Blogging Ottinger (tim)

I’ve got another take on the soup. This time it is closer to my first batch. Simpler is better, most of the time.

2 Green Bell Peppers
5 Seranno peppers
1 Qt Chicken Broth
1 medium onion
1 pt heavy cream
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp garlic powder
Oil (I didn’t measure, but I doubt over 1/2 cup)
Flour (about one cup)
Cilantro (to taste)
Salt and Pepper to taste

I didn’t put extra liquid in as I did the last two times, and cut back on the ingredients. I really wasn’t too keen on using green bell peppers, wanting something more like a poblano or anaheim but apparently peppers have just started selling for USD$133.00 just like oil. We didn’t want to spend over four dollars per pepper, and the local store had only bell peppers at reasonable prices. That reminds me that I need to plant my pepper seeds. It may have been a lucky break, though, since this was a good batch.

Again, chop peppers and onion and sweat them in oil in a medium saucepan.

Add the garlic powder, then make a good, thick roux with the oil and flour. You want this to be thick like a gravy.

Let the roux brown a little, then pour in the broth while stirring. Bring it to a nice boil, reduce heat a bit and add the heavy cream and cilantro.

Let the flavors cook together in the pot for a few minutes, maybe ten or fifteen. Keep the heat down so you don’t scorch it, stir it now and then.

When the house smells really good, hit the thick soup with an immersion blender.

Finally, stir in the milk and add salt and pepper to taste.

This made enough for my family of four, and was not excessively spicy. Some of us got seconds. We used quite a few crackers, but it was yummy. Next time I want to try adding sour cream instead of heavy cream. I might go back to adding avocados again, because that was a nice touch, but this is probably the right starting point for any further experiments.

You see the strangest things in hotel parking lots. Here is a bit of Americana oddity:

Today there were two of them. I took the picture with my phone, which is a poor camera, but there it is.

By the way, George Sparks sent me a spelling correction and a link to the wienermobile’s Wikipedia entry.

I guess you shouldn’t bother trying to get a loan from these guys:

It’s hard to be clear in those tiny spaces, but it’s sad when it reverses the message like this.

You know you live in a nerd household when your kids are arguing whether the new pet lizard should be named FinFangFoom or Mohinder. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

By the way, they settled on a Chinese name meaning “great dragon”, which is none of the above.

I really like my T-Mobile “Wing” (HTC Atlas) phone, at least as far as the hardware is concerned. It’s quite a nice little device, though it has some bad habits like locking up while doing transfers and making phone calls when I holster it. Overall, it’s mostly what I want, but it’s not as usable as a phone from the front panel as I’d like. Some of my complaints were issues with my use of it, more than troubles with phone service. It has good voice quality, though, and a nice form factor.

The slide-out qwerty is ideal. It’s wider than my bberry is/was, and softer. I don’t like how clicky the Windows Mobile operating system is, but there are ways to get around it.

This phone has a touch screen and stylus, but I generally don’t use them. For me, those are wasted features. I played a game on it that was easier with the stylus, but generally will use the buttons.

The cellular data connection could be better, but the wifi is great.

What I really want in a cell phone:

* Must be operable one-handed as a cell phone via front-panel buttons.
* Must work well as a phone (intelligible speech, etc), whether it has other cool features or not.
* Voice activation for dialing.
* MUST have a qwerty keyboard that folds or slides out somehow.
* Key Lock
* Data connection (as reliable as possible): GPRS, EDGE, etc.
* Email
* Must charge from standard USB voltage with standard USB cable.
* IM/IRC Chat
* Web Browsing
* GPS, external GPS support, or MyLocation
* Large(ish) display.
* Alarm clock.
* Case that covers and protects the keys to prevent unintentional calls.
* Should be able to run short distances without the case ejecting the phone onto the concrete.
* Data connection through phone network
* Wifi, which should be preferred over phone network for cost savings on relevant features.
* Lanyard. I’d hate my phone to be jarred out of my hand by a passer-by.
* Keep as much of my personal information as possible on a micro-SD or equivalent.
* The phone shouldn’t lock up, even for a few seconds.

Most of all, whether it is a PDA phone or smart phone or whatever, is item #1. It is a phone. If I didn’t want a phone, I’d buy an ultraportable PC or a PDA. I need to operate it by voice or by one-hand, especially if I have to receive and make calls while driving. I shouldn’t have to look down at the phone, but I should say “call home” or maybe I could move the clickmouse and hear contact names.

Cameras, video playback, and audio are all cute tricks. I don’t much care, though if I can install an audio file as my ring and a photo as my background, that makes me happy. The important customization is to move the things I do *most* to the welcome screen (like winMob “Today” plugins).

Yes, I want too much. But that’s why I still want it. The cell phone design problem is interesting because it’s essentially untenable — the display and keyboard are never large enough, and the phone itself is never small enough. At least with the smartphone/pda-phone thing going on, people are willing to accept bigger displays and keyboards. Cell phone designers are smart people, and they keep coming up with impressive new hardware.

This was the work of true ubergeeks. Not only did they realize that they could vary the pitch, they programmed in a song.

Was that nuts or what? It would have been better without the interjections of the onlookers, but there you go. At least it has that “live” feel. I suspect it was killer loud.

I went to the ChiPy meeting tonight. It was 1 1/2 hours each way by metra, plus I drove for 1/2 hour each way to get to a station that had a workable train schedule. My train line doesn’t run many trips, so I travel by car to travel by train. On the way down, I tested my active noise cancellation headphones. They work wonderfully. I also got to work on the Python version of infinitest and I think I made some improvements. I arrived at Union Station, which actually surprised me. I expected to go to ogilvie. I should read more carefully. Union Station was the better choice, though. It was a shorter walk.

