Ingredients:

• 1 lb. green beans (frozen are OK)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup slivered, red onions
• 1/3 cup raw cashews
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• few springs of fresh parsley
  

Algorithm:

• Boil water. Put beans in for five minutes on high. (Three minutes if frozen.)
• Strain. Run through cold water, set aside.
• In a large frying pan, heat up olive oil. Add black pepper and salt. Add onions, cashews, and stir-fry for two to three minutes at medium heat until onions soften.
• Add beans, cook until they are hot. Warning: Cashews burn!
• Put in serving dish, garnish with chopped parsley.

Ingredients:

• 6 cups vegetable stock
• 3 large yams
• 2 garlic bulbs, roasted
• 4 tomatoes
• 2 red peppers
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, diced
• 2 tsp salt
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tbsp minced sage
• 2 tbsp minced oregano
• 2 tsp coriander seeds, toasted and ground
• 1 tsp ancho chile powder
• pinch allspice
• 2 tsp chipotle purée
• 1 tbsp maple syrup
• juice of 1 lime
• salt and pepper to taste

Algorithm:

• Pre-heat oven to 375°F. Using a fork, poke a few holes in each yam. Place on a baking tray and roast until soft and collapsed (about 45 minutes). You can roast the garlic bulbs at the same time. When the yams are tender, cool slightly and remove skins. Squeeze flesh from the roasted garlic bulbs.
• Halve and seed peppers. Place peppers and whole tomatoes on an oiled baking tray and roast until the skins begin to puff and brown (about 15 minutes). Transfer to a bowl and cover with plastic wrap for 10 minutes. Peel away the skins and set aside.
• Heat vegetable oil in a large soup pot. Add onions and sauté until translucent. Add garlic, spices and herbs and cook until the garlic is golden. Stir in the peele, roasted, and vegetables, the stock and chipotle chiles. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
• Purée the soup until smooth. Whisk in maple syrup, lime juice and season to taste with salt, pepper and more chipotles, if desired. Serve hot.

Helpful Hint:
Great garnishes for this soup:

• roughly chopped roasted pecans
• spiced pecans
• fired whole sage leaves
• flame-roasted pepper salsa
• fried blue & yellow corn tortilla squares

Pictures from my AT skiing trip to ACC’s Bow Hut in early February of this year.

Here’s one of my latests addition to my Flickr photos.

This picture was taken on a midnight XC skiing trip I did back in February on the Goat Creek Trail, a 18 km stretch of track that connects Canmore to Banff. The strips of light coming down the hill and across the bridge, are the head-lamps of skiers, as too are the wide streaks of light in the center and right side of the photograph. Those latter streaks are from people standing close to the camera lens wearing head-lamps.

Gallery 2 is dead. Long live Flickr.

In the past, Gallery 2 was my go-to-guy for putting my photographs online. I had found a theme to my liking and things were going smoothly. Well, sort of. Over time, management was becoming increasing annoying and general usability was plagued by insufferably low bandwidth. When my web hosting company performed a “server upgrade” and in the process broke my photo gallery, I began questioning if I wanted to continue using Gallery 2 for my online photo publishing needs.

Today that question was answered.

I dropped my Gallery 2 database tables and created a [Pro] account. Check it out at: PantherModem @ Flickr

Sun Clock:

How many time have been about to write some class, but couldn’t come up with a good name? Like the other day, I had a Line class and was working on a “two connected line segments” class which for lack of a better word I decided to call a Path. Instead of thinking and obsessing about the right name, wouldn’t it be great if there was something that could just give me a great class name?

Well there is. It’s called: ClassNamer.com

Goodbye Path, hello CryptographicScrollbarSubscriber!

Last September, I was in the market for an iPod speaker system. I looked around, read some reviews, and in the end I decided to go with Griffin’s Amplifi 2.1. The clean design of the Amplifi caught my attention immediately and the sound quality proved sufficient for my purposes (listening to podcasts and music in the kitchen while cooking or eating). The one complaint I have about the Amplifi is the rather inelegant iPod dock design: it’s functional, but it has a precarious and awkward feel to it. With everything considered, I’ve been very pleased with the system.

The speakers served me well for the last six months, but just last weekend that all changed. On Sunday night, I connected my iPod and turned on the speakers only to be met with a momentary burst of electrostatic crackle. Weird. I adjusted the volume control of the Amplifi, only to encounter the sharp crackle once again. On further inspection I discovered that the volume control, when operated via the blue LED knob or the IR remote, did not increase nor decrease the speaker amplification; and that each adjustment incurred the wrath of the electrostatic crackle. It was looking like this was the end of my Amplifi.

Decided to follow up on the unit’s manufacturer one year warranty, so I called up Griffin’s customer service line (615.399.7000) and talked to a very nice lady by the name of Currey. She informed me that Griffin will replace my defective unit free of charge. I didn’t even have to send the broken unit in! But there was one catch. Here’s a section of Currey’s email:

We handle exchanges for international customers a little differently. Rather than have you send us the defective product, we request taking a digital picture of the defective product destroyed. You can smash, burn or crack open in whatever way you would like, so long as you do so safely. Also, take a digital picture (or scan a copy) of your receipt.

Next, send us the pictures. Just reply to this email and attach the digital pictures of the defective part and the receipt.

Once we receive the email and verify the photos we will send a replacement to the address that you have provided us.

Wow. Griffin wants me to annihilate the unit. So be it. Pictures are forthcoming.

The Hipster Parietal Disgorgement Aid!! Or simply, the hipster PDA!!

This is “so two thousand five”–but it’s new to me dammit!

Check out the original hPDA artcile at 43 Folders.

Check it: PantherModem @ LibraryThing