Flotsam & Jetsam

Who’d like to do a Chocolate Chip Cookie tour when I get back? This list and description made my mouth water from 6000 miles away.

http://newyork.seriouseats.com/2009/12/the-ultimate-chocolate-chip-cookie-tour-best-new-york-nyc-manhattan-brooklyn-bakery-picture-slideshow.html#show-65023

Ruby and Ruby on Rails is all the rage these days. As a dev environment, it’s one of the most simple I’ve ever worked with.

1. Ruby –
   Install latest Ruby one-click installer for Windows from http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubyinstaller/
   Include Ruby Gems.
   Up to you on installing the editor.
   Once you’ve installed Ruby, type this at the command line
   ruby -vyou should see the latest version returned. Mine is ruby 1.8.6 .

   If you see “Command not found”, make sure that you reload the command (close & open new) window after the install.

2. Update gems. Type this at the command line
   gem update –system
3. If you encounter a HTTP Error 403 trying to install Gems, here’s a workaround:download the latest gems from http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=126 (I used 1.3.1)
   unzip / untar the file
   cd rubygems-1.3.1
   ruby setup.rb

   Then do at the command line to bring it up to date:
   gem update –system

4. Now, install Rails. Type at the command line:
   gem install rails  –include-dependencies
   
5. Install a database. For learning and dev work, sqllite is a good choice. You can upgrade to MySQL later if you wish.
   Get the latest version from here: http://www.sqlite.org/download.html.
   You’ll need the command line application zip and the DLL zip.
   Download, extract and install to your Ruby bin directory.To test that everything is working well type at the command line:
   sqlite3

   You should see a response that says something like: “SQLite version 3.6.16? and give you a prompt. Type ctrl-c or ctrl-break to exit.

6. Install the sqlite3 gem. Type at the command line:
   gem install sqlite3-ruby

Voila!  Done.  Now you can start coding in Ruby using your favorite text editor.

gem install rails --include-dependencies

The NY Times has done a piece on why the US cellphone market is the way it is. Not too surprising actually, but interesting read on the details.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/business/15price.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

I don’t know about you, but I still have my old Palm 650. It’s a little big, and doesn’t have a wireless account anymore, but it’s great alarm clock and an easy way to take notes, so I keep it around. And, if I ever need a GSM phone, I just need to swap out the SIM card and we’re good to go. Color me surprised when I read that someone had ported Android to the Palm 650. Supposedly it doesn’t run very quickly (Android really pushes the limits on what the Palm can do), but if you’re in the mood to tinker, go for it and let me know how it goes:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/13/palm-treo-650-boots-into-android-lives-a-fulfilling-life-video/

Heard about Bittorrent, but don’t know how to use it? Know what it is, but not a master? Read this guide. It’s very informative.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/20_essential_tricks_and_skills_every_bittorrent_user_should_know?page=0%2C0

Check out their Firefox tweaks and tips article too:
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/20_essential_tweaks_every_firefox_user_should_know

Back in the day, everyone had access to a UNIX shell account at their internet service provider. With it, you could run batch files, scripts and access services that were only available from the command line. Unfortunately, shell access also allowed (some) people to hack and cause issues. Now-a-days with tons of Linux distros and more servers running windows, it’s rare to find a service provider that will give you access to a shell account, much less has one. But, still, there are times when you need one. When you do, search this list and find one that works:

http://www.red-pill.eu/freeunix.shtml

Cool little service. Allows you to post a private, secure web page that has a question / answer challenge.

https://norbt.com/

We’ve been using an MVIX box for the past couple of years to watch downloaded movies and TV shows.  The biggest problem with it is how stuff gets transfered to the box.  It has a wireless connection, but it’s slow and requires a proprietary app to xfer software to it via wireless.  Instead, we connected an external HD and just copy stuff onto the drive, then reconnect it downstairs.  Simple enough, but a still a bit of a pain.

