I haven't posted in ages, but generally anything interesting that happens to me happens to Ky also, and then she writes about it for both of us.

Anyhow, the wedding did happen to both of us, but I put the photos up in my Shutterfly account, so I figured I'd get on here and post a link. She may do the same. Who knows?

Photos

Sad weekend

2004-07-19T14:04:01Z

I realize that I don't post very often. Usually Ky and I are together and she writes in her journal about anything interesting that happens to us. However, I'm in Huntsville, AL this week on work so I guess it's time for me to post.

I had been really looking forward to this weekend because I was going to spend Sunday with Barry (my ex-roommate from college) and Saturday with Glen (a former workmate before he changed departments). I see Barry most times I have to come down to Alabama, but every time I come down here, Glen is travelling for his new position. This has been the first time we were in the same town in years.

Glen had to cut down a tree for a buddy on Saturday morning, so he called me on Friday and told me not to come over too early. When I got there, his garage was open and the house was empty. I hung out an hour, waiting for him, before giving up and driving into town to find a pay phone. His wife answered his cell phone and told me that Glen had a massive heart attack.

I'm going to be in town until Friday, so I will get a chance to say goodbye at his funeral, but I would rather have had my last memory of Glen been some time when we were hanging out, laughing, or even griping about whatever upset us.

No, I don't know if he had a history of heart problems in his family. He didn't take great care of himself. He was a big guy, smoked a lot, and was always on the go, but he was only like 37 or so. You just don't expect that sort of thing to catch up with you that fast. At least I never did.

I guess that's about all I have to say today. I'll try to post later this week, after the funeral, before I slip back into the silence of letting Ky tell everyone what's going on in our world. I did have a good time over at Barry's, but I don't really feel like talking about that now.

Cullinary Joy

2004-04-18T23:49:52Z

I finally gave up on ever finding seaweed wrappers here (or even nearby here) in Cedar City, so I went online and ordered $50 worth of stuff from an online place. Shipping was a lot (relatively) so I had to make the best of it and order more than just skins.

Murphy then laughed at me and I found seaweed wrappers at the grocery store closest to the house. Amazing, huh? I also found a mix for Chinese brown sauce, so in the end, life is good.

We didn't go hiking yesterday. A big storm front moved in and we actually got snow this morning. Not quite an inch, but pretty impressive for mid-April!

Styrofoam Balls

2004-04-17T05:16:30Z

Ky is finally back in town and man it's good to have her back. I've been a long week+ to be all alone after living in a house with five people for so long.

Tonight Ky and I dumped the million gallons of styrofoam balls out of two huge bean bag chairs that the dogs were busy shredding and into two new denim bags I made. It went quite well but now there are little staticy balls EVERYWHERE. The shop vac did a great job picking up most of the mess, but I have this suspicion that I'm going to encountering little balls now and then for the rest of my life. They are now indemic to this house.

No tikka tomorrow. I have to run down to St. George in the morning to pick up some pieces Ky had matted and then we're going hiking with Todd Kuchta. It's a tad unnerving that he asked us to go hiking and didn't tell us where to. I just loaned him some money to help bail his step-kid out of jail, so now I'm getting this paranoid idle thought of him killing us and dumping our bodies out in the desert somewhere.

If no one hears from us again, please tell the cops!

Anyhow, murder aside, I'm sure we'll have a lovely hike. Utah is just an amazing place for outdoorsy stuff. I just hope it isn't too cold. Still isn't too hot just yet.

Timber -

Sorry to hear about the late filing. How could you forget it was the 15th? Geez. What a nightmare. Also, don't fret about the Chinese. It's not that big a deal. I look forward to the chance to try the tikka at The Taj!

Everyone -

I found out more about asafoetia. One of original names for this stuff is "Devil's Dung". Not surprising. And yes, fetid is one of the roots of the name. Anyhow, I found out that if you cook it, the smell fades away. So if you have any of it, put it in FIRST when you make tikka. That will give it time to mellow and you won't get Devil's Dung Burps.

