Chayote (Choko) taco filling

This is Rick Bayless' Roast Chayote recipe with a few modifications.

They're called chokos here in Australia, but in Mexico they're called chayote.  This recipe has a mild but flavoursome taste that I really like.

If you're wondering how 'chayote' is pronounced, like I was, it seems to be chiYohteh, with the 'oh' rising and the 'teh' quite short.  These videos seem to show an authentic pronunciation.


Ingredients

• Chayote (choko), 3 large, peeled, pitted & cut into ~1cm cubes (it's better to cut them smaller rather than larger as more of the surface area will get browned, and you won't get mushy bits at the center of the cubes).
• Olive oil, 1.5 tbsp
• Salt
• Cracked black pepper
• Lime juice, fresh, 1.5 tbsp (or lemon or other tart citrus)
• Lime zest, grated, 1 tsp
• Goats cheese, 120g (or a not-too-briny feta works), crumbled
• I've found that it's better if the goats cheese is not too strong, so a mixture of goats cheese and ricotta works well.
• for the Green Chilli Adobo used in the recipe (note: this will make more than is required for this recipe -- but that's ok, it's good as a general-purpose condiment).
• Garlic, 1/2 head, separated into unpeeled cloves
• Serrano chillies, 4 to 5 serrano, stems removed
• Corriander, large bunch, thick bottom stems cut off, roughly chopped (about 2 cups loosely packed)
• Flat leaf parsley, 1 large bunch, thick bottom stems cut off, roughly chopped (about 2 cups loosely packed)
• Olive oil, 1 cup
• Salt, 2 generous tsp
   

Instructions

• Make the Green Chilli Adobo (this may be done in advance)
• Pan roast garlic and chillies
• Set a large (25cm) skillet over medium heat.
• Lay in the garlic and chillies and roast, turning regularly, until soft and browned in spots, about 10 minutes for the chillies and 15 for the garlic.
• (If you’re really short on time, you can soften them in a microwave: Cut a slit in each garlic clove and combine with the chillies in a microwavable bowl. Cover with plastic wrap, poke a few holes in the top and microwave on high for 30 seconds.)
• Chop garlic and chillies
• Cool until handleable, then slip off the garlic's papery husks.
• Roughly chop everything (no need to remove the chilli seeds).
• Blend ingredients
• In a blender or food processor, combine the garlic and chillies with the corriander, parsley, olive oil and salt.
• Process, stopping to scrape down the sides if necessary, until nearly smooth (it should look a little like pesto).
• Transfer to a jar and pour a little oil over the top.
• Store, covered, in the refrigerator, where it will last several months.

• Turn on the oven to 220C
• Prepare and roast chayote
• Toss the chayote with the olive oil and about 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 cracked pepper.
• Spread it onto a rimmed baking sheet.  You want the pieces to be spread out.  Use two pans if you need to.
• Put it into oven and roast, turning every few minutes
  ...until the chayote is beautifully browned and tender, about 25 minutes (cooking times may vary.  Sometimes I've had to cook them for 45 mins.  Definitely cook them as long as is required to get the pieces a browned)
• Remove from oven
• Toss chayote with lime juice, lime zest, and 1.5 tablespoons of the Green Chilli Adobo.
• Scatter cheese and leftover parsley or corriander on top

• This makes a fantastic (soft) taco filling.  Once you've added the filling to the taco, spoon a bit more of the adobo on top.
• Rick Bayless also suggests layering it with black bean refritos as a taco filling, and also serving it over greens such as baby rocket or watercress, for a robust salad.

Chipotle and orange juice Chicken taco filling

This recipe is from http://pinchofyum.com/spicy-chipotle-shredded-chicken
I've modified the structure of, and some of the contents of, the presentation.

The chipotles add heat and their smoky bite, while the orange juice adds a nice mild sweetness to balance it.

Ingredients

• Chipotle chillis (in adobo sauce), 3 (plus 1 tsp of the sauce)
• Garlic, 4 cloves
• Oil, 1 tbsp
• Orange juice, 1 cup
• Chicken stock, 2 cups
• Fresh coriander, ½ cup, chopped
• Chicken breasts, raw, 450g (approx 2 medium breasts)
• Yellow mustard, 2 tsp

Saute garlic and chipotles

• Mince the garlic cloves and chipotle chillis
• Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat
• Add the garlic and chipotles; saute for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent burning

Make sauce base and simmer chicken

• Add the orange juice, chicken stock, and coriander and turn the heat to high to bring to a boil
• Add the chicken breasts; cover and reduce heat to medium-low
• Simmer for 15-20 minutes or until the chicken breasts are cooked through

Cool and shred chicken

• Remove the chicken breasts from the pot and place on a cutting board for a few minutes to cool.
• Shred the chicken with a fork.
• I hold the chicken down with my other hand.  If you haven't shredded meat like this before, the idea is to use the tip of the fork to scrape apart the flesh at the muscle fibres.  So you want to be scraping the fork down through the edge of the meat, with the width of the fork parallel to the direction of the muscle fibres.

Reduce (and add mustard to) sauce

• Meanwhile, keep the sauce left in the pan over low heat
• Whisk in the mustard and cook the sauce until it reduces by about half, to get a thicker, more concentrated sauce
• I find it easier to put the mustard in a cup, and then spoon some of the sauce into the cup, and mix it together there, then pour the contents back into the pot
• Add the shredded chicken back to the pot with the sauce and mix to combine

The dish's flavour improves a few hours or a day after cooking.

My 2013

There's three reasons I wanted to write this.  When I think back on this year, it's all a bit of a jumble of details, and I wanted to get it clearer.  When I think back to what happened in my life in any given year in the past, I can hardly remember any specific details, so I wanted this to be a way to help me remember this year in the future.  And I think it's nice to share a bit about what's been going on in your life.  I always like hearing about what others have been up to.

This is the first time I've tried writing something like this.  I found it very difficult!  It was hard to know what kinds of details to put into it and how to structure it.  Hopefully the experience of doing it this year will make me better at this kind of thing in the future.

(Details about the books, films, TV shows, games, and music I experienced this year are here).

