Someone in an online discussion (Padraig) wrote the words that follow, and which I thought were well chosen enough to copy here. (I'd credit him with more specificity had he provided any).
When I die, I will be gone. period.
People will remember me for a time, then they will die. Before long, no one will remember me. Any mark I ever left on the world will have turned to dust and blown away.
Then, someday, our sun will swell into a red giant, consuming the inner planets, including earth, laying waste to any trace of life in the solar system. And then, unless we've found a way off the planet, any memory of the human race will have been annihilated.
Even if we have mastered interstellar travel and spread to other planets, entropy will have its way with the universe and nothing will remain but pervasive infrared radiation. Unless the universe itself has a memory, there will be no one and nothing to remember that life ever breathed anywhere.
And you know what? I still prefer that to believing a lie.
A well worded phrasing that resonates well with my perspective. His post was prefaced with one other sentence, saying, "My thoughts on death are incredibly bleak."
Here I disagree, in that I didn't find his view bleak at all. On the contrary, it captured well our existence as collections of molecules and electro-chemistry in the natural ebb and flow of matter and energy.
The universe is a beautiful manifestation of probability and pattern, complexity and depth. That within all that stuff, we can craft meaningful lives rather than just exist and procreate. That we can love and be loved, and create beauty from randomness gives us a reason to savour every moment between the before-we-were and the after-we-are-no-more.
I've recently connected up with Tumblr to see how they do things over there. I've got a bit of a footprint in the 'Blogger' world already, but I was curious to see if they do something a little different. My conclusion is that Tumblr is basically like Blogger with more style, and leaning more towards images, although it looks like some of their text capability is fairly stylish as well.
I posted a series of eleven pics to Twitter the other day and thought I'd put those up as a test. Blogger doesn't seem to offer me any means to do a tiled array of the small thumbnails that I pulled back down from TwitPic. I could put together a simple HTML table to pull it off, but I thought I'd see what Tumblr could do with it.
The result is good. Here's the final photo, plus the nice array that I just screen-shot captured from the Tumblr presentation:
The Tumblr interface stops you at 10 pictures, but it gives you several different layout options for tiled arrays.
So kudos to Tumbr. Not sure how much I'll add there, but if the experience continues to be painless and stylish, it could attract some additional attention from yours truly.
I've been lax at keeping up with accumulating photos. So I'm taking some time to sort pictures at the tail-end of this 2012 Christmas/2013 New Year holiday period. This could take a while, and no doubt my urge to share pics will be triggered by particularly interesting shots. These may evoke no particular excitement among my Twitter followers, so I thought maybe I can refresh this otherwise stale blog area with some pics. Be prepared for a total lack of theme or reason in their order and presentation.
This is a modern shoe-box experience, I suppose. Once we would clean up a room, find a shoe-box full of photos and with the intent to sort them we would spend a few hours reliving the memories. Now it's a folder on my desktop with a bunch of pics that didn't get sorted as I removed them from various picture-taking devices. Putting them into my 'digital photos' directory with meaningful categories allows me to revisit them as I do the sorting.
Prepare yourself - these will be quite random. :) Click pics for bigger versions.
The Photos
A. Bread! I like to bake bread as you may be aware if you follow me on Twitter. Batch to batch, I'm usually making either small loaves that I can get through in a couple of days lunches, or medium sized loaves that will get us through a stew dinner, and a couple of breakfasts. This shot at the right has my mouth watering.
Peanut butter on fresh bread - Yum.
There are a whole lot of bread pictures in these folders I'm sorting, so I'll spare the Internet the wasted bits and bytes. Oh, except here's a shot of some rye loaves. too.
B. Bugs! Sharing this video via YouTube, as taken from my back yard. During the spring I recorded the process of sweeping out my water-feature stream-bed, and it is very much filled with bugs. Seeing them all squirm around as I remove the organic junk is quite compelling.
Due to their habit of blending in, it might be tough to see in the embedded player above. You can click on this link to see it full-sized on the YouTube site - a creepy-crawly video record of my menagerie saved for posterity.
C. In Montreal in the summer, a trip to a popular breakfast spot on the Plateau. Four of us with lots to eat. Mine, are the eggs Benedict at the bottom.
That visit also featured a fun, though swelteringly hot, picnic in a park around Jean Talon area, and some fun 'Gypsy Jazz' at a club near Saint Denis. Le jazz manouche!
D. Ginger beer trials. Making my own ginger beer for a while, I decided to compare it against some of the commercial ones. A good learning experience. There were bits in the others that I could attempt to imitate, yet elements of mine that were better. A good exercise.