Back from Dinosaur NP

2004-04-05T01:12:34Z

Ky and I spent Ky's birthday weekend at Dinosaur National Park. Without a doubt, the dinosaur wall there is inexpressably cool. If you ever have a chance, check it out! There are also neat petroglyphs there at the park, if you like that sort of thing.

However, apart from the amazing, amazing fossils, there isn't a ton to do in Vernal (the nearest town). Usually the nearest town to natural wonders like these builds up a booming tourist trade and there are a ton of other things to check out and buy. Vernal isn't so hot in that department. Apart from lots of hiking and fossil seeing, there's not a lot to do and we were hard pressed to find things to do to fill the hours.

We went to a local restaurant that amused me to no end. The chicken parmesean had no sauce on it. The cheese was a square slice of white American cheese. The spaghetti (it SAID angelhair on the menu) was overcooked. There wasn't even any seasoning in the breading. The best part, however, had to be garlic bread made from a hamburger bun.

Another amusing thing was going to the local theater to watch Hell Boy. It was a mediocre movie, but the theater's ineptitude was what amused me. They played the two showings back to back so we had to go into the darkened theater as the credits were playing for the previous showing. Obviously the theater wasn't cleaned between showings so we had to move trash aside to make a seat. Oh, also, they didn't turn on any air conditioning, so it was all hot and stuffy in the theater. Bleah.

Ky will post a bunch of photos on her LJ, so check it out when they're up. We even took pix of the snake she grabbed!

That's all for now.

Happy Birthday, Ky!

2004-04-01T15:17:21Z

Can you believe Ky is 26 today? Wow. What an ancient gal! *prods* Happy Birthday, babe.

In a moment I'm going to get up and start making a cake for her. We're going down to St. George tonight for dinner and then hopefully we'll have room for cake when we get back. And then tomorrow, we're headed off to Dinosaur National Monument to spend the weekend exploring. It's a pretty long drive, but I know it's someplace that Ky has wanted to see for a while.

In other news, I spoke to Mage last night and he's moving out as well. He's not sure where he's going, so if you'd like to adopt a Mage, this is your chance.

It's going to be wild going from 5 people, 3 dogs, and 2 cats down to 2 people, 2 dogs, and 1 cat! I guess we'll just have all the more room for guests. Hopefully it won't be too lonely with so many people gone.

Happy April Fools to all! I wish I had a good prank to play this year, but it just isn't going to happen.

Sleepy Sunday Morning

2004-03-28T16:36:52Z

Good morning everyone!

Ky & I had a nice day yesterday. We had Gandhi and his wife Hastings over for lunch (we had tikka). It was a pretty nice batch although I burned the naan a little. I'm just not much of a baker.

After lunch we went to the Pastry Pub and had chai for a while before the tikka made everyone sleepy, so we had to return to our respective houses for respective naps.

There's not much going on here. The weather turned cold and Ky rented "Fatal Frame" for the PS/2. I don't think I'm really crazy about this one. I do like playing the creepy games, but I like it when the characters can actually fight back, instead of just run away or take pictures of the monsters. Plus, Japanese games about little girls always freak me out a bit. Perhaps it is just me, but it seems that these animators tread a strange line between "young sisters" and "lesbian lovers". These girls keep touching each other tenderly and moaning in fear instead of screaming. I just don't know what to make of it!

The big news around here is that Mitty has accepted a job in Colorado and so he'll be moving there in a couple weeks. Goldie will follow (probably in May) once he's had a chance to find them an apartment. Congrats Mitty & Goldie!

Happy St. Patty's Day

2004-03-17T15:53:02Z

This is not a holiday I usually celebrate, but I happen to be wearing a green sweatshirt (okay, I ALWAYS wear a green sweatshirt) so I thought I'd post something.

Let's see...

My sister (Kirsten) is a history teacher in Malaysia. Most of her co-workers are Brittish, so although they get most of the things she says, some of them come as a shock. The other day she went into the break room and one of her co-workers asked how she takes her coffee. Quoting the movie "Airplane", Kirsten says, "Black... like my men." She said all of her co-workers stared in absolute shock and silence, thinking Kirsten must be some kind of racist redneck or something.

