Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 5 min
Pancakes for breakfast have been a routine thing for me at the moment.
I have an awesome basic recipe.
1 cup flour
1 cup milk
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp veg oil
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg slightly beaten
mix the wet ingredients first, then mix into the combined dry ingredients.
From then on, you can do whatever you want. I put some taro tea mix in there sometimes. At other times, I have tried putting things like green boba tea mix, a ripe banana, and this time walnuts. Other than the color, the taro or the green tea mix doesn't seem to affect any noticable flavor, which is unfortunate. The banana however is a very strong banana taste. If you love bananas, you'll love the pancakes, if you hate bananas, it will not be edible. When I have some rip bananas, I'll put them into the walnut mix, and make banana walnut pancakes. I really can't see how this can turn out bad.
I've experimented a little to try to bring the green tea flavor out. And the way I was going to do that was to add a heavy amount of mix into the maple syrup. It did kinda work, but it became a lot thicker than I was hoping. Maybe I could have thinned it out with water.
Things I've learned, if you don't compltely mash the banans into almost a syrup, when its cooked, you'll have these pockets of soft banana goo inside your pancakes. I really thought it gave the pancakes some x-factor.
Also, walnuts...raw walnuts were ok into the pancake mix, but I think if you toast the walnuts first, it may even better. I'll have to try that next time.
Lastly, I always made the mistake of oiling the pan first before cooking pancakes. Especially because they are on the directions of every pancake mix I've ever bought. And if you do this you get really ugly pancakes. The trick is to not use any oil at all. Any oil that is in the recipe should be part of the mix. All you need is medium heat and a good very non stick pan. When you flip them over, they'll look perfect every time.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Introduction
I am going to log the things I watch for gits and shiggles. Why does blogger's logo make this theme look like the North Korea flag?
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Introduction
On my spare minutes, I play games on my DS, Wii, PSP, and 360. I would also like to keep a list of the games I pass.
Introduction
Working at home, I find myself cooking a lot. So I created this blog to log what I cook, the but more importantly the observations so I can improve on the dish next time.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Blackberry Storm's first impressions: A huge disappointment
I've been holding off on getting a iPhone until I tried the Blackberry Storm. So I went to the Verizon store, and I can't remember the last time I've been so disappointed due to high expectations. Well.....not counting Indiana Jones, Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls.
But the whole clickable LCD was a total mess. They never explain in the commercials how it really works. The entire LCD presses in. So for example, the amount of pressure needed to press the G key is a lot more than to key on the edge like A. That problem compounded by the fact that you have to press in for the key to register made it awkward. The pressing in feature slowed down typing.
There are positives and negatives. For example, before you type in a word like "The"
On the Storm, the key will light up, and once you realize you are on the right letter you have to press in.
On the iPhone, it registers when you just touch the key (or maybe when you lift up, not sure). That might sound like it'll take some precision touching but the iPhone seems to have incredible word recognition software where it seemed like I typed a 6 letter word completely wrong (6 out of 6 wrong characters), but since all the letters were approximately near a commonly known word, it corrected it after the 6th character.
Doing the Storm and iPhone typing head to head, the iPhone blew away the Storm.
When I first asked about the Storm to the Verizon rep, the first thing she said before anything was that the Storm's firmware that was on their current models are their old versions and that the response on the new firmwares are much improved. A stiff warning before we actually got to see the Storm with the old firmwares. And she wasn't kidding when we tried it out. The old firmware wasn't boarderline unbearable. It was beyond unbearable. Any person who actually saw the Storm in this form I would imagine would be running to the apple store. It was worse than my first encounter with the Motorola Q on its day 1 release.
Because of my love for Blackberrys, I'll have to give Storm just one more chance with the new firmware before I rule it out completely. But the Storm's better firmware is going to have to be about 10x more responsive to have the same responsiveness than the iPhone. I don't like the typing, which was my biggest reason to even consider the iPhone. My verdict until then will is that the Storm is a total miss.