E. Hiking with a picnic along the way is fun, and one of our
favourite spots not too far from the city is captured in this shot. I
use this one not due to its great composition or scenery but in way of
contrast. The left shot is from June 2011. As luck would have it I've
neglected tidying up my photos long enough that a walk to the same area
the following summer caught the contrast. The drought of spring 2012
decimated the scrubby oaks that populate the top of this part of the
Eardley escarpment. Sad to see, as in the second picture they
show pretty much a total loss of foliage. Whether they died as a
whole tree we won't know until the spring of 2013 I guess.
2012 View - Oaks Suffered from Drought
2011 View - Happy Trees
(Blogger has a bit of trouble managing picture placement, so I hope the pics are rendered okay in your browser. I seem to have got them reasonably well placed in Firefox for now)
F. Dinner for 55cents? Go to 219 Sparks Street with this coupon for the Plaza Hotel. Of course, the hotel may have been gone for 70years or so. This is from some random newspaper bits in our attic. Fun stuff to find. Click the pic for a bigger one you can read.
G. Pizza Anyone? Making a lot of thin-crust, fresh local ingredients-based pizza lately. Once the dough is made and ready it's quick and tasty. The other handy bit of info is that if you make a scratch dough, you can form it up into individual pizza sized balls, then wrap tightly in plastic and freeze them. When you anticipate a pizza event, pull em out to warm up and form into pies. Soaking the tightly-wrapped ball in cold water is a good way to thaw them as well.
H. Waffling can be a good thing. In early summer when the berries are in season, making some waffles is a good plan. So we did. The results are very photogenic with the great contrast between red and light-golden waffle.
I. A cup of tea. I've been known to spend a bit of time at one Bridgehead coffee shop or another (it's a local Ottawa, Canada coffee/tea place). This pic seems to capture my experience there pretty well. Tea, paraphernalia, and Internet access. Good way to spend an hour if you can get a good seat and cross your fingers that your corner doesn't turn into a daycare spontaneously. Avoiding prime mom times is the best advice.
J. A glass of wine or two makes life a tiny bit nicer. I'll take a pic of a wine bottle here and there, mostly for record keeping purposes. This is a good case in point. The 2010 Meiomi Pinot Noir blew me away all through the summer of 2012. For me it's just what you want in a Pinot - the fruit is crisp and rich, with raspberry/cherry notes, the tannins are balanced and soft without missing the bus. So, I was glad to have recorded the bottle. However, this picture worked out so well with the background and lighting and the super-cold glass of water that I had to share it here too.
I haven't found the 2011 yet but I've heard good rumours, though I wonder if they'll have pushed it a bit further away from classic Pinot territory if they've heard all the exclamation about big fruit and soft tannins. Okay, I'm getting distracted just thinking about it.
Late March 2012, and the Canadian government comes out with a budget with all the tricks of media manipulation well installed.
What's all this then? A few thoughts, in my usual "Too Many Words About…" format, on our political climate and the humble penny.
On one hand they were careful to schedule a particularly embarrassing hearing regarding alleged election-rigging to be simultaneous with the budget presentation, to ensure media outlets would mostly ignore it. Then within the budget itself, they included a bit of media-candy - the elimination of the penny - with hopes that the popular appeal of currency-related stories could take some attention off other bad news stories hidden in the budget.
This post will take that gambit and explore the penny decision. Happily, most media outlets have focussed on the meat of the budget rather than the $11million savings allegedly enabled by eliminating the diminutive penny. Many reports use a jocular punctuation of the penny-story as a closing tidbit in their budget discussions. But rather than argue keep it or lose it, I want to briefly explore a missed opportunity within the penny issue.
Pennies are arguably ineffective in our economy - their small value means that you cannot buy anything with a single or even a few pennies, as inflation over the decades has rendered them near valueless. I'm not very opinionated about keeping or eliminating the coin. Commerce will work fine without them, and I'm not paranoid about getting ripped-off as a consumer due to the transition.
A little part of me likes the completeness of a currency system that includes a representation of the smallest unit. Unlike the physical world, we know the unit quanta of the scheme and having it available gives me some sort of assurance of a properly implemented system.
Another part of me likes the cultural element of the penny - how people react to it, or don't. The little plastic "take a penny, leave a penny" dishes at cash registers embody some otherwise obsolete bit of trust among strangers that we don't see as much in the modern world. There is also the fascination of a young kid finding a penny, or the trigger for stories of the value of a penny in our historic memory; a penny for your thoughts, penny matches, penny candy. I like that those bits are current and in our pocket here and there.
But I can live without it, and the large can of collected pennies, and (as some visitors to my living spaces observed when I was single) my propensity to allow small change to pile up on random horizontal surfaces.
