The Frying Pan - 2014-04-23 (page 1 of 2)

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12:00 AM

I think I'm glad that ATK hasn't released the video yet for their brioche. I probably would have tried that first. Now I think I'm glad I didn't. ATK is using a no-knead approach with melted butter. I think this is going to be better. The dough is looking very nice.

You must give up your CI hero worship.

Fact is, I have just about tried all of their recipes that interest me. I still have a couple that I want to try, but I've pretty much reached the end. At least until next season.

More than 2 is crazy. Plus the magazine comes out year round.

CI has around long before that silly tv show.

Although I admit the TV show doesn't have the horrible self-indulgent essays at the beginning.

I do enjoy watching the videos while making the recipe, but I've pretty much sucked the marrow out of the website. One thing I still want to try is their Chicken Marbella.

Chicken with olives?

12:08 AM

and capers and prunes

And you want to make this?

Yep!

I thought you didn't have sled dogs?

I don't get it.

They would be hungry enough to eat that.

12:12 AM

Your list of stuff you don't like is very long. Mine is very short.

Capers.... ew.

Have you seen the "can't taste the milk in my tea" question?

I ignored it on the grounds of too stupid to bother with.

Jefromi answered it. He's quite patient.

Yeah, well, much more patient and inclusive than I am.

I should go downvote it, but that would be giving it more attention than it deserves.

Spoiler spoiler on 4-whatever episode is next. Its very sad.

12:17 AM

I don't think it has any votes, so no one has gone out of their way to be encouraging.

Not even the Alaskan girl?

Not even me. I left a nudging comment, but that's all.

8 hours later…

8:07 AM

Morning all

Tall!

Or Evening @SAJ14SAJ if you are you're usual wakeful self

@Jolenealaska Jojo!

How the devil are you?

Well, sweating bullets over my very first Brioche (to be baked tomorrow) other than that, OK.

ooo

how butterly insane are you going with it?

1 stick/loaf.

And 3 eggs

8:11 AM

How much is one stick weightwise?

Gee, does 1/4 lb mean anything?

100g

yes

we still use imperial measurements for that kind of thing

just not cups/sticks

why?

because we invented it :)

though produce is all labelled in metric, not imperial

That doesn't make it less stupid in 2014.

8:13 AM

let me rephrase

officially we are metric for the most part, certainly with food

off the top of my head, the only foodstuff that still has any kind of imperial labelling alongside the metric one is milk, ie pints, because everyone knows how much a pint of milk is

however, most people of around my age and older (certainly those who cook anyway) still have an inkling as to some imperial weights and measures, ie pounds and ounces

cups and sticks are entirely the preserve of colonials such as yourself however, unless, like my good self, one is familiar with the food of the northern American continent and the recipes thereof

I love the metric system. I've always appreciated the cleanness of it. I'm still waiting for the big metric conversion that we were promised was imminent.

All in all we are a strange amalgam of metric and imperial - we use metric for precise things, and imperial for coarser measurements

our road signs are all in miles, for example

Really?

our speedometers are in MPH with smaller km/h markings for when we hope across Le Manche

I had no idea.

8:21 AM

@Jolenealaska yup

That's just nuts.

I've driven (or been driven) in Europe for most of my life, I still couldn't tell you instinctively how long a kilometre is

but a mile, no problem

however, if I wanted to cut a piece of wood, or measure for drapes, I'd use cm or mm

Me neither. I mean I know, but, I can tell you that we have just walked a mile.

In terms of food, most recipe books will just use grams, but many more general ones will give metric and imperial

I wish grams would become universal.

Especially for flour!

8:24 AM

remember, we didn't have decimal currency until 1971

we still used pounds, shillings and pence

@Jolenealaska cup measures are infuriating

I'm a big boy, I can read a damn scale

Yes. I mean it would be fine if every recipe included an in-depth explanation of the author's measurement idiosyncrasies.

So you're all for metric, but what about the use of centigrade for temperature? If I say it's 32 degrees outside, I mean it's damn hot...

I'd get used to it. Quickly.

good for you

well, speak to your local congressperson

Make Alaska the Metric State

Funny thing, I have (but not for many, many years)

I was a science geek in school.

