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I have to hand it to my teacher; she manages to make every lesson productive even if life has prevented me from having gotten any practice time in the past week.
I'm actually starting to be able to play music in some semblance of proper time when sight-reading a new piece. Exciting! Also having the fledgling beginnings of being able to read ahead in the piece while playing, which is also Very Good News.
Still being gently reminded to grab hold of every tune and play it LIKE A BOSS. Music sounds better when played confidently, even with the occasional missed or slightly out of tune note! ^_^;
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I realized something last week while chatting over in the #dreamwidth-bitch IRC channel. When it comes to things people share with me, I don't really have an overshare zone. I mean, I watch what I say & try not to expose people to stuff they don't want to find out about. But incoming? I can't remember the last time someone tripped my TMI-meter. I may have had one at some point but I think I lost it somewhere along the way.
Maybe this has something to do with having been on the internetz for 15 years or so and being exposed to the kind of frank honesty that a lot of folks evince online. Even back before the days of blogs, I remember some people displaying a combination of self-knowledge and frank honesty that I really envied. ISTR reading one person's homepage, whence they described their typical day; it began with something along the lines of "Wake up, have a wank, get out of bed, ..." and I did a double-take, not because I found the disclosure that they were having a wank shocking or upsetting -- I didn't in the least -- but that they were forthright & open enough to put that fact online in public for all to read.
People have sex, periods, gross bodily functions, sordid histories, inappropriate fantasies about the people in their lives, and embarrassing moments at the supermarket. That's life! In all of its bodily and erotic and sometimes unflattering and imperfect glory. While the specifics are going to vary, these kinds of things happen to all of us in some way, shape, or form. So while I respect that not everybody wants to hear every last glorious detail of my sinus cold or ice-cream induced digestive difficulties, if there's something you want to get out in the open, don't feel compelled to hold back on my account. I'm only human, and I'm willing to bet you're only human too.
The ever-wonderful ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dingsi
nominated me for the
love meme
that's currently going on courtesy of littlebutfierce.
If anyone feels inclined to add a nice blurb, I would certainly be
quite flattered, but even better, maybe you'd like to nominate someone
else or send them a bit of joy? jjhunter
has the
index if so. =)
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<firestormink> Dear streetcar, whenever you are ready.
<@shadowspar> @firestormink don't worry; when the streetcar finally comes, I'm sure it will show its contrition by bringing three more with it.
<@firestormink> @shadowspar They travel in packs, for protection, and to hunt.
Also, like inoru_no_hoshi mentioned in IRC, we need
a qdb for twitter. =)
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First thing. For those who use vim but might not have known about it: vim has a feature called digraphs which gives you a way to enter letters with diacritics (eg ä), symbols (eg ✓), and other characters that aren't on your keyboard. It does have its idiosyncracies, but it's fairly reasonable once you start to toy with it a bit.
How it works: first, enter the compose key, which by default is Control-K. Then enter the two characters of the digraph, and you'll get the single character that's defined in the digraphs table for that particular combination.
So, for instance:
- Ctrl-K + o + - ⇒ ō
- Ctrl-K + e + : ⇒ ë
- Ctrl-K + c + , ⇒ ç
- Ctrl-K + o + C ⇒ ℃
- Ctrl-K + P + d ⇒ £
- Ctrl-K + 1 + 2 ⇒ ½
The command :digraphs will show you everything in the digraphs table.
Last thing and the point of all that preparatory context above: there is a terrible problem with the set of digraphs as it ships with vim. Clearly the sequence < + 3 should compose to the character ♥, but it doesn't by default. To remedy this horrible shortcoming, add the line
digraph <3 9829
to your vim config file. (9829 is the unicode decimal identifier for the character ♥.)
I opted not to go to the Remembrance Day service today. Instead, as is my custom, I'll have a small private memorial wherever I am at 1100.
I remember that "supporting the troops" includes valuing and honouring them enough not to order them into battle save for the gravest of circumstances. War is a last resort to address an extraordinary problem when all other means are exhausted, and we do ourselves, our soldiers, and the rest of the world the gravest wrong should we think it otherwise.
I remember that "supporting the troops" includes doing everything in our power to help them and their families when they're injured or killed while serving. Just as sure as we put them into harm's way, we're responsible for what happens to them when we do.
I remember that "supporting the troops" includes making our military a supportive place for them to serve. Threats from without are enough to worry about without having to worry about threats from within.
