How to Make an Ultrasonic Absinthe Mist Cocktail from Scott Heimendinger on Vimeo.
This blog is a foodie's cave of wonders... why have I never heard of it before! Oh yes, and he's also a food photographer, along with crazed food scientist.
You know you have a problem when you renew a subscription to a game you're not all that taken with, simply because you've stuffed your alts mailboxes with too much crap and need time to clear it all.
P.S. Rift is very generous with bag space, it's me that's the issue. *mourn*
Onto the second rule – regularly changing the password. Let me first say that this is a rule I hate. Not only does it not meet the goal of protecting an account, it actually makes things worse when combined with the first rule. Let me explain.
The reaction most users have when you tell them their password has to be (for example) at least 8 characters long and contain uppercase, lowercase, and numbers is not entirely positive. It’s not always easy to think of a password that meets all of these requirements as well as the unspoken one; you have to remember it. For obvious reasons, unless they’re instructed otherwise most people will choose something easy to remember like their surname followed by their birthday. It meets the requirements and they can remember it. To combat this, sensible administrators will explain how important it is that the password can’t be guessed and encourage another method of choosing a password. They might suggest turning a sentence into a string of characters. For example, the sentence “I’m going to try to remember this password” could become “ImG2t2RthP@ss”. That’s a pretty good password – it meets all the rules, it looks very random, it will survive a dictionary attack, and most importantly it can be remembered. Basically, it’s going to take a very long brute-force attack to guess.
Now, what if they know they’ll have to choose a new one to remember every month? Are they going to pick a hard password then? I’d suggest that it’s far less likely that they’ll go through this process of turning a sentence into a password every month. Even though it’s easier to remember than a random string of characters, it’s won’t stick instantly. It might take them a few days before they can type it without thinking. And if they have to do this every 30 days, it becomes that much harder to properly cement it in.
This is so true, and it doesn't even list all the other ways users 'game' a pword system that annoys them.
For some reason, no one on the interwebs seems to make white chocolate pancackles that are entirely white-choccy suffused (or is that infused hrm). There are lots of recipes for making blondies, and even a few for white chocolate pancackles, but in both cases, the white chocolate is always chopped up, then folded in, not melted throughout the whole lot.
>.> And so here we have, in another late night nugget crafting spree...
Sneaky White Chocolate Cranberry Pancackles
Why are they sneaky? They're sneaky because you can't (or I can't anyway) tell that these pancackles contain a ridiculous amount of white chocolate.
They are wonderfully rich, crisp and fluffy on the outside, and shading to soft, almost mochi-like moistness on the inside.
The melted white chocolate comes through in two surprisingly different ways. Flavour-wise, it delicately scents the whole pancackle with a mixture of vanilla and white chocolate; mouth-feel-wise, it makes the pancackle seem incredibly buttery, with a luxurious sweetness that intensifies with every bite, without getting cloying. O.O Add in the chewy sweet tartness of the dried cranberries and, OoOoOoh... um. Let's just say I gobbled one while I was waiting for the others to cook, and I don't normally do that. XD
And since the Interwebs doesn't easily turn up any recipe for these evil things, if you wanna try them yourself, here's what goes in 'em.
220g Dream white chocolate bar
5 sachets of white sugar
2 heaped dollops of ghee
2 eggs
Milk (yes, sorry, sorry, vague, you'll see)
1 tablespoon baking powder
Flour (woot vague again!)
Dried cranberries
- Dump sugar, chocolate, and the 2 heaped tablespoons of ghee into a bowl
- Plop bowl into rice cooker, set to bake (or just press down the button for single button rice cookers
- Ignore for 15-30 minutes (15 will do it, 30 is fine if you're... gaming...)
- Remove bowl from cooker
- Whisk the melty mess until smooth
- Add 2 eggs, whisk until smooth again
- Add and whisk milk until everything is a melty milkshake consistency (vs a freezy milkshake)
- In go the 1 tbs of baking powder and as many dried cranberries as you like, more whisking!
- Add and whisk flour until the mixture is so thick and gloopy you can barely move your whisk. It should look like the first piccy in the series up dere. You need it really really thick, because otherwise once it goes in the pan, it runs and melts everywhere and is generally sad.
- Grease pan (more ghee, wheeee!) and cook on very low heat (pic 2). If you have a cast iron pan, you probably want to cook on very high heat instead. >.> I dunno this, I've never owned a cast iron pan, so this is just what I've been told.
