Some of my favorite childhood memories are negotiating with my father about what I could select as a Christmas/birthday gift from the Edmund's catalog.
Me: "I want one of those ruby-laser kits." Him: "No. What about a prism?" Me: "I want one of those sets that has all the chemicals." Him: "No. What about a prism?" Me: "I want one of those magnets that can lift a small car." Him: "No. What about a prism?"
I got a *lot* of prisms. By the time I was eight, I had about a dozen of varied shapes and sizes.
Well, at the rarefied heights of "chef" and "pastry chef" there is generally a pretty good working knowledge of a limited subset of organic chemistry as it relates to food and taste. And sometimes a pretty impressive set of knowledge -- find a good pastry chef and ask them about the chemical interactions involved in a loaf of bread...and be ready for a 2 hour long lecture.
A guy I worked with once told me "if you're cutting up a steak for people to sample, don't cut it into little cubes...cut it into long, thin strips...it tastes better because it provides a greater surface area for {big long enzyme in the saliva} to work with". (He then told me, "I learned that in the Organic-Chemistry-for-Chefs Class that I took last year". (And, yes, he really used the phrase "organic chemistry".)). Of course, I immediately put this to a field test with about 5 people (including myself) as test subjects. Sure enough, he was correct...the same steak -- when cut into long thin strips -- tastes better than the when it's cut into an volumetrically equivalent cube.
*snickers* (Sorry, I was thinking of a time when I saw an idiot put a drop of pure pepeprmint oil on his tongue).
I wouldn't advocate using most essential oils in food. You could use them in absolutely microscopic amounts -- but most kitchens/chefs don't have the tools, time or inclination to measure out correct amounts of essential oils. And leaving out the "potentially physically unsafe" part of it, essential oils are so strong in flavor and scent that they will easily overwhelm the other flavors in a dish.
That's why most commonly used "food safe" extracts have an ingredient list that goes something like "distilled water, alcohol, whatever oil". The water provides a buffer.
Re:I'm sorry, but this is entirely incorrect.
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Dude. I have to say it. I *have* to say it.
Lorentz transformations might be "normal math" to you, but to a lot of people (even the average slashdotter) they probably aren't. Think about it. If the poster that you're replying to could *do* Lorentz transformations then he wouldn't be having this mental roadblock...because by learning how to do them, he would have figured out the concepts involved.
It might be more helpful in the future to say something like "here is a cool little Java applet that visually (and interactively) explains a Lorentz transformation. It's not a thorough mathematical explanation, but it should give you some clues to what I'm talking about. Simple Lorentz transformations can be done easily with the skills that you (hopefully) learned in high school algebra. I know that most papers explaining Lorentz transformation are written in mathematicese, but, hey, it's just like learning Perl. Take it slowly, one step at a time, and work all of the examples out yourself. Good luck."
My first memory...It's when I was driving home after I initially got glasses.
"Mom, that's a *lake*"
"Mom, those are *trees*"
"Mom, that's *our* house?"
I was a little older than two. I don't really remember anything before that. And I don't start remebering anything after that until I was 4. (And even then, it's just bits and pieces). My "full scale memoery" doesn't start kicking in until about 1st grade.
So, yes, here's me chiming in on "sensory events" being important to memory.
I suspect many geeks (who have a stereotype/reputation for buying *lots* of expensive toys and holding pretty decent sized debts) have it a lot worse than I do.
Oh yeah. The best processor in the house is a 600Mhz PII.
I'll skip the obligatory "though I never respond to an AC comment"...
The other two conflicts that I mentioned, WWII and Vietnam also result in the French having their asses handed to them. Let's not forget Algeria, either. If you take Napoleon out of the equation, there is a litany of stories that basically end in "...and the French got smacked down yet again."
What I wanted to point out is that France can lay claim to one of the most stunning, impressive, damn near unbelievable examples of "dedication to duty" that the world has ever seen. It's up there with the Alamo...and as a native Texan, indoctrinated from birth, I don't say that lightly.
Camerone is a shining example of dedication and a refusal to quit. So, the next time that you have a performance review...or the next time you need to convince your manager that you really *do* need a new server...remember Camerone Day!:)
I do have to point out Camerone Day. It is *way* up on the list of legendary-battles-that-really-happened.
Sure, it might be the French *Foreign* Legion. But there sure were some French guys there driving the train.
