Funny URLs and clever witticisms

Bragging about my prowess

2009-12-08T10:23:33Z

Worship me: I replaced the kitchen faucet tonight.

Honestly, this is one of the tougher bits of home plumbing there is. It's actually harder than "replace a dishwasher" (which I have done), but less hard than "fix a leaking pipe in the ceiling" (which I haven't). Not sure if it's harder than "replace a toilet" -- but I hope never to find that out.

The thing that makes it hard is that the faucet is bolted onto the sink, and the bolt is always underneath, behind the sink basins, way up back there. This presents two problems:

1) You have to know precisely where the nut is, what size it is, what it is made out of, and what it's going to look like, before you will ever be able to see it. (It's like those adventure game magic words -- they don't work until the wizard has actually TOLD them to you.)

Once you know all this stuff, and can visualize it with complete stability for an extended period of time, you have to remove everything from under the sink -- definitely including the water filtration equipment, maybe the drain pipes, hopefully not the garbage disposal. Then you have to crawl up inside the cabinet underneath, squirm up in there, somehow get a light in there, and then, and only then, you will be able to SEE the nut.

Of course, there's no possible way you will be able to TOUCH the nut. Oh maybe, if you can dislocate your shoulder, or turn your arm to rubber like Reed Richards, MAYBE you can touch it.

But even if, through some miracle, you COULD touch the nut, there's no possibility of loosening it. There's a gap of approximately 4 air molecules around the nut, between it and the wall and the sink basin. You could never use a typical wrench to loosen the nut, and there's pipes sticking out about 14 inches from the nut, so a socket isn't going to work, either.

2) To loosen the nut, you need a BASIN WRENCH. A Basin Wrench is the best single-purpose tool I ever found out about yesterday. It's an automatically-sizing, ratcheting, pipe wrench, with a swivel head, and a long rod and a handle. It's specifically designed to apply the correct kind of force on that nut, and is a bargain at only $40. Here's how it works:

a) You climb under the sink, and maneuver the wrench's ratchet head onto the nut by waving the rod around wildly while yelling from the pain of jamming your neck sideways up against a wood screw that someone put in the side of the cabinet.

b) Then you climb back out from under the sink while trying ever so carefully not to disrupt the placement of the wrench.

c) Repeat 20 - 30 times, cursing loudly, until you figure out that you can use a rolled up towel to prop the wrench into place, and if you do it JUST RIGHT, it will balance in place for 4 seconds before falling.

d) Become adept at getting out from under the sink in under 6 seconds. Repeat the cycle of attaching the wrench and slithering out from under the sink many times until through some miracle the wrench stays in place.

e) Now gently twist the handle and realize that you'd put the head on the wrong way. Invent a new curse involving at least two different phyla of the animal kingdom as you go back to Step A.

f) Once you gently twist the handle, you will find that the faucet is just loose enough to twist about without the nut actually loosening. Curse profoundly while whacking the faucet repeatedly with a big wrench, hoping that it will magically become disconnected.

g) Pour yourself a stiff drink, collect yourself, and find your domestic partner, who will be hiding in their car. Apologize at length for your cursing, and beg them to hold the wrench on the faucet while you attempt to loosen the nut.

(The next several minutes you won't remember, because the force necessary to loosen the nut will cause extremely high blood pressure-related short term memory loss, and hopefully only temporary visual aberrations.)

h) Bob's your uncle.

You are now holding an ugly nut, worth 4 cents, and a $40 wrench which you will NEVER use EVER again except to gloat at your friends.

"HAH!" you will say, "I have a BASIN WRENCH and I REPLACED MY KITCHEN FAUCET!! Look upon my works, ye mortals, and be very impressed."

Anything is better with the SPACE:1999 theme

2009-11-28T21:36:49Z

(for those that do not know, first watch the original.)

Theory: Anything is better with the SPACE:1999 theme added.

Evidence: CBS News 13

Oh, I know, you're thinking, "Pish tosh! Surely not EVERYTHING?!"