My newphew (Jonathan) announced today that if he catches a leprachaun, he gets three wishes. I had thought you get the pot of gold, but I'm no expert on Irish mythos. Anyhow, if this should happen, he will wish for a weasel, a skateboard, and a brother. I don't think I know anyone who has wished for a weasel before. Kids are bizarre.

Not much else going on except working, doing my taxes, and helping Ky overhaul her site. I'm using TaxCut for the taxes, and this year it told me to go look up IRS publication 525 and figure out how much of something was deductable! Gah! Isn't the program supposed to figure that out for me so I don't have to do crap like this? Stupid program.

Happy St. Patty's everyone.

Ah, asafoetida!

2004-03-14T18:22:08Z

Way, way back, foxfeather gave me a wonderful present of spices and Indian goodies for my weekly cooking experiments. One of the items is a super-stinky powder called "asafoetida". I honestly have no idea what this stuff is except that she assured me it was good to put in tikka. Since then, it has been stinking up my spice cabinet. In fact, I was forced to put the container in a ziplock baggie because I would open the cabinet door and all I could smell was asafoetida.

Each week, I try to remind myself to try it out, but I always seem to forget. Then in the middle of lunch, or just afterwards, I remember and kick myself. Anyhow, I remembered in advance yesterday and I've got to hand it to her, this stuff is awesome. I used a little less white pepper (I ran out) and put in some asafoetida in to jazz it back up. I'm not sure how much I used, but it was a lot. A lot more than the "TINY sprinkle" she told me to use, at least.

Anyhow, the end result was absolutely delicious! It was all I could have hoped for in a plate of tikka. Ahhh.

There was one down side of using this stuff, I soon discovered. About an hour after eating tikka, you usually get the burps. Tikka has so many wonderful spices that we typically burp, and then let out a happy sigh of "ahhhh, tikka" as all the delicious spices tickle our noses. I guess asafoetida has more staying power than other spices, so an hour later it was *burp* "ack! asafoetida!".

Oh well. There are worse things in life than asafoetida burps, so if you come over for a visit, expect to endure a few after dinner.

Today Ky wants me to help her work on her website. She's got a new design and I keep promising I'll help craft some good HTML to make it work.

I also need to get to work on my taxes and wedding invite lists. Ack. So much to do.

Yesterday we drove down to Las Vegas to visit a friend who had come into town for a wedding. We had a decent enough time doing touristy stuff and catching up. We rode on this one thing that flings you up in the air at like 5g's and then we ate at Macaroni Grill (HUGE PORTIONS!).

It was a very fun day, but driving back home at 2am was the pits. I was so tired I really thought I was going to fall asleep behind the wheel. Let's hear it for the old trick of sitting an ice-cold beverage in your lap. Ya just can't sleep with frozen gonads.

Long time, no post

2003-12-07T18:48:05Z

I've been meaning to post lately, but I just haven't gotten up the energy. I always get this way this time of the year. I feel all prickly and just want everyone to leave me alone. I hate going to restaurants and stores, even to buy mundane things like food. The stupid xmas music being piped in everywhere and the mindless crowds walking at a slow crawl make me angry. Also, I always feel like I'm letting everyone down with things I should have done, but haven't.

Some day, I hope to be financially independent enough that I can leave the country after Thanksgiving dinner has worn off and not return until January. People think I'm kidding about that, but I'm not. I love this country in general terms, but I can't bear how xmas permeates every aspect of life for a month or so every year. This isn't a christian country, but that doesn't seem to matter in December! It's sort of like how it used to be back before there were smoking and non-smoking sections. You had to put up with the smoke whether you liked smoking or not.

Anyhow, with all that said, we had a nice visit from Jake last night. He's a new friend who was living in St. George but recently moved to Cedar. He's an interesting character and time will tell what's he's like. We played a long game of Munchkin and watched Pirates of the Carribean.

The biggest news in my personal front is that I finally found a decent tandoori recipe. Actually Ben from SLC found the recipe, but I tried it out last night and it worked great. It is the spiciest tandoori recipe I've ever tasted so it made a wonderfully spicy tikka. That's fine by all of the house's inhabitants, but I can see that I'll need to experiment and come up with a mild version as well for guests who can't tolerate spicy foods. Then I can break out the canning gear I bought and try to save up some of this stuff. Muhahahah.