But the whole clickable LCD was a total mess. They never explain in the commercials how it really works. The entire LCD presses in. So for example, the amount of pressure needed to press the G key is a lot more than to key on the edge like A. That problem compounded by the fact that you have to press in for the key to register made it awkward. The pressing in feature slowed down typing.
There are positives and negatives. For example, before you type in a word like "The"
On the Storm, the key will light up, and once you realize you are on the right letter you have to press in.
On the iPhone, it registers when you just touch the key (or maybe when you lift up, not sure). That might sound like it'll take some precision touching but the iPhone seems to have incredible word recognition software where it seemed like I typed a 6 letter word completely wrong (6 out of 6 wrong characters), but since all the letters were approximately near a commonly known word, it corrected it after the 6th character.
Doing the Storm and iPhone typing head to head, the iPhone blew away the Storm.
When I first asked about the Storm to the Verizon rep, the first thing she said before anything was that the Storm's firmware that was on their current models are their old versions and that the response on the new firmwares are much improved. A stiff warning before we actually got to see the Storm with the old firmwares. And she wasn't kidding when we tried it out. The old firmware wasn't boarderline unbearable. It was beyond unbearable. Any person who actually saw the Storm in this form I would imagine would be running to the apple store. It was worse than my first encounter with the Motorola Q on its day 1 release.
Because of my love for Blackberrys, I'll have to give Storm just one more chance with the new firmware before I rule it out completely. But the Storm's better firmware is going to have to be about 10x more responsive to have the same responsiveness than the iPhone. I don't like the typing, which was my biggest reason to even consider the iPhone. My verdict until then will is that the Storm is a total miss.
Friday, November 21, 2008
TVersity, the greatest thing I've found on the internet in a long time
What is it? Basically there's a new standard for streaming content called DLNA. And things like ps3, xbox 360, and portable devices that have internet are supporting it. This means that you can basically watch any video you have downloaded (regardless of format, but divx/xvid/mp4 preferred so there is no transcoding involved) can be watched anywhere you go. I have collected over a terabyte of video of things that I considered had some replay value. This means that I have access to that collection without actually having it on me. On top of my own content, you can stream video over RSS feeds that are publicly available (some by tv networks). I've tried programs like that in the past, like orb, but could never get over the lack of quality. TVersity doesn't seem to have that problem. And one of the greatest things about tversity was it it installed, and it worked great from the start. There are not too many free software that does that.
DLNA is the future of video content on portable devices. In the future, we won't need a local copy of the video, or even a copy at home. You may need to pay for a subscription, but you can probably watch any show at any time on any advice. It will stream without transcoding, be high quality, and be at the right frame rate. We are almost there, and it can only get better from here. Imagine, you need to kill 15 minutes, you whip out your cell phone, and have every movie, every tv show, every video content you can ever dream of. Can't wait!
DLNA is the future of video content on portable devices. In the future, we won't need a local copy of the video, or even a copy at home. You may need to pay for a subscription, but you can probably watch any show at any time on any advice. It will stream without transcoding, be high quality, and be at the right frame rate. We are almost there, and it can only get better from here. Imagine, you need to kill 15 minutes, you whip out your cell phone, and have every movie, every tv show, every video content you can ever dream of. Can't wait!
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Anyone else tired of these Mac commercials?
I'm pretty sick of them. I once thought they were witty and funny. Now I think they are just a big lie with presuppositions that Mac can't seem to back up.
If you are a Mac user, do you ever find yourself needing a piece of 3rd party software, then find it on google, have it sound like exactly what you need, then discover its Windows only? See, Windows users don't have this problem. While Mac users probably encounter this on a daily basis, it is safe to say Windows users have never encountered it. Run it on a virtual machine you say? Yeah, real convienient and efficient. Why run one operating systems when you can run 2 at a time? Why run it at full speed, when you can run at virtual full speed? Why consume a few megs of space when you can consume a few megs of space plus 2 gigs for the virtual OS, and a few more gigs for the virtual enviornment? Why consume 15 megs of memory to run an application when you can consume 384 MB of ram isntead? Why use hardware acceleration when you can use software acceleration? Yeah, think of that when they tell you that you can still run all PC applications. Why are you buying a Mac again?
