tim merritt [dot] net

Will made a big honking pot of chili from the ancestral Gadberry recipe. Oh my yes.

I’m showing yet another GSU Professor about blogging with Wordpress. There are lots of educators building portfolios with Wordpress. Cool!

The AJC reports that The Advocate ranks Atlanta as America’s gayest city! This makes me happy. There are several criteria apparently, and as a straight myself, I’m unaware of many of them—but it turns out Atlanta is gayer than San Francisco or New York! I’ll have to tell Tom Price, my Congressman. It should make him feel happy too.

Shorpy posts vintage photos, with good quality and detail. Make sure to click through and look closely at the full-sized image. This is wonderful. My maternal grandmother, whom I am so happy to say I came to know pretty well, was about 2 years old in 1902—though living in Paris at the time. Having known her gives me a less remote feeling of connection to historical scenes like this; a person I spoke with regularly, as an adult, was alive in this world of horses, hats, Victorian dresses, and nascent automobiles.

Via

Shrimp Pho.

Atlanta and North Georgia has just enough snow/slush on the roads, and falling temps, that many schools are closed tomorrow and other places opening late. It make sense, really – it means roads will be unpredictably icy in the morning and there’s little sand/salt/gravel to make things passable.

Which means I’m sleeping in a bit tomorrow morning, and going downtown to work a little later than usual. [happy sigh]

Have you played with one of these $100 network attached storage servers? I just found out about them today. They’re “Plug computers”—a solid-state wall-wart-sized low-power-drawing Linux server; attach a Gigabit Ethernet connection to your router and a USB drive for storage, and you’ve got file sharing and media streaming on your home LAN and over the web. There’s the TonidoPlug, the PogoPlug, and the announced-just-yesterday Marvell Plug computer. I don’t know if I’m too easily impressed, but if these things deliver what they promise, then our home network needs just got way cheaper.

30 Best Blogs of 2009 – Fimoculous.com. Like I’ll have the time to go and actually read these. I want to, but I have to get stuff done, too.

Creamy Chicken Liver Pâté

• 10 to 15 peppercorns
• 2 allspice berries
• 1 clove
• 4 coriander seeds
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 pound chicken livers
• Salt
• 1/3 cup cream
• 1 to 2 tablespoons brandy

• Bread or crackers for serving.

  1. In a spice grinder or clean coffee grinder, combine peppercorns, allspice, clove and coriander seeds; grind until fine and set aside.

  2. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a skillet over medium-high heat; when foam subsides, add onion and cook until softened, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add livers to pan and sprinkle with salt; cook livers on one side until they begin to brown, about 2 minutes, then flip them and cook the other side. Be sure to keep heat relatively high so that the outside of livers sears and inside stays pink.

  3. Put onion, livers and their buttery juices into a food processor or blender with remaining butter, the cream, spices and brandy. Purée mixture until it is smooth; taste and adjust seasoning.

  4. Put pâté in a terrine or bowl, smooth top and put in refrigerator for 2 to 3 hours or until fully set. Serve pâté with bread or crackers.

  Yield: 8 to 10 servings.

  Via the New York Times.

FunctionFlip – Software – Kevin Gessner. Gonna add this to my MacBook Pro.

Interview with DAVID SIMON in Vice Magazine. Thanks to JD for the link.

A fascinating 90-second animation showing who has controlled the Middle east over the last 5000 years. I need to know more world history, for sure.

Via.

WordPress Plugin Update « After the Deadline.

A reminder to go and fix these when I’m home from work.

The New Facebook Privacy Settings: A How-To – Gadgetwise Blog – NYTimes.com.

It’s a foggy warmish Monday morning. I found this displayed in the window of a clothing shop one block away from my office. First I’ve heard of this.

This morning’s episode: painting your fingernails.

Posted via email from timmerritt’s posterous

Commonplaces from Making Light. Please read them all.

“We are prophets of a future not our own.” (Oscar Romero)

“Peace means something different from ‘not fighting’. Those aren’t peace advocates, they’re ‘stop fighting’ advocates. Peace is an active and complex thing and sometimes fighting is part of what it takes to get it.” (Jo Walton)

“You really think that safety can be plucked from the arms of an evil deed?” (Darla, “Inside Out”)

“The whole point of society is to be less unforgiving than nature.” (Arthur D. Hlavaty)

“Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.” (Michael Palin)

“Just because you’re on their side doesn’t mean they’re on your side.” (Teresa Nielsen Hayden)

“Young men and women, educated very carefully to be apolitical, to be technicians who thought they disliked politics, making them putty in the hands of their rulers, like always.” (Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars)

Since my brother gave me a nice bottle of Balvenie Single Barrel last year, I’ve tried other single malts: Laphroig, Macallan, Auchentoshan, and a few others. There’s much to be said for the very smoky Laphroig, and the Auchentoshan is very nice too, but Balvenie continues to be my favorite, both the single barrel he gave me (long gone, alas) and the 12-year-old double barrel.