It was a big relief that I was able to make the chicken without a tandoori oven. I was starting to think that we'd have to build a clay oven in the back yard and that sounded like a lot of hassle. As it turns out, a good, hot, charcoal fire seems good enough to do the trick. The guys at Walmart may look at you funny buying charcoal in the dead of winter, but that's there problem. BBQ'ing does not have a season! Ask anyone back in Kansas City.

In other news, I'm experimenting with a game idea that Ben suggested. I'll post more about it later when I have something to show.

Bleah. Have to do accounting today.

Groggy post-Halloween

2003-11-01T17:08:51Z

Hey folks!

Well, we survived Halloween and so did the kids we gave candy to... well... at least they made it off our property before they keeled over, so I have no knowledge of any of them passing away.

We had a very nutty Halloween. All five of us dressed up in our bestest disguises and we congregated in the driveway to scare kids with great success. More than a few kids skipped our house rather than risk walking among us to get their sugar. Ky dressed as a demon, I dressed as a lunatic in a straightjacket, Goldie as a werewolf, Mitty as an un-dead rebel soldier, and Mage as toxic waste cleaner (and then later as a scary reverend when his facemask fogged over). The garden was decorated with jack-o-lanterns filled with lamp oil so that flames lept up a foot or so from them. Soooooo much better than with just candles!

Many kids seemed to enjoy it. Some were indignant (which we found hillarious!).

"Why are you trying to scare kids?"
"Ummmmm... because it's Halloween?"

Geez.

Later we went to a Halloween party which was only so-so. Julie (our host) is a nice gal, but they found out they were moving only days before the party, so the house was empty and we had to eat chilli and hang out on the floor. Oh well.

I was going to get up early and experiment making naan for today's tikka, but it just didn't happen. I set an alarm and then decided that I didn't need naan that badly. My legs are sore from hopping around like an nut all night. Plus, there is already enough mess to clean up today. We don't need the extra challenge.

Lots of stuff to do today... make tikka, eat tikka, clean up, put together a new PC for Goldie, do the monthly accounting for WH, put up a new ceiling fan in the bedroom, put up new blinds in my office, and watch the stupid horror movies we rented earlier.

My first naan experiment on Wednesday was not a success. I think the taste was fairly close, but they needed more salt and needed to be cooked less (and on both sides). Perhaps I'll try again tomorrow. I would love to make naan every Saturday with my lunch-tikka, but I just don't know if it will happen. Bread of any type takes a lot of time and effort. We may have to scoot it to dinner.

Hope you all had ALMOST as much fun as we did! :)

Midweek Update

2003-10-29T23:44:35Z

Usually I don't do updates in the middle of the week, but I'm not making any progress on this program today. Well, I guess that isn't entirely true. I've added more code to the program, but it still crashes randomly. I wish I knew why.

Today started out horribly. My laptop crashed. Not badly, but all the notification icons disappeared from next to the clock! I wasted like an hour trying to figure out how to turn them back on. Also, my wireless network card stopped working and it took a while to realize that I had to reinstall the driver. Why? Beats me. Our DNS in the house went down this morning. It too was easy to fix, but it took a while to figure out how. Stupid network! Oh yeah, and I can't get my mouse to work on my SuSE box! GRRRRR!!! I need to re-run the configurator, but I don't know how to do it without the mouse!!!! *sighs*

Ky finished her mask last night and it is tres awesome (although it smells bad!). Today they're out getting stuff to spruce the house up for Halloween. I'm working at home.

I'm making naan too. I whipped up some batter at lunch and it's rising now in the bathroom. I hope it comes out.

Not much else going on. Ky and I met three years ago, almost to the day. We didn't go out on Monday to celebrate, but I'm going to drag her out tonight. Just a nice dinner... nothin' too fancy.

Sushi Saturday

2003-10-25T23:24:59Z

Not a terribly busy day today. I uploaded images from our trip to Moab so my mom could make printouts, I made tikka, and in the free time today I'm trying to rebuild Ky's old computer to turn it into a wedding present for Goldie.