The missing opportunity is a technology-based argument. We in Canada have some history of leadership in currency, both coinage and paper. Our bank note printers (we had two of them here in Ottawa up until just recently) are known for printing currency for many countries around the world. As well, our innovations in the bi-metal coin led the world. We pioneered and patented some facets of the two-metal coins that typically take the rung above the traditional range of coinage (two dollars/pounds/euros) with coins that emerged just over a decade back around the world.
The Canadian Mint created the Polar Bear 'toonie' coin in 1996. There were earlier bimetallic coins with the same differing outer ring and inner slug metals, but these were prone to coming apart. The Canadian innovation was a special patented locking mechanism. An earlier French innovation in locking mechanisms was also important in the space. In 1997 the Brits introduced the 2£ coin. The €1 and €2 coins emerged in 2002.
Hearing our Finance Minister say that making a penny costs the government a penny and a half was a challenge to my technology instincts as visceral as saying "you can't do that." This makes me think that we're missing an opportunity here.
Refined metals-based coinage seems a bit past its time, especially at the low-end of the currency spectrum. What if the Canadian Mint invested some research dollars in plastic coinage - preferably recycled plastics? Imagine if we developed a resilient coin technology from post-consumer plastic waste that allowed a penny to be made for 0.1 cents. The security burden is low, as nobody would counterfeit thousands of pennies to make some spare cash. The wear and loss burden is low as most of our modern pennies end up hoarded in jars anyway, so some loss due to damage or wear is no big deal.
Imagine, as well, the future of international currency challenges. As inflation continues to devalue low-end-of-the-spectrum coinage, we could easily be the global go-to experts for budget-strapped governments looking for penny-range coin replacement. We could put plastic Canadian coin technology into every pocket in the world.
Forget saving $11M from eliminating the penny, how about saving nearly the same amount from a cheaper penny, and driving hundreds of millions in international commerce as we solve the same problem for everyone else?
When there are escalating costs and "you-can't-do-thats" flying around, there is often a choice between two approaches: run away from the problem or turn it into an opportunity. It's too bad innovation and opportunity development aren't seen as an option for our government today.
In some gastronomic exploration years ago, I experimented with the interesting impact freezing had on tofu - particularly when you drop a frozen block of tofu into boiling water. The result is a porous, more firm item - still mostly devoid of flavour as tofu itself is, but with a new interesting texture.
Some random brand of tofu swiped from the net
The result is not unlike a sponge and as such, seemed a path towards carrying other flavours. I made some interesting tofu-burger things, and did a chicken-burger with the sponge item carrying other flavours from powdered broth mix. Interesting but not a staple.
When a Twitter friend (@tao23) this week mentioned dipping tofu into egg-mixture for making French Toast, this came to mind as a good evolution of that idea. There was no reason really for me to seek out an alternative to conventional French toast, or to find a new tofu delivery system really.
Tofu is probably most often used in western culture as a substitute for something one is excluding from their diet (e.g. meat for vegetarians) but as I'm not avoiding anything in particular, this is more of a food experimentation opportunity. It does present an appealing option towards making a gluten-free version of French toast for those who find digesting gluten a problem.
Tofu in east Asian cooking is just another ingredient. It's protein-rich and fat-free which alone makes it a good thing to try to squeeze into your diet. As an avid bread-maker, I don't propose to eliminate bread any time soon. But I'm a big fan of variety and this seems a good means to expand on the uses for that ubiquitous block of soy-bean curds.
The technique is pretty simple - freeze a block of tofu solid, then when a pot of water has reached a good rolling boil, toss in the block of tofu. The result, when the boil has returned, is a spongy looking block which is easily cut into a slab resembling a slice of bread.
I've used silken tofu here, and I noticed that the holes are a little larger, and the final product a little softer than if you use firm tofu. This seems a good way to emulate different softnesses of bread, and I was happy with this outcome.
After the water returned to a boil I transfered the spongy block to a board with a spatula and pressed the water out of it. It can hold quite a bit of liquid - this is a great feature, as it enables the scheme of soaking stuff - like our French toast egg mixture.
In the close-up picture here you can see the neat pattern of holes made by the ice crystals. The boiling water serves to set the tofu and retain those pockets and firm up the texture.
The next step is as normal for making French Toast - lightly whip up an egg with about an equal amount or so of milk. Add a tablespoon of sugar and a few drops of vanilla extract. Sop up this mixture with the tofu and fry in a little butter in a hot pan.
As it's frying a good hot pan ensures that the egg mixture doesn't leak out too quickly. Tidy up the edges with your spatula to retain the tasty goodness.
For a bit of a flavour enhancement, I also caramelized some banana slices in butter - a younger banana is best so it doesn't get too soft. Just quickly brown on both sides and remove.
Here's the final result on the plate, with a bit of butter and that oh so yummy Canadian maple syrup.
Make a big stack for all your gluten-free friends and let me know how you like it. Or make a couple for your anti-tofu friends and don't tell them what it is until they've finished.
