Our good friend Josh inspired this post. From earlier this week.
jSchwa: things that piss me off:
j: awesome new designs/devices/technologies that don’t exist outside of photoshop
j: for example (he sends this link)
Which got me to thinking about something else I saw on the intarwebs last week. Pictures and the rest of the story after the jump.
Dinner tonight. Nothing special, just some pasta and a salad.
Ah yes, the salad. One of my true passions. Well, not so much the salad, but the dressing. You could say that I have mastered salad dressing foo. It’s all in the science and vinegar, but you didn’t hear that from me. You did hear from me that I never use the dressing in a packet (water? no, I don’t think so) and seldom use dressing from a bottle (sometimes you just gotta have ranch).
So, I’m chopping salad and had the lad make up tonight’s dressing (under my guidance), to pass along some of that foo. And, since I’m pretty sure I’ve not done the same for you, here is a great starter.
What you need
- Olive Oil
- Vinegar - red wine and/or basalmic work best, more on this in a bit
- Parmesean Cheese. The stuff in the green can works really well.
- Salt
- Pepper
- Mustard Powder
- Sugar
No measures my friends, that’s where the foo comes in.
Start with your mixing container. Put in it the dry ingredients. No, wait. Put in the dry ingredients, except the sugar. You aren’t ready for that yet, I’m sorry I mentioned it. What I do is put in about a tbls of green cheese, a pinch of salt, a few grinds of pepper and about 1/2 tsp of mustard powder.
Next, you are going to need your oil. Start off equal parts oil and vinegar, but don’t put the oil away yet. Mix that all together very very well and give it a taste. It will probably be a bit strong and/or watery. Add the same amount of oil you started with. Mix some more and taste again. Too weak? Add a little bit of vinegar. Mix again. Taste again. Should be how you like it by this point.
Now, here is where the sugar comes in. I have some very interesting vinegar that you can’t get anywhere. My Grandfather made it years ago and I have a case hidden in a dark recess of a cabinet someplace, plus Mom has a case in the shed. Anyway, it tends to get a little strong and gives the dressing a very sharp edge. If this happens to you, you can add a very small amount of sugar, say a tablespoon, to knock that edge down a bit. You won’t get any of the sweet, but it will take away some of the bite. You can also use a bit of basalmic vinegar to do the same thing, bonus is you will get a really nice color.
Don’t get all freaked out if it sucked either. Just keep adding oil and vinegar and spices until it tastes the way you like and has the right mouth feel. Nice thing about this one too is that it will break, but unlke a fancy emulsified vinegrette, it’s supposed to. Just give it a good shake/mix before using.
Keeps in the fridge for about a month too, so get a good mason jar to store it in.
We can say I had some time on my hands this week. So, I got to play with some things.
New things for the week
A recap of all the things I’ve been trying/using this week, in case you missed any of them.
FriendFeed. I think it’s handy. 1 stop shopping for all my stuff, plus you can comment on things there (if you are subscribed). They added a new feature this week called Rooms that looks promising. It’s like a message board, kinda. Slightly less obnoxious and slightly easier to follow.
Facebook. For reasons passing understanding I started playing with Facebook again this week. It helped pass the time.
Viddler. Still using it. Still the best video service I’ve used. Bonus is a few new features they have rolled out lately. Subscriptions and RSS feeds. Handy stuff to have.
IShowU and Skitch. IShowU captures your screen as a video, handy for the new project and it works quite nice. And it’s cheap. As for Skitch, I finally found a use for it and it’s been super handy. It’s so handy in fact that, when it comes out of Beta, I would gladly opt for a paid version if one is available. Within reason, of course.
Fluid. I tried this before when it first came out and I thought it had potential. At the time, it worked not well enough to use on a daily basis. It’s been revised, fixed, revised and fixed again and seems to be working quite well for GMail. I might use it for a few other things, but I’m not quite sure yet. I’ll keep you posted.
If you are looking for me on Facebook, Viddler or FriendFeed, follow the links in the sidebar. If you are trying to figure out why you can’t use Fluid on your PC, now would be a good time to think about making the switch.
Busy week coming up. I certainly hope it goes smoothly. That would be keen. Oh yea, if Josh says anything to you about eating BBQ Penguin, just nod and smile. He does get a bit delusional at times (remember the Snobo Monkey’s from ‘01?). It’s all that fancy scotch he’s been drinking with his mates.
Yea, I know I said I wasn’t going to do anymore. I was feelin’ it today.
Twitter was down again this morning. Shocker. But, sadly, not really.
Great service, horrible reliability. If Twitter were, say the phone company, I would have switched about 4 months ago.
But, it’s free. I have a tendancy not to complain (too much) about stuff that is free. Instead, I look for alternatives.
There is Pownce. But you have to use the site or the horrible Air app (unless someone has made something else).
There is Jaiku. I played with this for about an hour and I think I remember it being ok.
FriendFeed kinda has some of the functionality. Kinda. But, with it comes a bit of noise that might be reduced some by the new Room feature.
All well and good, but what about the people? Therein lies the problem.
What do you think? Stick around and wait while the good lads at Twitter get their act together? Try to find something else to use instead? Or, just forget about the Microblogging platform all together and get back to using IM and short blog posts?
It’s just a little frustrating. And, I don’t like being frustrated.
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