QuickLook CSV Plugin

I never thought I could be a fan of a QuickLook plugin, but I am. Here's the link.

Boars, Barrows and Gilts

I just came across the article, Genetic Correlation Between Boars, Barrows and Gilts for Various Carcass Traits, from the Journal of Animal Science.

1. "Boars, Barrows and Gilts" - it rolls off the tongue. What a lovely phrase.
2. Carcass traits. Ick.

Mirriam Webster defines "gilt" alternately as "superficial brilliance" and "a young female swine." Equally evocatively, it defines "barrow" as "a large mound of earth or stones over the remains of the dead: tumulus" or "a male hog castrated before sexual maturity."

JetBlue All-You-Can-Fly pass

There are publicized restrictions, but I figured there must be more of a catch. But: "No blackout dates apply to Pass travel, and Pass travel is not capacity controlled" (from their terms available here).

Good-bye, Clarifi

I wanted to see if I still needed the Griffin Clarifi, the iPhone case that allowed me to take good pictures of receipts with my iPhone 3G. The 3G S is said to have a shorter focal length. I included pictures with my Nikon D-70 as a reference standard.

Unique file IDs

I write code to generate graphics. When I have a graphic I like, I save the image I've generated. In order to know exactly what code created that image, I like to save the code with the same name. As I gradually improve the code, the names evolve, with an addition of a descriptive word or with a version number. This all requires a kind of foresight (to know what description will be useful to my future self) and systematicness that I don't want to spend the time on. For now I've contented myself with a script that generates a unique time-based ID that I paste onto the end of the file names for the graphic and the code. The script copies the ID to my clipboard (requires OSX). Now all I need is a quicksilver trigger, and I can be more brainless than usual.

the code:

echo `date "+%Y%m%d_%H%M%S"` | pbcopy ; echo `pbpaste`

E-mail closings

From a WaPo article linked at Lifehacker:

Favorite:
Love and Bacon (Spike Mendelsohn)

Occasionally fun:
Seacrest out
Off like a prom dress

Meh:
Warmly
XOXO (meh when i wouldn't XOXO in person)

Does "Cordially" ever mean anything other than "My hostility is only thinly veiled"?
(Ruth McCann, WaPo)

The terseness of these is appealing:
Navy and the Air Force: "V/R" ("Very respectfully")
Marines: "S/F" (Semper Fi)
Army Rangers: "RLTW" ("Rangers Lead the Way")

Sadly, my favorites are probably not fit for public consumption. For example, I'd love to regularly close communications with "I have the honor to remain your obedient servant" but I think it might just make things awkward. I'll be sticking with my stand-by, "Best," unless "Thanks" is relevant.

Hour by hour temperature predictions

This is one of the hardest things for me to predict, and something I most like to know about the weather when I travel somewhere unfamiliar. I like pages like this.

scheduled ringer un-silencing: the killer mobile phone feature

How many people have forgotten that they muted their mobile phone ringer? I can go for days before I figure it out.

The solution has been around for years in the land of windows mobile. It's a feature in the third party program called "SPB Phone Suite" which I last used several years ago. It configures different groups of ringer-related settings. You might have one with a quiet, respectable ringer that you use when you're at work and a bunch of goofy loud personalized ones you use on your own time. But my favorite feature uses the one of the default profiles, the one called "Silent." You can set a category of appointments to trigger that profile automatically. Then every time you have an appointment scheduled, your phone will automatically not ring during that time. More importantly, it will switch back to your usual profile again after your appointment.

Only minorities have identity-based opinions?

There is a despicable implication in many questions Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings: only minorities are biased by their identities. Has no one mentioned that we all have identities that influence our perceptions?


-- Mobile post

The hot cash market for 3G iphone...

I posted my 3G iphone on EBay yesterday. I've gotten two messages asking whether I would be willing to sell it for cash in person. I wonder what that's about.

The two messages were very similar, but from different EBay ids. They have some indistinct similarity to brief replies I've gotten when selling things and offering apartments for rent on craigslist, replies that are vague and suggest the person is replying to a great number of ads.

Are these phones going overseas? Being superficially altered and resold as 3G S? Simply being sold to people who don't want contracts?