It struck me then

8:33 AM

well, I have heard the argument that the metric system is used where precision really matters

Wow! How easy! All you have to do is add a zero!

science and high tolerance engineering for example

but I think a lot of 'patriots' just like the fact that their car does 12 rods to the bushel and that's that.

that's true too. I bake by weight. I'd much rather deal with grams than ounces.

12 rods to the bushel?

I might have to Google that :)

Bread Bakers Apprentice drives me slightly mad - he goes on about how volume measurement sucks, so gives you the weights - in ozs. You try measuring 0.22oz of yeast!

ugh...Are you kidding me??

8:37 AM

nope

I struggle gamely on

I was just about to say one of the reasons that I like the brioche recipe I just used.

3.3g of salt!

deliciously precise

AKA 1/2 tsp

doesn't brioche dough feel lovely?

the very definition of a silky dough

btw, if you like brioche, you need to make casatiello

it's essentially a savoury brioche with cheese and salami baked in

it is the best thing ever

Since I was using kosher salt, it was my pleasure to whip out the gram scale!

I'm intrigued!

8:41 AM

the recipe is in BBA

despite the aforementioned stupidity of the measurements, it is worth getting

I'm not likely to buy any cookbook anytime soon, BUT I'll look anyway!

why ever not?

Cause I'm digitally wired

Alex!

We don't bite!

@Jolenealaska well that's all well and good, but if you miss out on awesome recipes you're just cutting you're nose off to spite your digital face

That could be true, but now that you can find gazillions of recipes for just about anything online, complete with ratings and comments, cookbooks have lost appeal.

8:49 AM

that makes me sad

Even my brioche. The Bread Bible...reprinted by Epicurious.com.

not least because a lot of online recipes suck balls

Yes they do.

Know the site and know how to read ratings.

meh

I like books

I got my kindle maybe 3 years ago. Books seem way too heavy anymore.

8:53 AM

I have a kindle, and it's great for novels, but i wouldn't use it for cookbooks

I used to have a huge collection of cookbooks. The only ones I still have are Joy of Cooking and The Art of French Cooking.

oooo, Fragile Allegiance is on GoG

I spent half the 90s playing that bad boy

Will you hate me when I say that I have lost interest in Baldurs Gate? Even just as I was entering Baldur's Gate?

nope

I have just rebought Skyrim myself

I am RPGing it properly

no fast travel

and always thinking 'what would my character do?'

since my character is a dispassionate self-serving Dark Elf assassin-thief with no morals who only cares about money and power, that usually involves stabbing someone in the back and taking all their stuff, but hey...

That might be the one...

Famous question on Arqade

Nope, different game.

This one is cute: gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/37805/…

G 'night!

10:15 AM

@Jolenealaska night! sorry, got wrapped up in FA

1 hour later…

11:34 AM

Happy Wednesday everyone

@SAJ14SAJ as ever, you are late

but I appreciate the sentiment nevertheless

and return it wholeheartedly

in the form of a haiku

ahem

In the week's centre, Wednesday sits unwavering. May it find you well

Its 7:35 AM. Even I sleep sometimes.

@ElendilTheTall :-)

12:02 PM

@ElendilTheTall I thought of the egg white thing, but it is just wrong for bagels :-) :-) I am pretty sure professional bagelistas just guilt the seeds into staying on.

@SAJ14SAJ yeah. I made that concession in the answer though :) I've always used sugar in the water myself

Sugar is even wronger.

Hi Rumlet.

hi @SAJ14SAJ

and hi @ElendilTheTall

12:18 PM

What is new and exciting @rumtscho

@rumtscho hello

did you sort out your CSS?

CSS is never sorted.... you just abandon working on it because you have exhausted all reasonable pathways of improvement.

you just abandon it :P

@ElendilTheTall @mie

@ElendilTheTall that was the generic you and it is true can is evil

you and your poor old fingers on that soft keyboard

it's like we're slowly losing you to some degenerative brain disorder

12:52 PM

I just found the cause of the strange bug I posted yesterday

after going through all the css I had changed and not changed before it appeared for many times repeatedly

I realized that I had made a small change to the markup too. Inserted a div to separate two elements which had decided they must stick together.

