Ketherian's Notebook

Irene Gallo (on tor.com) found a copy of the Nightmare Before Christmas, as read by Christopher Lee. The narrator's strong and creepy voice adds a wonderful dimension to Tim Burton's original poem. It's 11 minutes long, but animated and very well done.

Think of it as something to offset the sweetness of the season.

More on the Kindle (sort of)
Wired has a list of E-book readers at a glance "(old crappy ones not included)". The E-book reader is the ultimate geek toy; expensive, unnecessary and overly complicated (anything dealing with DRM is overly-complicated). That doesn't deter the want (at least not my want) of the device, just delays it a bit until the price point drops some more. Odd that the Apple itouch isn't in the list.

Is anybody listening?. The BBC has (yet another) article warning about the dangers of posting disturbing, illegal or just reputation-crushing details (not just photos mind) to social websites. "Millions of young people could damage their future careers with the details about themselves they post on social networking websites, a watchdog warns." If you know someone just starting their career - ask to see their social sites. They might be surprised to learn there are a lot of people over 40 on both FaceBook and MySpace (and LJ, and all the other social groups). Have you googled your name to see what comes up? Could you show it to your mother, your boss, your mentor? If you can't - you've got a problem.

Sad news
Verity Lambert died on Thursday, November 22, 2007. She was 71. She also was Doctor Who's first producer and the BBC's first female TV producer. Wikipedia entry, Screenonline biography, Times Obit.

More for my wish list.
Sling Media. Featured on Ars Technica's 2007 holdiay gift guide, the intro ads are great - and so too is the device. It's got a low price and seems readily available for online purchase from a host of online retailers. I've not seen anything about it in Canada, so I'm guessing the only way to get this things would be through the internet.

Home Trebuchet Kit, a Few Feet Short of Perfection. Gizmodo made my day by showing me this kit. It's only 1/20th scale (aww shuks!) but it's supposibly fully functional. Now this would be the thing to make a get-together something special. And, with winter already here - can you just imagine using snowballs in this thing?

Thanks to the Evil DM for the update - The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Vol1 (12 DVDs include seven feature-length empisodes [My First Adventure, Passion for Life, The Perils of Cupid, Travels With Father, Journey of Radiance, Spring Break Adventure, Love's Sweet Song], 38 companion documentaries, a Historical overview, an Interactive game and an Interactive timeline). Amazon.Ca has it for $91.99. Chapters has it for $104.99. This will eventually be a 3 box set detailing all 22 episodes of the series.

Metafilter question about buying dice has some good links to dice sellers. But what makes a "nice set of dice"? Is it their appearance? Is it the fact that they roll well (strange-shaped dice and d100s do not roll well - well, actually they roll too well as they almost never seem to stop!)? I've never really thought about it. I buy dice based on their appearance.

Events in Montreal
The 52nd Salon des metiers d'art will be at the Bonaventure west exibition hall from December 7th through the 22nd. If you're looking for handicraft, odd, or different Christmas gifts - this is a great place to go looking. The show typically has lots of small industry/home craft items for display and sale. The site doesn't have all the exhibitors up yet, but the list of exhibitors that are up are a great example of the myriad of exhibitors typical to the event.

The Muppet Wiki. Muppet Wiki is a collaborative encyclopedia for everything related to Jim Henson and the Muppets. The wiki format allows anyone to create or edit any article, so we can all work together to create a comprehensive database for Muppet fans. While there aren't always links to youtube episodes, there is tons of information in the wiki - including information about numerous muppet-containing tv shows. As with all Wiki's - they're looking for content.

Wired's 10 Cheesiest (Star Trek) classic Creatures. A great review of classics. Not sure I'd call them "cheesy" - I mean, they are now -- but so too is most special effects from stuff filmed before 1980! So, I guess the proper moniker for this one would be "vintage".

Sweeping the clouds away by Virginia Heffernan is an article about the release of the earliest episodes of Sesame Street being available on digitial video for adults. It seems our morals have changed sufficiently that what was fine in Nov 10, 1969 (the air date for the very first episode on PBS) is not OK now. Sounds silly doesn't it - but it's true. In 1969 smoking was OK, there was less of an attitude of "stranger means danger" and of course: Oscar. This has been covered several times on Boing Boing and NPR, but I thought I should mention it. The article is good, and the logic of the DVD publishers is understandable; but silly none-the-less.

