The Frying Pan

2:48 AM

@Jefromi Does it seem odd to put a three year old question on hold?

3:07 AM

@Jolenealaska Not really, it's happened a lot of times before. There are a lot of old questions that really should've been closed but weren't, and when they pop up, we usually close them.

The age doesn't stop it from being a poll, and we don't want more answers like the new one it got.

That one certainly seems close worthy, it does kind of seem unfair to the good answers though. (Although I couldn't agree more about the new answer)

That alone is a good reason to close it.

I don't think you lose rep for the question being closed?

No, just if it's deleted.

Arguably the people who answered it are sneaking out ahead - if we didn't want the question in the first place, you shouldn't really get rep for answering it, but since we didn't catch it in time, they get to keep their rep.

I just know that I hate to see questions closed that I bothered to answer, but I'm probably being silly.

3:15 AM

Yeah, I understand that. If they're old, we end up with this compromise, keep your rep, seems the best we can do.

I was on pins and needles when this faced closure:

33

A: Coca Cola's Secret Recipe

It's no secret, here it is! Complete with the cocaine that was removed from Coke's production in 1903: Picture and text from This American Life The radio broatcast recording on the above link makes a very compelling case that the picture at the top of the page is really the original formula...

Definitely seeing incorrectly closed when you answered it is super bad, yeah.

But really more just because I like the answer, than because of rep.

On the other hand if you answer something you know should be closed (which people totally do) you kinda deserve it.

anyway gotta run

Cya

rfusca

4:16 PM

good morning/afternoon/night

hello @rfusca

how goes it?

not very how.

eh?

@rfusca a Pooh Bear quote, possibly mis-back-translated.

rfusca

4:18 PM

oh hmm

finally notched the lid out of the container for my Anova. So now my setup is complete.

Indeed, I can't find it online. I wonder what the original quote is - I remember the translation verbatim.

5:08 PM

@rfusca How's the Anova? The Sansaire I have works nicely.

5:26 PM

I have the first edition Anova, rfusca has the second. Serious Eats did a side by side comparison and the Anova and Sansaire were pretty neck and neck.

Pooh Bear is the name of my avatar, BTW.

5:43 PM

"And how are you?", said Winnie-the-Pooh. (...)
"Not very how", he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a long time."

(Chapter 10)

Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)

@Jolenealaska Ah, so he can cook from his phone?

Wonder what the point of that feature is. Seems silly to me.

Yep! Which is fine by me, cause I would never do that :)

@Jefromi does your brisket text you to ask for more spice rub?

I've never made brisket!

Ah, well, then I hope it doesn't. That'd be worrying.

5:46 PM

Wha??

It always seemed like something where the effort it takes to do it right justifies going to a good barbecue restaurant for.

Now that I've been in California a while, I'm starting to reconsider, though.

I haven't made one either...

Besides, beef is so #$@!#*($ expensive at the moment :-(

Especially if you live in an apartment and having a smoker isn't very practical.

Yeah, and something tells me those oven/stovetop smoking trays aren't going to pull off brisket.

There is actually a silly ATK brisket recipe with (Dr Pepper?) and onion that I have been meaning to try.

My local grocery barely ever carries brisket that isn't corned.

5:50 PM

But yeah, now that I'm in California, and sous vide is a thing, might be worth doing... though I have the feeling it'll seem pretty weird.

Well, to run a smoker in Alaska... do you have to cover it in 2 feet (deep) of insulation?

I'm definitely doing a corned beef brisket sous-vide soon.

Using the Alton Brown corning recipe, I think, then cooking it loooooong sous-vide.

Oh! How does the Anova handle power failure? E.g., if the power flickers off for 10s.

Hmmm good question...let me see!

The Sansaire, I believe, just shuts off. Which is apparently a behavior designed by their lawyers because they hate you.

5:54 PM

The 1st edition Anova turns off :(

Yeah. My bread maker handles that well. Other than that, everything seems to fail. I forget if the SousVide Supreme Demi does any better.

Oh, my newer programmable crock pot handles it well, too.

Itchy & Twitchy :(

(And of course so do the old-style off-warm-low-high knob crock pots)

Annoyingly, it comes back on (lights and such), but with no heat or circulation.

Yeah. Because they decided that on power failure it should shut off.

