Notes

Short content: a microblog of status updates or short notes

I’ve discovered a spectacular tool for owning my own bookmarks and replacing Pocket and InstaPaper!

I’ve discovered a spectacular tool for owning my own bookmarks and replacing Pocket and InstaPaper!

  • It’s IndieWeb and POSSE friendly
  • Does link forwarding in a flexible/responsible manner
  • Allows for proper attributions
  • Keeps tons of metadata for analyzing reading behavior
  • Taggable
  • Allows for comments/commenting
  • Could be used easily as a linkblog
  • Archives the original article
  • Is searchable
  • Could be used for collaboration and curation
  • Has Readability integrated
  • Has a pre-configured browser bookmarklet
  • Is open source and well documented

Who could want more?! I want to experiment a bit with it, play with multiple configurations, and then document parts before rolling out–particularly as it wasn’t necessarily intended for this use case, but I’ll have some more details shortly.

📖 On page 95 of 206 of The Science of the Oven by Hervé This

📖 On page 95 of 206 of The Science of the Oven by Hervé This

Oh, if only more of my cookbooks had fantastic sentences like this one:

Now the flow of a liquid in a canal varies as the fourth power of the diameter.

Then there’s this lovely statement, which is as applicable to jellies and consommés as it is to our political leaders:

Today, as heirs to the (political) ancien regime, we all want jellies, like bouillons and consommés, to be transparent.

I’ll note that chapter 4 has some interesting recipes as well as one or two long-term experiments which may be interesting to try.

Book cover for The Science of the Oven

Owning my old Delicious Bookmarks… Sadly not today.

I thought I’d take a few minutes to go back and “own” the bookmarks I had put into Delicious since I joined on July 5, 2009, so I could have them on my own website. Sadly I ran into the following message:

We’re sorry, but due to heavy load on our database we are no longer able to offer an export function. Our engineers are working on this and we will restore it as soon as possible.

Hopefully they get things working properly so I can export them one of these days without resorting to more arcane methods to get the data back.

📖 64.0% done with Son of Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald

📖 64.0% done with Son of Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald

This is where things begin to go sideways! Here comes the third act… Much of what I anticipated was going to happen has; the question now is how will he manage to extract himself (and his friends/family)?

Son of Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald
Son of Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald

📖 57.0% done with Son of Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald

📖 57.0% done with Son of Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald

We’re starting to go somewhere, but I can sadly already almost predict the ending. In particular, there was a ham-handed mention of a car that gave the whole thing away for me.

Of all of the Fletch books, so far this one seems to be the biggest influencer for the creation of portions of the movie Fletch Lives, which was otherwise made out of whole cloth based on the character.

“I suspect it’s not every man’s dream to discover his son is a cop-killing, escaped convict, racist, hate-group organizer.”

Highlight (yellow) Location 2276-2277
This revealing quote could have been its own stand-alone teaser text.

Added on Tuesday, November 29, 2016 1:46:53 AM

Son of Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald
Son of Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald

📖 25.0% done with Son of Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald

📖 25.0% done with Son of Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald

We’re off like a shot. Somehow it doesn’t seem terrifically believable that the escape convicts so easily take Fletch’s advice on where to hide, but he does a fantastic job of coralling them in the opeining.

Some of the overt “Southernness” feels overdone to me, but perhaps it was the effect of Mcdonald’s many years living in Tennessee which had a tarnishing effect.

Son of Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald
Son of Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald

📕 Finished reading Fletch and the Man Who by Gregory Mcdonald

📕 Finished reading Fletch and the Man Who by Gregory Mcdonald

There’s some great stuff in the last half of the book about Wheeler’s platform that is eerily prescient of the situation we now find ourselves in with regard to a heavily internet connected world and who owns it. It’s also an odd feeling reading this after experiencing what’s recently happened in the 2016 presidential election and it’s ensuing results.

Fletch and the Man Who
Fletch and the Man Who

📖 35.0% done with Fletch and the Man Who by Gregory Mcdonald

📖 35.0% done with Fletch and the Man Who by Gregory Mcdonald

Usually Fletch is the one with all the sharp, ascerbic statements, but in this installment I’m noticing that he’s the tame one and everyone else is somehow playing the part he usually does.

Fletch and the Man Who
Fletch and the Man Who

📖 21.0% done with Fletch and the Man Who by Gregory Mcdonald

📖 21.0% done with Fletch and the Man Who by Gregory Mcdonald

Fletch has a new job, and like usual, the first few minutes of the book throw us right into a riveting high concept. Where we’re ultimately headed is anyone’s guess…

Fletch and the Man Who
Fletch and the Man Who

 

📖 On page 70 of 206 of The Science of the Oven by Hervé This

📖 On page 70 of 206 of The Science of the Oven by Hervé This

This just keeps getting better and better! This isn’t the fluff on food writing that I supposed it might be based on its title which drastically undersells the overall work. This is a great writer, and the translation is generally excellent. It borders frequently on poetry in its descriptions while maintaining a heavy reliance on underlying science. It manages to maintain enough generality to keep a broad audience while still expounding on the science at play. It will eventually sit in a place of pride on my bookshelf on next to Harold McGee who is one of the few writing at this level.

This does an excellent job of debunking some commonly held misconceptions about food and cooking while simultaneously creating a new vocabulary to make future descriptions and work easier to grasp.

Somehow I had been under the misunderstanding that the author was a chef when in fact he is a physical chemist. And the translator is a poet by trade.

Book cover for The Science of the Oven