Over the past couple of years, the XMBC project has come a long way.  One of these days I think I’m going to build a new XMBC box for the TV and see how it works:

http://lifehacker.com/5391308/build-a-silent-standalone-xbmc-media-center-on-the-cheap

If you build one, let me know how it goes.

Searching about for tips on how to take better photos, I came across Moose Peterson’s site and was blown away by his pictures.  If I ever have the time and money, I’d love to attend one of his seminars.

http://moosepeterson.com/blog/

I’ve been looking for a good, online to do list for ages. Tried writing one a while back, but got side-tracked and never got back to it. This list has a couple good ones that I’m going to check out.

http://designm.ag/resources/online-to-do-lists/

Ever wonder what technology a particular site uses? Go here, type in the URL and the site will give you a good breakdown of all technologies utilized that it can mine.

http://builtwith.com/

Are you a twitter fanatic? Looking for that perfect tool to increase your twittering addiction?

Here ya go – the ultimate list of Twitter Tools
http://www.brandsamongmany.com/2009/03/09/the-ultimate-list-of-twitter-tools/

Surprise, you can actually apply metrics to our healthcare system and see whether it’s effective or not. This blog entry at Harvard attempts to break out the numbers and explain why our system could use some work.

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/08/how_effective_is_american_heal.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE

Another attempt to catalog and put online good lectures from top Universities. Some of these aren’t too bad. Hopefully they’ll succeed where others failed.

http://www.academicearth.org/

Ran across this site a couple days ago and have been very impressed with the resources and data he supplies. If you’re ever going to design a site that people are expected to sign up and use, I highly recommend reading through his stuff.

http://bokardo.com/

This deck in particular was VERY good:
http://bokardo.com/archives/designing-for-social-traction-slide-deck/

101 tips from small business bloggers:
http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/money/article/101-tips-from-50-small-business-bloggers-gregory-go

Top 15 Social Media resources for food and foodies alike.

http://mashable.com/2009/07/30/social-media-foodies/

Niki and I went to a couple of their dinners a couple years back when they were touring the country throwing parties.  Food, ambiance, people and experience were great.  I’m glad to see they’ve expanded the program.  Check it out:

http://www.theghet.com/

You have a smoker and you have a grill. What you need now is a wood fired pizza oven.    This site: http://www.fornobravo.com/ has free plans for building your very own pizza oven!!

If I had room in the backyard, I’d be all over this.  Alas, our small Queens yard is currently full with the above smoker and grill.  Next house, for sure!

Found this while looking for Empanada recipes.

This was a bad winter here in the Northeast.  Bitter cold, lots of snow.  Spent a good portion of last fall weatherizing the house, but wasn’t perfect.  I kept feeling drafts that I couldn’t find.  Black and Decker have released an affordable Thermal Leak Detector for $50 that might be helpful next time around.

http://www.blackanddecker.com/ProductGuide/Product-Details.aspx?ProductID=20626

Ever wondered what your dog or cats day looks like?  Well, now you can.

Pets eye view is a little thing you put on their collar that takes pics at set intervals until the drive is full.

http://www.highlights.com/jump.jsp?itemID=3569&itemType=PRODUCT&ccid=KNC-1000-1000928&sccat=E0912&source=google_priority

If you want to build your own, with a bunch more flexibility:

http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/cc_index_en.htm

When I get some free time I’d like to try and build one of these things and send it out with Feena to the dog park.  If anything we’ll get some good pics!

A couple weeks ago I went to a talk by David Rose of Rose VC.  After the talk a group of people stayed behind to hear him talk and ask questions.  One of the questions asked what David looks for when he invests in a company and what attracts him.  Here is David’s list of 10 things he looks for in an Entrepreneur:

1. Integrity
2. Passion
3. Experience starting companies
4. Domain Experience
5. Skills – Finance, Mkt, HR, Sales
6. Leadership
7. Vision – want to create something big
8. Realism
9. Commitment
10. Coachability

I’ve always been a big fan of early American Music – Blues, gospel, country, jazz & folk.  Oftentimes, finding recordings or collections of music other than stuff that’s already made it to the mainstream can be difficult.  Back in 2002 I came across an amazing collection called “Goodbye, Babylon” which was a collection of Gospel songs from the Rural South.  Since then, Dust-to-Digital, the company that released the collection, has continued to seek out old recordings and collections that have been lost or forgotten and is slowly releasing them to the public.  They’re a good example to the music industry as a whole of a model that works – give people a good product that they’d be willing to pay for and, guess what, they’ll actually pay for it. 