I remember that the soldiers of old embarked on what they considered a noble enterprise, and were thrust into unimaginable hardship and suffering as a result. I honour their memory and their sacrifice by upholding the freedoms they fought for.
I remember that war is a consequence of us failing at the central tenet of basic humanity; at treating other people as fellow human beings; of recognizing our commonalities and reaching out to one another as equals and friends.
And finally I remember that Never Again is not just a catchphrase, but a call to action.
...and all that means so much more to me than a bunch of longwinded speeches by blowhard politicians who've never been there and likely never will.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
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There is a Rant, Gentle Readers, that I have long avoided subjecting you to; a Rant about how Certain Persons, helpful though they may be, invariably fall upon my Domestic Goodes, steal them away, and turn them to Ends such as Home Improvement, from whence they never return. I speak, for instance, of having all Laundry Baskets and Plasticware Disappear from the Laundry Room and Kitchen, respectively, only to make their reappearance in the Storage Room or Garage, having there been Converted to Storage Containers; or of Finding one's Prized Corkscrew, long having Vanished from the Kitchen under circumstances of Great Mystery, bravely serving in the Shed as an Opener of Painte Cans, and covered in Various Wondrous Shades of Latex Painte therefrom.
Tonight, however, I am not Ashamed to say that I had My Retribution, in that I had opportunity to Abscond with an unattended Painte Tray, and turn it to mine own Devious Ends; namely, the Storage of Rags having been Used for Cleaning as they wait upon the Chance to make into the Laundry for Washing. Vengeance!
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The ever-wonderful zarhooie has just posted one of them there friending memes. Go check people out! Get some new friends! (Erm...)
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Shaye - Happy Baby on YouTube.
Shaye was a three-woman supergroup comprised of Kim Stockwood, Damhnait Doyle and Tara MacLean, each amazing musicians in their own right. "Happy Baby" was their biggest hitting single, but there's a lot more to recommend them. Their rendition of On and On is surreal and awesome, and Lake of Fire, the title track off of their second CD, is tantalizing and seductive and just plain amazing.
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Checked in on LiveJournal just now on account of their latest security fail, and elected to delete my account there rather than keep it hanging around. I don't use it any more, so it doesn't represent anything more than a potential liability anyway.
I'd considered doing so (and really should have done) a while back when it was pointed out to me that they'd started running really obnoxious ads, like full-page / interstitial ones, or banners with scantily-clad imvu anime icons. No, I don't see that stuff myself (I've not touched the site in the past 18 months, and I run NoScript anyway, which means most of the crap doesn't load), but it still bothers me when they put stuff like that next to my smiling face and the words I wrote. I still like the people on LiveJournal, but the antics and long history of fail of LJ Corporate, not so much.
Thanks for coming out, LJ.
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Obscenely rich, completely vegan. An excellent way to get tofu into those who profess to loathe it. We had a family friend proclaiming how horrid tofu was as he was working his way through his third slice of this.
(This is a very slightly tuned-up version of a recipe in the Rebar Cookbook. Said cookbook is Full of Good and Wonderful Things, and I will not stop plugging it until everyone has a copy. =)
Crust:
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 1 cup spelt flour (or unbleached white flour)
- ⅓ cup toasted cashews (or substitute whole-wheat flour)
- ⅛ tsp salt (omittable)
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ¼ tsp powdered ginger
- ¼ cup vegetable shortening
- 3 tbsp vegetable oil
- ½ tsp vanilla
Filling:
- 1 tsp vanilla
- ¾ cup sugar
- 2½ boxes extra-firm silken tofu
- 1lb dark chocolate
- ⅛ tsp salt (omittable)
- 2 tsp espresso powder (optional)
Crust:
Preheat oven to 350℉. Grease an 8" springform pan.
Place sugar, flour, cashews, salt, cinnamon & ginger in a food processor. Whiz until finely ground. Add shortening; process until well blended. Turn out into a bowl; add oil & vanilla. Mix well. Press the mixture into the bottom of the springform pan. Bake for 15 minutes; set aside & let cool.
Filling:
Drain the tofu; purée in a food processor until smooth. Add sugar, vanilla & salt; mix well. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Fold the melted chocolate into the tofu mixture & mix thoroughly.
Pour the filling over the baked crust. Bake for 35min or until firm. Cool completely on a wire rack. Refrigerate overnight before serving. Omnomnom.