And that div was improperly closed, causing all the stuff which worked yesterday to stop working! sound of hair being torn out

ah

well, if you can't close your tags properly, I can't help you ;)

@ElendilTheTall I actually closed the tag

but I didn't plan to put anything inside it, so I made it a single tag, like <div class=separator />

how should I have known that this will break things?! It works for other tags, and I never read the actual HTML specification.

yeah, that's not valid in HTML5

Seeing that it's not my professional goal to become a good web designer, I decided to do this design job by the "fumble with it until it works" method, rather than the "first learn how it works on a low level and then you'll always know the right thing to do" route

and look where that got you :P

12:58 PM

The deadline was also part of this decision, because I tend to choose the second option even when it is clearly inefficient

@ElendilTheTall Research has shown that satisficers are generally happier than optimizers

And the maximizer in me wants to learn to use both a satisficing and an optimizing strategy and to always use the one better suited for the task at hand :P

What is a satisficer?

@ElendilTheTall Maybe you know it under the term "muddle through" if you have read Steve Krug?

People always have to take decisions. What to buy, when to stop working on a paper and turn it in already, that kind of thing.

There are some people who use a maximizing strategy. They gather all information they can lay their hands on, and use elaborate criteria to find the optimal alternative, the one which will get them the maximum benefit. Kind of a mindful homo oeconomicus.

And there are satisficers. These are people who have some idea of what they need. They grab the first alternative in sight which seems to meet this standard, and are ready with the decision. Then they move on to other things.

Geeks tend to be maximizers, which can lead to the creation of very high quality work in complex disciplines.

But it is also inefficient.

Satisficing is a decision-making strategy or cognitive heuristic that entails searching through the available alternatives until an acceptability threshold is met. This is contrasted with optimal decision making, an approach that specifically attempts to find the best alternative available. The term satisficing, a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice, was introduced by Herbert A. Simon in 1956, although the concept "was first posited in Administrative Behavior, published in 1947." Simon used satisficing to explain the behavior of decision makers under circumstances in which an optimal solutio...

The word is cumbersome. I dislike it.

I find it good that there is such a word at all. A succint way to communicate a complex and important concept. And if there has to be such a word, I don't see why one is more cumbersome than another. I even find it intuitive, with its connection to satisfaction (as in satisfying a minimal criterion).

@ElendilTheTall I don't think it is a word at all.

@rumtscho ARRGHHH.... I hate that. Validators are your friend, even though you hate them. For me, it is Javascript validators I use the most.

1:46 PM

@SAJ14SAJ Maybe I should learn to employ one. I didn't even think of checking the markup though, or rather, the moment I thought of it, I found the error almost immediately.

Validators are a great thing. I had this kind of thing yesterday too in LaTex. Suddenly, my 20 page report wouldn't compile, failing with a strange error the Internet said is due to a missing }

<shudder> LaTex

I didn't know where to find a validator for Latex, so I ended up finding an older version which does compile, doing a diff and then consolidating one paragraph at a time until I found the culprit :(

@rumtscho ouchies.

Turned out that it was a caption ending with a citation. So, there was an ending bracket there, so I hadn't recognized it in my cursory search. Never did I notice that there have to be two brackets there :(

It was something like \caption{Variable categories as listed in~\cite{Oliver2010}

@rumtscho Its really hard to see stuff like that. That sort of unreadable syntax is why I don't like TeX and its derivatives for human use. its great for machine generated, front-ended by some sort of GUI.

2:50 PM

Now this is ugly

I have to make a navigation which looks like the one DKFZ uses, dkfz.de

(I hope I can argue for leaving out the fake gloss effect which screams 2011)

when you click on one of the main links of the top navigation, you get the subitems in a menu on the left

and it has this little white arrow after the text

and its position is not fixed relative to the blue container, but to the link name itself

this is all nice and good in their fixed width layout

but after fighting to get it to work for me, I got widths at which the arrow spills to the right of the container :(

It works at 100% zoom, but spills out at higher zooms

Steal their code? Erm... I mean, reuse?

