Posts from March 2012

My hair is very long now. And my stress levels are at an all time high. The combination is a bad one.

There is hair everywhere. In the bathtub, on the floor, inside the keyboard, everywhere! Strange little hair creatures live in corners of my flat. It's so aggravating. I really don't have time to clean now or recycle. So my flat looks abysmal and weird. The omnipresent hair makes it worse. It's like my head has transformed into a human cat/shedding machine. I reckon I must be losing at least 200-300 strands a day.

And I seem to have entered a joyless cooking phase where I just make things as fast as I can so that I can gobble them up and get back to work. On top of it, my tea consumption has gone up to nearly 30 cups a day. I am not so concerned about drinking so much tea (it's mostly water and some milk). The main problem is I am out of my favourite teas (tetley and harrod's) because I just kind of burned through my stash. I don't have the time or inclination to go to the Indian store so I am stuck with my less-liked teas.

I am finding out that I really hate Chamomile tea. Worst pathetic tea in the world.

Maybe it's all a bit too much, but is it?

I currently use:

A laptop with fedora (Heavyduty (for me!) computing, coding and writing)
A laptop with an ubuntu derivative (madbox) (experimentation with linux)
A laptop with a lean modded WinXP (communicating with the non-clued in world. Read: people who don't know what LaTeX and linux are, live in the past and deal with the painful M$hit word.)

A tablet with honeycomb and considering dual boot with ubuntu LXDE. (Heavyduty PDF reading)
A smartphone with Ice cream sandwich (Camera with panorama)
A smartphone with gingerbread (Alarm Clock with fancy tunes.)

At work:
A paleolithic machine with some ancient slow version of WinXP (good for pretty much nothing really, because its so slow and terrible).

I bet @paul has more devices (actually I would love to see your list, @paul. :)) and whatnots but what about you all?

Can't complain about google new unified policy, Discovered Marteria. :)

I know e:kookcity wrote about the perfect stovetop popcorn but this is for busy times when you want popcorn and cannot be bothered to watch over the stove.

• Get a brown paper lunch bag
• Put in around 4 heaped tablespoons of unpopped kernels
• Set your microwave to 2-3 minutes and put the bag in
• When the popping slows to 1-2 per second take it out (this is crucial, burnt results are terrible).
• Empty the popped popcorn out over a big surface area (a generous bowl, perhaps).

And now is the step that no one on the net is sure about. How to make the seasoning stick to the air-popped or microwave popped popcorn:

• spray the popcorn with an ultra fine spray-mist of ... water!
• sprinkle on the seasoning. I love just plain salt.

That's it. Totally guilt free, perfectly seasoned popcorn without a stove, without toxic stuff, without preservatives, from kernels to perfection in under 5 minutes.

is grand.

So many reasons to love android and linux, and this beats them all! I was hunting around for a USB cable to transfer some snaps to my computer today and I found this instead. (This FTP application also helps transfers in the opposite direction: from linux to Asus transformer TF101 or any android device. See: @tinypliny #56232)

Motsha Wireless File transfer
(fork of swiftp)

It's so simple, it's amaaaaaazing!

Once you install the app.

1. Go to Setup
2. Input a username and password
3. check accept connections from wifi
4. check accept connections from net proxy
5. check keep phone awake (full cpu speed)
6. Tap Save
7. Tap Start
8. The wifi url will appear

On your linux:

• Open a console
• create a directory: mkdir somedirectorywhereyouwantthefiles
• and from that directory, do:

wget -m --user=username --password=password ftp: // 10.0.0.7:2121/sdcard/DCIM/Camera/

where username and password are the ones you set in Step 2
and the ftp address is the address that appears in Step 8.

Transfer speed: 54MB/s (the max on my router). No more hunting for USB cords!!! I know I keep whining about linux but once you step to linux windows seems infernal and complete paleolithic.

I am now able to confidently go in and make a completely whole wheat improvised bread with whatever without any recipes from scratch. And, more importantly eat the results without cringing or wishing I hadn't made the colossal mess. I know I said this already zillion moons back here: @tinypliny #53247 But that was banana bread. This is THE staple everyday bread bread.

I think that is progress.

Only, it's progress in the words of a frog in that arithmetic problem, you know, the one that lives in a slimy well and jumps up 4 steps to fall back 3.

I am sorely tempted to include one in my thesis:

You know your tea addiction has gone a bit far when:

1. You put the kettle on and when it boils, you immediately refill and put it on again because you know you will finish the current cup before it finishes brewing the next one
2. You distinctly remember having asked your archenemy in a nightmare if they would like a cup of oolong (poisoned) or a cup of cardamom tea (also poisoned, what did you think?)
3. You bid on auctions for green tea from ebay.com's authentic chinese sellers because the blurry pixelated pic looked like that one tea you had once upon a time that you could never find in stores later.
4. You lose the bid because someone sniped it at 4:00AM and you are bitter all day.
5. You drink coffee and think, ugh this is vile. Only the whipped cream redeems this mess.
6. You drink close to 27 16 oz cups of tea a day.
7. You don't drink any regular water anymore, only tea
8. You alternate between 7-8 different kinds of tea and have teas to match the hour and mood of the day.
9. The promise of tea is enough to enable you to weather minuscule work storms
10. You are known as the office tea pusher and have induced at least 5 other officemates to drink more tea than they ever did their entire lives.
11. You buy a kettle exclusively for the office and it is used so much, it develops scales within a month.
12. Your desktop is tea-themed
13. Your recycling is 10% or more teabag wrappers.

SCOOOOOOORRRREEEEESSSS!
Any 5 and you are one.
Any 7? have you taken the teaddiction test lately?
Any 10? Hmm.. and how does that make you feel?
Any 12? Have you put the kettle on yet?

Any 13? Welcome to my world.

Finally, a balanced meal that took 1/2 hour after weeks of eating 3-4 minute meals.