The Sansaire keeps all the settings (e.g., temperature)... so there wasn't any reason it couldn't resume. They claimed their lawyers told them not to.

5:57 PM

My rice cooker comes back on, no problem. I almost got the geek-food controller instead of the Anova

Damn lawyers!

It's not a huge deal where I am, as the power doesn't flicker like that, except during summer thunderstorms (and then it unfortunately often doesn't come back in 10s)

We get little power outages all the time, I didn't even think about that.

But... they could have at least picked "if it's back within one minute". The bath isn't going to cool appreciably in 1 minute.

Unfortunately, putting an UPS on a circulator is non-trivial, with the ~1100W UPS rating you'd need

Which is like 90% of our power outages.

The other 10% last for days, so we'd know.

All you need is an $800 SmartUPS 2200...

6:06 PM

Great

Luckily, I'm usually home, but that doesn't help if I'm sleep sous-viding

Well, CyberPower would probably cut it down to $400 :-p

Maybe that's what @Jefromi's bluetooth is for, to turn it back on automatically.

I have bluetooth?

@Jefromi Apparently, on those new Anova units.

oh, I see, I have a Sansaire.

LOL, I've confused you with @rfusca.

Oops...

Problems with half paying attention to chat while doing something else.

6:11 PM

I used bluetooth on my phone a few weeks ago though, it seems fancy.

@Jefromi But... can you cook with it?

@Jolenealaska yay! Thank you for finding it!

My pleasure, my avatar couldn't just let it go!

It's a long time since I've thought about Pooh Bear.

Maybe this is what I should treat myself with for my birthday: rereading it.

It's a bit saccharine. I loved it as a kid, I reread it in my twenties and was less impressed. Maybe 20s are just a cynical time.

6:17 PM

I always loved it as a kid. It was the first book I ever read by myself.

I don't think I've read it later.

I mean, not since I moved out of home at 18. I've certainly reread it after the first time.

My first "real" books were the Bobbsey Twins. That makes me feel really old.

I don't know them. But Pooh bear is much older than your childhood.

So are the Bobbsey Twins :)

Funny how adults rarely read very old books, the classics are not that popular, and when at all, then it seems that 19th century and early 20th get more reading than earlier. But when it comes to children's stories, the old ones - Arabian nights, the Grimm fairy tales, etc. are dominant.

Even when there are very good later fairy tales - my personal favorites are Oscar Wilde's, then Hans Christian Andersen's. The classic Grimm, the Russian folk tales about Ivan the fool and so on come later in the ranking, with a large distance.

I probably read 20 of them (Bobbsey Twins) I also LOVED The Chronicles of Narnia

6:24 PM

I only discovered Narnia in my 20s, and I didn't like it.

I also had (of all things) a very well worn book of Bible stories. I probably read from that book every day for 3 years.

How about A Wrinkle in Time?

Back soon...

6:51 PM

Did y'all see the spaceX first stage almost landing?

vine.co/v/OjqeYWWpVWK

@Jefromi Hand't seen it before, wow, that is close.

Pretty darn good for a first try.

Apparently it ran out of hydraulic fluid at some point, so it couldn't move control surfaces anymore, hence the bad angle.

Elon Musk called it "rapid unscheduled disassembly" and said next one would have a bunch more fluid so it'll at least crash for a different reason.

@Jefromi Wow, I should start learning euphemisms from him. "Rapid unscheduled disassembly" - I might need that someday.

LOL @ Rapid unscheduled disassembly! That's awesome.

@Jefromi Hah, maybe he can go for "landing with wrong attitude" instead of "crash", too.

7:06 PM

That's landing with a bad attitude.

@Jolenealaska Both, even :-)

The landing was successful. The only problem we encountered was a terminal velocity slightly above the predicted range.

After the Hudson River Plane Crash (one of my favorite recent stories) I kept flashing back to Toy Story "That's not flying! That's falling, with style!"

@rumtscho Nah, that appeared video seems to show more of an attitude problem than velocity (it appears to land ~45 deg. off)

Of course, maybe it was coming down to fast too

Maybe around 30 deg., not entirely sure when touchdown is there...

My point is, it wouldn't have broken apart if it had been almost not moving anymore. Imagine a feather falling in the wrong degree.