Dial P for Pulp Episode 3 came out today! Its a fun podcast that reviews other podcasts, books and anything else the author can find that relates to Pulp. I'm a big (but silent) fan of the podcast and I recommend it to anyone into pulp, horror or sci-fi in general.

Etat d'urence 07 is running in Downtown Montreal from the 21 through the 25 of November. They really need volunteers, support, and donations. It's a good cause with visible results, even if it only runs for a few days. The weather over the weekend is supposed to be cold (down to -3) and wet; so it's a good time to find shelter, warmth, and food -- all of which is provided on site. For the homeless and non-homeless alike there's a street circus, the art of dining, storytelling, dance, and so much more.

More MetaFilter Food
Cooking more with yonder crockpot. Has a multitude of recipes and at least one link I previous did not have bookmarked. Just Slow Cooking.

Gizmodo Wow, just wow post. Kewpie Bondage Cellphone Charms Give Us Utterly Horrific Nightmares. 'Nuf said. (pics on Gizmodo).

Menu for this week

Saturday
BBQ Chicken and corn
Romaine salad with cheese and red wine vinagrette

SUNDAY
AM: Breakfast Burritos (OAMC) (recipe)
Cheeseburgers & Salad

MONDAY
BBQ Trout with
mixed vegetables and dip
(Happy Canada Day!)

TUESDAY
Grilled chipotle Flank steak (recipe) pitas
with mixed vegetables and dip

WEDNESDAY
Balsamic soy glazed chicken parts (recipe)
and romain salad

THURSDAY
Chicken fried rice (recipe)

FRIDAY
Tacos (recipe for taco seasoning)

RPG

OMG! Dice at 150 US$. Would you actually use them? The copper are pretty, but I'd hate to see them tarnish.

Link Roundup

In 2004 this (PDF) was a military proposal, then it was an internet meme. Now it's a movie.

The ultimate rube goldberg machine Video. (Thanks Boing Boing).

The following is a Link to the boing boing post titled "Legal guide for Canadian podcasters. It's well worth reading for Canadians producing podcasts.

Lifehacker this week offered a link to Diet television. I'm still playing with it, but it does look interesting.

Steampunk

Brass goggles is an incredible steampunk site.
Thee posts from this site (now part of my bloglines) include:

• Edgar and the Voyagers! Steampunk Cartoons.
• A be-goggled paper squirrel.
• The Electrodynamic Engineer’s Primer in Five Parts

All worth reading. But then again I am a steampunk fan.

To the near and dear friend with a serious ... desire to travel; I suggest you check out this link. It's got some really good advice.

OAMC - yeah, I'll be doing that sometime soon. Probably just after I master lunch-fu with bento boxes.

Snacksby was down, but Cooking Light has some great info about tomatoes on their site. Recipes I want to copy to Snacksby include:

• Tropical Yellow Tomato Salsa
• Baked snapper with Tomato-Orange sauce
• Seafood salad
• Tomatoe-Green Bean Risotto with Feta Cheese
• Crispy Salmon with Risotto and Slow-Roasted Tomaotes
• Fresh Tomato Soup Au Gratin
• Flatbread with Oven-Dried TOmatoes, Rosemary, and Fontina
• Grilled Steak with Charred Tomato Salsa

FrameMaker links
Dan Emory's tome on templates is a very good reference for anyone making templates.

chili - ground beef and chile peppers. It's a recipe not an ingredient.
chile - Found in a variety of sizes, shapes, and hotness. If fresh remove skin before using. Also used dried and canned. It's an ingredient.
chilaquiles - Mexican casserole originally designed as a way to use up stale tortillas. The layered dish of tortillas, cheese and sauce has become such a favorite that often, fresh tortillas are now used to prepare it. It's a recipe not an ingredient.
galangal - a cousin of ginger sometimes called Siamese ginger. It is lighter in color and tinged with pink. Thai markets sell it fresh and frozen. It's an ingredient.
Chipotle - Smoked dried jalapeno chiles. The distinctive smoky heat of chipotles is used to flavor Southwestern and Mexican dishes. They are sold both dried and in cans, in a vinegary sauce called adobo. Most big supermarkets carry them, but a Latin-American market is your best bet.
Jalapeno - the plural is jalapenos, not jalapenoes.
Chayote - pale green vegetable, shaped like a pear
Chorizo - Highly seasoned hog link sausage.