But yes, I am quite confident in my assessment. This mashup should provide sufficient proof.

Sad and Happy Thanksgiving.

2009-11-27T08:10:28Z

The other day, we had to have a stray cat put to sleep. Not much choice in the matter, the thing was in terminal stages of feline AIDS, but I signed a consent paper, and then we stood there and petted him and tried as best as we could to make those last few minutes pleasant, while the sedative kicked in.

My dad passed away after a long illness, but at least he got better enough to enjoy a final bite of life before he did.

Bulleit Bourbon is on sale at the Safeway. It's very good stuff.

I am thankful that my sister is doing well. She has a great daughter. They, and my mom, are at my uncle's in western Massachusetts for the traditional thanksgiving. My uncle stirs Manhattans up, in honor of some of the sainted aunts who used to have just one, once a year, on Thanksgiving.

Last night I saw my old pal and her husband and two daughters. It was actually a bit humorous -- the kids are pretty wild, but that's pretty much to be expected for kids their age. It was enjoyable. I wish we had our own kid there too, but so far, not so much.

I am thankful for friends nearby. We went by their house and brought some food, and some Manhattans.

There are many friends I have, and I am extremely thankful for them. The women are all smarter than average and the men are all attractive.

My life, I should have no complaints. My wife is superb. The cats are charming. The job is stable, and the house is pleasant. We have art on the walls, and I made some of it.

We just got back from the Stanford Theatre, were we saw The Thin Man, and My Man Godfrey, and listened to their excellent organ. And I am making Suffering Bastards.

My Top 3 Cocktails (Week ending 2009-11-08)

2009-11-10T07:19:51Z

1) Bourbon + Ginger Ale (4)
2) Old Fashioned (3) (with home made cocktail cherry)
3) Tequila Por Mi Amante "Sour" (2)

Beautiful signs

2009-11-09T16:16:23Z

http://www.flickr.com/photos/society_in_decline/sets/72157594323475636/

My father has passed away.

2009-11-03T07:47:12Z

Several months ago, my father suddenly fell ill. He was 77, and had always had a weak heart, so it was not all that surprising how severely and suddenly he became sick. Due to the super-powers of the doctors of the Mass General Hospital, they figured out that his illness was a tick-borne infection similar to Lyme Disease, but different.

The problem with this kind of infection is that it causes a whole bunch of systems in the body to malfunction, so there were a lot of side effects and secondary problems. He nearly died a bunch of times while we stood by his bed and watched.

Over the next several months, he made a number of recoveries, and suffered a number of setbacks. There were plenty of times that the doctors commented that he got better because of his own will to live.

The most important thing I learned of all of this, in addition to a number of details about the way the kidneys work (which is awesome, by the way), is that when you take an elderly person and confine them to bed, they lose strength very quickly. Most of what the doctors did after they cleared up the infections and reprogrammed his heart defibrillator was to get him rehabilitation therapy, which started off by having him lift his arms and legs, and later stand upright with a walker, and eventually, get out of bed and walk.

He made enormous progress recovering, and had started doing enjoyable activities like watching the Red Sox and listening to jazz on an iPod. He was complaining that he wanted to get the heck out of the hospital, and go home.

And, on November 1, after having a morning check of his vitals and mental state, all normal, he passed away suddenly.

I am very glad that it worked out this way, that he got better enough to enjoy the Dave Brubeck Quartet and Miles Davis and baseball games. Jennifer and I sent pictures of our various activities to my mom, who printed them out and showed them to him, and my sister and her daughter visited him.

In the same way as a fish is unable to describe water, I have a hard time summarizing my father's influence on me. He was always an Engineer, like the guys you see on "From the Earth to the Moon." I think "1 2 3 Infinity" was his favorite book, and it has become one of mine. His intellectual curiosity, and capacity for understanding stuff, was gargantuan. A doctor I know recounts explaining a few details about how, for example, a single cell manages to turn into a full-sized human being, with so many different kinds of cells (they call this "ontogeny"), and within a few minutes his questions had exceeded the doctor's information.

