Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Thursday, 24 January 2002

# 11 PM

Now I know why my alarm clock was blinking twelves at me the other day: all afternoon, the power to the whole apartment would cut out for five seconds periodically. There's nothing obviously wrong with the fuse box, I wonder if these are area-wide brownouts. Fortunately I have a UPS so the computer didn't crash.

I've pretty much concluded to take the user interface course and not the compiler course. I'll learn more.

This weekend's assigned reading for the UI course is from a book titled Usability Engineering. I'm not sure if it's the one by Jakob Nielsen (we were given copies of the chapters assigned). It has some funny quotes:

Validity is a question of whether the usability test in fact measures something of relevance to usability of real products in real use outside the laboratory.

...[U]sability test subjects are not normally bodily harmed, even by irate developers resenting the users' mistreatment of their beloved software...

Now to do some dishes and then help Sumana move furniture.

# 5:10 AM

About to run off to the NTL meeting.

Did finally manage to get halfway decent airfare to Minnesota.

# 3:30 AM

how to make pasta sauce

a.k.a. "Hey, I don't need a jar of the stuff, I have all the ingredients right here."

  • 2 tomatoes
  • 1 onion
  • 9 mushrooms
  • a handful of black olives
  • 2 large cloves garlic
  • spices: black pepper, oregano, basil, tarragon

All these numbers are fungible: feel free to tweak them as you see fit. The 2:1 tomato:onion ratio is pretty important, though. It's okay to leave out the mushrooms or olives if you don't like them, or substitute other veggies. (Well, I don't think carrots would work.)

Chop up all the vegetables into appropriately sized bits. I like my onions and olives fine; my garlic, tomatoes, and mushrooms chunky. Put them in separate piles.

Start boiling water for the pasta.

In a largish pan, heat 1 tbsp olive oil and a pinch of salt. When it's hot, throw in the onion and stir-fry until it has begun to turn transparent. It's a good idea to reduce the temperature somewhat at this point. Now add the mushrooms. Continue to stir until the mushrooms are brown and have shrunk a bit. Add the garlic and olives. Continue until the garlic turns just barely yellow.

Now dump in the tomatoes, raise the heat again, stir until the tomatoes begin to disintegrate and there's enough liquid in the pan that you are no longer frying the veggies. Add the spices, mix everything up, cut the heat to a simmer and put a lid on the pan.

If you've timed it right, the pasta water will be boiling now. Throw the pasta in the water and leave both sauce and pasta to cook for about ten minutes. Grate some cheese while you're waiting. Drain the pasta, put it in a bowl, and pour the sauce over it. Add the cheese, mix well, eat.

a correction

The pile I picked my goddamned internet sticker from was not a junk pile, Sumana informs me. It was just a pile of stuff.