The Hive-mind at meta-filter told someone this today:
Apocalypse Chow: How to Eat Well When the Power Goes Out is a book my dad  bought me when I moved out of the dorms. It's got lots of recipes you can  make with only canned or long-shelf-life foods. Recipes include  Shiitake-Happens Mushroom Soup and Consolation Couscous. It includes a  4-person week-long meal plan with shopping list. He sent me off with a  couple of boxes with everything on that list. I've really enjoyed their  black bean patty recipe. A stove is required for many of them, though.

I just love that recipe title. Shiitake-Happens Mushroom Soup and Consolation Couscous.

Slashdot tells the tale of the redistrciting game. Check it out.

Slashdot pointed out this pair of essays. I'm a SF fan myself, and I find myself agreeing with Charlie Stross's essay. (The summary for those who don't want to read it - is that, currently, space colonization is neither feasable nor possible, nor is it even realistic. To do it at all - travel (and the means to safely communicate as well as send live cargo) would have to be unbelievably cheap.)

Treasure tables pointed me to a great article on ars lundi Plot vs Premise: Running Crime Games. It's pretty short, but I liked the article enough to add it to my bloglines. There was a great article on this topic from a while back; but now all I can find is this great book on the SJG site. Which isn't such a bad idea.

If you're like me (and already collecting background images from NASA,
National Geographic and Wikipedia's picture of the day) here's 17 more that might interst you from Wired. Steam-driven Dreams: The wonderously whimsical workld of Steampunk.

And here's three more good ones from Boing Boing today:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/125711439/what_steampunk_means.html
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/125713460/good_copy_bad_copy_s.html
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/125823586/john_heilemann_in_ny.html

Yeah, I can see myself getting a lot done tonight. ;)

Lobscouse and Spotted Dog - it's a cookbook. I've added it to my Chapters Wish list. Hrm. If I started a sailing RPG set in Royal Navy during the Napolenoic Wars Patrick O'Brien wrote - this would be a great guide as to what to serve on game night.

Speaking of which, I really must add the rest of his 20 books to my wish list. I keep forgetting which ones I've already got. *And* I need to finish adding my books to Library Thing. My goal (eventually) is to finish entering all my books and print the list out so that, when next I go book shopping, I know what I have. Every time they change a cover I find myself wondering - do I have that book? It sounds so familiar; but then, when you read a lot - a lot of books sound familiar.

Last night I added frozen fieldberries to oatmeal muffins and baked a loaf of banana bread. I swear I could bake banana bread weekly and never get tired of it. The oatmeal muffins dissapeared fast - but I have enough mix left to make one more batch. That's right dear readers, I use pre-packaged mixes when I make muffins. Sure I could make them from scratch - but this is so much easier.

Carrot Sheet Cake with Cream cheese Frosting - it's something I've been wanting to cook for a while, and there's a game coming up on Saturday...

Cat cam! see a series of stills from a camera weilding cat. (thanks Boing Boing)

Don't know much biology a rebuttal to Senator Sam Brownback's NYT editorial. (Thanks Boing Boing)

LOL Cats what a great collection of time wasters.

I've not had a lot of time to surf about today (snowed-in by work), but this crossed my inbox and looks interesting...

The results from this post were: Words: 23 (NOTE: The genie works best on texts of more than 500 words.) Female Score: 31 Male Score: 8 The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: female! Go figure!

Writing tools.
The french company Hamelin (oxford) is making digital notebooks and agendas. Write in the notebook with a special pen and synch it to your computer.(thanks diyplanner.com)

Heat Transfer and Cooking by Burr Zimmerman. A fascinating article on the chemistry of cooking.