I've been promising to put up my sushi recipe for ages, but you can't just describe how to make sushi. To do it right, you really need a lot of photos. It's something you have to see.

Well, I have the time and the photos ready, so let's begin. Mind you, this isn't the greatest sushi in the world, but it's still pretty darn good. If you're like me and get a craving for it, but don't have convenient access to a decent sushi restaurant (or you're just cheap), then it will suffice.

I call these Cedar City rolls instead of California rolls because they're probably not very authentic. They taste good and that's all I really care about.

Preparation time: Depends on your proficiency!

Serves: 1 (three rolls)

You're going to need:

1, 6 oz. can of crab meat
2 Tbs. mayonnaise
1 tsp. (?) wasabi
1/4 avocado
2" of cucumber
1 1/2 sheets of seaweed wrapper

1 cup white rice (many kinds will do, but I prefer jasmine or those fat grains if you can get them)
1 1/4 cup water
1 Tbs. honey
1 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
sesame seeds
soy sauce

3 1'x1' sheets of wax paper

Completely drain the crab of the packing water. In a mixing bowl, combine the crab, mayonnaise, and wasabi. I'm not entirely sure how much wasabi to add since it doesn't measure well. See the photo and add to taste. The amount shown was pretty mild, so you may use more. Mix with a spatula until homogeneous.

Prepare the cucumber by peeling and slicing into little toothpicks.

Slice the avocado thinly. Avocado is tricky to manipulate, so I peel off a 1/4 section and then slice the meat still inside the skin. Peel back the skin when you need the slices later on.

Seaweed sheets are twice as big as we're going to need. They are pretty brittle, so fold them in half and then tear down the fold mark. We will need three half-sheets.

Cook the rice and water in a rice cooker. When it is done, gently fold in the honey and vinegar with a rice paddle. Do not over mix the rice or you will break the delicate grains.

Scoop out about a third of the rice onto a sheet of wax paper. Using the rice paddle, gently flatten the rice into a thin layer a little larger than half a sheet of seaweed. It will be very sticky, so don't touch it with your fingers. With a knife or other straight edge, remove the jagged edge of one side of the rice layer.

Take a half-sheet of seaweed (rough side down) and place it onto the rice layer so that it overlaps the straight edge by about a centimeter. Firmly press the seaweed into place so that it adheres completely to the rice.

With your knife or straight edge, trim away the extra rice from the other three edges of the seaweed. Be careful not to rip the wax paper like I did! All this extra rice may be put back in the rice pot, of course.

Now, put some cucumber and avocado slices long-ways down the seaweed wrapper. Don't put too much or you won't be able to get the roll closed up!

With a spatula, scoop out a third of the crab salad we already prepared and place it on top of the veggies.

Use one hand to start rolling the wax paper from the side opposite the seaweed flap (remember how the seaweed overlaps the rice). With the spatula in your other hand, help form the roll's contents. (Don't ask how I held the camera!)

Once you get it rolling, use both hands to form the wax paper into a roll. The extra flap of seaweed should tuck underneath the opposite seaweed layer, so that only rice is exposed on the roll's exterior.

Once you've formed a nice tight roll, carefully peel back the wax paper so that the seam ends up on the roll's underside. Again, do not touch the rice with your fingers.

Sprinkle the rice with sesame seeds. They add a nice taste and will help keep the rice from sticking to your hands when you slice it.

The roll will be quite squishy at this point so I put it in the freezer for a few minutes. Do not over-freeze it or it will taste frozen inside. Bleah. Gently hold the roll and slice into bite-sized bits with a sharp, serrated knife. THIS IS THE HARDEST PART!

Serve on-end on a plate. Soy sauce tastes great on them, but if they are not spicy enough, mix some more wasabi into the soy sauce.

Repeat the preparation for your other two rolls.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Another week, come and gone

2003-10-04T16:49:32Z

Billiards is clearly not my sport.

Ky, Mage, and I went out drinking last night. Actually I was driving, so I didn't drink. Regardless, we shot pool at the local bars and were impressed at just how bad we are. Every now and then each of us got a couple great (for us) shots in a row and then the rest of the time was a dismal embarassment. I even missed the cue ball a few times. We really need practice at this.