Home sick today. (No, not that kind of sick. Strongest thing I drank yesterday was root beer.) Thankfully only "stay home from work and don't make everyone else sick" kind of sick, not "flat on my ass incapacitated" sick.
As much as I was tempted to curl up in bed and try to get into reading h/c fic, closing up the computer and sleeping through the morning probably did more for my aching head, throat, and stomach. =)
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Thanks for the paid time, man! If y'all will excuse me, I have to get to work filling up my paltry stash of icons now. ^_^
I posted this recipe a while back in a comment to an entry in
![[community profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
omnomnom.
Now that it's Thanksgiving
weekend and we have a bunch of beets from the last week of our CSA for
the year, I've been looking high and low for it, so here it is for future
reference.
I'm not a huge fan of beets, but these are really nice and really simple. They go well in a salad, or you can use them as a side. It's a fairly large recipe but it halves. We get tiny beets from our CSA, so we just peel them and cut the larger ones down to 1cm/½" cubes.
Orange-glazed beets
(from Vegan With a Vengeance)
- 1½lb / ¾kg beets (3-4 average sized); peeled, quartered, sliced ~¼"/½cm thick
- 1 cup / 250ml orange juice
- 1 tsp / 5ml orange zest
- 1 tsp / 5ml maple syrup
- 1 tsp / 5ml salt
Put everything into a large pan, cover, and bring to a low boil. Simmer for around 12 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover & reduce to give a nice glaze.
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(Note: Trigger warning for transphobia, homophobia, and general assholery on some of the linked news articles.)
It's hilarious, at least after a fashion, how the conservative types always seem far more obsessed with sex than the racy lefties they decry. To wit: one Tim Hudak. Amongst other things, during this election campaign he denounced a sex-ed curriculum that the Liberals never implemented, and defended his party's use of misleading, homophobic and transphobic flyers to do so. After failing to win the election but successfully narrowing the seat difference between his Conservatives and Premier Dalton McGuinty's reigning Liberals, he held a press conference where:
...he said the Premier would be on a very short leash.
He said this a lot. At least a dozen times in 10 minutes.
Erm, you don't say.
Sometimes he noted the leash would not just be short, but tight.
Is it just me, or...
"Dalton McGuinty is willing to do backroom deals", he said.
O RLY.
You might as well just break out your fetish gear and get it over with, Hudak. Slashfic, anyone?
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Audrey Tang is far and away the most awesome hacker I've ever had the privilege to have worked with. She's best known for creating Pugs, a perl6 implementation in Haskell. Though it's now semi-retired in favour of the newer implementations that it had a role in inspiring, it represented a huge leap forward and a quantum shift in Perl6 development at a time when enthusiasm around Perl6 was sorely flagging. She was the first CPAN contributor to have uploaded 100 modules. She's the key figure behind Perl 5's internationalization, as well as the i18n of many, many other individual pieces of software. She was part of the committee that designed the Haskell 2010 standard, and has made innumerable other contributions to the open source community.
I never got seriously involved with Pugs, but many of the things Audrey did with it shaped my thinking around open source, community, and how we should collaborate. First was the idea that a project should be optimized for fun (-Ofun1), not for control, or strict adherence to the founder's vision, or anything else. Second, whereas many open source projects keep a very tight rein on who has commit access and make getting a commit bit an arduous process, Audrey aggressively gave out commit bits to anybody who happened to wander by in the general vicinity of Pugs. Got a great idea? Here's a commit bit, go implement it. Notice something missing in the docs? Here's a commit bit; go add it. Ranting in IRC that something's not working? Here's a commit bit; go fix it. Extending this trust makes people feel welcome and want to contribute. It fosters an air of community instead of making prospective new participants feel as though they are looking at climbing (or worse, building) a pyramid.
Audrey would likely demur at my calling her brilliant, but it's a fitting descriptor for her. She has a unique and penetrating insight into code and an uncanny knack for encouraging the people who write it. I count myself as fortunate to have been able to work with her and to be part of a few of the communities she's had such a profound impact on.
1 -Ofun: -O is the compiler option that tells it how you want your code optimized. Audrey's presentation on -Ofun [pdf] talks more about how to maximize the amount of fun in your software project.
Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging about women in science and technology. You can find more information at the Finding Ada website.
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It's been thoroughly inculcated in me that one never speaks ill of the dead, so I'm reticent to post anything at all about Steve Jobs. And while the vast majority of what I have to say about him is positive, it's not unreservedly so, so I'm just going to leave it at that.
