wiredfool

For a the winter “I want quick soup” mood. Everything is canned, adjust to taste.

• 1 28oz can tomatoes, whole or diced.
• 1 (14oz?) can corn
• 1 (14oz?) can whole cooked beans, drained (I use a 3 bean blend)
• 1 quart veggie broth

Conviently enough, all of the above are found in 2 aisles of Trader Joes. Finely diced potatoes can be good in this too. You may need a little more liquid if you use potatoes too.

Add the tomatoes, smoosh or cut them up if they’re whole. Add corn liquid, beans minus liquid, and broth. Simmer for 1/2 hour or so. You may need to go longer if your beans are still really firm. The tomatoes will start to break down a bit. Add the corn near the end so that it doesn’t go to mush.

Seasonings:

• Chipotle
• Salt
• Lime Juice

All to taste. Probably about a tablespoon of the lime and chipotle, a couple of teaspoons of salt. But do taste it as you go.

This is a pancake recipe that is good enough that I normally eat the pancakes without syrup or butter. And I’m a sugar freak.

The Core:

• 2 cups flour*
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 3 eggs seperated
• 2 cups milk
• oil, 1 tbsp more or less.
• Some salt, less than tsp.

The Flavorings:

• 1/3 cup Brown Sugar
• 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• Other seasoning to taste: nutmeg, cardamom, whatever you have that’s interesting.

A word about the flour. You want something with flavor that doesn’t have a lot of protein, like bread flours. Too much protein will make your pancakes rubbery instead of tender. Depending on where you are in the country, you may need to seek out something with less gluten than the ordinary all purpose flours. I use Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry Flour, which is 10% protein instead of 13% for their normal flours. And a good flavor.

To make:

Mix the dry ingredients. Seperate the eggs, add the yolks to the mixture and beat the whites till they are stiffish or your hand gets tired. Mix in the other wet ingredients till you have a good batter, then fold in the egg whites.

Cook like pancakes. (nawww. you don’t say.) With a good nonstick pan and the right temperature, you don’t need any additional oil in the pan. Too cool and they’ll stick, too warm and they turn brown fast.

If you’re not into following recipies, the only proportions that are really essential are the baking powder, flour and milk. Everything else is open to intrepretation.

This started as something from the Tassajara bread book.

I’ve posted some of the better pictures from my Northern Ireland vacation.

Dont’ know why, but one of my sites is generating the following URL,

http://laquintagroup.net/l5Press/public/login?http://laquintagroup.net/l5Press/member/signup

whether I click on the automated signup link or whether I directly type in:

http://laquintagroup.net/l5Press/member/signup

This appears to be the behaviour occuring after the plugIn was activated. Any ideas why this is occuring?

More importantly, how can one manage the automated membership registration process in such an instance?

Every so often as you drive around Northern Ireland, you come across something that is ancient. Broken towers, incomplete walls, or the remains of castles. They are a reminder that some people came here before you and had completely different concerns.

This window is part of Carrickfergus castle. Other windows of the castle have somewhat realistic plastic soldiers with rifles. A reminder that Ireland does not have a particularly peaceful history.

I’m heading out on vacation to Northern Ireland for a week or so. Posts here will probably be slow for a good reason, instead of the usual neglect and work and gardening and biking and such.

The Saw Doctors, from Monday evening at Bumbershoot. Played for 2 hours in the wind and rain putting on a very good show.

I was a little dissapointed in the offerings at bumbershoot this year: fewer stages and higher prices. On monday, I only ended up seeing 5 shows. There was a huge hole in the middle of the day that was filled with a good rain shower. Rockin Teenage Combo was fun, El Vez was quite political, and on the ‘right’ side. He had a short talk/song on erosion of liberties and what this country is supposed to be. I also enjoyed the Derailleurs and the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra. Both nice upbeat bands.

This post has been brought to you by the wayport sea-tac airport airport network. It’s not free, but at $7 for a day (or the two hours that I’m waiting. 5 min at checkin, 2 minutes at security. 2:30 is the time to arrive for the London flight.)

I’ve just revised my “Patch Tool” to include scripts to dump a table to disk as a file system tree and read it back into a database. It saves files as text or xml whenever possible, and base64 encoded binary as a last resort.

This should allow the conventional source code management systems to help manage Frontier/Radio scripts. It can also serve as a human readable backup for configuration information or website contents.

I want a smite key on the keyboard. Next to the LART key. Near the Cluebar. Most sysadmins will agree with me, that what ever I might do is entirely justified. This would be a good birthday present, for those taking notes at home. Unfortunately, I needed it this morning.

This morning I find that someone has made my RAQ an open proxy (could be Sun, could be a cracker, haven’t gotten that far yet). It’s like an open relay, but for web requests. So something like 50 ip addresses out there are using my T1 to anonymously surf porn. 50 big ones, and a score of little fry.

My connection, My machines, My vengence. If there’s any possible excuse for DOSing somone off the net, this is one of them. They fall into two categories. Mostly foreign dialups and ()wn#d cable modem connected computers. I don’t have time to track them down, I just want to shoot first and ask questions later. In the case of the ()wn#d boxes, I’d probably be doing the rest of the net a favor.

Last weekend’s trip through Central Washington was the first time that I had been to the Walla Walla area in 5 years or so. The last time, I was in a van with a bunch of crazy cyclists from the UW going out for a race weekend.

It has changed. The wierdest change is the wind farms. I started noticing them at dusk when the aircraft warning strobes kicked on. Imagine a hundred strobes in irregular patterns coming from a hill where you can only barely make out that there is something other than grass. Looking back into the setting sun, you could see some of the turbines silhouetted against the fading orange glow.

The other thing I noticed was the smell of grapes. Every few miles there would be another vineyard with the sweet smell of growing grapes. I don’t think I’ve smelled them since I was 5, when we had some grape vines on the back fence at home. Yet I knew instantly what the smell was.

Somewhere in the middle of Idaho this weekend, I came upon a sign from above.

Well not just somewhere, It’s on Highway 12 heading east to Lolo pass. (From Lewiston Id to Missoula Mt.) And of those 77 miles of winding roads, there are no stoplights, or stop signs, cellphone towers, or billboards. For 65 miles, there are no services.

And on Saturday, there were a total of 4 cars to pass, about one group every 20 miles.

Once you cross Lolo pass, it’s just a few miles downhill into the Bitterroot Valley. I might also point out the speed limit on the Montana side is 70 mph on a 2 lane road.