When I decided to go to MIT, as he had, he advised me not to, because, frankly, of the amount of bullshit they inflicted on students. I decided that MIT was the best place in the world to learn about computers, and did learn a ton. I wish I had made more progress with research, but MIT doesn't teach you how to learn, never mind the basic foundations of the knowledge you're assimilating. Instead, they hand you a problem set that assumes you are already a programming wizard in their favorite pet language (Scheme, a wonderful programming language I still enjoy), and give you a huge amount of work to accomplish by the next week. If a bunch of people drop the course, they obviously aren't very passionate about the topic, and that's no great loss to the professors, who are often more interested in research than students.

I can recall several times during my attendance that he called me up to get me to arrange to have a certain book duplicated. I'd go to the engineering library, request a book, and sit there while one of his assistants would photocopy the entire book. Obviously, back then, there were no books online, and the really esoteric books might only have a few copies anywhere. A valid library card is still a treasure, and I treasured taking a class at Harvard both for the access to their library system, and for the entirely different approach to classes, which emphasized being able to read mountains of technical papers in a week, and provide intelligent commentary on them. (If you said nothing during recitation, you got an F for the week.)

I always intended to get him a complete reference of The New York Times on some form of computer media, because that way he could let go of his cubic yards of clippings. Unfortunately, the NYT never came through on their end.

This voracious curiosity, coupled with his ability and desire to reduce things to simple, solvable equations, marked his career as an Engineer. I knew, even in high school, how to be an engineer: you looked up equations in the appropriate Big Book of Engineering, and found the correct equation, then applied it to get the results. Different kinds of engineering had different books. Since he was a Mechanical Engineer first and foremost, his books were written by a mythical demi-god named Timoshenko. One had to go to MIT, I learned, because you'd need four years of college to be able to understand and use these books correctly.

I picked up a bit, helping him design and document a solar panel support frame. Once he explained what the symbols in the equation stood for, and how to find them, I could solve these very simple problems, and I could instantly see that, for example, having multiple support beams caused the equations to get incredibly complicated. (I asked him how people solved those problems, and he said, "Ah, that's when you have to either be very clever, or find someone else who is." He knew a lot of very smart people. One guy could solve almost any differential equation. One thing I was good at, in college, and am still, at Apple, is knowing which people to call to ask the Really Hard Questions.)

Later I found out that most people in his era avoided these problems entirely, but that he'd been one of the pioneers trying to figure out how to get computers to solve the problem. He had a framed letter from the director of the computer "laboratory" at the major defense contractor he worked at, asking to explain why he used more computer time (which was billed in increments of tenths of seconds, back then) than the entire rest of the company. He'd written a FORTRAN program to solve one of these difficult sets of equations. He was attempting to calculate the exact resonant frequencies of an airplane wing. Nowadays, you can use commercial software to solve these kinds of things, apparently in a day or less, but you still have to be pretty darn smart to know how to use the software and get an answer that is not just "Garbage In-Garbage Out.")

My father helped design a bunch of things related to missiles. I am very opposed to these sorts of things, but I still have a great deal of pride in his achievements. He was a member of the team that figured out how to cover missile silos with concrete protective covers, and move them aside quickly when it was time to launch. He called a high school buddy who knew someone who knew about how to make very large, very strong, springs, and it turns out the key is a funny phrase -- "shot peening" -- that I'd heard in the liner notes of a rock and roll singer who grew up next to a factory where they made the springs, and that this process produced, as a side effect, amazing and mysterious noises. No kidding.

My father worked on a way to send stuff to the moon, using a tulip-petal enshrouded projectile, where the petals would unfurl and become landing gear designed to "crush up" and absorb almost all of the impact force. It was never used by the United States, but was later used by the Russians. Was it re-invented, or pilfered? Who knows. I think it was mentioned as being considered in the recent Mars trips, before they settled on the "air bags" idea. My father thought that was quite audacious -- designing something that would actually work, on Mars, was quite an engineering challenge.