He had a complex and world-changing life. Remember him how you want.
Grant loaves: super-easy to make whole wheat bread with a super-dense texture (almost muffin-like, with a crisp, substantial crust). No kneading. Minimal time commitment - scratch to bread in 90 minutes.
This is a dense bread that goes well with butter, jam, or a nice cheese. Also great with soups, stews, and the like. Won't fit in a garden-variety toaster, but toasts up nicely in a toaster oven. Definitely not sandwich bread.
The original recipe appeared in a British cookbook published in the 1940s, written by Ms. Doris Grant. It's exactly the kind of bread recipe I'd be looking for if I were working shifts at the munitions factory but still expected to bake fresh bread for the family every day.
The recipe as I remember it, cut down to one loaf instead of the original batch of three:
- 1⅔ cups warm water (yeast-friendly; ~95-100℉ or ~38℃)
- 1 tsp brown sugar (the darker the better)
- 1 tsp yeast
- 4 cups whole-wheat flour
- 1 tsp salt
The temperature of all ingredients is key, so if you should happen to keep your flour in a coldroom or some such, bring it into the kitchen and let it warm up a bit.
Grease a loaf pan.
Stir the sugar into the water until dissolved, then add the yeast. Sift the flour and salt together into a bowl, or if you're like me, dump them both into a bowl and run a whisk through them a few times to mix. After about ten minutes or so, when the yeast is foamy and happy, make a well in the middle of the flour and pour the yeast & water in. Stir with a wooden spoon, working the dry outsides towards the center. Mix for about a minute. Again, if you bake like I do, you'll get annoyed with the stirring process after about 30 seconds and mix in the remaining dry bits with your hands. ^_^;
Form into a loaf and dump it into the greased loaf pan. Let rise in a warm place for ~30 minutes, until the loaf has increased in size by about a third.
While the bread is rising, preheat your oven to 400℉. Bake for 40 minutes. When done, the loaf should have a substantial crust and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool.
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k, I was never a Delicious user, and I dwell on the very outskirts of fandom, so take this for what it's worth. When Delicious came down crashing down in a burning wreck, though, it was made adamantly clear to me how much of the collective memory of the internet resides there. And I don't really have words right now to describe how this is glomming together in my brain, but the current Delicious fail and subsequent mass exodus / influx to Pinboard is playing out as leading to a Fandom Saves The Internet type scenario. ^_^;
You know how sometimes you get the impression that you're watching history in the making, even though the larger world isn't taking notice? Or that something that's perceived as being of modest significance is actually capital-I Important? Yeah.
Anyway, a few links:
-
an epic link roundup
by bookshop
- Pinboard gift exchange for fen who may not be in a position to ante up cash money for an account
-
Also, the whole thing summed up as a
wonderful play in one act. (Thanks skud for the pointer)
Mock if you want on account of it being John Denver, but I think this is a really beautiful song. One day I will play it on viola.
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Running Debian squeeze? Using the supplied Iceweasel as your browser? Did your "It's all text!" plugin installed from the Firefox add-ons site recently quit working? Uninstall it and install the package xul-ext-itsalltext instead, and you'll get a version that works with your Iceweasel/Firefox.
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One of my favourite classical numbers. (This video includes No. 6 as well, which is also nice, though I'm not over the moon about it.)
Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 5 & 6 on Youtube.
When I hear this piece, it is punctuated in my head with words that cannot be repeated in polite company.
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So, over in #dreamwidth-bitch, we were geeking around about the probabilities involved with RWHell. Interesting little snippet of how Hell reacts when you feed it an item, gleaned from a brief glance at the source code:
( Probably only of interest to Dreamwidth IRC denizens... )Tags:
Some who live deserve death, and some who die deserve life -- can you give it to them? Then be not to eager to deal out death in judgement, for even the very wise cannot see all ends.
:Gandalf
Armies of darkness:
Forces of light:
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...though they've moved to a 12-month deferral. Which...yeah, whatever. Now celibate queer men can donate. Still, I suppose it is progress, after a fashion. There are rumours that a change might be in the works over here in Canada, too. I can only hope.
Meanwhile, I love how the lifetime ban on donations for MSM is buried in an obscure submenu about a dozen clicks into the Canadian Blood Services website, and it never seems to be mentioned in their breathless press releases about the urgency of giving blood. I guess having the message "don't bother coming to the clinic, homo, 'cuz we'll throw your gay-ass blood right in the trash" splashed all over the place doesn't make for good PR.