Overall, it wasn't a bad year.  I moved forwards with a number of things.  And of course I have to make special mention of M -- thank you for everything this year.



PhD

I made some solid progress with my PhD.  For the five or so years prior to 2013 I'd been working part-time, but this year I didn't have a job so was able to work full-time on my PhD.  And after nine years of working on it, I finally got over that hump in explaining the ideas and started writing it up, and got through early drafts of several chapters.  I'm aiming to finish it by the end of 2014.

The amount of time it's been taking has weighed on me a bit this year.  It's been nine years of very little money or free time, and a big opportunity cost in terms of career development and life in general.  It feels a bit like life has been put on hold over those years.  But still it is ultimately what I want to be doing, and I still believe there'll be a worthwhile payoff in the end.


Health

The breathing problems, and the consequent sleeping problems, that have plagued me over the last couple of years thankfully started to settle down towards the end of this year, and there's been general improvement in all my health problems (some of the areas where the muscles are ridiculously weak are slowly getting stronger and I'm slowly getting increased flexibility).  But still, those problems had a bit impact on my productivity, and meant I had less productive time each day, and consequently that a larger proportion of it has to be spent on PhD writing.  Which has meant I haven't caught up with friends that much, or done much in the way of other activities, this year.

Half way through the year I discovered, to my surprise, that I'm gluten intolerant.  Long story short, my health has improved a fair bit after getting off gluten (and now that my body has had time to recover, even fairly small amounts of gluten effect me pretty badly).  There is an intriguing link between the gluten and my musculo-skeletal/neurological problems, but it seems there currently just isn't enough medical knowledge about such things.  I'm hoping that in the longer term being off gluten will help reduce those problems.  The next step is to see what sort of tests I can get done and figure out whether it is just an intolerance or Celiac disease. 


Slow Carb diet

When I first started going gluten-free I went on the Slow Carb diet as a means to make it easier to be gluten-free but also just to lose weight.  I managed to lose 13 kgs quite quickly and have kept it off.  The diet is pretty well designed: I never felt hungry, and the weekly 'cheat day', when you can eat whatever you like, helps keep it sustainable. 


The 'cheat day' as a weekly break and day to work on other projects

The weekly 'cheat day' (on Sunday) felt like a little holiday, so I ended up deciding that, instead of working on PhD writing 7 days a week, I'd take Sundays off, which turned out to make a good weekly routine.  On Sundays I started doing some recreational things like watching a DVD, going for a walk, and playing some games.  I'd always tried in the past to make headway on some non PhD projects, but I'd never been able to regularly find the time, but now I spend 2 hours each Sunday on them, which has been great.  This year I was programming a proof-of-concept of my fan menus idea (which is still in progress).


Podcasts and getting back into games

A big part of my day-to-day routine over the last few years has been all my prepartion for getting to bed -- hotpacks, traction and stretches -- so that I can have a chance of sleeping, what with all the bad breathing problems stemming from the musculo-skeletal stuff etc.

At some point this year I started listening to podcasts while doing the stretches.  I ended up listening to ones on Indie game development.  First, the The Game Engine podcast, and then when I'd gone through all of the episodes of that, the Big Sushi podcasts.  I found it inspiring listening to people talking about the process, and hearing about how much more accessible game development is these days (compared to when I was back at uni in the 90s).  Makes me feel like I'd like to have a go at it sometime and try out some of my interactive storytelling ideas.

Over the last 15 or so years I mostly haven't played games much, but with listening to those podcasts and having Sundays off, I started playing some more computer games, particularly ones focused on interactive storytelling.  I wanted to get more of a sense of what's out there.  Partially for the interactive storytelling ideas, but also because games in general seems to be an area where there's a reasonable amount of innovation.  With my interest in education/communication/user interfaces, it's always interesting to see where you can get inspiration from.  Playing more games has meant I've read less this year. 


Noisy Neighbours

This year was my second one spent living at Corinda, which is a fairly nice place.  But our neighbours have been a problem.  After moving from Indooroopilly to avoid problems with horrible neighbours-noise, we've ended up with awful neighbours that are so disruptive and stressful.  Initially the ones from the gray house nearby, who were loud at night and into the mornings.  But they ended up quietening down then moving out.  Now it's the ones at the white house, who are constantly screaming (angrily, at the tops of their lungs) at each other.  Makes it unpleasant living here.

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Not having a job has meant needing to be fairly frugal.  Didn't do much in the way of activities this year, and didn't go on any holidays.  A few miscellaneous things:

• Several weddings this year.  In March there was Mark and Adele's over on Stradbroke Island.  Then there were several overseas weddings that I would have loved to have gone to, but didn't have the time or money to do so: my cousin We Chong's, my cousing Pei Li's, and my friend Lehka's.
• Dad and Debbie were in Western Australia this year.  Dad working up at Pilbera, first working directly on train lines, then surveying, then managing stores.  Debbie at the store in Fremantle.  Dad come over here a couple of times during year.
• My four-year old iPhone 3GS stopped working, so I got a silver iPhone 5S.

Overall, this hasn't been a bad year.  I'm glad that my health problems have improved, and finding out about the gluten intolerance has been a big thing for me.  The PhD has been a really long journey and I'm really looking forwards to getting it done within the next year or so.

My 2013 in books, games, film, tv and music

What I read (saw, played, etc) in 2013.  Most of these weren't released in 2013, though.


My top picks, the ones that stood out:

• The game "The Walking Dead" (season 1)
  
  Though I still don't think interactive storytelling has truly lived up to its potential, The Walking Dead does a pretty damn good job.  It's a pretty powerful experience.  Even if you don't like computer games, it's worth taking a look at.

• The movie "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre"
  
  Deservedly a classic.  Quite enjoyable, never too predictable, and has a good ending.  I really liked how it felt quite naturalistic, with the plot arising organically from the situation.