Recipes
Rougaille beef A great use of leftover meat (yes, at our house we do, occasionally, have leftover meat).
Stuffed Mushrooms (top 3 recipes)

• bacon, garlic, oregano, and cheese
• Garlic, and ricotta
• Crab , onions, horseradish, worcestershire and cream cheese

Turkey curry on Flatbread.

Slashdotted

• A new global memory card standard - called the Multiple Interface Card (miCard)
• In the over-hyped category, Slashdot reports that the iPhone release date is June 29. Sheesh. With all the commercials we've seen on this you'd think it was out all readly. For the tech-savvy, check out Wherefore Art Though iPhone SDK?

Worth listening to (does that make it listen-worthy?)

• The Open Culture sight article from way back (February 8th) links to sources to listen to Orson Well's famous recording of War of the worlds. Well with listening to. While Open culture isn't really a podcast - I've subscribed to its RSS feed in Bloglines under that heading. The blog is all about the podcasts that the Open culture site finds and links to. They are a library, of sorts, that regularly updates their catalog.
• Open source sex. No I've not listened to it yet, but the blurbs seem interesting, and with that title -- well, I'll be saving this one for after dinner.
• Heroes has its own podcast. Go figure. It seems to be episode specific and features the voices of the cast members as well as citing stuff from the forum and the blogs. This is one TV show that is totally wired to the web. (Ug. That was a bit of social jargon I didn't need to see myself write.)
• The Jazz Vinyl Podcast. Old vinyl records played as a podcast. Good quality MP3s the website lists the tracks and other "liner notes". There's an associated blog available too. http:\\jazzvinyl.blogspot.com, I'm definitely subscribing to this one as I love old Jazz!
• 60 minutes has a podcast (who knew)? At least now I know where to go if I miss a report. http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml has all their up to date articles (available to be read, exported or watched). and http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/06/utility/main706903.shtml seems to be the general list of RSS feeds for the podcasts, downloading, iTunes or checking the archive (the first link).

As an aside - I'm subscribed the del.icio.us link rss feed for "podcasts". Each times Bloglines updates there's a good 50 of them showing up. This is more links than RPGS (which averages at about 25 an update)!

Roleplaying

• D&D Counters. A great collection of free images to print & use at your game. Got it from my rss of RPG links and added it to my own bookmarks.

In the humorous yet painful category:

• Boing Boing today pointed out LOLCODE - LOLCats meets programming. And I quote: "programming using the strange, ungrammatical argot of the LOLCats mem." I'll spare the programmers who read this site the example. But check out the link if you're perversely curious.
• Global nerdy posted a fascinating comparison entitled "Cyberwar ain't what it use to be". It compares terms from Cyberpunk stores to "similar" real world scenarios. It makes for interesting reading. With a name like Global Nerdy you know it's so going on my bloglines daily tally for a while. If anyone reminds me (in a week or so) I'll even review it.

Thus ends the links of the day

Kenner IceBird Snow Cone machine Advertizement. Originally from slashfood .

One for the math-geek in all of us. Welcome to the website of deferential geometry (beta). It's also a tiddly wiki.

Flashgames http://www.nekogames.com/shockwave8/xananeko.html : In this one you go through a pretty basic dungeon. Can't figure out how to jump; but if you run into things shield-first they turn into coins.

Podcasts I'm currently listening to: Fear the Boot . An interesting podcast about a wide variety of topics, mostly centered on role playing. Not terribly organized, but interesting.

RPG topic of note: Using Metapoints. Treasure tables posted the topic, and it's an interesting one.

Interrobang. A rarely used, nonstandard English-language punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of a question mark and an exclamation mark. Yes folks - it's real.

Recipes:

• Clestial Blend's Chocolate Earl Grey Truffles & other delectables
• Hot Fudge pudding cake. A delectable desert.
• Homemade whole grain pancake mix. Even without a hot griddle, these sound good.

Powers for free. No - not that kind. The comic book.

Interesting story: Nuts!