- When the pancackle goo looks mostly done at the edges but is still gooey in the centre (pic 3), flip it! Flip it naaaaaaoooo! It should take about 6-8 minutes to get from goo to this state. Yes, that's an awfully long time, but since we're essentially baking in a pan...
- Wait about 2 minutes before boffing the pancackle around and checking the bottom. To be honest, I have no idea how I know when the bottom side is done, I just do. But each pancackle took me roughly 10 minutes to cook, so 2 minutes should be just about right.
- Plop pancackle on plate, then try not to burn fingers and tongue while gobbling.
Makes roughly 8 sneaky white chocolate cranberry pancackles. Of doom.
A mad three-day weekend of eating... yaaaaaay! (There were also two, yes TWO meals of chilli crab at my favourite neighbourhood family restaurant, but alas, too busy eating to take photos.)
Brownie Pancackles Topped with Bacon and Slathered with Haxx Chocolate-Baileys Sauce
The chocolate-Baileys sauce sets off the brownie pancackles amazingly - somehow the chocolate sauce on top of the chocolate brownie pancackle doesn't result in an overwhelming sameness of chocolate. The zingy choccy-Baileys sauce makes the brownie pancackle taste even more decadently chocolatey, and it's somehow made even better by the savoury baconny goodness in the middle.
._. I don't have a recipe for this since I (lol) don't use recipes. But what I did take away from making brownie pancackles is that unsweetened chocolate requires roughly half its weight in sugar in order to make it barely sweet enough, more if you like it sweeter.
The chocolate-Baileys sauce is total haxx. It looks so difficult and restauranty and all that, but it actually takes no work at all. All you have to do is stir it for less than 30 seconds. Really! XD
Chocolate Baileys Haxx Sauce for Dummies
Dump this stuff in a bowl in a 1:1 ratio for everything
Sugar
Chocolate, unsweetened
Ghee (butter will do, who cares if it's salted or not)
- Plop bowl in rice cooker.
- Do not put ANYTHING else in the cooker. Not even water.
- Set cooker either to cook (one-button), or bake (if you have it).
- Ignore for 15-20 min.
- Take bowl out (carefully)!
- Whisk together the whole melty mess, don't worry if it isn't all melted, by the time you're done whisking, which should take less than 30 seconds, it'll be a nice smooth sauce.
- Add Baileys (or whatever alcohol) to taste, whisk. The alcohol should immediately turn your sauce much darker and gluey-er, don't worry about it.
- Add milk or cream, whisking until it's of a thinness/consistency you like. Go slow, it only needs a tiny bit.
- Go mad pouring it all over everything!
If you use good semi-sweet chocolate, you can omit the sugar. I'd advise using a good chocolate for this (I used Ghirardelli's the second time round), because you can really taste the difference. Using Ghirardelli's gave the sauce that luxurious zomg-I'm-paying-a-lot-for-this-meal-but-it's-worth-it kinda mouthfeel. XD
Pomegranate & Brandy-Butter Icecream Filled Lemon Peels
This was kinda hard to set up initially, the lemon halves kept falling over! (I cut them in half along the middle of the lemon). Then I figured out I could stand the pointy bottoms on an empty icecube tray, and it all went smashingly after that.
Very cute presentation-wise, but I was a bit unsatisfied by how the lemon peels weren't edible...
Fish-Head Curry of TASTY DOOM @ Segar Restaurant
Some of the best fish-head curry in Singapore, in the nugget's book. Before I discovered this place (so near my place yay), I had to go all the way down to Amoy Street to have something comparably good. I could drink this rich, tamarindy, creamy curry sauce in a glass. >.>
Jelly-Filled Candied Lemon Peels, Sprinkled with Sugar
Having been disappointed with the inedibility of the lemon peels in the icecream version of this, I decided to candy the things before filling them with jelly! I used some cheap brand from my childhood called Tortally, but really, any jelly will do.
I also discovered that ice-cream scoops make amazing juicers. cut the lemon in half, then abuse it with the icecream scoop, and all the juice squishes out wonderfully.
- Juice lemon (or as many lemons as you want to make).
- Stab lemons once on each of their four sides, between their pith and pulp.
- Insert thumb into the stab wounds, and yank on the pulp. It should all come out cleanly, and you should end up with neatly gutted lemons.
- Scrape the insides with a knife to remove as much pith as you can - but try not to make any holes!