ETA: WTF, the UK still has a permanent ban on sex workers...so even if you quit the biz an eternity ago and test clean, the blood people are still there with a big scarlet letter for you. FFS.
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Inasmuch as the Dos Equis Guy commercials feature Formulaic Beer-Commercial Fail (about which I've previously vented here), this is still a good quote:
(On pickup lines:)
There's a time and place for them.
The time...is never.
You can figure out the place on your own.
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Courtesy of Terrance Simien & the Zydeco Experience.
Dance Everybody (mp3)
Oldest Living Tree (mp3)
I love this stuff; makes me feel alive. If it sounds good to you, definitely go check out one of their shows. I promise you won't be disappointed. =)
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Douglas Crockford whines that people have baggage.
Isn't it kind of hypocritical, or at least wilfully ignorant, to build a social media website -- something of which people are a central component, and getting them in the door key to its success -- and then complain that these damned people don't behave deterministically and don't fit neatly into the system like nice little cubes?
Well, surprise! People are mushy bags of mostly edge cases, and if you're building social software, you're going to bloody well have to deal with it.
Damn users, getting to have opinions about software, instead of just using it or not!
⁰: Self-loading cargo: airline industry slang for passengers.
This...just...I don't even know where to start with this. And it's not even something horrible, it's...well...I'll just tell the story.
Anyway, this guy apparently had a buddy blow his mind with a "fucking brilliant" vacation responder. Go check it out, then come back.
Apparently "off the grid" means something radically different to me than it means to them, because here an "I'm off the grid" vacation message would look more like
Hi. I'm currently out of the office for an off-the-grid vacation in Lake Superior Provincial Park. If you have a really, truly urgent matter that needs an immediate response from me, you are out of luck, because there's not a chance in hell that I'm going to have any kind of usable cellphone signal where I am. Knowing this, if you still need to get a hold of me, you are going to have to come up with something damn good -- good enough to convince the park rangers to tramp several dozen kilometers through the wilderness after me and pull me out of the bush. Good luck! Cheers, Rick
To be clear, I don't think that Kopelman or Feld are somehow wrong or outlandish; I'm glad they have their autoresponder and it works for them. They just live in a very, very different world from the one in which I reside.
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The Nymwars rage on. Much has already been said, and I'm not sure how much this will add to it. However, there are a few things I really want to get off my chest about G+.
The importance of the ability to choose your own name, psuedonym,
or other identifier has been extensively covered by the tireless work
of skud, the contributors over at
My Name Is Me,
the crowd at Geek Feminism,
Botgirl Questi,
Identity Woman,
and
many
other
folks.
But -- I just want to state how insulting, how infuriating, how incredibly patronizing and condescending it is for someone to tell you that they know better than you do what your name should be.
And how belittling, how othering is it to have someone tell you that there is something wrong with your name; that your name is not right; that your name and the identity tied up in it are invalid, or not adequately "real"; in need of alteration or repair?
IMNSHO, this kind of behaviour -- coming from an impersonal service like Google, no less -- is the height of disrespect and impudence, and it most certainly merits a rousing "fuck you".
How dare someone tell you that they know what your name is better than you do.
Second, in this video, Brad Horowitz mentions that minors (under 18 years) aren't allowed to use G+ yet, and says (jokingly or not) that there are no minors on the service at all. In the offline world, we all know how effective age controls have been at preventing determined underagers from getting hold of things like alcohol, tobacco, and porn. I'm sure keeping them out of G+ will be a veritable cake walk. Good luck with that.
Third, one of the arguments most frequently trotted out is that G+ is a private service. If you don't like it, don't join; they don't have any obligation to serve you. While this may be true after a fashion, think about how many private services you have to use in your day-to-day life to really function as a full member of society. Banks, telecom companies, couriers; hell, even retail stores. How would your life look without a bank account; without a phone, or internet access in your house; without the ability to easily buy products or services you need or want. While any private business can refuse to serve you for no reason whatsoever, in most jurisdictions anti-discrimination laws or human rights codes get created so that folks with unpopular attributes (you know, like being black, or queer, or an immigrant) can, at least in principle, access the private services they need to get by in day-to-day life.
We're not there yet on the frontiers of the Internet. We don't yet know what combination of private services will become well-nigh mandatory to fully participate in our digital society. Google Plus could very well end up being one of these, especially since it's now being touted as an identity service, and could eventually end up being a key part of things like job hunting or online payment.