My father's favorite achievement -- he spent several months collecting information and crunching numbers to determine the surprisingly low cost ($1 million per mile) of putting the MX "Cruise" missiles on locomotive railroad trains in the desert in New Mexico. (Since the Russians could not know precisely where the missiles were, they'd have to devote many, many warheads to blanketing an entire region. It was actually cheaper and more effective than hardened silos.) Apparently President Reagan held up a copy of the report my dad had written, and it was mentioned in The New York Times.

My father also loved to work hard. He bought a plot of land in the almost uncharted woods of Harold Parker State Forest, and cut a road up the side of a hill over the course of many weekends. He felled tree after tree, and eventually got a pal with some kind of heavy equipment to stack up all the trees into a pile, and then started the real work. He designed the house, had the walls fabricated in a factory, and then supervised as it was brought out and assembled on-site. His high standards resulted in a lot of labor-intensive craftsmanship, including plaster walls and cathedral ceilings with extra-thick insulation and california redwood plank ceilings. (At the time, redwood planks were inexpensive and plentiful. If the house is ever demolished, I know that the reclamation value of that lumber should pay for a year of college, maybe more.)

The town turned out to be a very progressive liberal town called Andover, Massachusetts, and is now one of the more prosperous suburbs of Boston. I remember the excellent schools and beautiful woods in which I spent thousands of hours. Only very recently did he finally sell his excess land to a developer, who squeezed in five giant houses on an acre each, after putting in a much nicer road. (After much consideration, it was named Coderre Way.)

I will miss my father very much.

Gear pr0n of the day

2009-10-26T23:31:27Z

iPhone programming book has a great idea: Each key idea in a working program. I hope it's as good as it sounds: http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=9780137058426

Pocket digital oscilloscope is $90: Only NINETY DOLLARS? Can I buy two and use them in 3D http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/micro-digital-storage-oscilloscopedso-nano-p-512.html

Hobby table saw that is 100% pure WANT: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/10/electricity-free_tables_aw.html

Without Comment

2009-10-24T20:08:32Z

http://www.librarything.com/blog/2009/09/geeks-vs-nerds-hard-data.php

Never got around to writing a comment, but it's funny and interesting, so...

Coolness of the moment

2009-10-22T23:34:41Z

http://www.physorg.com/news175446089.html

I think I know how this works -- how do you think it works?

Magic Mouse Product Announcement Reactions

2009-10-21T08:08:44Z

APPLE: We've shipped a new mouse that has lasers and multi-touch, just like Microsoft's demo last month, only for reals.

BLOGGER 1: It's not the tablet that we've been PROMISED for 800 YEARS!!! WAHH!!!

BLOGGER 2: Why doesn't it have the following 137 other ports? BUT DELL....

BLOGGER 3: This was exactly like what the rumors sites predicted. Except that they predicted that the mouse would recharge itself wirelessly, and didn't predict the multi-touch, laser part. YAWWWWNNNNN!!!!

BLOGGER 4: Everyone who likes these things is a mindless Appal Fanboi!!!!!! And Windows 7.5, which comes out sometime in the next decade, will have killer new features, just like that product mockup that MS leaked last year.

Five New Macintosh Games I've Mostly Liked

2009-10-16T23:29:50Z

"Games on a Mac?" Yes, really. These all have free demos.

Little Space Duo is a puzzle-adventure that requires a small amount of eye-hand coordination, so I suck at it. But the puzzly bits are good -- you play two characters, a little girl, and a floating robot, who are stuck in a cargo hold of an alien ship, and must turn off all the power switches to get out. The robot, unfortunately, has no hands, and the little girl, unfortunately, cannot float, so they have to work together. Yeah, the drawings of the girl are a little wooden, but this is not much of an issue in the actual game.

Return to Mysterious Island is a point and click adventure set on a Jules Verne-inspired desert island. Figure out how to make fire, cook food, and eat! Woo! The visuals are great. You click to move from spot to spot, and each spot is a 360 degree panorama including animation and directional stereo sound. There's an inventory system that allows you to combine items to make other items in a way that allows the combinations to be undone, so objects are frequently used more than once. The Secrets of Da Vinci is another title from the same publisher.