Yes, the vast majority of WWII was not too pretty...however, Dien Bien Phu -- while a failure, was not a surrender. And that difference is incredibly important. Dien Bien Phu would be impressive by itself. But Camerone gives the French, and the French military, something that no one will ever be able to take away. And if you don't understand what I just said, then I will never be able to explain it to you.
The day after Camerone Day, like the day after Veteran's Day, is a day that I will always manage to get off...because I'll be so hungover that I wouldn't be able to work.
-- An Anglo-American that spent many, many years in the U.S. Army (with a large amount of time being shot at in Panama, Iraq, Bosnia and Somalia).
I spent a number of years flying every week. I smoked back then. I also had an assortment of laptop bags. Whenever I was using a leather laptop bag, I would be pulled to the side. (And I mean "whenever" as "*EVERY* freaking time").
Airport security would look through my carry-ons and then swab the parts of the bag that my hands would be most likely to touch (handle, strap, zipers) and run the swab through the "detecting of bad things" machine.
I'm not sure of the relationship with smoking, but I have a medical lab-tech friend who showed me the chemical-detecting-machine that will detect nicotine off of a piece of paper rubbed across your finger 30 minutes after you smoked a cigarette.
And it only happened when I traveled with a leather laptop bag. If I had a nylon or canvas bag, I wouldn't be touched.
Beats the hell out of me, but I thought I'd share my whacky hypothesis with you in hopes that the/. crowd might confirm or deny this.
It's been driving me slowly crazy for years...why, *every* time that *I* flew with a leather laptop bag did *I* get picked for the "let us sample the surface areas of your laptop bag"?
And that's because developers -- due to the nature of software -- are conditioned to think of "what is every possible way that anyone could possibly want to use this software?"
The reason that they think this is because it allows them to reduce the number of bugs introduced by unforseen input.
"Usability" to a developer == "this software is able to do the largest number of things that people can think of that have some relevance to the software's purpose (stated or implicit)".
"Usability" to a usability engineer == "whatever tasks people are able to do with this software should be intuitive, easy, and non-confusing".
The Unix tradition of "thou shalt be able to shoot thyself in the foot if thou so desire (or if thou maketh a mistake)" is deeply rooted in the developer definition of "usability".
The first time I used vi, I used CTRL-Z to make it go away. It said "[stopped]", right? Someone came over to my machine and said, "Why in the hell are these (20 or 30) editors running in the background on the server?" Definitely one of my most embarrasing computer memories.
I often wonder how fledgling sysadmins manage to survive.
Isn't that where management and marketing conspire to tie the development team onto a railroad track 5 minutes before the Customer Express comes into town?
The reason that French is "considered kind of snobbish" is due to the Normans. After William the Conqueror conquered England, the nobility were French...and they spoke French. All of the peons spoke English.
This also is a significant factor in the large number of borrowed-from-French words in English. And one of the reasons that English is less like all of the other Germanic languages.
Not only can cooking "be as masculine as anything", cooking can also be "sexy as hell". Those of you with facial hair (and experience with actual RL women) might have noticed that women like to watch you shave. They also like to watch you cook in much the same manner.
Just remember, the first few dates, don't cook something so complex that it might destroy their self-esteem -- women often think that they should be good in the kitchen even if they're not -- and they don't want you to remind them of that.
Grapeseed oil has less saturated fat than olive oil. Lots of antioxidants. It appears to raise your HDL while lowering your LDL. (I'd have to do some more research before I was certain about that particular claim). It also has a high smokepoint (comparable to peanut oil).
No way canola oil is 2nd on the list. At least from a cooking perspective. It's probably about number 4. Grapeseed oil, Peanut oil, Olive oil, Canola oil.
In absolute terms, povray renders a hell of a lot faster than it did 5+ years ago since CPUs have gotten so much faster.
In relative terms, povray render times still suck. Since CPUs have gotten so much faster in the last 5+ years, my definition of "slow" has changed quite a bit.
Instead of a company charging a metered rate -- which would eliminate a lot of profit from the "paying too much money" people -- they can just beat/ban/forbid/threaten the high-bandwidth users until they fall into the low-bandwidth category.
This is probably why most ISPs don't explicitly state what acceptable/unacceptable bandwidth usage is...if customers knew, then they could adjust for it. Since customers can't know (because it's never stated), then the company can make the adjsutments.
As I'm too lazy to register on your site so I can respond, I'm doing it here.
