Short, sharp updates
Dec. 3rd, 2010 02:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tahnanI don't typically grow fond of things I can't lift (people excluded, naturally). My laptop, my cats, some books, that sort of thing. A notable exception is the cast-iron skillet my wife gave me for Chanukah, which I'm already quite happy to have.
Tonight, after something of a cooking drought (we've been doing a lot of scrounging out of the fridge or freezer—lots of yogurt, turkey sandwiches, pizza rolls, that sort of thing), I decided to put the skillet to good use, and went out for supplies. Dinner was, consequently, latkes (which I called my mother while frying; "did you grate potatoes or use a mix?", she asked, as if she hadn't raised me properly) and the Moosewood Daily Special's recipe for Alabama hot slaw. They went together remarkably well, and I felt accomplished. And pretty Jewish (plus a little hippie and a little Southern). And well-fed.
I'm not the crossword aficionado some of my friends are, but this week's New York Times crosswords have been a cut above the usual standard. Wednesday's tribute to someone who turned 75 on December 1; Thursday's remarkable construction, in which nine of the fifteen rows had two seven-letter words with identical clues used in two different senses; and today's, which was ostensibly themeless but which had a clever minor theme woven effortlessly into the grid. (My favorite clue from the puzzle: the strangely specific "Shipyard worker fired in 1976".)
Someone compiled a list of what people typed into the "gender" field on Metafilter; it has a note saying "this is free-form, go nuts", and indeed, some people did. It's fascinating reading.
Also fascinating to play with: Subzin, which searches dialogue from movies and TV shows (I gather that what they're doing is searching a database of subtitles, possibly Netflix's). For instance, I had fun searching on phrases like "can't handle the truth" and "stinking badges", to see how they got referenced over time. Unfortunately, there are a lot of problems in the database, as you can see if you search "hill of beans", sorted oldest to newest. (Silent movies seem to be something of a problem for them—there's quite an extensive transcript of Edison's Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze. As do movies with similar titles: I searched on a few swear words/phrases, to get a sense of when they were first used, and let me stress that there's a difference between Disney's Alice in Wonderland (1951) and the John Holmes biopic Wonderland (2003), and that Subzin might be wrong about which one repeatedly uses a ten-letter word ending in "sucker".)
I ought to come up with some clever way to tie all this together, but, nope, sorry, that's what you get.
Tonight, after something of a cooking drought (we've been doing a lot of scrounging out of the fridge or freezer—lots of yogurt, turkey sandwiches, pizza rolls, that sort of thing), I decided to put the skillet to good use, and went out for supplies. Dinner was, consequently, latkes (which I called my mother while frying; "did you grate potatoes or use a mix?", she asked, as if she hadn't raised me properly) and the Moosewood Daily Special's recipe for Alabama hot slaw. They went together remarkably well, and I felt accomplished. And pretty Jewish (plus a little hippie and a little Southern). And well-fed.
I'm not the crossword aficionado some of my friends are, but this week's New York Times crosswords have been a cut above the usual standard. Wednesday's tribute to someone who turned 75 on December 1; Thursday's remarkable construction, in which nine of the fifteen rows had two seven-letter words with identical clues used in two different senses; and today's, which was ostensibly themeless but which had a clever minor theme woven effortlessly into the grid. (My favorite clue from the puzzle: the strangely specific "Shipyard worker fired in 1976".)
Someone compiled a list of what people typed into the "gender" field on Metafilter; it has a note saying "this is free-form, go nuts", and indeed, some people did. It's fascinating reading.
Also fascinating to play with: Subzin, which searches dialogue from movies and TV shows (I gather that what they're doing is searching a database of subtitles, possibly Netflix's). For instance, I had fun searching on phrases like "can't handle the truth" and "stinking badges", to see how they got referenced over time. Unfortunately, there are a lot of problems in the database, as you can see if you search "hill of beans", sorted oldest to newest. (Silent movies seem to be something of a problem for them—there's quite an extensive transcript of Edison's Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze. As do movies with similar titles: I searched on a few swear words/phrases, to get a sense of when they were first used, and let me stress that there's a difference between Disney's Alice in Wonderland (1951) and the John Holmes biopic Wonderland (2003), and that Subzin might be wrong about which one repeatedly uses a ten-letter word ending in "sucker".)
I ought to come up with some clever way to tie all this together, but, nope, sorry, that's what you get.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-03 08:44 am (UTC)*laughs out loud* <3
Laughs from loquacious
Date: 2010-12-03 10:13 pm (UTC)breath...
but then I click on the link to the gender options and LOL.
<3 loq