Billed as "Retro Future"

I don't even know what to make of it.

word of the day: artifactual

dismissive. in biology, it means a result that is unintentionally caused by the process of asking the question (e. g. pressure on a sample when you put a coverslip on a microscope slide). a result that is not relevant to the general biological truth.

Science should be FUN

like this:

Five competition polo ponies were ridden by a professional rider to perform five maximal accelerations and five maximal decelerations in an all-weather polo arena...Stride timings were derived from hoof-mounted 50 g accelerometers logged into MP3 recorders.

From the article "Pitch then Power" in the Biology Letters journal.

As an aside, I think it's interesting that they choose to compare greyhounds with polo ponies. Racing greyhounds accelerate in a linear context. Winning races does not depend on deceleration. Polo ponies, on the other hand, work in a multi-directional environment responding to other players on different paths. Mostly they're turning on a dime, negotiating melees, suddenly starting or stopping, and changing stride to adjust to changing conditions. The study seems to find equivalence between the two groups, but it would be hard to know if any differences were the result of one variable (species) or the other (competion conditions). A hard-core reductionist could instead compare race horses with greyhounds or herding dogs with polo ponies.

Recursive dog

Roomate: Good-night little dog, little dog with a little dog in his mouth
me: He's recursive dog
Roommate: Yes, you need to sew a smaller dog in the little dog's mouth.

Caltech PhDs awarded in 2009 by division and date of undergrad degree

A back-of-the-program sketch.

Worst phone I've ever had: iPhone

Sure, it's also the best piece of electronics I've ever had, and that's why I keep it. But for making calls, it continues to be the worst phone I've ever had, including my first cell phone, that creaky Kyocera.

Best: interface, content, features. Maps, web, games. There are lots of improvements I'd like to see, but it's the best thing going for a mobile device. One of the reasons I like it is because it reduces the amount of stuff I need to carry. But what I really need to add to my purse is a phone that works.

Still: Women underrepresented in applicant pool for science faculty positions

This is the same result I remember from the last report. Basically, even when women are present in equal numbers in graduate programs, they are less likely than men to apply for faculty positions in their field. However, women who do have faculty positions are generally compensated as well as men. The bottleneck is in the applicant pool.

Why? Here's what I think: women are motivated to pursue science. Once they have reached the point of considering whether to apply for a faculty position, they have become intimately acquainted with work conditions in academia. They've seen that successful faculty forsake all other interests. Many women are not willing to do that, especially if it means forsaking family. So if they have a choice, they don't pursue an academic faculty position.

gumption traps

gumption traps are small problems that "destroy enthusiasm and leave you so discouraged you want to forget the whole business."

(credited to robert pirsig by nick heil)

Yummy spelling errors

this is a "run"

who does this crazy kind of thing?

Short pallets on moving walkway

The pallets on this moving walkway at JFK are about half the length of my shoe.

In support of drunk driving?

This kind of stuff cracks me up:

"...bracelets can promote the support of many causes that sweep the nation such as breast cancer awareness, racial tolerance, drunk driving and free speech."

from here, in this instance.

The downside of ease of use

The ease of use of the mac really opens you up to have a truly disabling drinking problem.

-paraphrased from merlin mann's "most days" daily video project 2009/01/04

Overheard: quality or cost?

Overheard boarding airplane out of Burbank:

"Pick the one with the four stars, I mean the four dollar signs.

Bacon cup with toast and egg

After lots of big talk, I finally got around to making bacon cups. Mostly I was motivated by the departure of my fantastic cook friend, whom I wanted to make some food for on his moving day. I had read about them here and learned about microwaving them here, and of course I was goosed by the recent Bacon Explosion mania. I'm really sold on the microwave version - the speed makes the whole thing very quick. Here's a description of how I made them. The "egg sandwich in bacon cup" was a huge hit, and really yummy. I made the bacon cups before I made the eggs, and I reheated the cups in the microwave for 5 seconds before putting the warm egg and toast in it. The toast works well to fill the holes in the bottom - I couldn't eat all the bacon it would take to make a solid bottom. The best way to eat it was like a sandwich, although it was messy. I'm thinking of doing an oatmeal version, and experimenting with maple syrup and brown sugar on the bacon.