@SAJ14SAJ their layout is completely static

The size of this container is given in pixels, and the positions too, so nothing can ever spill out

I don't see any little white arrows

dkfz.de/de/aktuelles/index.html

Beside Aktuelles in the left hand nav

a white triangle

That adds zero value from any possible perspective. Why not simply omit it?

Or cheat and put it in the markup with a unicode character.

2:56 PM

Because I am told to follow corporate design

and will have to fight tooth and nail for any change I want to have a bit differently

so, I prefer to keep most things I don't care about and only fight for the ones I really want to see changed.

Cheat. Omit it and when they don't catch it, ignore it.

Maybe I really should.

It's not that our corporate design is great.

Or that our webpage is following it.

You see that font there? It's Arial.

don't forget to add a duck to your design

Only the corporate design guidelines state that the only font ever allowed on our pages is Verdana and nothing else

that usually helps

2:59 PM

Even when we have walls of text with headings, these headings are supposed to be Verdana. And if you have ever seen Verdana text with Verdana headings, you know how painful it is.

So there are these scientists who decide to format their page a bit differently, and they are told by the press deparment to go back to corporate design immediately.

In a meeting, talk to you soon

But it seems that the press department can't recognize the difference between Arial and Verdana on the main page :)

usng verdana stupid, linux and non windows hosts will not have it

@waxeagle Indeed, it is a thing to consider.

@SAJ14SAJ The webmasters do define a few fallbacks. But I think it is widespread on Linux too, I had seen some numbers with over 80% of them having it.

About the duck... I am a bit scared that I will stick it in and my product owner or the product champion will love it :(

@rumtscho lol, that'd be rather hilarious

3:07 PM

@waxeagle This is the second time in my life I am doing design. And in the first time, I learned never to underestimate the bad taste of customers.

Luckily, the first project never saw the light of day.

Or maybe not so lucky from the point of view of me and my teammate having sunk so many hours into it. But the users were lucky that they didn't have to work with the abomination we'd created (at their request). I am not only talking about visual ugliness, but also about bad usability and being bug-ridden. Oh, and it was programmed in Classic ASP. It was 2007, .NET was available in version 2 or 3, and we were using a language from 1992.

@rumtscho oof

Basically, they wanted a content management system which could do at least as much as Joomla, plus a few special requests. And all they had was two student assistants working 10 hours per week, a totally unsuitable database schema designed by students during a teaching project, and the requirement to use Classic ASP.

After a year of development, they noticed that they could use Joomla :)

I had a similar experience working as a student.

3:22 PM

@Sobachatina I guess many students go through at least one very-ambitious-but-too-complex-to-work system before they start learning to say no

hello @Sobachatina, how are you?

@rumtscho Hi! We're doing well. Everyone is healthy. Nothing too exciting to report.

I did butcher one of my goats. That was new.

@Sobachatina was it tasty?

I hope the butchering process wasn't too unpleasant.

Yes. But I haven't cooked any of him in a way that really does him justice yet.

I think I'm going to smoke a leg sometime.

Dispatching him was unpleasant but it was over quickly.

Skinning, cleaning, and butchering wasn't bad.

I did make minor mistakes but I'll do better next time.

I haven't seen you in such a long time. Did your children learn to like goat milk?

And do you still have this project of building a forge in your yard?

We've only had a little- I didn't get the timing right with my schedule before the lactating doe weaned her kids.

They didn't mind it.

sigh I don't know if I'm ever going to get that far down my list of projects.

3:27 PM

what is above it?

I think a treehouse has been placed at a higher priority by the rest of the family.

Sounds like a fun project too

And an electric fence to keep the goats out of the fruit trees.

Yes. I am only just learning how little time I actually have.

roast the next piece of goat in cherry sauce as revenge

How is your dissertation going?

@rumtscho Genius!

3:28 PM

I have a mmeting with my supervisor tomorrow

I didn't have a ready result, only a it-is-in-the-middle-of-being-worked-on to show

so during Easter worked day and night on it

and yesterday night had a very cool insight

and I hope she has the time to see it and give me feedback

Good luck.

It took me to 5AM to write it down :(

at least the job here doesn't mind if I come to work at 2 PM

Are you going to insist that we all refer to you as Dr. Rummy? :)

Probably not. I don't want to be one of these people who wave their title everywhere.