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Also worth a mention

• Books
• I didn't get to read that many books this year, but out of those I did, the best ones were:
• Cider With Rosie, by Laurie Lee. Nice memoir of childhood in Cotswold village in 1920s. The writing is mostly pretty good.
• The Main Dish (Kindle Single), Michael Ruhlman. Interesting look at how, to the author's surprise, he ended up becoming a food and cookbook author. Well written and pretty funny.
• Games
• Tales of Monkey Island. Pretty good for a point-and-click adventure game.
• Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (on iOS)
• Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney (on iOS)
• Films
• Kumare. Pretty interesting and thought provoking.
• Indie Game: The Movie. Doco about the journey of some indie-game developers as they're making their games.
• Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Interesting doco about Jiro Ono, a master sushi maker, and his philosophy on work and striving for perfection.
• Unforgiven.  Quite good.  Been wanting to see this movie for so long - glad I finally got around to it.
• Once Upon a Time in the West. Style wins over substance, but a pretty good triumph. Visuals and music were excellent. Intriguing all the way through.
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.   Good, though I liked "Once Upon a Time in the West" (also by Sergio Leone) a little more.
• Music
• I didn't listen to much new music this year.  For whatever reason, I just haven't been into music as much lately.  Part of it's that most of the time I'm listening to music I'm doing PhD writing, and I find vocals a bit too distracting, so I only listen to instrumental stuff (mostly electronic stuff) and I don't really know of a good way of finding out about new releases of the sort I like.
• Tomorrow's Harvest, by Boards of Canada.  It's a good album but I don't like the bleaker aesthetic on it as much as that on their earlier albums.
• TV shows
• Derek, season 1.  Ricky Gervais comedy/drama.

Decent

• Books
• The Call of the Wild, by Jack London (free ebook edition here).
• Chairs in the Rafters (Kindle Single), by Julia Glass
• Trapped (Kindle Single), Richard Greener. About the author getting heart transplant, and shocking complications he experienced from it. Some interesting details in it.
• A PhD Is Not Enough!: A Guide to Survival in Science, by Peter J. Feibelman. Not bad, though a lot of the info it is fairly obvious. USA- & science- centric. Not always clear how it'd apply to engineering/comp sci. Could be more in-depth.
• Games
• Gone Home.  An admirable experiment interactive storytelling, but ultimately I don't think it works that well.  Worth a look if you're interested in how interactive storytelling can be done.
• Katawa Shoujo.  A straight-up "visual novel", so pretty much just a matter of reading through it rather than being a game.  Wasn't bad, but targeted more at teens than someone like me (I was curious about these visual novels and this was one people recommended).
• "Fester Mudd" episode 1 (on iOS).
• "The Silent Age" episode 1.
• The Majesty of Colors.  A quick play.  Ok, but nothing special.
• Proteus.  Ok, but I found it a little dull
• Sourcery!  I was interested to see what those "game books" are like.  Good presentation and I think good for what it is, but not really my kind of thing.  Even though it is textual, it doesn't feel like a story to me.
• MIMPI.  Puzzle platformer where you play as a dog.  Some frustrating puzzles and controls can be frustrating, but otherwise pretty decent.
• Films
• Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.   Fun.  I'm getting a bit too old to fully relate to the characters' situation though.
• Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. The sequel. Not bad, but not as fun as the first film.
• American Pie: Reunion
• Amon Tobin ISAM version 1 Live DVD. Some of the 3D effects are awesome and goose-bump inducing. And that's just watching it on a flat screen... I can't imagine what it would've been like to see in the flesh.
• TV shows
• Broadchurch, season 1
• The Shield, seasons 1 & 2.  Pretty decent -- and compared to most tv shows, pretty good -- but it too often relies on improbable escapes from tricky situations.  We decided not to watch the rest of the seasons.  Our search for another show that can stand up to The Wire continues...

Okay

• Books
• Blue Highways: A Journey into America, by William Least Heat-Moon. Travels in small-town America.
• A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens. Not bad, but didn't think it was that great.
• iPoe 1. A fairly successful attempt to add multimedia elements to some of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories.
• iPoe 2. Didn't think it was as good as first one. Perhaps also it started to feel more gimmicky.
• Some books on Ancient Rome:
  • Roman Warfare, Adrian Goldsworthy
  • Tiberius Caesar (2nd ed), David Shotter
  • Caligula, by Sam Wilkinson. Dry.

Bit Meh

• Books
• The Last Website.  Nice presentation but the story didn't do much for me.  Far too obtuse.
• Games
• The Novelist.  An experiment in interactive storytelling that doesn't work.  I mostly agree with these reviews.
• Galatea.  A textual 'interactive fiction' game.  Didn't find it interesting.
• De Baron.  Also interactive fiction.  Didn't do much for me.
• The Graveyard.  Nothing to really engage with in it, so its hard to get emotional impact from it.
• Films
• Rashomon.  Interesting idea, but it wasn't well capitalised on.  Dull, and doesn't convey anything interesting through the use of the multiple perspectives.  I've only seen one other Kurosawa film so far, The Seven Samurai, but I thought that was much better.

Lots Meh

• Books
• Juniper's Knot.  Lame. Adolescent-quality writing and content, and the way animation/interactivity was used actually detracted from things.
• Games
• Thirty Flights of Loving.  I don't get the positive reviews of it.  Didn't do anything for me.

Idea: a remote-controlled car as a modern-day Logo-turtle

Just a random thought.

You could do a modern take on the old Logo turtle-robot, but with a remote-control car whose movement you could program, wirelessly, via a smart-phone or tablet.

image source

If you're not familiar with Logo, the "turtle" was a simple robot on wheels with a pen attached to it.  You sat it down on a big piece of paper and as it moved along the pen traced out its path on the paper.  Logo was the simple programming language used to tell the turtle what to do (e.g. 'move forwards 10 units', 'turn 45 degrees right', 'move forwards 5 units', etc).  You'd write the program then send it to the turtle which would slowly move around according to the commands in your program, and if you programmed it right it could draw out all sorts of shapes and patterns.  The system was for teaching kids the basic concepts behind programming.

A Logo 'turtle'. Image source

But what if instead of the turtle you had a remote-controlled car?  Instead of directly controlling its behaviour with a normal RC controller, you'd control it like the turtle, by writing a program that sets out the movements it should perform.  Specifying this with a smart-phone or tablet would make sense - the instructions could be sent wirelessly to the car.

Compared to the traditional turtle an RC car would be faster, have acceleration and braking, and could travel over rough and varied surfaces.