• Mustard. Growing up I was known as the mustard kid. Other kids wanted peanut butter - me, I wanted mustard. To this day I will still put plain yellow mustard on any source of protein. Last week the San Francisco chronicle had an article on Mustard that made my mouth water.
• Pumpkin-Apple strussel For those of us who hate pie crusts, but love pie.
• According to Epicurious - rich flavor and deep colored gravey begins with turkey stock made days, or even months, ahead.
• Washinton Post's Dinner in 25 minutes features spicy ground beef with green beans.
• Soup recipes from meta filter
  

Give your resume a face lift It's a good introduction to typography in a useful setting. It also is an article with a great set of links. I think I'll use it to update my resume tonight.

I'm posting this collection of works ... just because. Enjoy.

Food for the Day

I'm a big fan of ravioli, and this dish adds pan fried cremini mushrooms, wine and shallots to the mix.

If you're like me and think that winter is for casseroles, than this link is definitely for you. Epicurious features 50 recipies for "one dish comfort
food". From cassoulets to mac and cheese, mexican style and meatless. There's even a Tuna Noodle casserole dish in the list; but there's also an amazing recipe for Baked Rice, cheese and vegetable casserole.

This beautiful picture is Irish corned beef hash. I still can't believe it. While my memories of corned beef are not linked to images of Alpo (as with the author of slashdot), they are rather ... tinny.

Recipe Maven daily update for October 10th, 2006

Vacuume Cleaners

When shopping for one, it's hard to figure out what you're supposed to buy. After visiting several reviewing sites, I stumbled upon Wikipedia's article on the topic. The article wasn't that great - but its links were:

• Vacuum Cleaners - Online guide explaining advantages of different vacuum brands and not much else. Text only, no links to sites or models.
• Eight myths of vacuuming - Facinatingreading.
• HEPA & ULPA Vacuum Cleaners - What They Can & Can't Do for IAQ So I shouldn't have to buy a HEPA filter if I don't want to spend the money. The best way to keep my allergies down is to not be in the room when someone vacuum's. Now that's good news!
• How Stuff Works - Vacuum Cleaner - As always - a great explanation as to what is a vaccum cleaner and how it works. Not to be missed: How to buy a vacuum cleaner
• Vacuum repair guides and maintenance tips

I'm starting to think that the easiest thing would be to pick a store and go through what they have available, writing down prices, sales and quantity and then take that list home to see what I can do with it.

Dream Eaters

A beautiful flash site detailing a victorian steam punk book that is released in 10 installments. Subscription to the installments is now closed,
but future ventures are promised...

RPG Corner

Boing Boing had this amazing RPG table on their site. I've heard of having the projector above and using the computer (with Photoshop) to mask out areas of the map. I've even seen a GM (hi!) do this with a huge TV connected to his Mac, but the Ultimate RPG Gaming Table ... whoah. That's amazing. I wonder if I can convince my friend that carpentry would be a good hobby to take up...

This episode:
An interesting piece of flash
How one live journal is creating an RPG world
Food and Sci-Fi

All this and more 

Stupid Plot Tricks is an amazing set of lists. All 250 items of the evil overlord list, companion lists (for the hero, the henchmen and several others), murphy's laws of combat and What I Learned From The Movies. I swear these things should be read aloud at a party!

No Room For Magic is a web comic that updates 3x a week. I like it's qwerky attitude and the plotline is just a bit bent. SFW and occasionally funny.

Girl Genius another amazing web comic that is downright bent. It updates 2-3x a week and has a truely odd story to tell. The art is gorgeous and it's in full color.

Snacksby a new online web community. This one lets you manage your pantry and shopping lists from a list of recipes. It's all volunteer entered and the site is slowly growing in size and complexity. It was originally built to allow you to enter a list of disparate items from your pantry and return with one or more recipes these ingredients could make. It also has a competitor now : FoodieView I've not played around with FoodieView much, but it looks like it was designed to work in a similar fashion to Snacksby.

For all my links, visit my del.icio.us page at: http://del.icio.us/ketherian?setcount=100 I add links on a regular basis. If you've got a great link, tell me about it in the comments.