Science Tattoos

There's a whole collection.
atom-future

Thank goodness that's over

bye, 43.

Michelle Obama fangirl

I'm a fan of Barack Obama, but I'm wild about Michelle Obama. I've never actively liked a first lady before - I think Barbara Bush was the most personable of presidential wives during my conscious civic life. I was musing on whether the Obamas would get any criticism for going "too black" with Aretha's musical interpretation. But then I looked at the religious speaker and their manner and clothes, and I thought: "they will be given all the room in the world: they out-WASP the WASPs with their poise, reserve, and dignity." Plus, Michelle dresses like a house on fire.

Lab coats: the Kathryn Heigl Collection

There's also a "Grey's Anatomy" line. The scrubs themselves are nothing special. How big is that market, anyway?

I find this comforting

All you are is a bag of particles acting out the laws of physics -Brian Greene

(from the Multi Universe(s) episode of Radiolab)

skeleton sweatshirt

more from street anatomy

from The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art

(by Karen Norberg)

Click the image for a big pretty version.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Twice the size of Texas, it's small and large pieces of plastic gathered by ocean currents.
Wikipedia entry
NYTimes article Sea of Trash
Image from Greenpeace animation. Link is halfway down this page.

Leek soup

leek soup
Originally uploaded by manducasexta

I meant to take a picture before I ate it. My failure to do so is a testament to how yummy it was.

The recipe, loosely derived from cooks illustrated:

Cut and wash 6 leeks

Melt 6 TBS butter in stock pot

When butter is foaming, add leeks

Give it 15 minutes or so until leeks start to become translucent. (I also added 2 potatoes 5 minutes later, but I think I should have waited longer)

Add 1 TBS flour, stir until mixed

After a few minutes, slowly add 4 c chicken stock with stirring (salty stock is ok - this soup needs salt)

Let cook 20 min or so (until potatoes are done)

Let cool a bit

Blend with immersion blender - with more foresight I would have moved the soup into a pot with a smaller diameter to make the blending easier. I didn't blend to homogeneity - I like a little texture left. with yet more foresight, I might have poured some out and then poured it back after blending most of it.

Taste, add salt & pepper, repeat

I couldn't find any herbs or spices I was very inspired by - I smelled the ones I had and wasn't moved

I let the soup cool even further and stored most of it away in the fridge.

I poured the rest (~1 cup) into the pyrex bowl in the picture and added a couple tbs of heavy cream and gobbled it up before I could remember to take a picture.

I'm not sure if i'll put cream in the rest. It's pretty good as is, but cream is pretty good too!

My biggest weakness

Click for larger image.


Horrible to have it laid out so clearly.

XKCD is often brilliant. This is another of my favorites.

New roommate

New roommate
Originally uploaded by manducasexta

Thanks Jason.

Burda twist dress

This dress looks fun to make. People report that it's easy (!?). The pattern is from Burda's World of Fashion magazine (2008 number 103). The picture is a version of the dress made by Melissa Fehr, but many other people have written about sewing it too.

I want to like ThreadBanger.com

But the truth is that there are many better sewing websites. Stodgy patternreview.com and european-leaning burdastyle.com are stuffed (stuffed!) with highly skilled sewing enthusiasts, and even craftster.org, which covers many areas other than sewing, has higher quality projects and information. When ThreadBanger raved about the movie Bride Wars, our relationship ended. We still talk, but not regularly.

Jonathan Gold reviews Noodle Island

Adding Noodle Island to my list of Place to Eat Before I Leave. Yum!

Street Anatomy

A lovely new find. Thanks Jordan!

Found

"No Bake Cooking Kit"

IMG_0219.JPG
Originally uploaded by manducasexta

What?

Stalk of Brussels Sprouts

Stalk of Brussels Sprouts
Originally uploaded by manducasexta

I didn't know the sprouts grew in a spiral. Or that they heft like a cricket bat.

"These directions are for planning purposes only."

Do not follow directions
Originally uploaded by manducasexta

A new-looking exit sign points toward the corner of two walls. There is no way to go in that direction, much less exit that way. It reminds me of the disclaimers on automatic maps. Google's is "These directions are for planning purposes only."