Food, glorious food. We don't always eat pricey, but we always try to eat good. Or, "well" I suppose. Here are a few thoughts on recent food pursuits at home, away and on the grass.
Okay, sometimes we eat pricey too, but the real goal is usually value for money. Why eat junk when something good to eat can be whipped up in 20 minutes? Or when there's a owner-operated restaurant (ie non-chain) nearby where they care about what they are putting on the table?
I was just cleaning a few pictures off of my camera and noticed that a bunch of them are food related. Rather than file them away, or crafting several different posts, I thought an omnibus post with a few tasty shots and associated background would be a good way to use them. So read on if you're in the mood for a virtual bite.
Eating at Home
Pasta - it's one of the most versatile and enjoyable of all food groups. There are few other dishes (short of just fresh, unadulterated produce from the garden) that are so simple, yet so good. This dish from last week was a good case in point. It was a build-it-as-you-go thing and every bite was great.
With some penne cooked up, a little disk of pesto (made and frozen after last years basil crop) was tossed in. The orange bits are fresh cherry tomatoes grabbed from this summer's prolific garden. The green are the flowers off this year's basil plants on the back patio. A spicy Italian sausage was quickly fried and cut up. I topped with parmesan and enjoyed it all with a glass of wine, and some fresh bread.
Eating While Away
Letting someone else cook breakfast is a lazy mans tradition for, well a long time. In Montreal a few weekends back, we dropped by "The Avenue" as we've been known to do. Their breakfasts are elaborate and well prepared. This shot shows what the four of us were having. For me it was an Eggs Benedict, T had pancakes with apples, K had a ham and cheese crepe, D had buttermilk pancakes. The potatoes were nice and tasty too.
There is usually a lineup on a weekend, but we seemed to squeak in just before it formed. A nice way to start a Saturday in Montreal.
Eating On the Grass
On a nice day in the summer, food always tastes better outside. And if you're eating outside, and have access to a red/white checkered piece of cloth, you are duty bound to have a picnic. One of the best parts of a picnic - from my perspective - is the shopping for food items. In a city with good markets, it is an enjoyable way to work up your appetite. That same weekend in Montreal, we hit the Jean Talon market and weaved our way through, picking up items for our midday meal as something struck our fancy.
Here is a picture about midway through the extravaganza. The bag (of Ontario origin!) hides a bottle of Quebec still cider which was a nice accompaniment for the food we chose...though I was a little disappointed with it. Probably a gewurtz would have been a nicer bottle with our snack. There are three different Quebec cheeses in there, soft, hard and a mellow orange one that was really good. I can rarely remember cheese names, sadly. Some local charcuterie, some fresh fruit, some olives and a baguette were all valued participants. There was a savory Turkish pastry with spinach in it as well. Nearby, a cricket game was on. One of the sides wore 'Team India' jerseys and were apparently trouncing their opponents. All-in-all a nice civilized afternoon.
With such a warm summer, my ability to keep us stocked with home-made bread has been a bit of a challenge, since I'd rather not get the oven going if I'm going to be running the central air conditioning trying to push the house in the opposite direction. Thus I tend to wait for cool, rainy days to make some bread. Plus, with humidity and warmth during summer, loaves don't last as long before moulding (unlike supermarket bread so chemicalled-up so as to last for months). The remedy is making small loaves and freezing them. I freeze them when they are still a bit warm, and when thawed they taste very fresh, like they just came out of the oven.
Here is a set of loaves just out and cooling from a week or so ago. They were about half and half white and brown flour then a third again as much 9 grain flour, and a handful of rolled oats for good measure.
They're mostly gone now, I'm due for another baking session this week. Let's see what weather comes in behind Hurricane Irene as she passes by. Here's hoping for something cool.
The day is dull and hurricaney. Thought I would address the long-standing cookie deficiency of our home with a bit of baking. The hurricane influence is just the outer arm of 'Irene' that swamped and uprooted bits of New York City. We'll likely get a bit of rain at some point, and it's pretty gusty, but it will surely pass soon.
The cookies were easy and successful. The obligatory initial sampling went well with an afternoon cup of tea. The recipe, for those interested:
Cream together 1/2 cup each of white sugar, brown sugar and butter.
Then add: an unbeaten egg,
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup of quick (rolled) oats
3/4 cup of flour
1/2 cup of coconut (shredded or flaked)
1/2 tsp of cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg
Mix it all up, spoon out globs and bake in a 350 oven, for about 10min or until browned.
The original recipe called for a 'can of flaked coconut' but that's apparently an obsolete delivery method. Can't say I remember ever seeing coconut come in cans. You could probably double the coconut without much of an issue - I found half a cup to work out nicely. You can taste it, but still taste the oatmeal flavour.