Instead of being about drawing patterns on paper, it could be about getting the car to successfully navigate the physical environment.  It might be in your backyard, and avoiding trees, going down slopes, traversing small mounds, etc.  Where there's obstacles, the possibility for jumps, and so forth.  Where obstacles could form signposts for a track.

I suspect that, rather than programming it by telling it to move by a certain distance or to turn by a certain number of degrees, you'd want commands like 'move at 75% throttle for 5 seconds' and '50% right turn for 1 second' (where '100% right turn' would mean turn as sharply right as possible, so 50% means turn half as sharply).

The hope would be that kids would find this kind of thing fun.  Rather than having a more abstract goal of drawing certain shapes, they'd have more tangible goals like navigating around the physical space, getting it to do a jump over a curb, etc.  That a remote control car can go pretty fast would hopefully make it more exciting, too.

I would imagine that if a bunch of kids got together and they had several of these cars, they could try and race them or set up some other kind of competition (e.g. trying to get the cars to ram each other, maybe to knock one over).

Electronics are so much cheaper these days, so I imagine that cost or getting the necessary parts to do something like wouldn't be too much of a barrier.  (And if you are wondering whether I have any thoughts about trying it out, I don't.  It'd be nice to try but I'm working on other things at the moment.  Just thought I'd get the idea out there).

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Of course, there'd be a lot more to think about to think this through properly.  E.g. Logo has the equivalent of procedures, which can be useful for drawing shapes and patterns, and these are a form of abstraction you want to teach.  Would there be some motivation for utilising procedures if the focus wasn't on drawing patterns?  There could be, especially if you set up an obstacle course for the car that made them useful.


Edit: this idea could also be applied to drones.

Allowing wiki-style edits on every single web-page

As everyone knows, anybody can edit any page on Wikipedia.  What if anybody could also make edits on every single page on the internet?

I mean every - a corporate site's 'about' page, their CEO's bio page, the Amazon.com description of a book, a post on someone's personal blog, a news story.  Anything.

Sound crazy?  No doubt about it.  But here's a slightly less crazy way it could be handled:

• Edits don't change the public version of the page.
    
• All edits are publicly accessible via a standard [edits] link on each page, and the page owner gets to choose whether to accept, reject or ignore any of them.
    
• You must log-in with a public identity (Facebook, Google+, etc) to make an edit.
    
• To help deal with trolls.

Why let anyone edit any page?  For the same reasons Wikipedia does: to allow people to suggest corrections and enhancements.

People like feeling that they've made a contribution, and if their contributions are useful and get taken up that can add to their reputation.   Such a system would help better harness the talent out there.  Or such is the hope.

Some slightly more technical points:

• The site owner could possibly even mark someone's edits as trolling, where both the edits and who marked them as trolling are public information, and if people's edits across the internet were aggregated it might further discourage trolling.

• What if the changes a person suggests concern information that comes from a database rather than a static page?  If the page owner thinks it's a good contribution then they'd have to change the relevant data in the database.

Obviously there'd be various technical issues in implementing this.  Presumably these days storage space for the edits wouldn't be much of an issue.  Perhaps the ability for storing each person's edits for a page could be handled by a standard feature of the web-server.  Naturally there'd be issues with how the editing interface is provided, how the edits are described, etc.  This post is more just about the general idea rather than all of the hurdles it'd have to overcome to make it practical.

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EDIT 5 May 2013: I originally used Wikipedia as a model for this idea.  Github is another model you could think of it in terms of.  On Github you can fork anyone's project to make improvements to it.  Doing so doesn't effect the original project.  You can send the owner of the project a pull-request suggesting for them to incorporate your changes.  They can ignore that if they wish, but if they decide they like your suggested changes they can make use of them.  What I'm suggesting is a standard, structured way for anyone to suggest changes to a web-pages.

Things to try: tequila edition

Until recently, my only experience of tequlia had been tequila shots and the 'lip, sip, suck' (salt, tequila, lime) drill.  I didn't know that shots typically used just one type of tequila, and that there are other types with different types of flavours.

Silver (or 'white') tequila is what they normally use in shots.  Silver tequila is un-aged and has a rawer, more vegetal taste.  All the other types are aged.

There's Reposado which is aged for less than a year.  ~AUD$40-50 upwards

Añejo which is aged for one to three years.  ~AUD$70 upwards (often over $100).  There's also an Extra Añejo category, which is aged even longer.

Gold tequila (known as Joven or oro tequila) is a mixture of a silver tequila and an aged tequila.

Trying them.

Reposado tequila has a nice smooth, earthy flavour.  I reckon it goes best 1:1 with some soda water.  The slight bite of soda water suits it (soda water is preferable to mineral water, which is preferable to still water).  You can also sip it straight.  Of those I've tried, El Espolon is my favourite, el Jimador is decent, and I'd steer clear of the Sierra reposado - it's not very nice.

I haven't tried an Añejo yet, but presumably it's similar to a Reposado.

I find Silver tequila goes well with generous amount of soda water and a dash of lime juice, or with tonic water.


Other things.

Watermelon wedges soaked in Reposado tequila tastes great!

If gluten is a problem for you, good quality tequilas are 100% gluten free.  Tequila is made from the blue agave plant, and the good quality tequilas will say "100% blue agave" on the label - these are completely gluten free.  If the label doesn't say that, then the tequila will be a Mixto, which includes other ingredients, and these mightn't be gluten free.  More info.

Oh, and this is what blue agave plants look like:

source

the 'hearts' of the plants, from which the tequila is made. source.

Wikipedia page on tequila

I'd like a 'Lessons Learnt' episode of Grand Designs

It must be Grand Designs season on this blog, coz this post makes two in a row about the show.

That show's been going for over ten years and they've probably featured around 100 homes.  So what are the lessons learnt?  Are there any lessons to be learnt?  Any common patterns to successes or to failures?  Any other types of patterns (concerning: aesthetics, construction materials, amount or type of planning done, use of experts, etc etc)?

It could make for an interesting episode.

Visually comparing the different stages of a house's construction

I was just watching the tv show Grand Designs.  It's nice to see the development of a house from plans, through construction to the finished design.