7:15 PM

@rumtscho Well, possibly. Whatever support was supposed to hold it might be designed to hold it presuming all legs are holding their own shares... but instead it came down on one leg. Even if it was fully stationary, it might proceed to tip over or collapse.

you saw a leg there?

But yeah, wouldn't be surprising if it had too much (or at least wrong direction) velocity. E.g., horizontal instead of vertical.

@rumtscho There appears to be something sticking out you can sort of see as the engine cuts

I watched it twice first and did not understand what it is (from another link, where it wasn't labeled with "spacex first stage landing"). Then I watched it once after I knew what it is. I only saw a big long metal thing hitting an edge and exploding.

I watched it 6 more times. I only see that there is some detail (unclear what) on the upper part of the pencil shaped thing. Nothing around the lower part.

It's just too quick to see anything.

open it using a real video player, where you can frame advance

So, the detail on top seems to be a neck of something which looks like the caps of the towers of Agraba

and on the bottom, hmm. There is something jutting out - I can't tell if it's a single leg or part of a ring.

Why do rockets land vertically?

Wouldn't horizontally be easier?

7:23 PM

@rumtscho They launch vertically, so I'd guess maybe the support structure is already there at the bottom. Maybe another structure to land horizontally would weigh too much. Also, unclear how you'd slow it down for horizontal landing, the engine is on the bottom...

also, if it lands in a dessert instead of the ocean, they can just let it open wheels on the side like a plane and roll for as long as it has inertia. Why a boat, where it has to hit a very small space?

@derobert you could slow down first, then turn it a bit. They don't seem to have a problem to turn it halfway in this video :P

@rumtscho Probably because you can put a boat further away from people. If you're 100 miles off, you just dump your rocket in the ocean. 100 miles off a desert, you may hit populated areas.

@derobert but if you land it in the middle of a 300 mile radius desert, you don't hit much.

@rumtscho Yeah. But you can do thousands of miles of nothing with the ocean. Not to mention, your entire flight path can be over ocean.

(No idea if this one was.)

Also, politically, their choice of deserts would probably be the Nevada one. Oceans have far fewer political issues.

you mean, in the ocean you don't risk hitting the government's secret labs?

7:30 PM

LOL

mtc.cdn.vine.co/r/videos/… is the URL for that video, wget will grab it

if you frame advance it, you can see the bottom of the rocket start being crushed, followed by the, ummm, unscheduled disassembly.

7:45 PM

I've got a Groupon to use this afternoon for take-out from a restaurant that bills itself as "a great fusion of India, Nepal, Tibet and Burma". I should spend $25.

I can't decide!

namasteshangrila.com/node/1

When I can't decide from a restaurant menu, I get the items I'm less likely to cook at home

so from this menu, I'd take a tandoori. I can't do tandoori at home. And from that, probably the lamb, because I seldom find lamb in the store to cook for myself.

Goat Biryani! I've never had goat.

@Jolenealaska good idea

I've got to try Achar

and either onion kulcha or the cheese stuffed naan for bread

7:51 PM

Ooh the Shangri-La Mix Grill and the biryani will put me over, but will give me a lot of stuff to try! And cheese naan.

That would leave me with a balance of $8. I can do that!

@Jolenealaska isn't it too much for a meal? if the food is good when you order one dish, you can order another time again, to try the other.

It is too much, but I'll eat on it all weekend. I only go by the place once a month, and I have a $25 voucher.

Next time I know what I really like.

yes, the biryani should be easy to store.

If it's wonderful, I think the Groupon is still available. (Groupons are vouchers that are offered for a limited time for all kinds of stuff. For this one I paid $15 for $25 credit)

The place has very good online reviews.

4-5 stars across the board.

I'm very intrigued by the goat.

8:12 PM

I'm making myself crazy looking at this menu :)

Goat is good!

I loooooove baingan bharta (or whatever your favorite transliteration is).

OOH the Groupon is still available, so I can get another one if I love the food.

And and and!!! The restaurant I've been watching for ages is finally open. Asian and Mexican Fusion How crazy is that? One thing I see on their Groupon is Bulgogi Burrito! HA! I got that Groupon too.

I think Korean tacos have been a Thing in trendy places for a few years now.

8:34 PM

Well, Anchorage =/= trendy :)

I don't know if this town is ready for Mexican/Asian fusion, but I'm ready!