The Three Musketeers is a top-down role playing adventure game featuring some pretty slick animations and easy-peasy minigames (tennis, poker) and a simple combat system to add to the excitement of spending hour after hour going from one end of Olde Paris to the other -- AND BACK. Also, people don't seem to mind when you walk into their houses and rifle through their crates and chests, but almost all of what you find is stinky old clothes, worth at most a franc or two at the market. I actually had a surprising amount of fun playing the demo, and hope to luck into getting it for cheaper than the $25 official purchase price.

Machinarium is another point and click adventure, featuring robots in a world of junk. It's charming and hard.

Two quick notes about iPhone Apps that are pretty exciting

2009-10-16T22:17:40Z

If you're a programmer, you probably already heard these, but they are interesting to non-programmers:

1) Apple announced that they would allow in-app purchasing in free apps.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO HUMANS: Currently, if you want to try a game without buying it, you have to find the "Lite" version and then download it for free, then, when the game is over, go back to the app store and pay for (and download) an entirely separate game.

The new thing will be a game that's free, and when you hit the end of the demo, a dialog appears allowing you to purchase the rest of the game. Click once and you go back to playing, and your iTunes account pays the author.

This is much simpler for users, and should mean that more people will end up buying the game.

It also allows for a different kind of application, what I call, "Free Toolbox, Tools Extra." For instance, catbear's iPhone sketching app could be free, including basic paper and pencil tools. You might pay extra for color paint, canvas drawing surface, and an "automatic line tracer" tool to turn a picture you took into a simplified line drawing -- a "potion of instant drawing skills."

2) O'Reilly is publishing a book about how to make iPhone apps using programming stuff normally used by web applications.

Tech details: It boils down to programming in Javascript, with a handful of other tricks to gloss over the fact that the app is not absolutely the same as a regular app. (Almost all of the pain of Javascript comes from making one Javascript program run on 8 different web browsers, but iPhone has just one browser!)

WHAT THIS MEANS TO PROGRAMMERS: You can make an app that completely circumvents the App Store. You can create a program that is pretty much a "real iPhone app." It can store itself, and its data, locally, and take over the whole screen, and get access to the special iPhone hardware. It won't be quite as slick-looking, but hey, it's actually easy and fun to program Javascript.

WHAT THIS MEANS TO HUMANS: You might someday see websites that offer iPhone programs other than the Apple App store. Maybe some of these apps will be pretty good, but I bet most of them are made by hobbyists, and smell like it. But that's OK, it makes the programmers REALLY HAPPY.

Seed Bomb Season

2009-10-05T06:10:11Z

American Meadows has their wildflower seed mix on sale for $17/lb, which is a huge discount. (Look for "Fall Maximum Wildflower Seed Mix") I take it this is a mix of all their leftovers from this year, so there will be many, many different kinds of plants in the mix. Some might not be native to the area, but those ones probably won't take hold.

Seed bombs can be made by mixing 2 parts seeds, 3 parts compost, and then when that's mixed up good, mix with 5 parts powdered clay. (Yes, this is a bit tricky to obtain. Art supply stores have it, but might want you to buy a huge sack. I lucked out, and a friend was able to get me 10 lbs or so for almost-free.)

Anyway, once you've got that mixed up, add just enough water to make a stiff batter that can be molded into balls. Make balls 1-2" in diameter and let them dry overnight.

Put them in a sack, and when you find a vacant lot, toss in some seed bombs onto the dirt, hopefully 1 per square foot, but randomness is cool. The clay exterior keeps the birds and field rodents from eating the seeds up. When the rains hit, the clay will disintegrate and the seeds will be able to grow. Some won't survive, but some will, and the compost gives them a good head start.

I'm going to bomb the bare dirt shoulders on the roads near the house. With any luck, I'll get them out before the rains. I'll try to remember to post how much volume a pound of seeds is, and just how much other stuff you need -- and how many bombs you end up with.

