A Little Nonsense Now and Then

Oh, also, I found this:
http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/07/circuit_board_coffee_table.html

Inspirational!
Not that I want an incentive to start collecting cruft again.

The awesome thing about this recipe is that damaged tomatoes are very cheap at the supermarket, so I can make an amazing sauce that costs hardly anything.

Ingredients:
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 stalks green garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
2-3 lbs fresh tomatoes, coarsely diced
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 c red wine
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 c loosely packed fresh lemon basil, chopped
1 tbsp fresh rosemary
1 tsp fresh oregano
1/2 tsp fresh thyme

Heat the olive oil in a stock pot over high heat. Add the onions and saute till translucent. Reduce the heat to medium, add the green garlic and cook till softened. Remove from heat and stir in the paprika, then return to heat. Add the tomatoes, vinegar, wine, salt, pepper, and half of the lemon basil. Bring to a boil then reduce to low heat and simmer for at least half an hour or until desired consistency is reached. Stir occasionally to aid in breaking up the tomatoes. Once the consistency is good, add the remaining fresh herbs and cook for 3-4 minutes more. Remove from heat, add salt and pepper to taste, and serve over pasta, chicken, or as a spread on warm Italian bread.

Last night, I was finally able to successfully play Half-Life 2 in Wine, using my Logitech Dual Action gamepad. I am very, very proud of this fact, as it took about a week of researching and filtering information to get it to work properly. I will document it as soon as possible to help other people as well. I might even put it on my website! The process is now very obvious, after the fact, but there's so much crap out there that I went through all sorts of wrong turns.
Steam under linux is pretty awesome. I cannot wait for the native client.

Also, now running debian testing. I didn't even notice that Lenny had gone to stable till a couple weeks ago. Some annoyance with the dist upgrade since udev breaks, so you have to upgrade the kernel from 2.6.26 to 2.6.32 first, reboot, then do the rest. (If you don't and get stuck in the broken state, apt-get -f install the kernel image, kernel common, udev and libudev at the same time. This worked, if I recall correctly.)
Major differences between lenny and squeeze, but that's always the way.

ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOFRANK

Fine. I'm a sheep. I have a twitter now. You can probably guess the username. Maybe it'll train me to update more. Tell me your usernames so I can stalk^H^H^H^H^Hfollow you.

In raid yesterday: "Oh my God, you guys, I'm totally being stabbed by Frostmourne! Eee!"

We are silly people.

I haven't posted a recipe in a while, so here, have one I've fallen utterly in love with.
(One of the upsides of living with a Korean is finding out how to do this sort of thing properly.)

Beef Bulgogi/Bulgoki

1 1/2 pounds beef shoulder steak (london broil) trimmed of fat and sliced very thinly. You can also use top or bottom round. Basically, cheap tough cuts.
1 medium onion, sliced thinly
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp sesame oil
3 tbsp soy sauce
1-2 tbsp white sugar
1/2 tsp powdered ginger, or maybe a quarter teaspoon fresh
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp sake (I use Momokawa Ruby. Adds a nice fruitiness but not too sweet.)

Mix everything together and let it marinate for at least an hour, ideally overnight.
Drain and reserve the marinade and stir-fry in a very hot nonstick pan until the beef is cooked and onions are almost translucent (about 5 minutes all told). Add to the marinade:

1 tbsp corn starch

Mix till smooth then add to the pan. Cook until sauce is thickened and onions are transparent, which should not take more than another minute or two.
If it's too sour-tasting, add more sugar next time. The measurements are approximate, since that's how I roll.
Serve over rice. For optimal rice, cook a ratio of 3 parts rice to 1 part pearl barley.

Kimchi recipe forthcoming once we actually remember to make the stuff and not just leave the cabbage in the fridge until it goes bad and has to be thrown out... >.>

Brains, brains, the magical fruit, the more you eat, the more youBRAAAAAAAINS...

I know there's already a different version out there on the web but...

I now have a brake and a half! This beats the third of a brake I had before. I got one rotor replaced, but the other is going to need professional help, as a hammer isn't even making it twitch.

I also have assorted aches and pains like you wouldn't believe, but that's par for the course.

Also, a bicycle gang has moved in next door. There goes the neighborhood. Yay!