Mean happiness: Despite the bad press infographics have gotten lately, this one is quite clever.
Friday, April 16th 2010
Wednesday, April 14th 2010
Caprese burgers, mashed red potatoes and green beans!
The burgers patties are made from about 2 lbs. of 90/10 lean ground beef, plus 1/4 large white onion (I might use red or sweet next time), 2 cloves of garlic, 4 oz. of mozzarella cheese (all diced) and a couple teaspoons of salt.
Atop the patties are slabs of soft mozzarella cheese (the kind you make caprese with) topped with balsamic vinegar while grilling. On top of that are slices of red bell pepper pressed into the cheese (totally cheated on the caprese here, they should be tomatoes) and basil leaves.
12 California Red potatoes (from a large bag at Costco) make up the potato salad, along with 1 stick of butter, 1/2 a cup half and half and salt—decadent, I know, but very tasty. We’ve been doing mashed potatoes in the pressure cooker. It’s faster at cooking the potatoes, and for added bonus, the steam relief valve popping cues you to turn the stove off (helpful for the multitasking-challenged).
I don’t normally have the energy to make three dishes on a weeknight, but tonight I felt up to the multitasking challenge. The results were happily nominated.
UPDATE: I made some more caprese burgers last night with the addition of ~1/4 cup balsamic vinegar to the patties. I highly recommend it!
Tuesday, April 13th 2010
A window pops up. You read the message to decide whether to hit OK or Cancel. Nerd! If you were a normal person, you’d have hit “OK” already
UX insight by Esther Nam
Monday, April 12th 2010
The Adobe - Apple Flame War →
I’ve been talking with a number of you about Adobe and Apple’s platform fight. The latest monday note by Jean-Louis Gassée (who founded BeOS after leaving Apple) makes an excellent jumping-off point, explaining some of the history and elucidating (as always) the underlying strategies of the players. Whereas Adobe is trying to commoditize it’s compliments, Apple must hold onto it’s unique strengths:
Cross-platform tools dangle the old “write once, run everywhere” promise. But, by being cross-platform, they don’t use, they erase “uncommon” features. To Apple, this is anathema as it wants apps developers to use, to promote its differentiation. It’s that simple. Losing differentiation is death by low margins. It’s that simple. It’s business. Apple is right to keep control of its platform’s future.
Gassée also nails what I find the most fascinating about the new Apple:
Does anyone mind that Jobs won’t sacrifice the truly strategic differentiation of the iPhone platform on the altar of cross-platform compatibility? Customers and critics don’t. They love the end-result. Nor do developers.
The response by the market (the consumer market and the developer market) supports Apple differentiating itself along a basis vector largely ignored by the rest of the computer industry.
This is extremely encouraging to me. I’ve always held that computers are not ready for the world, but we’re approaching and age where the average person can use a computer as a natural extension of themselves and their will to manipulate the world. I approve of what Apple is doing with the iPad not because they are Apple, but because their actions take us further toward this ideal.
Thursday, April 8th 2010
In case you were wondering where all the leftover Easter lamb went: Gyros! Well, my take on them anyway.
I started with a good amount of minced garlic and chopped red onions sauteed in olive oil, then added the sliced lamb and cubed roma tomatoes (on the vine, from Costco), added some flake salt and ground peppercorns over the pan. The bread is nothing special, just from Trader Joe’s, but the green stuff is mâche or “lamb’s lettuce” (also from TJ’s) and is quite tasty, like a light, nutty spinach. Topping off the ensemble is some Greek yogurt.
They turned out quite well.
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