Finally, the language that Schmidt and others use seems to suggest that they think of anyone who doesn't have some kind of strong identifier bound tightly to them as being "fake"; translucent; somehow less than a real person. This not-so-subtle implication is a crock of shit. Humanity's got on for thousands of years without wallet names; even more telling are the fleeting encounters you have with strangers every day. You may chance to exchange a smile, a scowl, a knowing glance, or a passing kindness with dozens of folks who are anonymous, or nearly so; and they are just as real, if not moreso, than some faceless executive who sits in an office and dictates policy about identity.
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So this happened to swim by in my Twitter feed:
New Approaches To Designing Log-In Forms
This kind of thing makes me want to metaphorically grab hold of the field of User Experience Design, tell it "Here, I have someone I'd like you to meet," and drag it over to the field of Security. The converse goes for Security when (for instance) its practitioners come up with an amazing new security procedure that no user will ever follow. In fact, a great many problems would be solved if we could but make a few more introductions between disciplines. Getting Software Development acquainted with fields like Ethics, Sociology, and Social Justice and concepts like privacy, identity, diversity, and accessibility would be a good start.
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Noticed a conversation on twitter right now where two acquaintances of mine were talking about exchanging business cards at conferences, both of the dead-tree and vcf varieties. It came as rather a surprise to me that people at tech conferences are still exchanging business cards. Who really does that any more?
When I meet someone interesting in the tech scene for the first time, we essentially exchange URLs, because the vast majority of us seem to have some flavour of website/blog/profile/activity stream that links to most of the other personal information we care to publish. People I'm meeting in a "strictly professional" context get my twitter account. From there they can find my "professional" blog, which directly or indirectly links to GitHub, my résumé, a general idea of where I live (city & country) and my mobile #. Folks I'm more comfortable with probably get a link to this DW account, from whence they can also find flickr, last.fm, and so forth. Details like home phone number and exact physical address get given out on an as-needed basis.
How exactly does this tie in with how we see our own identity? I can't help but wonder if there's some kind of online-persona/offline-persona spectrum going on here, and what kind of identifiers we give people has to do with where we feel we mainly reside. There's a tie-in with wallet names and online handles here too. I think "shadowspar" is a rather puerile and somewhat meaningless handle, but back when I picked it (1999-2000-ish) it was essentially unique. If I tell someone that my nick is "shadowspar", and they feed that into a search engine, pages referencing me are largely what come out.
Dunno where I'm going with all this, it's just...business cards (at least the "traditional" variety, for some value of "traditional") seem to be a link to an offline identity, and just...that's not the world I live in any more.
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From this review of Becky Hogge's Barefoot into Cyberspace:
There's a not-so secret about activists that those pursuing anti-democratic policies have unfortunately spotted: they burn out. A trade association has its choice of professional lobbyists willing to be paid to argue the cause during working hours. The supply of people willing to donate their lives to sparking protest for little or no money is much smaller, however, and the toll is intense.
(Amongst other things, the idea of getting a law degree and leaping into the current Intellectual Property fray on the side of good has a great deal of appeal to me, and this is why. There are plenty of excellent law firms taking up the interests of the monied corporations, but few folks standing up for remixers, independent artists, consumers, and so forth -- almost nobody can afford to.)
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(Cross-posted from my "professional" DW.)
As you may or may not have already heard, LinkedIn recently added a new "feature" that allows them to use your name and image in their advertising. It is turned on by default, with no direct notification to the user that it has been added and activated.
This is an abuse of your trust. It is wrong.
You have authorized LinkedIn to do a certain set of things with your data, but they have gone and done something else with it; something to which you haven't consented. It is as though someone had asked to borrow your car to go grocery shopping but then took it bar-hopping instead.
It would be bad enough for any website to do this, but LinkedIn isn't just any social networking site -- it's a professional networking forum. Your presence on it is a living résumé. LinkedIn is the custodian of your professional reputation. Shouldn't they be handling it a little more respectfully than this?
What they should have done is to ask first, with the default being 'no'. Presumably, they knew that most people would either answer no if presented with this choice, or not answer at all -- thus removing the majority of their user base from this program and largely eliminating the additional ad revenue it would bring. This is a move that smacks of desperation; of a company that is ruthlessly trying to wring every possible cent of ad revenue out of its subscriber base.
I'm participating in one event that's using LinkedIn to organize, but after it's done, so is my LinkedIn account.