Yeah. You don't seem like that type.

BTW- my youngest brother is going to Bulgaria in a month as a missionary for two years.

3:32 PM

Cool! Which city?

Which means I will know three people who speak Bulgarian- I think you'll find that is much higher than the national average.

@Sobachatina I already know that you are culturally open :)

@rumtscho I think the area he will be working in covers the entire country and part of Turkey. They move around every few months so I don't know where he will be exactly.

I'll let you know when he gets there.

I told him to expect a lot of yogurt and cheese.

This would be interesting indeed. Well, all of Bulgaria is beautiful, so he can't do wrong wherever he goes :)

I hope I get to see it. I like what I've seen of eastern Europe.

3:35 PM

If you get to do it, tell me. I might take a vacation on the same time so I can meet you and show you around

Definitely!

I am ordering chinese for lunch. The excitement is overwhelming!

@SAJ14SAJ that sounds yummy

we're going out tomorrow for lunch, not sure where yet

3:51 PM

@waxeagle I have access to two very good places that deliver chinese, and two okay places that deliver mexican. otherwise I am in a wasteland--and my home and office are close together, so they are pretty much the same in terms of choices. I would kill for a really good pizza.

Train the chef of one of the bad places, say that you will accept payment in a number of free pizzas per month for the next few years.

@rumtscho They are chains, that is not really an option. :=|

Okay, there is one non-chain. But their major problem is their food is halal. You cannot make a good pepporini pizza and conform to the laws of halal.

You don't eat veggie pizza?

@SAJ14SAJ that is problematic.

@rumtscho Well, chains tend to do green peppers and onions very, very, very badly. I eat them at home, but not if I buy.

3:56 PM

wait, halal doesn't forbid mixing meat and cheese, this was kosher

@SAJ14SAJ I'm downtown, so I have a pretty wide variety of local and national quick-medium-slow options

so you can order pizza with some other meat. Or do they do it badly too?

@SAJ14SAJ I meant that you can order veggie at the halal non-chain

@waxeagle And even eating food that is halal, to get certified halal food, you pay more for equivilent quality, so there is a downward quality pressure.

@rumtscho Sadly, they don't do a great job, even within the halal world.

They targetted the low end.

I ordered from them twice. I think I have learned my lesson!

@SAJ14SAJ Interesting. I would have expected them to be able to offer acceptable quality at above-market prices, because from the point of view of halal eaters, the competition is greatly reduced.

@rumtscho I live in a neighborhood that is not very upscale right now.

3:58 PM

In other news, I am on my way to CSS genius!

But it is only about 4 km from my office.

I was able to create the tiny grey horizontal triangles before each link using font, not a background image

they now look great at all zooms

and I did it completely in CSS, not touching the markup

I could swear someone suggested just such thing above :-)

Does it work on older browsers, then?

@SAJ14SAJ The "genius" part was about me being able to execute it. My standards are a bit low when it comes to CSS knowledge.

I thought Rumi meant "little genius (female)" in Bulgarian.

4:00 PM

@SAJ14SAJ Not tested yet :( But since this is going to go live after April 2014, I am officially not required to support IE 8 and below

@rumtscho How lucky for you!

@SAJ14SAJ I know. I learn to appreciate it more with each forum/SO question I find on CSS.

but good thing that you reminded me. I have to get hold of a system with IE9.

I am using so much stuff, if it doesn't work on old IE, I may start delivering a completely static layout to unpleasant user agents. The good part of "my customers don't care about scalability" is that I will get away with it.

@rumtscho ooh I have support ie7. I hate it

user image

The

That is the view while I wait foruncb

For lunch

4:46 PM

Great!

I see spring has at last reached you.

What do you call that tree?

We usually call it Japanse kers, I think. But its blossoms have already dropped and withered here.

@Cerberus I call it the tree with pink flowers. No doubt others, more botanically aware than I am, have more precise names :-)

There are many, many of those in this region.

Yeah same here.

At least in the city. Although my parents also have one.

They like to blanket the ground with their petals

They do.

I ran over such a blanket a few days ago.

@Cerberus I think that is 400 years of bad luck.

5:15 PM

They're hard to avoid...