If you like hearing music from the Roots of US music, I highly recommend their stuff:

http://dust-digital.com/index.htm

In the kitchen, a good knife can make all the difference between an easily prepared meal and one that’s a pain in the butt to make.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to use a piece of steel with a bit of wood at the end someone has called a knife to prep a meal – never my best meals, or my favorite to prepare.  When I could (or knew there’d be no alternative), I’ve always brought my own knifes – makes things go smoother.  For the past bunch of years I’ve been using a classic Wustoff – the workhorse in most kitchens I’ve ever worked in / visited that didn’t use those knives with white plastic handles.  Lately I’ve been interested in getting a new knife ’cause the one we’ve got at home has taken quite a beating over the years and I’d like to try and work with some of the Japanese style knives in addition to the classic French that I’ve always used.  Plus, it’s nice to have a new toy every now and then.

http://www.kramerknives.com/index.htm

The New Yorker did a big article on Bob Kramer in a past issue.  Soon after, his order queue filled and he stopped taking orders.  Guess if you want one you’ll need to get on his list and hope the queue shortens quickly. 

Alternatively, you can get one of the knives he designed for Shun and for sale at Sur le Table:

http://www.surlatable.com/product/cutlery/chefs&%23039-+knives/shun+bob+kramer+chef’s+knife+with+bonus.do

Not sure what I’m going to get.  Been looking at the Globals too, but gotta go play with a couple and see.  Maybe Adi has a suggestion ….

During the cold WInter months, it’s good to have a list of places where you can go that are public, and indoors out of the wind and snow.  NYC.gov has compiled a pretty good list:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/priv/priv.shtml

Z.

Ingredients:

1. 1 1/2 cup of sugar
2. 1 1/2 cup of Water
3. 1 tbsp Lemon rind
4. 1 1/2 cup of lemon juice
5. 1 lemon thinly sliced
6. Mint

Directions:

1. Mix sugar, water and Lemon rind in a saucepan and let boil for 5 minutes
2. Cool, stir in lemon juice
3. Add water to taste, garnish with mint and slices of lemon
4. Drink and enjoy

Like a lot of connected tech people, I have multiple email accounts, multiple computers and multiple locations from which I connect to and read my email.  The problem is that there is no good way to keep all the activity you do on those various places synced up.  For instance, I read and delete a bunch of mail while sitting at my laptop downstairs.  Last thing I want to do is repeat the same thing on my machine at work and my machine upstairs.  When I send mail from upstairs, I want the same message to be in my sent mailbox downstairs.  In theory, IMAP should solve this problem, but I have yet to find a good, stable IMAP client that doesn’t freak out when the ‘net connection is lost.  *sigh*  Searching the web I’ve come across a couple of tools that claim to solve the problem for a slight fee.  In the not too distant future I’m gonna check these things out and see how they fare.

Syncing.net claims to be able to sync your inboxes even through a NAT or firewall
http://www.syncing.net/en/home.html

BeInSync claims to be able to sync your inbox and specified folders on your desktop with each other.
http://www.beinsync.com/

Anyone have any thoughts or experience using any of these tools?  Know of any others?

A. A lot of stuff happened to bring the interest rate to record low’s starting in the 1970’s (or earlier if you want to go back that far).  A partial attempt to try and explain what has happened over the past year.