Thanks for coming out, LinkedIn.
(Originally from Health & Wellness magazine.)
- 1 cup quinoa
- 2 cups orange or pineapple juice
- ½ cup carrot, diced
- ½ cup red onion, diced
- 1 cup cucumber (~ ⅔ of an english cucumber)
- 1 ea red or green pepper, diced
- ½ cup celery, diced
- ¼ cup fresh coriander, chopped
- ¼ cup fresh mint
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- salt/pepper to taste
- Rinse quinoa, combine with juice, bring to a boil. Reduce heat & simmer, covered, until liquid is absorbed; ~15-20min. Let cool.
- Combine everything; adjust seasoning. Chill & serve.
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- Dressing
- 2 tablespoons white or red balsamic vinegar
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon pepper
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- Salad
- 1 cup dried lentils, sorted, rinsed
- 2 bell peppers, quartered lengthwise
- ¼ cup sliced green onions
- 2 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh basil
- 4 leaves of leaf lettuce (optional garnish)
- 2 oz. (1/2 cup) crumbled feta cheese
Procedure:
- In small nonmetal bowl, combine all dressing ingredients; blend well. Refrigerate.
- Heat grill. In medium saucepan, combine lentils and 3 cups of water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer 15 to 20 minutes or until lentils are tender but not mushy. Drain; rinse with cold water to cool. Drain well.
- Place peppers on gas grill over medium heat or on charcoal grill 4 to 6 inches from medium coals. Cook 4 to 6 minutes or until crisp-tender and grill-marked, turning occasionally. Alternatively, roast peppers in a 400℉ oven. Remove peppers from grill; let stand until cool enough to handle.
- Optional: peel skins off of the peppers. This will go more easily if you put them into a sealed container after removing them from the grill or oven; the residual heat & moisture helps "sweat" the skins off.
- Cut peppers into 1/2 inch pieces.
- In large bowl, combine cooked lentils, bell peppers, onions and basil. Pour dressing over salad; toss gently to coat.
- To serve, line individual plates with lettuce. Spoon salad onto lettuce. Top with cheese.
Makes 4 (1 cup) servings.
When we lived in Victoria, we were part of a CSA called Share Organics. One of the nice things they included along with your weekly box of veggies was a list of recipes for anything that might be unusual or unfamiliar. This was one of the ones we got with our first bunch of kale. Simple but very tasty.
Pasta with Kale and Feta
Sauté over medium heat in a deep skillet:
- 3 Tbsp. olive oil
- 2 cups chopped onions
- 1 large garlic clove minced
Add, cover and cook over low heat for 10 minutes:
- 1 bunch kale chopped
- 1/2 lb short substantial pasta such as penne, shells, fusilli
Add to sauté:
- 1/4 to 1/2 lb feta cheese, crumbled
Lightly drain pasta and add to sauté. Mix thoroughly and cook on low for a few minutes longer. Serve with black pepper.
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Finally gave in and admitted that I'd need to find my old logic texts
to finish the article I'm working on. Resigning myself to a lengthy
search, I headed down to the junk spare room in the basement,
cracked open the first box, and lo! found all of the texts I needed
right on top.
I think this is probably the first time this has happened to anyone in the history of ever.
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Dr AnnMaria DeMars, former judo world champion and hardcore statistics geek, who I've followed on twitter seemingly forever:
- DrAnnMaria: If you're following me hoping to hear about business, statistics or programming you want @annmariastat
- DrAnnMaria: I have two twitter accounts because most programmers don't care about conditioning for martial arts or matwork.
- DrAnnMaria: On the other hand, with all the sexual harassment problems at conferences #OSCON maybe those programmers ARE following me here on purpose
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Haven't posted anything about how the viola lessons have been progressing for some time now. Will try to find time to rectify that soon; big news coming up. ^_^;
In the meantime, and since I haven't posted it yet, here's one of my favourite pieces of classical music. If you're not familiar with it -- it starts out soft, but you might not want to turn up your speakers too loud. ^_^ Even with the obvious musical joke in this piece aside, I really think it's a beautiful and flowing piece of music.