I was not that interested, but

2009-10-01T19:47:48Z

Some friends of mine have been the victims of unwanted sexual contact. Therefore, I am totally, 100% in support of putting Roman Polanski in prison.

Above and beyond that support, there's a very logical argument.

Polanski is guilty of the following:
• giving a 13 year old girl champagne and quaaludes
• raping her
• sodomizing her

Note that even at the time of the crime, an adult having sex with a minor is always considered rape, even if the minor was completely willing. However, there is no dispute that the minor did not consent. She yelled NO! cried, and begged to be released.

How do we know this? The victim swore to these things happening, and Polanski did not dispute her testimony. Polanski also confessed. He is definitively guilty.

Polanski also had an excellent lawyer at the time, who got Polanski a deal: minimal jail time in return for pleading guilty to a lesser charge. Instead of showing up and serving time, Polanski fled the country. In the ensuing decades, he has both downplayed the crime and flaunted the law. He fled to France, and France decided not to extradite him back to America.

Therefore, Polanski is also indisputably guilty of fleeing justice, a crime punishable by prison time. Defendants who miss a court date -- even if it were impossible for them to appear -- are almost automatically convicted to serve time for doing so.

There are a few mitigating factors:

• Some people argue about the severity of the crime. Others want to point out that the victim has forgiven him and been compensated in a civil court. Perhaps most insanely, some claim Polanski has "suffered enough." Many of these people are celebrity friends of his.

This is all 100% bullshit.. Even though, back then, both the chance of conviction and the punishments for rape were less severe, Polanski still confessed.

His friends won't be even brought up in court, because if a defendant brings in character witnesses, the prosecution is allowed to bring in counter-witnesses, and these will include literally dozens of reporters who wrote that he said things like, "Everyone wants to fuck little girls. The judge wants to fuck little girls."[1]

• Apparently, the way the "plea bargaining" system works, until the judge bangs the gavel at the end of the sentencing, any deal is tentative to the discretion of the judge. If the judge thinks the deal is not reasonable, he can ignore it.[2] There's some rumors going that Polanski might have heard that the judge wasn't going to honor the deal, and therefore was somehow justified in fleeing.

This simply isn't a useful argument. If one is charged, one must show up.

• Most disturbing, there have been allegations of the prosecutor influencing the judge.

This seems unlikely to have happened -- usually prosecutors will scrupulously avoid being alone in the same room with a judge -- but given the fact that it's been in the papers, this is going to be the major issue of the new hearings.

In any case, Polanski is still 100% guilty of fleeing justice. There is, in my naïve estimation, less than a zero percent chance of Polanski not going to prison for that.

The original charges will not be overthrown, however. It's just a question of how long the judge decides to make the sentence. I doubt, extremely, that the judge will allow the usual "time served" or "1 hour, er, 1 day" celebrity sentence. Doing so might make it easier to get Polanski released on appeal, and I can't imagine a judge that stupid.

Even if, like Al Capone, Roman Polanski gets locked up on a charge very different from the original crime he committed, away he will go, and some amount of justice will be served.

[1] I am not sure if prosecution can use recordings of the defendant as evidence against the character of the defendant.

[2] I am not sure exactly what happens next in such cases -- whether the judge simply announces a different sentence, or the whole court case goes back to the "How does the defendant plead?" stage. Not that it matters.

Sweeping up the sand

2009-09-28T02:34:57Z

Sweeping up the sand
Originally uploaded by haineux

Venerable Ngawang Chojor and Lama Paljor spent the last three days at the San Jose Museum of Modern Art, downtown, constructing a sand painting.

Jen and I were able to attend the deconstruction ceremony. First we prayed for all sentient beings to be helped by this action, then the monks cut and swept up the sand. Some of the sand was dumped in the nearby Guadelupe River, and some was passed out to the onlookers, including many children.

Seven more pictures in the set at Flickr.