The meeting was easy enough to find. There were a few people (mostly the organizers) there, but the room quickly filled up. I was surprised by the quantity of food set out by the caterers. If we’d all made pigs of ourselves, there would be food left over. It was beautiful, and delicious.

The meeting had a number of lightning talks, each about 15 minutes long. We explored the pickle package and protocol in some depth, the uno API for scripting OpenOffice.org, the joys of pyStage (which can help you propose to your future wife), and a fun game in Pyglet written by a doting uncle and his young neice. The talks were all good.

I’m not the best guy when it comes to “working a room” and I really didn’t try too hard, but I met some nice folks. In a room of python people, you can always hear someone bashing perl, just as a room full of Java programmers will bash on C++. I mostly avoided those conversations, though I did indulge once.

It seems that there is a lot of Python going on in Chicago, and I hear that web hosting companies are seeing more python all the time. One sys admin told me that he’s read that there’s more Python than Perl on the web now. He supposed he still sees more PHP than Python, but the python is there and growing. Oddly enough, he doesn’t see that much Ruby/Rails. I was surprised by that.

The room was full of developers, and that means that just about everyone had either a Mac or a standard PC laptop running Ubuntu. One presenter had a Mac running Ubuntu. I guess he wins the geek prize. I also saw an XO from the OLPC project, and that was pretty exciting. There was also a neat assortment of cell phones in the room.

All in all, it was a good evening, even factoring in over 4 hours of transit and the snow and sleet. I think I’ll try attending again next month, and I may end up volunteering at the Chicago(land) PyCon this year. I might put a talk together after I get a little polish on infinitest.

Especially Tal Wilkenfeld. She looks like a little kid, but she doesn’t play like one.

She was at the 2007 crossroads guitar festival (organized by Eric Clapton for the sake of the Crossroads Centre, Antigua for the treatment of drug and alcohol addictions). Tal played with Jeff Beck, who is a favorite guitar player. Videos are available in the Crossroads DVD (recommended) and also on YouTube, which is embedded here:

Before someone jumps on me for being sexist or ageist or something, the “girl bass players” line is courtesy of a young lady bassist I know (Hi Andrea!).

I wrote about my first batch earlier. I gave it another shot while grading Java tests today. I made a few modifications.

5 Jalapeno
2 sweet peppers (one red, one yellow)
1/2 onion, diced
1 leek, diced.
a few baby carrots, diced.
1 tsp minced garlic
cilantro
1/4 c oil (olive or grape seed)
1/4 c flour
2 Avocados
1+ qt water
1 qt chicken stock
1 qt heavy cream
Salt, Pepper to taste

The mix of peppers gave the soup a nicer color to begin with. I got plenty of flavor, but a lower heat that my family can handle better. I kinda wish I’d had celery. Anyway, the carrots and sweet peppers and leeks gave a nice sweetness.

I put all the veggies but the avocados in to sweat and soften for a little while, then worked up a roux with the flour and oil, then added the chicken stock and water. I put about two cloves of garlic in (equivalent in pre-chopped garlic paste) and cilantro to taste. I let this marry for a long time, probably an hour, on low heat.

I mashed and added the avocado and let it cook for a little while. The avocado added some color in addition to flavor. When it was good and hot, I hit it with the immersion blender.

An hour or so later, it’s time for the cream. My house smells incredible. I taste it and see that I was a little generous with the salt. Next time less. Not sure how much I put in, because I kind of eyeballed it. Probably two or three teaspoons of kosher salt. Yeah, that should have been a dead giveaway. It’s salty, but doesn’t ruin the flavor. I give it a little time to thicken up while I’m waiting on the family to get home and while I grade another test.

We add some dry cilantro. It will provide some green specs to the avocado-colored soup.

It’s not thick enough. I think I just added too much liquid here. Libby goes to work on it, making a roux out of the oil that gathered on top. Maybe I need to listen to Kris more. Even with heavy cream, avocado, an initial roux, and some good long cooking time, it’s thin. Libby brings it up to a nice silky consistency. I would have liked it a little thicker yet. Maybe next time. There’s always a little crowd inside the silver lining, you know?

Again we make up a little basic salsa. We fill each bowl with soup and add a good dollop of salsa to the center. A few ritz crackers around the edge make it ready for dining.

The kids didn’t think it was too hot this time. I think we nailed that part. The avocado, leek, and carrot made the soup a little sweeter than the variety I had down in Texas, and for my family that was a bonus. The cilantro set off the lighter green color, and the bits of salsa tomato floating on the top gave it a more seasonal color scheme.

It really was quite delicious. I think I’m one or two batches from perfecting our version of this soup.

I had messed with the transcoding script a few times, and sadly got to a point where the video playback got pretty laggy. I couldn’t stand watching when the audio greatly preceded the video, so it was time for some research. My current command:

/usr/bin/mencoder "${SOURCE}" -o ${DESTINATION} -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=300 -vf scale=320:240 -ofps 30 -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=128 mode=3

It actually works. I would like to say that I figured this out, but a lot of that is gobbledygook to me. I can tell you that the bitrate is down, the scale is the display resolution of the device, and that it’s using xvid and lame in an avi wrapper. That’s more than I might have known a year ago. I actually got it from wiki.gp2x.org which seems a useful resource in general.