Sadly, the climbing gym has been closed much of this week and it's really getting in the way of us getting back in shape. Grrr. I do hope it is back open by Monday. Seems they were going to move and then the deal fell through. However, they had already dismantled their climbing wall and they're dragging their feet now at getting it put back together. :(

I spent this week writing application code. That was a neat change! I like writing Windows programs in Python, but I don't think I'd want to do it for a living. I'm so slow at it. Hopefully I'll get quicker soon.

I signed up to teach a class on Python in January. I'm not sure why I did, but I thought it would be fun. Hopefully someone will sign up for the class now!

Hmmmmm... what else is going on here? It's the beginning of the month, so I've been doing Wolfhome's books. Bleah. I hate that. Wish we made enough to pay someone to do it for me.

I ordered some new furniture for the sitting room. The guy has already made the couch and love seat, but it will need to be stained to match our other furniture. I doubt it will take long. Oh yeah, we also have to order some upholstery and have the cushions made. I guess that may take a while. For the time being we've moved the old couch and recliner into the sitting room. I like our new couch and love seat a lot. Between the two of them, they have four recliners!

It's about time to start making tikka. I need to run off to the store to get some cream, I think, so I'll wrap this up quick. This week's expirements to make tandoori chicken have been a dismal failure. At least the tikka comes out consistently good. I did get ingredients to make more sushi. Perhaps I will do that tomorrow.

I did finally beat "Fistful of Boomstick". Muhahhahaha.

Julie's coming to clean the house today instead of on Friday's now. I'll hide in the basement to keep out of her way and play with programming on my laptop. Oh darn, that means I can't do the accounting until after she's gone. Darn, darn, darn. (not)

Hope everyone out there had a good week!

Big Day Ahead

2003-09-27T15:35:51Z

Good morning, Journal.

I think Ky is slightly annoyed with me because I've spent every waking moment since I got back from Alabama working. Sorry about that, Ky. I've been really excited about this part of the project and it's been a ton of fun to do. Plus they finally gave me a laptop and when my car broke down (all week long) I ended up doing my work in the living room. That in itself wasn't bad, but with the laptop sitting there and the work not done, I kept finding myself picking it up and trying to figure out what was broken (in my code). This is yet another reason why I should not work at home.

Anyhow, my car is fixed and the code is FINALLY done. Now I can go back to my usual lazy ways. Yay!

On the agenda today is cooking tikka (of course) and looking for furniture. I'm finally out of debt and that's been the one thing that has really kept us from making the new house more homey. I want to draw a plan of the front rooms and see if I can force Ky to help me list out what it is we want to put there. I want a plan of attack! There's no point in looking at furniture if we don't know what we want.

That's about it. It may not sound like a big day, but when you live in a small town with only a few furniture stores, you have to accept the possibility that you will need to drive elsewhere to find what it is you want. We may have to drive a lot today (thank goodness my car works now!).

Oh yeah, a couple last things.

1. Ky is finally starting to feel better. Yay!

2. I've been thinking about adding greylisting to my mail servers. Here's a link for those who are unfamiliar with it. It's pretty technical, but it is very clever: http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/

3. I need to fix a couple toilets that keep running.

4. We bought "Fistful of Boomstick". Heh heh. I need to figure out how to beat the first boss.

5. I've got an itch to get/make a tandoori oven. My tikka sauce doesn't need any more tweaking, but the chicken I put in it is only "okay". In Indian restaurants, they use tandoori chicken, but I have yet to perfect that. Good tandoori chicken requires two things: the right spices (I don't have that yet, but I will experiment until I do) and an oven hot enough to cook it correctly.

Tandoori chicken is really tender, skinless chicken where the outermost layer is cooked hard and red with some mysterious spices. To get the outside to be harder, they use a hot, clay oven that cooks from all sides. Only a little experimentation has told me that 400 degrees isn't hot enough. I'm going to experiment a little more and see how hot my oven can go, but failing that I'm going to need to go outdoors and look at charcoal fires.

If I can't get the BBQ grill hot enough, then I may need to weld the top and bottom halves together, weld on a smokestack, and bury it in the ground. I'm willing to do that if I have to, but if there is an easier way, then I'd like to save it as a last resort.

