Smoof Blog: Blog Entries

This may be the most abominable and utterly insane function I have ever had the misfortune to write.

function oct = octify (n) 
    oct = sscanf (sprintf ('%o', n), '%d');
end

I've been homing in on the perfect recipe for lemon chess pie. I think I've made about six of them. Here's the best one I've made so far:

For the crust:

• 6 ounces by weight of all purpose flour
• one stick of very cold butter
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt
• very cold water. (I use a bar shaker to chill the water).

For the filling:

• 4 eggs
• 1.5 cups sugar
• 5 tablesppons melted butter
• 3 tablespoons cornmeal. (I may use only 2 next time)
• juice and zest of two lemons
• a pinch of salt

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 425. Combine the flour and salt. Cut the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter. Do not use a food processor. The butter chunks should be roughly pea sized. Put the ice cold water into a spritz bottle. Spray it on the flour mixture, toss the mixture, and spray again. Continue spraying and tossing until the mixture comes together as a dough when you squeeze it in your hand. It should still be somewhat crumbly. Wrap it up in tin foil and press it flat. Leave it in the fridge for at least half an hour. When you take it out it should be a good deal more dough-like. Form the dough into a ball, trying to work it as little as possible. You may have to knead it a few times to work in the crumbly bits, but the less kneading, the better. Roll it out into a crust. You'll need to frequently apply four and flip the dough to avoid stickage. Put the crust in your pie pan, and dock it with a fork. Cover it with parchment paper and cover the parchment paper with pie weights, or dry beans, or rice. Bake it for ten minutes. Take off the weights and parchment and bake it until it's just starting to brown, about another 10. Take the crust out and let it cool completely.

Lower the oven temperature to 350. Once the crust is cool, beat the eggs and whisk in the rest of the filling ingredients. Fill up the pie. You probably don't need the whole batch of filling. It's very lemony and rich so you really only want a thin layer. I think I used about 2/3 of it. Bake it until the top is slightly browned and a knife comes out clean, about 30-35 minutes. Let the pie cool completly before eating.

I smelled bay leaves for the first time in my life today. I've been putting them in my food for years out of nothing more than habit. Before today they smelled like nothing. The bay I smelled today smelled amazing. I bought it at a spice store called Penzy's. I think I'm going to start throwing all my spices out and replacing them with fresh ones from there.

I'm unenthusiastic about the first-black-president angle on Obama's soon-to-be presidency. It's inevitable of course. People love these sort of "milestones" and this is obviously the biggest of such we've ever had. But the associations that all the milestone talk brings to my mind are ugly. It reminds me of affirmative action, of Lebanon's segregated constitution. Focusing on the milestone detracts from the aspects of this election that I find truly inspirational. To see my country return to normalcy so fast, after hysteria and insanity had become the new normal for so long inspires me. To see thoughtfulness and intellectualism beat out populism inspires me. To see us turning to peace instead of war inspires me.

But the first black president? Honestly I'm neutral on that. What if it had been someone else? What if the violence and anarchy in Iraq had miraculously abated, and the mortgage bubble had declined to burst for a few more years? Could Colin Powell be our president elect now? Should I rejoice a milestone while this disgraced Bush-conspirator prepares to lead my country into God knows what new wars, new depths of depravity. I think not. People, even politicians should be judged as individuals, not members of groups.

There is one aspect of the race angle that I'm pleased with. Obama has shown America, by his example and by his words, how to finally move past the post-segregation racial deadlock. He has shown that we don't have to be socially and politically defined by race, and that this doesn't mean we have to pretend that race doesn't exist or that slavery and segregation never happened. We can let race become our history, instead of our current events. I don't think this transformation could really be complete until America elected a black president.

I found an odd fruit at the grocery store today labeled a "sweet lime". They look like lemons, and the juice has a sweet, mild lemon flavor without any tartness. I tried cutting them into wedges and eating them like an orange, but I wouldn't recommend that. The pulp is fibrous and bitter. It's best to just use the juice.

I don't think I could possibly express how relieved I am today. 8 years. 8 Fucking years. And now it's finally over.

I've always been proud of America, and always been proud to be an American. But until today it was an empty, theoretical pride. I was proud of what America was supposed to be, proud of what it perhaps was long ago. Today is the first day of my life that I've been proud of my country for what it actually is.

I had given up hope for America. Today that hope was restored. Maybe it won't last, and maybe it will, but for today at least, for the first time in my life, the future looks bright.

If you have ever tried to figure out how to add a custom keybind to Firefox, you know it is a frustrating, infuriating, and futile task. There is no reasonable way to do it. There's a way that seems to have worked six years ago, and requires you to edit the firefox installation instead of your profile. There's extensions that might add the keybinds you want, but they all suck in one way or another. There's an extension that lets you add keybinds with the GUI, but it stores them in your user prefs so there's no way to sync them between machines. You could make your own extension, but then you have to figure out all the stupid boilerplate that extensions require and reinstall it every time you make a change.

All I really want is a text file somewhere I can edit. When I add a binding to emacs, I add a single line to a single text file. The file is in a git repository, so syncing changes is easy. This blissful state of affairs actually can be achieved in firefox; and here's how you do it:

Firefox can load an extension from a path outside the profile directory. So you just create an extension with your personal customizations, and just edit it directly. After you make a change you just restart firefox. There's no need to make a XPI and install it. I keep mine in ~/config/dot-firefox. Aside from the boilerplate, there's just two files.

overlay.js for your javascript:

// from mozless
function tabRelativeSelect(delta)
{
  var oldTab = gBrowser.selectedTab;
  var newTab = null;
  var length = gBrowser.tabContainer.childNodes.length;
  var index;
  for (index=0; index<length; index++) {
    if (gBrowser.tabContainer.childNodes[index] == oldTab) {
      var new_index = index + delta;
      if (new_index < 0) new_index += length;
      else if (new_index >= length) new_index -= length;
      newTab = gBrowser.tabContainer.childNodes[new_index];
      break;
    }
  }
  if (newTab && newTab != oldTab)
    gBrowser.selectedTab = newTab;
}

and overlay.xul for your XUL:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<overlay xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul">
  <script src="overlay.js"/>
  <keyset id="mainKeyset">
    <key key="k" oncommand="goDoCommand('cmd_scrollLineUp')" />
    <key key="h" oncommand="goDoCommand('cmd_scrollLeft')" />
    <key key="j" oncommand="goDoCommand('cmd_scrollLineDown')" />
    <key key="l" oncommand="goDoCommand('cmd_scrollRight')" />
    <key key="d" oncommand="goDoCommand('cmd_scrollPageDown')" />
    <key key="u" oncommand="goDoCommand('cmd_scrollPageUp')" />
    <key modifiers="shift" key="B" oncommand="BrowserBack()" />
    <key modifiers="shift" key="F" oncommand="BrowserForward()" />
    <key key="." oncommand="tabRelativeSelect(1)" />
    <key key="," oncommand="tabRelativeSelect(-1)" />
  </keyset>
</overlay>

To get firefox to load it:

$ echo ~/config/dot-firefox > $firefox_profile_dir/extensions/dot-firefox@elder-gods.org

If you wanna see/copy the boilerplate, it's all in this git repo.

I gave some canned Chinese truffles the same treatment as the Oregon blacks. Don't bother with these. They have almost no smell and no taste at all.