1. You want a loan, but you’re risky.  You go to a mortgage broker who says they can get you a loan, regardless of how much money you make.
2. Sleazy mortgage broker gets you a loan with A
3. A makes a bunch of these loans at X percentage points.
4. In order to diversify their risk, A packages up a bunch of these loans and sells them to consolidator B at a rate of X-Y.  A doesn’t make nearly as much money as they would have, but they’ve off-loaded their risk and make some of would they would have made (and lost less than they would have).
5. Dealer A bundles more of these loans up and sells them to B
6. Repeat step 5, but different B (then move onto step 7)
7. B sells these all the loans they collected as one big bunch to investment bank C
8. C bundles up these loans into a securitized security called a Mortgage Back Security (MBS for short).  C then sells these things on the open market like a stock or bond.
9. D buys some of these MBS’s
10. D takes out loans to buy MBS’s (and other securities)  They borrow upwards of 10x (or more) the amount of cash they have on hand.
11. D, because they have a lot of these MBS’s, decides to hedge their bet and buys these other securities called Credit Default Swaps (CDS’s) from places like AIG.  A CDS guarantees the interest rate of a bond by calculating the risk and charging the appropriate “premium”.  Think of it as bond insurance.
12. AIG writes a lot of these CDS’s because they’re supposed to be fairly low risk based on the diversification algorithms
13. Because places like AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman … etc are writing lots of CDS’s, which, in theory, should hedge their risk, and they’re greedy, they borrow more money and repeat steps 7 and 8.
14. Because these things have value that can be traced (supposedly), firms use them as collateral in other loans and deals.
15. A War happens and goes longer than anticipated.
16. The price of oil goes up
17. Interest rates start to rise.
18. The LIBOR rate – which most US loans a based on – goes up.
19. 2 and 3 year ARM mortgages expire and the interest rates of these risky mortgages ratches up to what they should be based on the LIBOR spread
20. Mortgages start to go into default.
21. Repeat steps 15, 16, 17, 18, 19
22. April ’07: Countrywide – the largest writer of mortgates in the US starts to fail due to too many defaults on bad debts
23. Between January ‘07 and December ‘07 many smaller subprime mortgage lenders fail, leaving a lot of debt behind in places like ML, Bear and Morgan Stanley
24. The ratings agencies start to downgrade Countrywide and ratings across the board start to be questioned.  Rumors of Countrywide bankruptcy start to surface.
25. Jan 11, 2008: Bank of America buys Contrywide for $4.1 billion in stock
26. Confidence on Wall St starts to falter
27. March 14, 2008: Bear Stearns gets Federal funding as Bears stock price crashes
28. March 16, 2008: Bear is acquired by JPMorgan Chase for $2/share.  The deal is back by the Fed with a $30B loan to cover potential losses.
29. Repeat steps 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 & 26
30. The interest rates on the MBS’s starts to fall below the rate guaranteed by the CDS
31. AIG and others start to pay out cash to cover the CDS’s
32. Repeat steps 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 & 26
33. Writers of CDS’s start to run out of cash and can’t pay.  The borrowers are having their loans called due to bad debts.  Now both sides of the deal are losing – the writer can’t pay for what they bought, the buyer is out what they paid for the MBS and what they paid for the CDS and the loan
    amount.
34. Sept. 7, 2008: Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac fail.  Citing the impact the failure will have on the economy, the Fed Nationalizes them over and wipes out the equity structure in the process
35. Confidence on Wall St continues to accelerate downward
36. Sept 14, 2008: Merrill Lynch runs out of cash and is sold to Bank of America
37. The pressure goes up.  
38. Sept 15, 2008: Lehman Brothers files for Bankruptcy.  The government doesn’t save them.
39. Sept 16, 2008: AIG is downgraded by Moody’s and S&P – AIG’s stock price crashes
40. Sept 17, 2008: Citing the impact the failure will have on the economy, the Fed lends AIG $85B to keep them afloat
41. Sept 19, 2008: Paulson unveils plan to use $700B of taxpayer money to buy toxic debt
42. Sept 25, 2008: Washington Mutual is seized by the FDIC and sold to JP Morgan Chase
43. Sept 29, 2008: The  Emergency Economic Stabilization Act is defeated 228-205 in the House of Representatives
44. Sept 29, 2008: Wachovia fails in the largest banking crash in history and is purchased by Citibank.
45. The market goes into a free fall
46. Last week
47. Morgan Stanley & Goldman Sachs become traditional commercial banks, ending the history of investment banks on Wall St.