God Hates Signs

westboro baptist church and me
Originally uploaded by Burstein!

Mmm, absurdist goodness. Way to get in there and shake things up.

noodle bar yums

In spite of my new austerity plan, I ate out last night. I am pleased to report I've found a new (to me) gem: Viet Noodle Bar. The friend of a friend picked it. Lovely minimalist interior, simple excellent menu. We got a selection of appetizers, all of which were delicious. For an entree, I got Vegetarian Soyskin noodle, which was terrific. We brought our own wine. Here's their minimalist website: vietnoodlebar.com

Promoting insight

This article suggests, among other things, that insight requires focus
followed by relaxation. Many of my fellow graduate students have
trouble falling asleep, a potential time for new insights. We use
various drugs and distractions to get to sleep. It seems that this is
yet another case of our desire for progress actually impeding it.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_lehrer

---
Sent from a teeny keyboard; please excuse typos.

Black kids @ the Mayan

Pop quiz: Name three Harlequin romance book categories

Harlequin Medical Romance
Harlequin NASCAR
Harlequin Superromance

(see here for more answers)

Luckily Harlequin has guidelines for each of its lines, so the writer can tune her/his prose. For example:

In Harlequin Historical UNDONE we are looking for a high level of sensuality that flows naturally out of the plotline. There should be a strong emotional basis to the heightened attraction—it's vital the reader can believe in the intense emotion driving the characters as their relationship develops. These stories should be hot, sexy and subtly explicit without the lovemaking being vulgar or gratuitous.

Whether you choose a dark and devilishly sexy Regency rake caught in a compromising situation with a headstrong miss, or a courageous Saxon lady held captive by a powerful Norman warrior, your characters should be fully fleshed out and should be the main focus of the story.

The wikipedia entry on "Romance novel" is also quite interesting.

Frontier Baroque

As Alistair Cooke observed, “Americans seem to be more comfortable with Republican presidents because they share the common frailty of muddled syntax and because, when they attempt eloquence, they do tend to spout a kind of Frontier Baroque.”

As quoted by Maureen Dowd, 10/5/08

Don't ask

Get flight status notification, unless late or delayed

Apparently, on the Southwest Airlines website, you can't get flight information notifications unless you sign up well before the flight is scheduled to leave. If you find out the flight is delayed, and then decide you want to be notified, you get this piece of broken logic:

The flight information that you entered is for a flight that has either already arrived or departed, or the notification time that you selected is too close to the arrival or departure time.

Any programmer would advise against the ambiguity introduced by those "OR" statements.

Does it mean you can't request notification of arrival time after the plane has departed?

New Nantucket Nectar bottle shape

New Nantucket Nectar bottle shape
Originally uploaded by manducasexta

I'm so sad to see this - I loved the big fat Nantucket Nectar bottle shape (left) and the printed letters on it, the old-fashioned shape and the non-rectangular label. Now it's the same smooth bottle you see everywhere.

Carhenge

Carhenge
Originally uploaded by yarnzombie

This is on my "places to go" list.

Dinosaur eats/humps dog?

Dinner

Pork cutlets (from tenderloin, dredged in flour, egg, and fresh white bread crumbs)
Mashed potatoes (toasted 30 cloves of garlic on the stove top, used 2 cups 1/2 & 1/2; 2 sticks butter, 5 oz alouette cheese)
Salad (spinach, dried cranberries, candied pecans, goat cheese, some vinaigrette dressing)

Outcome: one guest, AS, said she liked the food so much she was "feeling romantic about it."

Yay.

Paddling the Long Beach canals

Kayaking in the canals of the Naples neighborhood of Long Beach (actually quite lovely in spite of Long Beach being the second busiest port in the United States), kc and I saw something I haven't seen before: people paddling while standing up on big floaty surfboards. Apparently it's a surfing thing, but these folks were just leisurely kicking around the canals. I didn't really get it - it seems like fun for waves, but very un-ergonomic for calm water.

Photos (admittedly not of stand-up paddlers) clockwise from top right by flickr users kris247, Mr Babyman, kris247 and Binary LA.