EDIT: I apologize to the people I stood in front of. There must be many more, better pictures around. Also, if you want some of the sand, contact me.

The medium is the mass.age

2009-09-22T18:59:47Z

More so than it ever was before. I wonder how many listeners recognize the sound of the rotary phone being dialed, or the LP surface noise.

Opera in the Ball Park

2009-09-20T21:37:12Z

Curtain Call
Originally uploaded by haineux

28,000 opera fans watched a live simulcast of Verdi's Il Trovatore in AT&T Park, San Francisco. Four more pictures and comments at flickr.

A suitable Manhattan

2009-09-17T07:50:40Z

The Manhattan cocktail is one of the six great perfections of the cocktail world, one of the Mother Sauces of the sauced, if you will.

It requires four basic ingredients:

Whiskey (traditionally, Rye)
Vermouth (traditionally, sweet)
Bitters
A cherry

Like a Mother Sauce, though, there are myriad variations. My favorite fancy bar drink, the Bob Tail Nag from Absinthe Bar in San Francisco, is a Manhattan made with a peculiar italian digestif wine instead of the vermouth, and mint "bitters." Most Manhattans you get today will be made with Bourbon, because most bars simply don't stock Rye. And the Rob Roy cocktail, made with Scotch, is a notably excellent variant.

In any case, here's the Manhattan I have decided that is the House Version of Record. Naturally, it will require a bit of work to make. Most specifically, it will require the acquisition of 190 proof Everclear grain alcohol (or equivalent), and fresh cherries. Pit the cherries, put them in a jar, and add Everclear to cover. Steep for 3 days or more. What you end up with is a cherry liqueur at about, oh, 140 proof, and a cherry with a most delightful "hot" flavor provided by the alcohol alone.

Prepare a serving glass with a bar spoon of cherry liqueur and a cherry. Run a piece of orange rind around the rim of the glass.

Now, in a tall mixing glass full of ice, add one dash of bitters and a bar spoon of the cherry liqueur. I find Angostura bitters a little harsh, and prefer Fee Brothers' regular bitters.

Also add one dash of Fee Brothers Mint Bitters. This is basically an alcohol solution of mint flavor, with no actual bitterness to it, so if you can't get that brand, add a drop or two of peppermint extract, or peppermit schnapps, or just skip it. The flavor effect is subliminal.

Next, add 1 ounce of sweet vermouth. A doctor of my acquaintance assures me that an ideal sweet vermouth can be made by combining Noilly-Pratt and ~~Martini And Rossi~~ Cinzano in equal measure. I happened to have only the Martini and Rossi, and that was still OK. Stir a bit, until the outside of the glass gets cold.

Last add one ounce of Woodford Reserve bourbon (required for its pronounced flavor of oak), and one ounce of rye whiskey (I used Jim Beam Rye, which is the best inexpensive rye around). If you are lucky enough to obtain Fee Brother's Whisky Barrel Aged Bitters, you can use that and just the rye.

Stir well, and strain into the serving glass, and then spray some of the zest oil from some orange rind onto the surface of the drink. If you want to be a show-off, you can shoot the oil through the flame of a lit match. Then discard the orange rind and the match, but not in the drink.

Now sit down and watch Mad Men, or Sex in the City, or even Star Trek TNG. As I am told, there is no illness that this drink cannot improve.

Beautiful, Incredible, Great

2009-09-16T00:51:35Z

http://gizmodo.com/5360259/apple-is-amazing-awesome-beautiful-great-incredible-really-nice-and-unbelievable

Sand Mandala creation at SJ MOMA

2009-09-15T02:04:28Z

Some tibetan buddhist monks will create a sand mandala in the lobby of the San Jose Museum of Modern Art Setp 25-27, 2009

Four lines from the Diamond-Cutter Sutra

2009-09-08T05:34:55Z

A star, a visual aberration, a flame of a lamp,
An illusion, a drop of dew, or a bubble,
A dream, a flash of lightning, a cloud,
See all conditioned things as such!