One thing I find, though, is that it's always hard to connect the before and after.  You see the after shot and it's hard to remember what that spot looked like at different stages in the construction, and it made me think about how you make those details more apparent.

They could show the exact same shot -- with the camera in the exact same location, pointing in the exact same direction -- at different points in the house's development, starting with the empty site, when the foundations are up, when the wall frames are up, when the roof and walls are done, and when it's fully furnished.  They could run through them in chronological order, transitioning between them by fading the current one out and at the same time fading the next one in, so you could see a bit more of the relationship between the two.

Such a technique could also be employed on moving shots, such as a shot that sweeps across a room, or one that starts at one end of a long room, facing towards the other end of the room, and then moves towards the other end of the room.  As the camera moves along, the imagery could seamlessly progress between the different stages of the development.

And of course such techniques lend themselves to some sort of interactive presentation on a web-site.  (It makes me think of these interactive before-and-after photos of the recent Brisbane floods.)

The perfect martini

At a friend's James Bond-themed party I discovered how much I like martinis.  There's something that really works about that combination of gin, vermouth and olives, making a flavour truly "greater than the sum of its parts".  Afterwards, I set out to try the different variations on martinis to see which ones I liked and which I didn't.  This is what I learned.

Lets look at the three ingredients.

Gin

While gin's the classic base for a martini, some people like to use vodka.  To my taste that's losing out on a lot of flavour - you're basically making a different kind of drink.

It's important to use a reasonably good gin for a martini because it's the main ingredient.  While a cheaper gin can be fine in a Gin & Tonic, because the tonic water has a stronger flavour, it can ruin a martini.  I tried using Vickers gin once and the result wasn't that nice.

Vermouth

Some people have their martinis with none or almost no vermouth - that is, 

they're basically having straight gin.  All I can say is prefer the 

combination of gin and vermouth to just straight gin.

There's three common types of Vermouth

• Sweet (aka 'Rosso', 'Rosato', 'Italian')
• Semi-sweet (aka 'Bianco', 'Blanc', 'White')
• Dry (aka 'French')

 

There's lots of different brands of Vermouth.  Cinzano and Martini & Rossi (labelled just as "Martini") seem to be the most common here in Australia.  The Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth (their 'Rosato') is a noticeably sweeter than the Cinzano sweet vermouth (their 'Rosso').

Most recipes seem to refer to only the sweet and dry vermouths.  The Bianco vermouth is often called a sweet vermouth, but it's less sweet than the Rosso/Rosato.

The different types of vermouth don't just differ in terms of how sweet they are - they each actually have a fairly different flavours.

The Rosso and Bianco vermouths have stronger, more fragrant flavours.  In comparison, I find the flavour of dry vermouth a bit flat.  For me, the Bianco has the nicest flavour.

The classic martini uses dry vermouth, but I actually prefer it with bianco vermouth.  I like its flavour more, and the slight sweetness it adds.

The other thing about vermouth is that it's only around 15% alcohol, so it should be kept in the fridge not on the shelf.  Apparently an opened bottle will maintain its flavour for a month or two in the fridge.

Olives

I skewer three olives on a toothpick and drop that in the glass.  Lemon peel can also be used [2], or even cocktail onions (in which case, the drink is called a Gibson), but I don't think their flavour suits it as well.

[2] to make a lemon-peel twist use a fruit peeler to peel the rind off a lemon.  Start at one end of the lemon and work you way around its circumference in a spiral - just like you would when peeling an apple.  You can get enough peel for several drinks from the one lemon.

Temperature

Martini's taste better very cold, so you want keep all the ingredients cold.  They don't taste that nice if they're only slightly cool.  Keeping in mind that the drink will warm up in your hand and that it'll take a bit of time till you've finished drinking it, you want to get the initial ingredients as cold as possible

• keep the vermouth in the fridge
• keep the gin in the freezer
• keep the martini glass in the freezer

My perfect martini recipe

A ratio of 5:1 of gin to vermouth.

• 2.5 oz/shots good quality gin
• 0.5 oz/shots bianco vermouth
• 3 stuffed olives, skewered on a toothpick.

Add the gin and vermouth and lots of ice (enough to at least cover the liquid) into a cocktail shaker.  Shake vigorously for about thirty seconds. (You can also just stir it for about the same amount of time.  I'm not sure if shaking vs stirring makes much of a difference to the flavour).  One thing this does is adds some water into cocktail.  Pop the olives into a martini glass and then strain the cocktail shaker mix into it.

Variations

• The best variations I've come across
• Cranberry martini (tastes good and has quite a nice colour)
• 2 oz gin : 0.5 oz vermouth : 2 oz cranberry juice
• Fresh, frozen or dried cranberries for garnish
• Others
• Add a little extra olive brine to make a 'Dirty Martini'
• There's all sorts of variations on the ratio of gin to vermouth. E.g. a 50-50 martini uses equal quantities of gin and vermouth (you could use 1.5 oz/shots of each).
• Cranberry Lime Martini (this one was a bit sharp for my tastes, but a friend really liked it)
• 2 gin : 2 freshly squeezed lime juice : 2 parts cranberry juice
• Lime wedge for garnish
• Breakfast Martini (thought this one wasn't bad, but didn't think it was that great).
• 2 gin : 0.75 cointreau : 0.75 lemon juice. plus 5ml orange marmalade
• orange twist to garnish
• There's two variants that add orange juice: the Bronx and the Minnehaha.  The difference between them is that they basically switch the vermouth and orange juice ratios.  Personally neither of these did that much for me
• Bronx
• 1.5 oz gin : 0.25 oz dry vermouth : 0.25 oz sweet vermouth : 1 oz orange juice
• Orange slice for garnish
• Minnehaha
• 1.05 oz gin : 0.75 oz dry vermouth : 0.75 oz sweet vermouth : 0.25 oz orange juice
• Marguerite
• 2 gin : 0.75 dry vermouth. plus a dash orange bitters
• Lemon twist to garnish
• Haven't gotten around to trying these variants yet
• Broadway Martini
• 3 Gin : 0.5 Creme De Menthe (ideally the clear 'white' type)
• mint leaves for garnish (optional)
• Emerson
• 2 gin : 1 sweet vermouth : 0.5 lemon juice : 0.5 maraschino liqueur
• Dirty Blues Martini
• 4 oz gin
• 6 green olives stuffed with blue cheese
• 1/4 teaspoon olive juice (adjust to personal taste)

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Here's some other ways you can use vermouth

• bianco goes quite well with equal portions of orange juice.
• rosso goes well in equal portions with cranberry juice, and well with cola (though seems to be better if you add a larger proportion of cola).
• dry goes not bad with pineapple juice.
• and you can use them for cooking.