- Boil the lemon halves 5 times, simmering for 10 minutes each time (total 50 minutes).
- Melt an equal portion of sugar in hot water, dump your lemon peels in the mixture.
- Put the bowl of lemon peels in sugar water in the rice cooker, add enough water OUTSIDE of the bowl, in the rice cooker pot itself, to cook for 1h45min.
- Fish out lemon peels, turn them hollow side down on a plate, plop in the fridge to dry for half a day or more.
- Make jelly mix.
- Stand lemon peels, pointy end down, in empty icecube tray.
- Put empty lemon peels in fridge.
- Ladle jelly mix into lemon peels. You have to do this in the fridge, otherwise it'll slosh and slop everywhere. XD Or maybe you just need more points in dexterity than me.
- Ignore for 2-3 hours / till jelly sets.
- Take lemon peels outta fridge, slice down the middle.
- Sprinkle liberally with white sugar.
- NOM!
In hindsight, I should have coated the lemon peels themselves in white sugar before they dried, THEN filled them with jelly for a better effect, but oh well. Next time!
Immersion isn’t a mass market activity in that sense, because most people are comfortable being who they are and where they are. It’s us crazy dreamers who are unmoored, and who always seek out secondary worlds.
It’s just that games aren’t just for crazy dreamers anymore.
via raphkoster.com
Please, always let there be people making pies for crazy dreamers. :(
P.S. In Koster's LegendMUD, I found the only virtual world I have EVER truly 'lived' in. The man knows what he's talking about, when it comes to immersion.
Moar thoughts:
There were a lot of responses to Raph's post, and a lot of them arguing that he defined immersion incorrectly.
What really struck a chord with me when I read his post though, was that my idea of immersion is being able to actually live in a world. Where, much like being immersed in a good book - everything goes away. Even 'you' go away. 'You' can be someone else so not yourself, that it's like a vacation from yourself. Movies don't give me that - in movies, no matter how entertained I am, I'm always an observer. Same with MMOs.
It's also not so much needing to feel that your choices can affect the fate of the world in any dramatic way - seriously, I don't feel that in real life, and I live there some of the time! But more the feeling that your choices in the world matter to YOU on a personal and emotional level, as well as an economic one (woot, moar stats always shiny).
Immersion for me, is where the people you deal with have their contextual and emotional reality tied into the world you are both/all inhabiting, where everyone makes sense in the context of said world. Has a context in said world. Has a... meaning in said world.
This is not something any MMO has ever given me. No MMO has given me the feeling that the other people I've dealt with are a living and breathing part of the world we inhabited, that they were grounded in it, rooted in it, had a history in it, could not be the same anywhere else, in any other world. To be quite honest, the social side of MMOs that isn't tied to game architecture seems very much like a glorified chatroom.
...that's what I think of, when I think of immersion.
...that's what I've been mourning ever since I left LegendMUD.
Model Two – Everyone has specialties and you match the spec to the situation
Under this model, we would establish spec specialties. For example, Arcane could be good for single-target fights while Fire is great at AE fights. Some of that design already exists in the game, but we try not to overdo it. If you really like playing one mage spec, or really detest constant spec swapping, then this model isn’t going to be to your liking. Furthermore, we don’t want to overstrain our boss design by having to meet a certain quota of AE vs. single target fights and movement vs. stationary fights and burn phase vs. longevity fights or whatever. It is also really hard to engineer these situations in Arenas or Battlegrounds (for example, both mobility and burst are extremely desirable in PvP), so in those scenarios there still may just be one acceptable spec.
via us.battle.net
The problem I see here is that WoW is way too limited in what DPS can bring to the table.
Since Ghostcrawler used a mage as this example, here's a mage (elementalist) from a Guild Wars perspective.
Water is good at defending the party, and shutting down both casters and melee (not very good at damage).
Fire is good at burning burning burning. Masses of things, or single things. BURN! Defence? What's that? Shutdown? Well there is about one spell, otherwise, the best shutdown and defence are BURNNNNN THEM ALL.
Air is good at single target spiking (conceptually, the best single target ele damage), shutting down physicals, and to some degree, casters.
Earth is good at defending the party (though not as good as water), but does a decent amount of aoe damage (not as much as fire), and an equally decent amount of shutdown. Not so good at single target.
*pokes simplified GW elementalists* *ponders WoW mages*
...poor buggers really don't have much of a choice at all.