Monthly Archives: December 2006

Pond Side Web

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I sometimes take on small side projects like web design, web programming, search engine optimization or user experience design. It feld a little funny not having a web presence to refer to when talking to potential clients so, I set up a simple site.

Since I live next to Jamaica Pond, I decided to call it pondsideweb.com

And thanks to Michal at cornerhost for being an awesome web host.

Past taglines for tmrs

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The following is a list of past sub-heads (taglines) that have been used on The Monkey Represents Sharing (tmrs)

  • It’s the future imperfect.
  • “the s in /s stands for _sigh_”
  • “These aren’t the man-eating crocodiles you’re looking for”
  • “You had me at recursive.”
  • This nerd wagon is out of control
  • Brought to you by Bootfish and Catslayer
  • Change will happen
  • This hypothesis is suspect
  • I envy your donkey and your name
  • There are rules for the use of apostrophes
  • Its not always candy trees and jelly driveways
  • Solace is not the word your looking for (typo pointed out by kwrigh)

Me Left-Brained??! –Nooo…

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The nice folks at tickle.com sent me a Christmas present, a free brain type report! I know, crazy. Now all other gifts I receive will pale in comparison. This is what they had to say about my brain.

Sean, you are Left-brained, which means that the left hemisphere of your brain is dominant over your right.Typically, left-brained individuals like you feel most at ease and in control in situations requiring verbal ability, attention to detail, and in-depth, linear, analytical ability. Writing ability and sequential processes of thought are also traits associated with left-brained individuals. We know this because researchers notice increased activity in the left hemisphere of the brain in people hooked up to monitors when they ask them to perform activities that require sharp focus on detail and organization.In addition to isolating the ways in which your brain processes information, your left brain also controls the right side of your body. If you are strongly left-brained, you will find that your natural tendency is to be right-handed — though with some skills, you may find that you are left-handed if a left-handed person taught you how to complete a certain task.

You are probably methodical and efficient at many things that you do. You could also be good at math which is based on very strict rules that don’t vary terribly much. Numbers are sequential and formulas don’t change which is something your left brain can identify with. Because of this, you probably tend to break things down into their constituent parts instead of looking at the whole of a picture. Left-brained people also are likely to rely more on objective observations than subjective feelings. For this reason, you might find that for pleasure reading, you’re more interested in the facts of nonfiction instead of the free-flow of fiction.

You probably think about things that are more straightforward and practical instead of things that are more symbolic and abstract. The one rule you’re certain about in life is that there is always an answer if you approach a problem with your systematic and organized thoughts.

That’s how your brain processes information. And while your dominant brain hemisphere certainly contributes to the way you process information, there is also a style of learning, unrelated to your dominant hemisphere, that determines the ways in which you are best able to pick up information. When you’re learning something new, your dominant brain hemisphere will want to take over. But there are times when the information being presented is not well suited to your dominant hemisphere’s abilities.

That’s why, in addition to your hemispheric dominance, you also have a style of learning that is dominant for you. Whether you know it or not, you are naturally predisposed to learning things visually, aurally, or through a combination of the two.

Your test results show that you are an auditory learner.

Other left-brained people who are also auditory learners are John Lennon, the writer James Joyce, and a variety of musicians and composers, including atonal composer Arnold Shoenberg, and classical electronic composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. But before delving deeper into how you learn, you should get the basics of your brain’s physiology.

I can’t wait ’till they analyze my other organs.

Losing Money != Fun

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Ok, so I’m a little too interested in my 401k; people like finance.yahoo.com shouldn’t let people like me sign up for daily text messages about portfolio performance.

Last Friday wasn’t a particularly fun day, there were several work-related crisses and such, but when I got my 6:15 PM page and saw fdivx (-2.97) I thought, “Did they switch to %?”.

FDIVX chart around 12/01/2006 - Precipitous drop

Even so, that would have been bad enough but no, it dropped nearly $3.00 per share or ~7% in one day. That was a nice capstone to my fun day.

Ginger & Butternut Squash Soup

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Ingredients

  • 1 normal sized butternut squash (maybe 3lbs?)
  • 1 medium yellow onion
  • 4 lg. celery stalks
  • 3 carrots (not too big)
  • 3-4 cloves garlic
  • 1 large hand of ginger
  • 1 large hand of fresh ginger (when peeled and dices/grated should be about 1/3 sorta firmly packed)
  • 6 Cups chicken stock
  • As much unsalted butter and heavy cream as your conscience allows (at least 3 Tbs. butter and 1/2 pint heavy cream)
  • seasoning to taste: S&P; dried: ginger, nutmeg, cinamon (listed in decending order of proportions)

Prep work

  • Peel the squash (a cheap vegetable peeler works great), chop into chunks about 1 inch square (not literally, they’ll be all sorts of wacky shapes, just don’t make them to small or too big, sort of like this is good.
  • Peel the ginger. I usually just mince with a chefs knife, you could grate it too.
  • For the onion, celery and carrots you’re basically making a mirepoix, but instead of the clasic 2:1:1 proportions (2x onion, 1x celery an carrots) this one should be more like 1:1:1, or equal parts.
    • Clean and peel the carrots, wash the celery, peel the garlic.
    • Dice the onion carrots and celery into a larger version of a brunoise, or whatever depending on your knife skillz.
  • Thinly slice the garlic.

Cooking it up

  1. Put some butter in a large pot (something this size, though not that price, will do) over medium-ish heat, melt.
  2. Add your mirepoix and sweat it (cook over low heat letting the juices come out) when the onion and celery start to get tender (before they start turning transcluent) add the garlic and seasonings. You may want to add some more butter if the pan starts to dry out a bit.
  3. When you start smelling lovely garlic and things get a bit softer add the squash.
  4. Let the squash cook and mingle with the other flavors a bit (I’ll leave it up to you to decide when to stir things. People are all crazy about when they think they need to stir stuff)
  5. At some point you’re going to have to add the chicken stock, go ahead.
  6. Raise the heat, bringing it up to a simmer
  7. Simmer for a spell.
  8. At some point your going to be stiring that pot and you’ll notice the edges of the squash are getting rounded over, poke one. If it seems like you could split it in half with a wooden spoon and you wouldn’t make mashed squash in the process ad the cream.
  9. Adjust the seasoning (after you add cream or any unsalted dairy, you’ll always need to add some more salt)
  10. Pull it off, the heat.
  11. Transfer in small batches into blender or food processor, pulse until it is smooth and silky.
  12. Transfer all the pureed stuffs back into the pot (give it a rinse first at least, people!)
  13. Cook till it thickens some more (this is a matter of taste, but no one like baby food and we’re not making a broth, so its gotta be somewhere in between. It should definately coat the back of a spoon though)
  14. Serve with some toasted bread (and beer).

Now you just made a whole lot of soup, so you should have a plan for storing it. 1qt. mason jars work nicely. If you fill mason jars when the liquid is quite hot, leave the lids loose until while its in the ‘fridge until it cools. Otherwise you could have a mess on your hands.