From the BRC Rangers List:

Make the muffin recipe on the back of the cornmeal box …

… and here comes the complicated bit …

…  add caramelized onions, bacon bits and a little bit of orange zest.  

YUM!!!

Cleaning up I found a recipe for fondue that I’ve used a bunch of times with great success.

• Cheese: Gruyere, Emmental, Buford or Comte.  Pick at least 2.
• a couple sprigs of Rosemary, finely chopped
• some Thyme, finely chopped
• Cup of dry white wine (swiss wine if you can get it)
• shot of Kirsch
• clove of garlic

1. Shred  the cheese using a grater
2. Rub the inside of the fondue pot with a clove of garlic
3. Bring one cup of dry white wine to a gentle simmer.
4. Gradually add the shredded cheese, stir while adding.
5. After it’s all melted and smooth, add one shot of Kirsch, the rosemary and thyme.
6. Serve with squared chunks of french bread.

A couple years back a friend of mine and I spent a lot of time in this one particular bar during a convention.  We got to know the bartender pretty well and, together, we concocted an amazing drink we called the $50 Milkshake.  Here, for the first time, is the recipe (that I found on a slip of paper while going through some old boxes).

1. Fill a glass with ice
2. Add a shot of Baileys and let it cool
3. Add at least 2 shots of good Cognac
4. Add a shot of Kaluha or Tia Maria
5. Spash of Cointreau
6. Some vanilla ice cream if it’s on hand.

Swill.  Yum.  Many a nite was lost to these.

I love this poster.  I saw it at a friends house a couple weeks back and had to track down a copy.  I think it’ll be a perfect addition to our bathroom.

http://www.georgetownbookshop.com/georgetown/display2.asp?id=167

Ah, Verizon.  The company we love to hate. 

I’ve had Verizon DSL for near on 9 years now.  I got it when I lived in Morningside Heights and they first started offering it in NYC, then moved the service to Brooklyn when I graduated from school, then moved it to Astoria when I bought my house.  Throughout that time I’ve had long bouts of good service followed by long (but shorter) bouts of bad service.  This last long bout (for poor internet service that is) has lasted about a month.  Every couple of days my download speed – which should be 3mb / sec down falls to, oh, 3KB / sec and stays that way for several hours, or days, depending on how long it takes me to get through the myriad of drones Verizon has manning their tech support lines and convincing them that the problem isn’t the fact that I’m not running virus protection, but that they have a problem in their switch.  In the past month I’ve spoken to support people in India, Mexico, the Philipines and somewhere in the fly-over.  Well, now thanx to the Consumerist, I have a secret weapon – Verizon’s Landline Executive Customer Support:

Call 1-800-483-7988 and press 3 to reach the Verizon Customer Advocates for landlines and DSL

I called them today and got a support manager on the line who filed an escalated complaint and has promised to send out a technician tomorrow.  Hopefully this will get the situation solved once and for all.  If not, Speakeasy here I come.

*Edit*

If that doesn’t work, call the New York State Public Service Commission: 800-342-3377.  They take complaints, register them and then force the utility companies to respond.  From everyone I’ve spoken to, going this route gets the most difficult problems solved quickly.

Here’s their website: http://www.dps.state.ny.us/

Now, I hate alarm clocks as much, if not more, than the next guy, but this one just might convince me to not throw it across the room.

 http://www.mathlete.com/portfolio/wakeNbacon.php

I think my biggest issue would be getting at the bacon before Feena and Mush did.  Evern try to wrest a piece of bacon from the mouth of a 130+ lb hungry Rottweiler before you’ve had your morning coffee?  I don’t suggest it.  It’s not pretty.

 True Bacon porn.

via: http://ize.hu/