In the DFW area (Dallas/Fort Worth for all of you foreigners), check out August.Net. There TOS is here. Basically it says "do whatever you want as long as it's not illegal". The thing is that you pay for the bandwidth you use -- though I do believe that with T1 service they do have one unlimited usage plan.
They're geek friendly. Tech support is amazingly good. If you're in the area and are willing to pay for what you use, this is the place to go.
Urgh. Yes. You, and the parent post are correct. I was wrong. I was also obnoxious. Thank you for pointing out my wrongness. While I don't enjoy it too much, I do appreciate it.
Thanks.
(And I also wish there was a "-1, wrong" moderation so that my post could find its way into the bowels of negativeness more quickly).
I apologize. My first response to you was wrong, retarded, and obnoxious. I have had the error of my ways, and thought process pointed out to me by others. (Just read all of the replies). I really should not give in to the "let's go look at slashdot" after a night out.
Slashdot Mirror
Me: "I want one of those ruby-laser kits."
Him: "No. What about a prism?"
Me: "I want one of those sets that has all the chemicals."
Him: "No. What about a prism?"
Me: "I want one of those magnets that can lift a small car."
Him: "No. What about a prism?"
I got a *lot* of prisms. By the time I was eight, I had about a dozen of varied shapes and sizes.
A guy I worked with once told me "if you're cutting up a steak for people to sample, don't cut it into little cubes...cut it into long, thin strips...it tastes better because it provides a greater surface area for {big long enzyme in the saliva} to work with". (He then told me, "I learned that in the Organic-Chemistry-for-Chefs Class that I took last year". (And, yes, he really used the phrase "organic chemistry".)). Of course, I immediately put this to a field test with about 5 people (including myself) as test subjects. Sure enough, he was correct...the same steak -- when cut into long thin strips -- tastes better than the when it's cut into an volumetrically equivalent cube.
I wouldn't advocate using most essential oils in food. You could use them in absolutely microscopic amounts -- but most kitchens/chefs don't have the tools, time or inclination to measure out correct amounts of essential oils. And leaving out the "potentially physically unsafe" part of it, essential oils are so strong in flavor and scent that they will easily overwhelm the other flavors in a dish.
That's why most commonly used "food safe" extracts have an ingredient list that goes something like "distilled water, alcohol, whatever oil". The water provides a buffer.
Lorentz transformations might be "normal math" to you, but to a lot of people (even the average slashdotter) they probably aren't. Think about it. If the poster that you're replying to could *do* Lorentz transformations then he wouldn't be having this mental roadblock...because by learning how to do them, he would have figured out the concepts involved.
It might be more helpful in the future to say something like "here is a cool little Java applet that visually (and interactively) explains a Lorentz transformation. It's not a thorough mathematical explanation, but it should give you some clues to what I'm talking about. Simple Lorentz transformations can be done easily with the skills that you (hopefully) learned in high school algebra. I know that most papers explaining Lorentz transformation are written in mathematicese, but, hey, it's just like learning Perl. Take it slowly, one step at a time, and work all of the examples out yourself. Good luck."
"Mom, that's a *lake*"
"Mom, those are *trees*"
"Mom, that's *our* house?"
I was a little older than two. I don't really remember anything before that. And I don't start remebering anything after that until I was 4. (And even then, it's just bits and pieces). My "full scale memoery" doesn't start kicking in until about 1st grade.
So, yes, here's me chiming in on "sensory events" being important to memory.
Oh yeah. The best processor in the house is a 600Mhz PII.
I'll skip the obligatory "though I never respond to an AC comment"...
:)
The other two conflicts that I mentioned, WWII and Vietnam also result in the French having their asses handed to them. Let's not forget Algeria, either. If you take Napoleon out of the equation, there is a litany of stories that basically end in "...and the French got smacked down yet again."
What I wanted to point out is that France can lay claim to one of the most stunning, impressive, damn near unbelievable examples of "dedication to duty" that the world has ever seen. It's up there with the Alamo...and as a native Texan, indoctrinated from birth, I don't say that lightly.
Camerone is a shining example of dedication and a refusal to quit. So, the next time that you have a performance review...or the next time you need to convince your manager that you really *do* need a new server...remember Camerone Day!
Sure, it might be the French *Foreign* Legion. But there sure were some French guys there driving the train.
