baffo's New Writeups

Homemade Stir-Fry Oil (idea)

2008-08-11T22:56:59Z

If you decide to make any type of garlic oil, please remember that it can become the cosy home of a bacterium, your best friend clostridium botulinum, a microrganism that produces a deadly toxin called botulin, which in turns produces a very characteristic and dangerous syndrome called botulism. The botulinum likes moist, anaerobic (that is, oxygen free), basic places, just like garlic and peppers in oil.
Even heating the oil does not really cut it, because the botulinum is very hardy. And this is why you should stay away from home-made garlic preserved in oil, or home-made garlic flavored oil. Commercial packers acidify the garlic.

(source: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee) and a msg from shaogo.

quake putty (thing)

2008-06-01T11:34:10Z

It is just putty, like blue tack. But, people in California call it quake putty because they use it to prevent valuable things from falling out of shelves when a small quake hits. Beloved by museum conservators and collectors of Precious Moments figurines.

Of course, if the quake is really strong, things may still fall out of shelves. But then, if the quake is really strong, shattered Swarowski swans could easily be the least of your troubles.

An unintentionally funny picture of a woman with unintentionally funny hair demonstrating the amazing power of a specific brand of quake putty can be found here: http://www.gotputty.com/images/women.jpg

Valve Unveils Steam Cloud (event)

2008-05-31T14:32:37Z

a headline, posted today on Slashdot. The content of the article is not what interests me at the moment, though. What is most impressive is that most of the words in the headline are used in a highly technical sense, very few people would have been able to understand this sentence five years ago, probably nobody would have understood it ten years ago, and I suspect that nobody will understand it ten years from now.

So, Valve unveils Steam Cloud. Or, if you prefer,

the Valve Corporation software company, famous among other things for developing Half-Life, unveils (metaphorically speaking, since we are talking about software and servers hidden somewhere in a datacenter) an extension to its existing Steam game content distribution technology, while making an oblique reference to cloud computing, something that is not really well defined but is currently the target of much investment and speculation.

This sentence is to contemporary life what a joke about…

culture shock through washing dishes (thing)

2008-04-09T11:46:06Z

It is probably safe to assume that dishes are washed all over the world. You can get a soapy, warm feeling just by thinking about all those foamy suds and clattering silverware. But it is not safe to assume that everybody washes them in the same way.
I was washing the dishes at my friend's house (no, I don't do this professionally, it was just something that needed to be done while having a friendly chat), and he suggested that I did not need to rinse them.

Get this: his method of washing dishes consists in running them through a sink of hot soapy water, scrubbing with a sponge and then drying them off with a kitchen towel. That's it. I said "but this would leave a film of soapy water all over your stuff", and I used the tone of shocked horror that I reserve for people that wear socks and sandals and consider cardboard an acceptable packaging for wine. And he countered that that was OK.
I had to restrain myself from jumping up and down while screaming that he was…

Achiote (person)

2008-02-27T13:46:50Z

A dark red, intensely dark red, food colouring and flavoring used in South American and Mexican cuisine.

Particularly necessary for the cochinita pibil. Usually sold under the form of a thick red, crumbly paste in small packets produced by grinding together annatto, oregano, cumin, clove, black pepper, garlic, and salt. Colored red by the annatto seeds, it stains like nobody's business. Before use it is turned into a liquited by adding something acidic, like vinegar or lemon juice.

It is not particularly expensive, as the ingredients are not, and at any rate a little bit goes a long way.

anobii (thing)

2008-02-08T19:52:45Z

The Anobii service, accessible at http://www.anobii.com/ is a Web 2.0 service (in case such things exist) that focuses on books. Books you own, books you have borrowed, books you would like to read or to own.

Briefly said, this multilingual service allows you to build a big list of books called your shelf. You add books by either inserting their ISBN code or by searching for title or author. The ISBN way is vastly more convenient, since each ISBN refers to a certain edition by a specific publisher. You can add data to each of the books that are on your shelf, including

how you got the book: purchase, borrowing, gift (Anobii users do not steal books)
whether and when you have started reading it, and whether and when you have finished the book
a private and a public remark
a set of tags
an evaluation on a 1-5 scale
whether you have rented the book, to whom and when it should come back
whether you are willing to swap it

…