Gently-Baked Salmon with Cabbage, Bacon, and Dill

This is the "Slow-Roasted Salmon with Cabbage, Bacon, and Dill" recipe from serious eats.

It's quite quick and easy to prepare and tastes fantastic.

I wouldn't have thought it'd be possible to make salmon come out so soft and succulent, but baking it at low temperatures works wonders.  And the mild sweetness of the cabbage cooked with bacon really compliments it.

• savoy cabbage, 1 head (halved, cored, and roughly chopped)
• bacon, 6 slices
• onion, 1, diced
• water, 1 cup
• salmon fillets, 4 (4-6 ounces each, skin removed)
• fresh dill, chopped, 1 teaspoon (plus more for garnish)
• olive oil, 4 tablespoons 
• butter, 2 tablespoons
• lemon juice, from one lemon
• salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 120 degrees celsius (250°F).

Cook the cabbage

• In medium saucepan, place bacon and heat over medium. Cook, stirring occasionally, until fat is rendered from bacon and bacon is beginning to crisp.
• Add onion and cook for an additional minute, then add cabbage and water.
• Bring to a boil, then simmer until cabbage is tender, 20-25 minutes, adding more liquid if necessary.
• Once very tender, season with salt, pepper, and half the dill.

Prepare and cook the salmon

• In the meantime, season salmon fillets with salt and pepper and place salmon on non-stick sheet pan.
• Drizzle olive oil over fillets, top with half the dill, and finish with small knob of butter.
• Cook 15-18 minutes for medium rare, or up to 25 minutes for medium, depending on thickness of fish.
• Remove from oven and drizzle with lemon juice.

Serve

• Divide cabbage and salmon among plates and garnish with more dill, if desired.
• Serve immediately.

Books I read in 2012

The best:

Wool - Omnibus edition, by Hugh Howey
Great bit of storytelling


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Ones that were decent:

We Are All Weird, by Seth Godin
A touch wishy-washy but an interesting, brief look at broad cultural currents.

Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge
Fairly good, but mainly as a plausible near-future (c 2025) world of pervasive augmented reality & wearable computers.


A number of Kindle Singles, all of which were decent:

My Seinfeld Year, by Fred Stoller
Memoir. A couple of interesting insights into how the writing process for Seinfeld worked.

Gutenberg the Geek, by Jeff Jarvis
A look at Gutenberg as an entrepreneur

Cautionary Tales, by Stephen Tobolowsky
Memoir of bad (but funny) mistakes the author made.

The First Light of Evening, by Mark Ernest Pothier
A day in the life of a guy 3 years after divorce and still dealing with it. Pretty nicely done.

Shakedown, by James Ellroy
Pretty sharply written. Somewhat salicious.


A number of books on ancient Rome, all pretty decent. Working on slowly building up my understanding of history.

Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, by Simon Baker.
Decent, readable basic overview. Focus mainly on politics and major political figures

The World of Rome, by Michael Grant
This one was a bit less readable than the others, but fairly informative.

Rubicon: The Triumph and the Tragedy of the Roman Republic, by Tom Holland

Julius Caesar, by Philip Freeman

Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician, by Anthony Everitt

Antony and Cleopatra, by Adrian Goldsworthy

Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor, by Anthony Everitt


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Ones I really didn't like. I'd avoid these: 


The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect, by Roger Williams

Accelerando, by Charles Stross


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And several that I read bits of but didn't around to finishing. Not because I didn't like them, just didn't get time:

Stop Stealing Dreams, Seth Godin

The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 23, by Gardner Dozois
I read about 5 stories from this, and didn't think much of most of them.

Pro Git, by Scott Chacon

Poems of Emily Dickinson, series 1, by Emily Dickinson

Sweet Red Onion Pasta

This is a Jamie Oliver recipe.  I photocopied it from one of his cookbooks years ago, but I don't know anymore which cookbook it was.

The original recipe is vegetarian, but if you want to include meat some chicken thighs would suit the flavour.  You could add 2 chicken thighs, cut into thin strips.

• Olive oil
• Butter, 2 large knobs
• Onions, 2 white, 3 red (i.e. five in total).
  • Peel and slice
• Garlic, 1 clove
  • Peel and finely slice
• Red chilli, 1
  • Finely slice
• Potatoes, 200g
  • Finely slice
• Cinnamon, 1/2 a stick
• Thyme (fresh), small handful
  • Pick the leaves from it
• Salt
• Black Pepper
• Nutmeg, a grating of
• Fusilli or spaghetti, 450g
• Chicken or vegetable stock, 250ml
• Parmesan, grated, 2-3 handfuls of
• Flat-leaf parsley, a handful of
  • Finely chop

Get a casserole-type pan

Put a drizzle of olive oil and the butter into it.

Slowly fry onions, garlic, chilli and potatoes with the cinnamon stick.  If adding chicken, add the chicken thigh strips now.

Cook slowly for 5 minutes

Then put the lid on and continue cooking for another 5 to 8 minutes until lightly golden (I found I had to cook a lot longer than this).

Add the thyme leaves and season carefully with salt, pepper and a light grating of nutmeg.

Bring a separate pan of salted water to the boil

Add the pasta and cook according to the packet instructions.

Try one of the potatoes to check that it is soft (if not, you've made the slices too thick, but no worries -- just add a little water to the pan and continue cooking until softened).

Drain the pasta, reserving some of the cooking water.

Add the stock to the onions and mush up about half of the potatoes.

Discard the cinnamon stick and season to taste.

Working quickly, toss the pasta with the onions and potatoes, loosening if necessary with a little of the reserved cooking water and add one or two handfuls of Parmesan and the parsley.