Yes, the vast majority of WWII was not too pretty...however, Dien Bien Phu -- while a failure, was not a surrender. And that difference is incredibly important. Dien Bien Phu would be impressive by itself. But Camerone gives the French, and the French military, something that no one will ever be able to take away. And if you don't understand what I just said, then I will never be able to explain it to you.
The day after Camerone Day, like the day after Veteran's Day, is a day that I will always manage to get off...because I'll be so hungover that I wouldn't be able to work.
-- An Anglo-American that spent many, many years in the U.S. Army (with a large amount of time being shot at in Panama, Iraq, Bosnia and Somalia).
Do you smoke? And have a leather laptop bag?
/. crowd might confirm or deny this.
I spent a number of years flying every week. I smoked back then. I also had an assortment of laptop bags. Whenever I was using a leather laptop bag, I would be pulled to the side. (And I mean "whenever" as "*EVERY* freaking time").
Airport security would look through my carry-ons and then swab the parts of the bag that my hands would be most likely to touch (handle, strap, zipers) and run the swab through the "detecting of bad things" machine.
I'm not sure of the relationship with smoking, but I have a medical lab-tech friend who showed me the chemical-detecting-machine that will detect nicotine off of a piece of paper rubbed across your finger 30 minutes after you smoked a cigarette.
And it only happened when I traveled with a leather laptop bag. If I had a nylon or canvas bag, I wouldn't be touched.
Beats the hell out of me, but I thought I'd share my whacky hypothesis with you in hopes that the
It's been driving me slowly crazy for years...why, *every* time that *I* flew with a leather laptop bag did *I* get picked for the "let us sample the surface areas of your laptop bag"?
The reason that they think this is because it allows them to reduce the number of bugs introduced by unforseen input.
"Usability" to a developer == "this software is able to do the largest number of things that people can think of that have some relevance to the software's purpose (stated or implicit)".
"Usability" to a usability engineer == "whatever tasks people are able to do with this software should be intuitive, easy, and non-confusing".
The Unix tradition of "thou shalt be able to shoot thyself in the foot if thou so desire (or if thou maketh a mistake)" is deeply rooted in the developer definition of "usability".
If you're getting that detailed, you should probably ask them if you can get your in-addr-arpa zone(s) delegated to you.
The first time I used vi, I used CTRL-Z to make it go away. It said "[stopped]", right? Someone came over to my machine and said, "Why in the hell are these (20 or 30) editors running in the background on the server?" Definitely one of my most embarrasing computer memories.
I often wonder how fledgling sysadmins manage to survive.
Because Oracle DBAs are freaking expensive...because Postgres lost the mindshare war...because MSSQL absolutely sucked ass until version 7.0
The reason that French is "considered kind of snobbish" is due to the Normans. After William the Conqueror conquered England, the nobility were French...and they spoke French. All of the peons spoke English.
This also is a significant factor in the large number of borrowed-from-French words in English. And one of the reasons that English is less like all of the other Germanic languages.
Hell is also nicer than Houston.
Just remember, the first few dates, don't cook something so complex that it might destroy their self-esteem -- women often think that they should be good in the kitchen even if they're not -- and they don't want you to remind them of that.
It's good stuff.
No way canola oil is 2nd on the list. At least from a cooking perspective. It's probably about number 4. Grapeseed oil, Peanut oil, Olive oil, Canola oil.
In relative terms, povray render times still suck. Since CPUs have gotten so much faster in the last 5+ years, my definition of "slow" has changed quite a bit.
Because the RTLAFA (Random Three Letter Acronym Federal Agency) is planning to come and have a "talk" with you.
Instead of a company charging a metered rate -- which would eliminate a lot of profit from the "paying too much money" people -- they can just beat/ban/forbid/threaten the high-bandwidth users until they fall into the low-bandwidth category.
This is probably why most ISPs don't explicitly state what acceptable/unacceptable bandwidth usage is...if customers knew, then they could adjust for it. Since customers can't know (because it's never stated), then the company can make the adjsutments.
In the DFW area (Dallas/Fort Worth for all of you foreigners), check out August.Net. There TOS is here. Basically it says "do whatever you want as long as it's not illegal". The thing is that you pay for the bandwidth you use -- though I do believe that with T1 service they do have one unlimited usage plan.
They're geek friendly. Tech support is amazingly good. If you're in the area and are willing to pay for what you use, this is the place to go.
Thanks.
(And I also wish there was a "-1, wrong" moderation so that my post could find its way into the bowels of negativeness more quickly).
Later.