The truth is Windows OS is not that bad, and Mac OS is not that good. All software has bugs, and Mac OS is no exception. Apple users assume that Windows is worse because that's what they are lead to believe as they point to problems Windows had with BSOD 8 years ago. Sure you still encounter that maybe once a year for each computer you own, but its because you're probably running buggy cracked 3rd party software, or some generic cheapo hardware that costed your $2 less at Fry's that came in a white box. I don't think Macs crash any less frequently than that.
When I'm on a PC I am doing 15 different things at once (a few chat programs, often Firefox and IE at the same time, a suite of Microsoft Office applications, a suite of adobe applications, at least 3 virtual machines all running server OS, multiple instances of visual studio, and a few applets like uTorrent, Daemon Tools, and VLC.) When I get on a Mac, I feel like I am limited to doing what the Mac is capable of doing. And some things that it does, I'm only doing the *lite* version of them as the open source programmers with their busy full time jobs (as artist or unix wiz) haven't had time to add the feature that PC users had since the application of that type first became available.
Being a Microsoft hating fanboy is a sick disease to where someone like Jerry Yang, the now former CEO of Yahoo! would rather see the worth of his company drop down to half price, than make a deal with Microsoft. Get off the bandwagon already. No one likes a hater. I'm done with the commericials that say "buy me because my competition is horrible." That does not really say you are any better.
If you are a Mac user, do you ever find yourself needing a piece of 3rd party software, then find it on google, have it sound like exactly what you need, then discover its Windows only? See, Windows users don't have this problem. While Mac users probably encounter this on a daily basis, it is safe to say Windows users have never encountered it. Run it on a virtual machine you say? Yeah, real convienient and efficient. Why run one operating systems when you can run 2 at a time? Why run it at full speed, when you can run at virtual full speed? Why consume a few megs of space when you can consume a few megs of space plus 2 gigs for the virtual OS, and a few more gigs for the virtual enviornment? Why consume 15 megs of memory to run an application when you can consume 384 MB of ram isntead? Why use hardware acceleration when you can use software acceleration? Yeah, think of that when they tell you that you can still run all PC applications. Why are you buying a Mac again?
The truth is Windows OS is not that bad, and Mac OS is not that good. All software has bugs, and Mac OS is no exception. Apple users assume that Windows is worse because that's what they are lead to believe as they point to problems Windows had with BSOD 8 years ago. Sure you still encounter that maybe once a year for each computer you own, but its because you're probably running buggy cracked 3rd party software, or some generic cheapo hardware that costed your $2 less at Fry's that came in a white box. I don't think Macs crash any less frequently than that.
When I'm on a PC I am doing 15 different things at once (a few chat programs, often Firefox and IE at the same time, a suite of Microsoft Office applications, a suite of adobe applications, at least 3 virtual machines all running server OS, multiple instances of visual studio, and a few applets like uTorrent, Daemon Tools, and VLC.) When I get on a Mac, I feel like I am limited to doing what the Mac is capable of doing. And some things that it does, I'm only doing the *lite* version of them as the open source programmers with their busy full time jobs (as artist or unix wiz) haven't had time to add the feature that PC users had since the application of that type first became available.
Being a Microsoft hating fanboy is a sick disease to where someone like Jerry Yang, the now former CEO of Yahoo! would rather see the worth of his company drop down to half price, than make a deal with Microsoft. Get off the bandwagon already. No one likes a hater. I'm done with the commericials that say "buy me because my competition is horrible." That does not really say you are any better.
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