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Since having to quit eating eggs on account of my youngest daughter's egg allergy, one of the dishes we've really missed is macaroni salad. The traditional family recipe calls for Miracle Whip, all varieties of which contain some amount of egg. Most of the vegan mayo substitutes try to replicate plain mayonnaise, and even it just doesn't have the same zing. Someone on one of the veggie boards pointed out that Miracle Whip is just mayo with a few additives to make it more sweet & tart, though, and further recommended tuning up some Vegenaise with a bit of sugar and cider vinegar, a strategy we used to great effect. Mixing ¾ tbsp of white sugar and ½ tbsp cider vinegar into 1½ cups of Vegenaise gives a vegan "Miracle Whip" that has about the right balance of sweet & tart, but is a bit weaker than the real thing and still missing some of the "bite". Next go 'round we'll probably try to zip things up with a bit of lemon juice or dry mustard, but this worked passably well. Use that to make a double recipe of Company's Coming Main Macaroni Salad and you are off to the races.
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Even more interesting than what's on your shopping list is what you run out of, because that shows what you're actually using. Sometimes it only dawns on me how differently I've been cooking when we suddenly start running out of something we've never run out of before, or how many cakes, cupcakes, scones and hotcakes this kitchen has emitted as of late when I realize that the bag of flour I'm buying is the third one this month.
Things we've run out of lately:
Cumin, oregano, ancho chile powder: adding homemade veg burritos to our dinner rotation is the main culprit here, but lately cumin seems to go into every recipe that requires dried spices...so much so that the second 3oz jar to go was replaced with a one-pound bag of the stuff. (They say never to argue with a person who buys ink by the barrel...what about someone who buys cumin by the pound?)
Onions and garlic: Incredibly enough, we used to buy onions a few at a time with specific recipes in mind, but more & more they seem to be getting into many of the savoury dishes we make each week: stirfry, burritos as noted above, iridōfu, plus we finally found egg-free commercial perogies, so we can finally eat perogies covered in fried onions again. Olio aglio eats through a lot of our garlic, as well as soup recipes, but a clove here and there seems to go into all the other veg dishes, too.
We had a good run on vegan soup stock for a while, but that's dropped off, what with it being spring now and all.
Finally, white sugar & white flour (>_<), along with the holy baking trifecta of cornstarch, baking soda, and baking powder. Oh, and vanilla extract too -- some four bottles of the stuff in recent memory -- and cider vinegar, of all things, which is what we use to turn soymilk into vegan buttermilk for baking. In the last while we've made a whack of birthday cakes including a half-sheet monster, several batches of scones for work & domestic consumption, several doz maple cupcakes for the kid's school, and (currently in the oven) choc chip cupcakes for Mothers' Day. This along with the regular Sunday hotcake routine and the occasional round of bread, buns, focaccia, or pizza. Sheesh.
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I don't know that there's anyone in my dwircle that hasn't seen this yet, but just in case: if you've ever played D&D in your life, you need to check out the music parody video Roll a D6.
The line-dancing goblins and zombies are an especially nice touch.
Hat tip to terriko via the
Geek Feminism blog.
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It's awesome when your teacher gives you permission to suck, either explicitly or implicitly. In this case, it's the latter; no matter how little practice time I've managed to get in, I never get a guilt trip over it.
I feel like I've been either on the road or sick for all of the last three weeks, with the concomitant lack of practice having the expected effect on my technique. Nonetheless, we worked on left-hand technique that'd help me reach higher notes & lower strings more easily (elbow well to the right; palm angled well towards the fingerboard instead of facing you), tuning up my intonation on the C string, and bringing the fourth finger into play.
More practice.
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What have we learned tonight, my friends? That you can be the only Government in a Westminster Parliament ever censured for Contempt of Parliament, that you can defend to the death Ministers who lie and present misleading documents to the House, that you can refuse to disclose the costs of your most expensive and controversial programs, that you can run the most secretive Government in memory, prevent Canadians from criticizing their Prime Minister, refuse to answer their questions, scorn our Constitution and Charter, and in return, you will be rewarded not just by being sent back to Ottawa, but returned there with a majority government.
At least there are a few bright spots. The NDP took a record number of seats, forming the Official Opposition for the first time, though they won't have much in the way of leverage faced up against a majority Government. Elizabeth May won her seat in the House, a fact about which I am thrilled. She's extremely intelligent and articulate, and is easily the party leader for whom I have the most respect.
Time to cross our fingers and see what happens in the next four years. Believe me when I say I'll be remembering which of the local pundits were stumping for the Conservatives when we see policy changes coming down the pipes. If worse comes to worse, as I fear it will, I suppose civil disobedience is the silver lining to the cloud of Conservative rule.
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