Grr. My neighbour is having a party.

Grr? You're not invited? :(

We live in a strange building. When my door is closed and her door is closed, I never hear anything from her room, the soundproofing is very good. But when her door is open, she could as well be in my room, it's so loud.

And now her guests seem to use the corridor as a party space :(

@Jolenealaska no, I'm not

That makes it much more annoying.

I stopped working for today, but I hope she won't be too loud when I go to sleep.

But she is a good neighbour, I've never had trouble with her. I don't want to be the grumpy party destroyer.

8:43 PM

This is the whole website of the Asian/Mexican place. I sense a theme:

casaak.com

To me, it looks like an alternative transliteration of Cossack

The Groupon says:

I wonder if I would have made the association if I hadn't been reading War and Peace. But there are no Cossacks in the book so far, just husars.

Celebrating its grand opening special, the chefs at Casa Asian Fusion Mexican Restaurant honor the culinary heritages of two distinct cultures by fusing Asian and Mexican flavors into every dish. Traditional Mexican street foods are transformed with the addition of Korean– and Japanese–style marinated meats, resulting in popular dishes such as bulgogi burritos and spicy pork tacos.

This looks pretty good:

War and Peace huh? That one was too long even for me.

As a child, the main virtue of a book was its length

The average 50k word novel was through in half a day, if I had read it before already. Too small.

8:49 PM

Hugo has pretty much cured me of that. You know I love him, but....

DUDE!

I read less nowadays, and not with the same speed. But I don't see a problem in finishing it. It's quite interesting, he's as good an observer as they say.

@Jolenealaska really? Les Miserables is a rather small booklet, as far as I remember

3000 pages.

Oh. I have a visual memory of it, less than 2 cm thick, A5 size. Must be of another book.

But Hugo isn't that bad. If you want long writing, try Balzac.

It (along with W&P) is on the 10 longest books list ever published in the English language. Many, many abridged editions of Les Mis are out there.

maybe I had a children's edition.

Hmm. If I read it in French, I'll probably learn the language until I reach the end.

But I don't really have the motivation for it.

8:54 PM

List of longest novels

This is a list of the longest novels over 500,000 words published through a mainstream publisher. The longest novel is Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, originally published (1649–54) in 10 parts, each part in three volumes. Artamène is generally attributed to Madeleine de Scudéry. Composing a list of longest novels yields different results depending on whether pages, words or characters are counted. Length of a book is typically associated with its size—specifically page count—leading many to assume the largest and thickest book equates to its length. Word counts are a direct way to measure the length...

Oh God, I had forgotten Atlas Shrugged.

Never read it. If you want philosophy thinly shrouded as a novel, Kundera is much better.

I still don't know who the hell John Galt was. :) (J/K)

The novel is torture, but I was going through a big Libertarian phase. Kind of required.

what, Infinite Jest is the fifth longest novel by word count?

I've wanted to read it for a long time. I love David Foster Wallace.

I don't know of it.

he was a prominent rising star of contemporary writing, until he killed himself. Very surreal writing. I've read his short stories. Highly recommended.

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American author of novels, short stories and essays, as well as a professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which was cited by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin called Wallace "one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years". Wallace's last, unfinished novel, The Pale King, was published in 2011 and was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. ...

8:59 PM

Wow...young.

I'll check him out.

Yay, the avocado thing got an upvote. That's 11! :)

Hysterical realism

Hysterical realism, also called recherché postmodernism, is a term coined in 2000 by English critic James Wood in an essay on Zadie Smith's White Teeth to describe what he sees as a literary genre typified by a strong contrast between elaborately absurd prose, plotting, or characterization; and careful, detailed investigations of real specific social phenomena. Wood introduced the term in an essay on Zadie Smith's White Teeth, which appeared in the July 24, 2000 issue of The New Republic. Wood uses the term to denote the contemporary conception of the "big, ambitious novel" that pursues "vitality...

I loved something before I knew it existed!

That makes me think of the Ze Frank videos for some reason.

Um, it's not really humorous. At least the DFW stories I mentioned.

I didn't say that it made sense that it makes make me think of Ze Frank :P

Well, I'm off to go get my monthly $10,000 shot. At least I have good food to look forward to after. CYA later!