Gingergrass

In more food news, I went to Gingergrass on Sunday night. I've heard mixed things about it, but I was totally sold. Great company helped. I had the special shrimp and coconut, partially split with kc who had the clay pot curry vegetables with tofu. We also got a steamed noodle veggie dumpling, and our food pals got their favorite, the wok-tossed noodles. Yum.

Scoops: wonder-gelato

I finally got to Scoops tonight, after going to a live session of The Moth. The Moth was fun, but the gelato was fantastic. Scoops apparently avoids publicity, so I'll avoid linking to it. I had two flavors: salty caramel and orange chocolate. AR had two flavors too: brown bread and strawberry with poppy seed. Apparently, sometimes they have salt chocolate. Wonderful. The folks behind the counter were very friendly. We chatted a bit with our server, who had some good suggestions. While we were sitting inside eating, they closed up, but not before giving us a big to-go container full of coffee and green tea gelato. We briefly chatted up the guy who comes up with the flavors and makes them all every night (Tai Kim). I felt like I was in the presence of greatness. The flavors were all quite strong, an very fresh. Wonderful.

bacon-chocolate crunch bar: Jonathan Gold says yes

Photo by Ringo H.W. Chiu / For The [LA]Times

J. Gold article

Electronic innards, artistically arranged

Lovely, by brittnybadger

"Sortation:" what's wrong with a gerund?

This is what FedEx calls their sorting centers for their SmartPost service. If it's good enough for William Safire (here), it should be good enough for me. Unfortunately, it isn't.

Olympic-level idiocy

Three gripes about the Olympic opening ceremonies: firstly, the kid scheduled to sing a patriotic Chinese song while the Chinese olympic team entered the stadium was switched out at last minute. The new girl's voice was overdubbed by the earlier singer's. The switch was revealed days later by a musical director of the opening ceremonies. Why the switch? Because:

"The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feeling and expression."
(from MTV.com, Olympic Lip-Synching Singer Outed Following Opening-Ceremonies Switch)

"The national interest requires that the girl should have good looks and a good grasp of the song and look good on screen."
(from WaPo, Pretty Face and Voice Didn't Belong to Same Girl)

My second gripe concerns the fireworks that were set off in the shape of footsteps advancing toward the ceremony. They were represented on television by computer-generated graphics. The graphics were produced by "a team of hundreds of Chinese visual effects specialists who worked for nearly a year to pull it off." This wasn't revealed until later, neither in China or the US. Until then the clearest indication of what we were watching was Matt Lauer's inarticulate and ridiculous: "This is actually almost animation."
(from NPR, Computer-Enhanced Fireworks)

Lastly, there was a group of kids dressed in traditional clothing from ethnic minority groups were actually from the majority Han group, even though "the official Olympic guide said the children were from the ethnic groups they represented."
(from WSJ, Chinese children in ethnic costume come from Han majority)

On the subject of actual Olympic athletic competition, it turns out that "Live" does not mean what one might expect. On the west coast, NBC is broadcasting the actual events with a "live" graphic, although they took place three hours earlier. NBC's response to questions about this disparity? Two or maybe four times per hour, they add a time stamp to indicate when the event actually was live.
(from Reuters, Olympics, NBC dogged by fakery accusations)

A Prius kind of day

This convertible Prius surprised me this morning. A little web-searching suggests it's made by Newport Convertible Engineering.

Later I was walking in a parking lot, choking on cigarette smoke coming out of a Prius. Hilarious.

Bastille Day Cheesecake

I made a three layer cheesecake for my friend's Bastille Day party. The picture is an in-progress shot. The cake was huge, and served about 16 people who were also eating from other desserts.

The recipe is a bastardization of about 3 different recipes from Cook's Illustrated, Epicurious and cdkitchen. Here's roughly what I did.

(Cook's Illustrated)
Line bottom of 9-inch springform pan with foil, tuck foil underneath pan bottom, assemble pan, then pull foil around side of pan, (see illustrations 1 and 2, below). Brush bottom and sides with butter.