When it's all nicely mixed together, serve in warmed bowls.

An authoritative source of current scientific opinion would be useful

[update: I've written a newer post that contextualises the kind of idea outlined here, as a way of helping truth spread in our 'information ecosystem']

I was talking to someone the other day who believed that Quantum Mechanics (QM) basically equated to the Copenhagen interpretation of it -- you know, the one where an observation collapses the quantum wave.

As far as I know, this interpretation is not very popular among working physicists. But I can't recall anymore where I got this detail from. No doubt it was from books I've read or things I've read in discussion forums, but I just can't remember.

I would have liked to have been able to point the person towards something online that showed that in fact most physicists don't believe the Copenhagen interpretation, but it's just not easy to find something that will tell you the current scientific opinion on a particular topic.

And if I can't reference some sort of reputable source, the person I'm talking to has no particular reason to believe what I'm saying.

Being able to easily find out, and link to, the current scientific opinion on topics would make it easier to address common misconceptions. A better informed public can on-the-whole only be a good thing, and surely this would also be helpful for matters of public policy where scientific opinion is relevant.

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I'll explain what I mean by a source outlining current scientific opinion.

Imagine that a high status journal like Nature did a biannual survey of working scientists to gather their opinions about various topics, such as which interpretation of QM they believe. They could survey scientists in different fields, asking them about topics specific to their field. For example, Cosmologists could be asked whether they believe the big bang theory is true. Biologists could be asked whether they believe evolution is true. And so on.

Obviously a lot of thought would have to go into the questions they asked. Since the results of the survey would be for the general public, the media and the government to use, you'd want it to cover the sorts of questions these people might have a use for.

They could put the survey results up on a web-site that you could search and find answers such as (to make up a statistic) "99% of surveyed biologists believe in evolution".

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The goal would be to have an authoritative source of such information. First, a reasonable proportion of practicing scientists would need to respond to the survey, so you know that the statistics it provides are representative. Hopefully scientists would be willing to respond to the survey, as a kind of public service.

Second, it would need to be a "brand" that was known to be reputable. So that if you presented a fact like "99% of surveyed biologists believe in evolution", linking to this source, the people seeing it would recognise that site and know what it's about and believe that it is reputable. (Obviously this is just an ideal. It couldn't just start out with that reputation, and it could never have that reputation for everyone in the population).

There's learned philosophers but not philosophical experts

I posted the following to reddit/r/philosophy:

It seems to me that the notion of expertise can only apply to fields in which there is an established body of knowledge. By that I mean fields in which we have (empirical) grounds for believing our knowledge is at least an approximation or heading in the right direction. Physics or genetics or how to fix cars are examples of such fields. You can be an expert in physics.

Philosophy seems different. What makes philosophy interesting is that it's about things we don't understand well. In philosophy we're not even sure that existing approaches to problems are heading in the right direction.

Philosophy is pretty much by definition about things we don't understand well. Once a philosophical topic is understood it ceases to be part of philosophy, and becomes part of another field like physics, biology, economics, etc. (or alternatively, the problem may be dissolved and seen as a kind of misunderstanding.)

I would say the kind of knowledge that exists in the field of philosophy is more of ways of describing problems, or particular arguments for or against a view of problems. It's more like a discussion.

You can be an expert in the different positions about a philosophical problem, but I would distinguish this from the idea that someone can be an expert on a philosophical subject.

For example, someone can be an expert on the various problems and arguments associated with consciousness, but I don't think anyone can claim to be an expert on consciousness (at least the hard problem of consciousness) because we just don't understand it.

So rather than saying there are experts in philosophy I would say that there are people who are very learned in philosophy.

Why does this distinction matter?

When there isn't established knowledge, we're less certain that existing approaches are correct. The fact that an existing approach hasn't been able to solve a problem for long time may mean that it's the wrong approach. It is more likely in philosophy that someone who comes from outside of the field, who isn't well versed in the existing approaches, can add something of use to the table. The fact that they aren't familiar with existing arguments may even be a virtue.

If there aren't philosophical experts, then there aren't experts to challenge.

Yet it seems to me that philosophy seems to hold greater reverence for 'experts' than most other fields.

Improving 'use by' labelling on food

Here's a pretty basic suggestion for improving 'use by' labelling on food.

Even food that's properly packaged and uncontaminated can still go bad well before its use by date.

For example, once a tub of tomato paste has been opened it needs to be used within a few weeks at most, even if its use by date is still more than a year away.  And of course, it needs to be stored properly, in the fridge.

'use by' labelling unfortunately suggests that the food is ok to consume as long as that date hasn't passed, regardless of any other details.  (the same applies for 'best before' dates).


Here's my suggestion for how the labels could look:

    Use by:
    7 days after opening
    and before 31 Mar 2012
    Refrigerate after opening.

Packaging does often show 'time after opening' information and storage info, but they're usually in some fine-print separated from the (much more prominent) use by date. I think all this information should be shown right next to each other, as in the labelling suggested above.

With the way it currently is, you can easily just see the use by date by itself and draw the conclusion that if today's date is before then the food is ok.

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You might think it'd be obvious how food needs to be stored, but people often put condiments that according to the labelling should be refrigerated in the pantry.

And even if you have stored it properly, the sight of the use by date being still months or years off can make it feel like the food must still be ok.  I've seen someone who has, for this reason, used tomato paste that's been put in the fridge but since gone mouldy (first scraping the mould off).

Of course labelling is never going to *stop* people from doing anything, but that's not the point.  It's to try and help reduce the chances of it happening, even if only by a relatively small amount.

Keep in mind, also, that it's not just about the one-off effects of eating unsafe foods, but whatever the cumulative effects of this may be.

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Warning: the following is a bit rambly... where I try to think through some of the issues to do with human perception and psychology that underly labelling.

Labelling concerns human perception and psychology.  It's not a matter of what information is, strictly speaking, available.  It's about what information we'll notice and how we'll perceive it and how it can effect our actions.

The thing is that people aren't going to devote much time or effort to checking food safety info on labels.

The amount of time and effort and concentration we devote to a task tends to be proportional to how important it is to us at that point in time (and this is not usually the result of a conscious choice).