There even was one on the entrance to a bridge. Of course there are 1000 bridges here, but I really wanted to take that one.

So I had to step on it.

They probably blow tons of pollen into the air too.... lots of people are telling me they are suffering with their allergies.

Those blossoms/flowers specifically?

6:10 PM

@Cerberus probably more from grass, but who knows?

Wow. We're still getting rid of snow, spring takes it's own sweet time getting here, but it's spectacular when it finally arrives!

An event I have been anticipating for years has certain members of my family in knots. My beloved 15 year old nephew has announced that he's gay. I just sent him an email telling him that if things get too rough there, I'll find a way to get him here. I have a spare room. He can help he clean it out.

6:54 PM

Aww that's nice of you.

Are his parents religious and/or do they have a problem with it?

So far the parents have been ominously silent. The worst of it is coming from what I call the Catholic arm of the family. My uncle (with a gay brother, yet another family drama) and his wife and kids. Very vocal. They have actually recommended a "camp".

Over my dead body!

@Jolenealaska I don't know, sequestering him with other boys of similar age and disposition might be very educational. Not in the way the people running the place intend, but they are probably stupid.

I'd find a way to "kidnap" him. I know places we could go where we would be very hard to find.

@Jolenealaska Yes, I am sure having the police look for you would be very wise and conducive to everyone's long term health, happiness, and welfare.

It's not going to happen. My dad is very much the patriarch of the family, the parents will take his advice. Luckily, my dad is also very rational.

7:07 PM

Then why the crazy rhetoric?

It's just crazy rhetoric. My aunt is making a huge fuss, typical of her, and I'm a bit wound up about it. She's even sent me an email asking for my support. I haven't responded yet. I need to cool down first.

Play with your brioche.

You can make phallic loaves in honor of anything you want that seems appropriate.

It's proofing now. It looks so small!

@Jolenealaska Just wait until it is excited.

It hasn't started poofing yet, it just came out of the fridge.

7:12 PM

well, you know cold makes it shrink.

Yes - I am familiar with the phenomenon. :)

It was very easy to shape, not sticky at all. I used a bit of Pam on my hands, piece of cake.

And now I have forever altered your perception of bread..... :-) :-) :-) :-)

Muhahahahahahahahhahhahaha

hahahahhaaha

ha!

Not really. I can easily find sexual connotations in just about everything :)

It's been 45 minutes and it has just started to poof.

It's making me nervous.

The recipe says it can take up to 2.5 hours.

@Jolenealaska Then you have enough time to make a carrot cake before you need the oven for the dil... erm.... loaf.

bah!

I'm using my cast iron skillet (overturned) as a baking stone. My stone from Amazon arrived chipped.

7:20 PM

@Jolenealaska Quarry tiles. Cheap, and you won't care if they are chipped. Thicker and more effective as well.

I haven't gotten around to returning it yet.

I might go that route.

You know you want the super expensive Baking Steel.

Why doesn't anyone use parchment paper for thin crust pizzas? Is there a good reason not to? It seems like it would make it a lot easier.

Yes, I do want it.

@Jolenealaska It are not traditional, and it burns at true pizza temperatures.

Just imagine that you have chosen to not buy super expensive cultured butter for brioche each week for a year. You will have saved enough.

It just get brittle at 525, which is as hot as my oven gets. It would be pretty useless getting the pizza out but by that time the pizza is easier to handle anyway.

I've got stuff to make amazing cheesesteaks for dinner. I'm trying it with muenster cheese. I suppose I could saute the mushrooms, peppers and onions now. That will take my mind off the brioche and my nephew for a few minutes.

Yep, I'm going to do that. Cya later. Hopefully I'll have a good report on the brioche.

7:56 PM

@Jolenealaska FYI, meta.stackexchange.com/questions/207837/…

They're working on the spam edit problem.

8:47 PM

@derobert That's good to know. It's kind of funny that a thread about a butt shaped cake has gotten such a beating :)

Yeah.

I just rejected another spam edit from the queue earlier today :-(

@Jolenealaska I have one about when a pitch is counted as a strike that gets hit at least once a week, but we reject pretty readily over there

My very first Brioche is in the oven! I'm all aquiver

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The Frying Pan

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