And, to answer the obvious question, the title refers to a cutting implement which is made of unbreakable material (eg. diamond). Some people use the term "adamantine," which always reminds me of the Pop-Punk rocker.

An alternate translation of the sanskrit title (Vajracchedika Prajnaparamita Sutra) could also be "A Bolt of Lightning which Cuts Through Illusion, a Concise Instructional Scripture for the Perfection of Wisdom."

Japan...

2009-09-01T19:59:36Z

Magician confuses chimp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM-KQxgtOao

Tequila por mi amante, with free blender drinks on the side.

2009-08-30T02:00:45Z

So there is an excellent "recipe" floating around for Tequila por mi amante.

Well, it's not so much a recipe as a sublime set of brain-dead simple instructions:
1) Chop up strawberries
2) Put in a jar with tequila to cover
3) Store in fridge for three weeks, stirring occasionally.
4) Strain and age liqueur for 6 weeks or more.
5) Discard strawberries -- "They've given their all."

Well, except for that last part, which is WRONG. The strawberries have NOT given their all. They are now totally ready to be turned into FROSTY BLENDER DRINKS. (You can call this a "strawberry margarita," or not. I don't care.)

Simply add equal parts strained strawberries and ice to a blender, along with maybe a tablespoon of sour mix[1] per 4 ounces of strawberries, and a splash of water to make it blend well.

Blend. Taste. Add more sour mix if necessary. Enjoy!

[1] Proper sour mix is equal parts lemon/lime juice, and sugar syrup. Sugar syrup is equal parts sugar, and water, dissolved.

This being as it is, there is no excuse for buying something that comes in a flimsy bar bottle that has 18 ingredients, most of which are there to make the liquid a suitable color and consistency, and give the finished product the half life of a Twinkie. You won't see the sour mix after it's blended, and you don't need the preservatives.

If you don't have sour mix, just add some lemon juice and some dissolved sugar to the blender. Yes, you can use the cheap lemon juice that comes in the big bottle, if you have to, but squeezing a real lemon will taste a lot better. You can even just add some plain old table sugar to the blender. Your drink might be a bit crunchy until the sugar dissolves, but hey, it'll be entertaining.

You can have some wishes

2009-08-26T06:44:35Z

http://www.real-wishes.com/

What will you wish for? What shall I wish for?

App Store Flare-Up: FCC to pry

2009-08-25T02:30:11Z

A very reasonable case that could be made for having a very restrictive app store, as explained by an anonymous lawyer [1] http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_to_view_the_fcc_questions_for_apple/

Now, I do not know anyone that works in the iPhone App Store, and have been authorized by my employer to tell people that, so that right there is a clue. But this lawyer makes an excellent point that Apple has been absolutely clear to everyone that will listen that they consider their tight restrictions as a benefit to users, and the users, so far, have been pretty happy with that idea.

Personally, I have heard many, many complaints about how Apple has been "completely arbitrary" or even "evil" in rejecting apps. But my opinion, based on limited data, is that most of the stories trumpeted around to great outrage are, in fact, not entirely true. Phil Schiller, head of Apple marketing, disagreed with a published report recently, in a public comment, so it's either him lying, or the developers, and I bet it's not him, because Apple would suffer greatly if he is lying.

Be that as it may, I do understand that certain programmers and bloggers still think Apple is too restrictive about the App Store, and still get very worked up about it.

My suggestion is that those people should go write software for Android. First of all, that's a very open environment (except there are still restrictions) -- so any app you can write, you can sell, and second, Android could use a few thousand more apps just on general principle. Those people, if they are pissed at Apple, should find a simple game, and port it to Android, for free or for pay.

Doing so will send a clear message to Apple, even more so if Android gets significant market share. (Whining in blogs only annoys your few remaining friends, so having finished my own whining, and in the process commending this excellent article to your attention, I shall stop.)

[1] Presumably anonymous because naming yourself as author of such a document is a ticket to being prevented from doing lawyer work in that area.

[2] Disclosure: I haven't actually used an Android, and haven't written software for iPhone or Android.