We don't fully consciously process the smaller things.  To some extent we're always handling certain tasks on automatic, rather than giving them full conscious deliberation.  We're creatures of habit, as they say.

While we're doing the little tasks we usually have our concentration focused more on the bigger tasks and concerns on our minds.

We're unlikely to ever devote that much time or effort or conscious thought to food labelling info.

As soon as a person finds something that seems like its telling them the whole story (the "use by" date) they're likely to stop their search.

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Think what it'd actually take to actually find and process the other food safety information in addition to the use by date.

We'd have to think to look for it.  We'd have to find it on the packet, then take the effort to read it.  And then we'd have to reconcile that information with the use by date information.  The latter is harder than it sounds.  It took me a fair while to get clear how the use by date relates to the 'time after opening' info.

And we'd have to overcome our natural inclination to stop our search once we have found an answer (you can find a description of some research on this here.  I can't recall where I had first heard about this, but I do remember that Dan Airely describes it in his book Predictably Irrational).  We make swift, relatively sub-conscious judgements.

Where's the motivation in a normal situation to do these things?  There doesn't seem to be one.  There's always heaps of things you could be doing, but unless they're relevant to what you are doing or want to do they don't come to mind.

It may seem so "obvious" as something to focus upon because that's what we're doing right now in this bit of writing.  Which is the 'paradox' of discussing aspects of tasks that you wouldn't think of when you were actually doing the task - when you're discussing it you're making yourself to focus on it.

Future scenario: personal AI drone cameraman

Here's a possible future scenario.

There's really cheap, light, compact drones (mini helicopter things) with good AI, an on-board camera, and really good battery life. They're quiet, too.

You and a friend go on a hike together, and take one of these with you.

At the start of the hike you take it out and tell it to follow you. (it's got voice control, so you just tell it what to do).

You tell it to take shots every once in a while. Its AI is good enough to compose reasonable shots, ensuring it gets one or both of you in the frame.

Perhaps it can even spot things of interest on the side of the track (e.g a big mushroom nestled in a rotting log on the side of the track) you might have missed.

You come to nice waterfall beside the track so you ask the drone to fly out so it can get a shot of both of you with the waterfall in the background.

It flies out to where it thinks it might get a good shot. It's transmitting the image to your phone so you can see what it looks like. You want it to move more to the left and get a little lower so you tell it that.

At the end of the walk you sit down on a picnic blanket and have lunch together. You figure it'd be nice to get a shot of both of you having the picnic so you instruct the drone to take one.

(and of course that's just one of many possible scenarios, many no doubt with a sinister edge, that such technology might make possible).

Reframing how digital content is sold

Perhaps we could change how digital content (e-books, MP3s etc) is offered for sale.  Instead of "buy a copy of this item", offer it as "pay for the effort that went into creating this item".

Buying a copy means buying some bits, and since bits sound insubstantial and making copies of bits is effortless, it doesn't sound like it should be worth much money.

But when you frame it as paying the content creator for their effort, that sounds (to me) like something that's worth more.

This is about changing how people view what it means to purchase digital content.  There's obviously a big question about how that could be achieved and I'm not sure of the answer.

One component of that is the user-interface in online-stores.  I wonder if you could replace the 'buy' button with something else?  Replace it with something that suggests you are giving money to pay for the effort that went into creating that content.

Perhaps it could be a 'pay' button, with hover-text saying "pay for the effort that went into creating this item".

Obviously you'd want it to be something pretty short and sweet.

--

update: I wonder if the visual "branding" used by Creative Commons might serve as a model for this.  There are a range of buttons that represent particular Creative Commons licences (see the image to the right of this paragraph for an example).  Perhaps you could have something analogous to this and by, instead of a 'buy' button, having a special button that represents this notion of paying for the creation of the content instead of for the content itself.

Idea: hold-and-swipe touch-screen gesture

An idea for a type of touch-screen gesture for phones: the user places their left-thumb anywhere on the screen and keeps it in the same place, and at the same time they swipe across with their right-thumb.

You can think of the left-thumb as acting like a modifier, like the shift-key.  A left-handed person could keep their right thumb stationary and swipe their left thumb - it'd have the same effect.

Each different swipe direction (up, down, left or right) could be recognised as a distinct gesture with its own distinct meaning.

I don't know if anyone has used this type of gesture before, but the benefit of it is that it's quite easy to perform.  Which is one of the challenges with gestures: finding ones that are really quick and easy to do.

On distinctions made between 'data', 'information' and 'knowledge'

Someone recently asked me what I thought about the distinction between data, information and knowledge.  I emailed them a response, and I thought I might as well turn that response into a blog post.

I think that it's good to recognise that not all "information" is the same, and that there is a kind of spectrum between 'raw data' and 'deep knowledge'.

But I'm not that keen on all the arguments about how you distinguish between these three concepts.  I just don't think we have a clear enough picture of what *any* of them are to draw sharp lines between them.  I also doubt there are any *sharp* lines to be drawn along that spectrum.

But aren't these sorts of arguments what is required to get a clearer understanding of the concept?  I don't think so.  I think our current understanding of these concepts is a "pre-scientific" one, and that what these arguments are doing is trying to find some set of criteria within these concepts that sharply distinguishes each from the other.  

I think that task is doomed to failure.  Here's an analogy: when philosophers had a "pre-scientific" understanding of matter, they could get into all sorts of arguments about what was the difference was between liquids, solids and gasses (this is a thought-experiment, I don't know the historical details well enough to know specifically what happened).  But they were never going to solve the problem just trying to find some criteria to sharply distinguish these concepts from each other.

We now know that what was required was to get an understanding that we'd now label with terms like 'chemistry' and 'physics' -- an understanding in terms of molecules, atoms, etc.  What was required was to go deeper than their phenomenal concepts of 'liquid', 'solid' and 'gas'.  To have an understanding of what each of those things actually are, rather than just how to distinguish between them.

So, in the case of data, information and knowledge we need to go beyond our phenomenal notions of them and get at their "underlying physics", so to speak.  And when we do so we may find that -- like with 'liquids', 'solids' and 'gasses' -- there is an underlying unity there.