Tim Bray talks about the past year and his experiences with his TiBook and OS X. I have to say that overall I agree with him. And I’ve been a mac guy for right around two years now. Apple’s biggest issue is price and speed. While I don’t miss my Windows machine much at all, I do feel the slight slowdown. But the stability I’ve had more than makes up for it.

Here’s the sauce Mom made with dinner tonight.

Merlot Sauce

Can be prepared in 45 min or less<

1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
3 tablespoons red-wine vinegar
1 cup finely chopped onion (about 1 medium)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cups Merlot or other dry red wine
2 cups rich veal stock[1] or demiglace[1]

[1]Available at specialty food shops and some supermarkets.

In a small heavy saucepan bring water with sugar to a boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Boil syrup, without stirring, until a golden caramel. remove pan from heat and carefully add vinegar down the side of pan (caramel will steam and harden). Cook caramel over moderate heat, until dissolved, about 3 minutes, and remove pan from heat.

In a heavy saucepan cook onion in butter over moderate heat, stirring, until golden, about 5 minutes. Stir in wine and boil until mixture is reduced to about 1 cup, about 15 minutes. Stir in stock or demiglace and boil until mixture is reduced to about 2 cups, about 10 min. Remove pan from heat and stir in caramel. Pour sauce through a sieve into a bowl. Sauce may be made 2 days ahead, cooled completely, and chilled, covered. Reheat sauce before serving.

Gourmet – December 1996

This sauce was sooo yummy. Just putting a bit over the steak and Fennel Mashed Potatoes was really good.

John Horgan has a very interesting article in Slate.

Tripping De-Light Fantastic
Are psychedelic drugs good for you?

By John Horgan
Posted Wednesday, May 7, 2003, at 8:44 AM PT

A year ago, hoping to dispel the postpartum gloom that had gripped me after I finished writing a book, I hiked into a forest near my home and pitched a tent under some pine trees. I spent that day and evening listening to the forest, scribbling in my journal, and thinking—all while under the influence of a psychedelic drug. The next morning I returned to my wife and children feeling better than I had in months.

What I did that day should not be illegal. Adults seeking solace or insight ought to be allowed to consume psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline. U.S. laws now classify them as Schedule 1 drugs, banned for all purposes because of their health risks. But recent studies have shown that psychedelics—which more than 20 million Americans have ingested—can be harmless and even beneficial when taken under appropriate circumstances.

Personally, I think people should be able to make choices about things like this on their own. But I also think it requires people to be better informed than most are. There’s also at least one famous person, who was known to use LSD.

Yup, as usual a slow start to the day. Though this is mostly because I’ve been down at my parents. Making sure their mac is all up to date over a dialup connection is hellish. I just plugged in the firewire cable and did the IP over firewire to my laptop to move over some software though. i really should be doing that more often. I need to try and talk my mom into going high speed on the computer too. I’m actually thinking DSL might be a better fit for them. Then they could get rid of the 2nd phone line.

Just had an amazing dinner too. Hopefully I’ll be typing in some recipes from it in a bit (I haven’t added anything to that section in a while).

LiveJournal looks like they are doing some interesting things. The biggest of which is they are introducing a new page layout system (with some in the works documentation), At this point it’s available for people to use, but I think it is mostly as a beta since they are still working on it some. So far it looks kind of interesting, but may be a bit too complex for my tastes. On the bonus side it looks like you can configure just about everything to do with your Journal. I’m considering a few things. The biggie is that entries on other people’s friends page still have to show up correctly, and my own friends page has to still show up correctly.

So, what I think I’m going to do is have it so that if they view my primary page it will redirect them to my blog. But my friends page would be the same as it is now, and people would see my posts as normal on their friends page. Now, if I could just find a way to clean up RSS feeds in LJ. It would be cool if someone could ‘own’ a feed and provide a style for it.

Of course now it’s morning and I’m reading over all this and wondering if it is worth the effort.

Scientists have found a new jellyfish.

MYSTERIES OF THE ANIMAL WORLD
NEW JELLYFISH: Big Red has cluster of arms, not tentacles

In the cold, dark waters north of the Farallon Islands, nearly a mile beneath the surface, scientists have discovered a new species of huge jellyfish with a striking red bell that grows more than a yard wide and has a cluster of wrinkled, fleshy arms instead of streaming tentacles.

They call it Big Red, and its entire life is a mystery. The researchers don’t know whether the ones they have observed are males or females, they don’t know how they reproduce, and they don’t know what they eat or what eats them.

They do know that the jellyfish has anywhere from four to seven thick arms and uses them for eating. It also carries wartlike clusters of stinging cells. They think — but don’t know — that it may prey on smaller jellies for food. [SFGate.com]

Yikes! That is one scary looking jellyfish. Just keep it away from me!.

Dave reports that LiveJournal can now ping weblogs.com.

LiveJournal can now ping Weblogs.Com. This is cool because there are a lot of apps that watch the XML feed from Weblogs.Com. Now LiveJournal sites will show up there, if they opt-in. [Scripting News]

I’m very glad it was made opt-in, and only for paid LiveJournal users. Otherwise I think it would probably overload weblogs.com. The next thing LiveJournal needs to do is pay attention the comments tag in RSS 2.0. IMHO, their neglecting that is very lame.

Also, rumor has it they will be supporting trackback. Does this mean LJ is finally starting to play with others more?

/usr/bin/girl has a link to a cute web comic called FishTanked. I enjoyed it so figured I’d share.

Reading through my LiveJournal friend’s page I came across a link to a story about Japanese love hotels.

Adonis specializes in S&M rooms and cute cartoon characters/ Maybe it was inevitable that the two would be combined to make the “HELLO KITTY SM ROOM”. There’s even a Kitty-chan plush doll wearing a ball gag, blind fold, and barbed wire garter belts that will give you nightmares for years. Adonis also has a room with glow in the dark jelly fish, a prison cell, a high school classroom and some really scary S&M rooms. [Lovehotels]

Personally the idea of the Hello Kitty S&M room just makes me a bit nervous and a little disturbed. Now, a Badtz Maru room, that would be more fitting.