Thoughts anyone?

Redneck Jambalaya

2003-09-21T06:07:16Z

I call this "redneck jambalaya" because it's really simple. It may not be totally authentic, but it tastes really damn good.

Feeds: 4
Prep time: 1 hour

Cube a skinless, boneless chicken breast and allow to soak in lemon juice for 12 hours. As always, use a covered, non-metalic container in your refrigerator to hold the chicken and lemon juice.

In a rice cooker, make 2 cups of rice with 2 1/2 cups of water.

Dice 1/2 medium onion. Finely chop 2 Tbs. of green olives (with or without pimentos).

I highly, highly recommend Krustease honey cornbread box mix. I've tried a million mixes and this is the only one worth using. Start the cornbread now so it will be done at the right time. Also, ignore the instructions on the box regarding using 375 degree heat and a longer cooking time if you bake the cornbread in a glass container. 400 degrees and the shorter cooking time works best.

While the rice is cooking, fry and dice a chorizo or other hot sausage and the chicken you left soaking earlier. If you do not like crunchy onions, add in the onions midway through cooking the chicken to give them extra cooking time. Drain and pat dry with a paper towel.

When the rice is ready, add the following directly into the rice cooker:

1 can (4 1/2 oz) of crab
1 cup cooked, drained shrimp (100-150 count size)
1 cup of spaghetti sauce
1 cup of Pace medium picante sauce
2 cups of water
chicken, sausage, onion, and olives mentioned earlier

With a big rice-paddle, gently fold the ingredients into the rice so that you don't break all the rice grains. Smooth top to a flat surface, sprinkle with parsley flakes, and set the rice cooker again to "cook".

When the cornbread and jambalaya are done, allow the cornbread to cool for a few minutes and then serve together.

Let me know what you think!

*Yawn!*

It's late and I need to set up the chicken for tikka tomorrow. G'night!

Back in Utah again

2003-09-20T16:54:11Z

I survived my trip to Alabama! Yay.

We got our debug done in a record day and a half, so I had lots of time to sit around, play games, read, and do my regular work. It was a surprisingly good week. I ate too much, but that is a standard part of going on business trips.

It's good to be back, but I can see that this is going to be a tiring weekend. Even though I asked everyone to put away camping gear, it is all still in the garage. Plus we need to remove an old carpet that the dogs are using as a potty. Bleah.

The airlines called this morning and they still can't find my bag. They said they will try to have it back to me by tomorrow. I'm okay with that since it just has dirty clothes and games in it. Thank goodness it wasn't lost at the beginning of my trip! I had a spare toothbrush and I took my laptop as carry-on. As long as they get it back to me eventually, then all is well.

Ky looks good. She's been sick all week with some kind of cold, but I guess she's over it now. I was so wasted on Dramamine last night that I barely noticed anything.

No tikka for lunch today. I really need 24 hours for it to set up and there was no way I was going to chop chicken last night! I'll do it today so we can have Indian tomorrow. Perhaps I'll make Jambalaya or something. MMmmmmm. Cajun...

Good-bye Utah

2003-09-13T15:25:21Z

Gah.

It's already Saturday morning and I have to go to Alabama tomorrow. I've been hanging out with everyone that came back from the howl and we had a very good time. Lots of silliness, playing games, eating good stuff, and lots of drinking last night. I'm going to miss everyone lots.

I bought Crononauts the other day and we played it a bunch. It's a fun card game where you travel through time and change past events in an attempt to get back to the world you came from. It's clever and fun.

Looks like the big plans for today are making tikka (like every Saturday), washing clothes, and packing up for the trip. I'm sure this next week will be hell, starting with 8 hours of travelling, tomorrow. Bleah and double-bleah.

The good news is that I have this stock purchase plan at work and I sold the stock that my company has been buying on my behalf. The sale amount is almost exactly the same as the loan amount that I have for all the home improvements we've done to this house. In other words, when I get back from Alabama, I should be out of debt! Yay!

Of course, being out of debt means being able to buy new furniture, so I guess it won't be an end to our debt, but merely a milestone of sorts.