(epicurious)
In a bowl stir together the cookie crumbs and the butter until the mixture is combined well and pat the mixture onto the bottom and 1/2 inch up the side of a 9 1/2-inch springform pan. Chill the crust for 30 minutes.

(Cook's Illustrated)
Meanwhile, beat cream cheese in food processor until smooth. Gradually add sugar and mix until sugar dissolves, about 3 minutes.

(winging it)
Split the cream cheese-sugar combo into thirds. To the first third, add about 1 cup of frozen blackberries. Mix until smooth. if desired, add blue food coloring (The mixture was purple, and adding the blue didn't have much effect. in the future I might omit it.)

Beat two eggs, and from that mixture, pour about 1.3 eggs into the food processor. Add 2 TBS each cream and sour cream. mix until just incorporated (this is why you don't add the frozen fruit at the end; you don't want to beat the eggs or cream much).

(modified from cdkitchen)
Pour blackberry portion into crust. freeze for 40 minutes. meanwhile, prepare the strawberry and vanilla portions in the same way as the first, adding 1/2 tsp vanilla to the vanilla portion only. You'll use 4 eggs in all. refrigerate each portion while waiting to pour them.

When the blackberry layer is firm, remove from freezer and add vanilla layer. In the picture, I've spooned on a little of the vanilla layer to see how well the blackberry level has gelled. Freeze till firm, about 1/2 hour. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 500 degrees. Add red layer when vanilla is firm.

(Cook's Illustrated)
Bake cheesecake at 500 degrees for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 200 degrees, leaving oven door ajar until oven temperature reduces. Bake until perimeter of cake is set, but center jiggles like Jell-O when pan is tapped, about 1 hour longer. Remove springform pan and set on wire rack; cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate until chilled, at least 4 hours. (Can be refrigerated up to 4 days.)

(hard learned lesson)
Note: you really must refrigerate for 4 hours or the center of the cake won't set. You'll be left with a gooey, tasty mess. To make the cheesecake on the day you'll eat it, it has to be started at least 7 hours before.

My country 'tis of bacteria

At an Independence Day pops concert, we heard a vocal medley of patriotic songs including "America" (recognizable as "My Country 'Tis of Thee"). I was delighted by the line "Microbes and giant trees" in the list of American things we love, but it turns out it's "Thy groves." Oh well. (Microbes available from giantmicrobes.com)

McGee Creek Hike

A good change from the city. Don't miss the bug eating locoweed and the dog chilling his paws. The snow in July blew my mind although I grew up seeing it in Colorado. The whole trip I was struck by how much the Eastern Sierra reminded me of Colorado, from the mountains and fir trees all the way to the sagebrush.

You may also notice some haze in the pictures. At least part of it is from the prodigious fires in the area. The California Office of Emergency Services has some great maps and data available (that's a 2008 link - parse it if necessary).

TDC Stereo Project-or-view

TDC Stereo Project-or-view
Originally uploaded by _buttercup

I fell for the design the minute I saw it, and couldn't stop myself from salvaging it from recycling center. I'm still thinking about its future. Meta frame/controller for digital photo frame? If I could make one front dial scan through the photos like Cover Flow and another zoom in and out, I'd die happy. Or maybe it should hold the monitor for my home server. And/or run it off my old iPod Nano, maybe with iPodLinux. Or my NSLU2.

The screen is 7 7/8" x 8 7/8". Here are the internal schematics.

My goals for it are low power consumption and the ability to turn on the whole unit with a single switch, to reduce fuss, and so i can run it off a timer.

Jesus loves destructive, proselytizing renters

(The small text says "Go Vegetarian! peta2.com")

My renter left this on the fridge in his apartment when he moved out. I'm not sure what I'm most annoyed by:

1. Being proselytized to about Jesus
2. Being proselytized to about vegetarianism
3. Peta, for freak's sake. I'm an animal researcher! There've been a lot of attacks on animal researchers regionally. I've killed fewer mice than most homeowners, and more humanely, but there isn't necessarily much safety in that: so far, researchers have been targeted apparently randomly.
4. Leaving a strongly-adhered sticker on a brand new fridge. You can see the marks where I started to try to peel it off.

Escapism

Dreaming about the day I'm not a graduate student anymore. (Desk from boingboing).