firehose

Sign #1

latimes:

The story behind Sriracha

With a distinctive bottle and taste, Sriracha has gone from an unpronounceable challenge to a staple sauce for many Americans. In the U.S. alone, $60 million worth of the sauce was sold last year alone.

But it wasn’t always such a prevalent item on store shelves. David Tran, the man responsible for popularizing the hot sauce, had a long journey beforehand:

When North Vietnam’s communists took power in South Vietnam, Tran, a major in the South Vietnamese army, fled with his family to the U.S. After settling in Los Angeles, Tran couldn’t find a job — or a hot sauce to his liking.

So he made his own by hand in a bucket, bottled it and drove it to customers in a van. He named his company Huy Fong Foods after the Taiwanese freighter that carried him out of Vietnam.

Read more via our profile of Tran, and his beloved hot sauce.

Photos: Gina Ferazzi, Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

This stuff makes a dynamite Bloody Mary.

jabber.org - the original XMPP instant messaging service:

You can create an account by visiting register.jabber.org (or use one of the other fine public XMPP services).

XMPP interop with Gchat still seems to be working, despite what Google’s saying.

At long last the third major version of Mageia, the popular community fork of Mandriva Linux, is now available. There's a lot of new stuff to Mageia 3 like a new version of RPM and updated systemd, but the distribution is still not shipping GRUB2 by default...

The Comfy Breasts relaxation system by Michael C Riley is a full body pillow for every woman that sl..(Read...)

A small collection of old photos of Japanese 130 years ago

See more at vintag.es

Many tunnels in Sydney, Australia aren't tall enough to permit tractor trailers to move through safely. This animated gif shows a warning system that informs truck drivers when they're about to crash into a tunnel entrance. When sensors detect a vehicle that is too tall, the system pours water across the entrance to the tunnel and projects a stop sign onto that water curtain.

Link

[Photographs: Maggie Hoffman]

Portland, Oregon’s Salt & Straw is known for churning up unusual ice cream flavors. We’re big fans of their Coffee Bourbon ice cream, though we found last fall’s rich and savory foie gras flavor a little challenging. In honor of Father’s Day, they’re launching a sixpack of beer-inspired ice creams featuring local breweries. (They’ll be available in Portland scoop shops throughout June, and online for June through September.)

The flavors were created in collaboration with Portland brewers including Breakside Brewery, Gigantic Brewing Company, Hair of the Dog Brewing Company, Logsdon Organic Farmhouse Ales, The Commons Brewery, and Widmer Brothers Brewing—but that doesn’t mean that the Salt & Straw team just dumped some beer in the freezer. Instead, the flavors of individual brews were incorporated in a few unusual ways: for example, one ice cream base was cold-steeped in a barrel that was used to age the beer, while another ice cream was infused with the beer’s Meridian hops.

These ice creams won’t get you tipsy, but do they capture the Portland craft beer experience in frozen form? We love beer, and we love ice cream, but would we love beer-flavored ice cream? We gave the whole sixpack a taste to find out.

Hopped Farmhouse Ale

This is a citrusy, creamy ice cream with a remarkable wort-like flavor, inspired by Commons Brewery’s Myrtle Farmhouse Ale. Honeyed malt flavors work well with the creaminess and fudgy texture, though the finish is a little weird. The ice cream base was steeped with Meridian hops, which are known for their floral, lemony, citrus flavor. That totally comes through here—it’s not piney or very bitter, so this flavor works pretty well as a dessert.

Cherry Adam from the Wood

We recruited our beer columnist Mike Reis (of Monk’s Kettle and Abbot’s Cellar in San Francisco) to taste through these ice creams with us, and this was the one that got him most excited. “Dude, this is cool,” said Reis. “Lots of bourbon character, lots of cherry.” The malty cherry ice cream base was cold steeped in a bourbon barrel from Hair of the Dog Brewery. The result is boozy but not totally over the top—oaky and vanilla-y but not aggressively spiritous. You have to really like bourbon to be into this, but as long as you do, this is one to try, especially with some toasted nuts on top.

Bretta Fermented Pears and Fudge

Inspired by David Logsdon’s Cocoa Bretta Ale, this ice cream is based on pear juice and malted fudge syrup fermented with the yeast strain used for the beer. This ice cream has a bit of a funky fermented fruit character, and the results will seem totally weird to some. Though you might identify a pureed pear flavor, it’s subtle. The malted fudge is quite malty and has an interesting fruity character that will please malted milkshake fans. “I like that is has a very unusual flavor profile,” says Mike Reis. “Your palate becomes accustomed to the funkiness pretty quickly.”

Passionfruit Berliner Weisse Marmalade in Coconut Water Sorbet

This is one of the easiest in the bunch to love: sweet coconut sorbet with slim ribbons of marmalade made with Breakside Brewing’s Passionfruit Berliner Weisse. The marmalade offers a nice bit of tartness, and the ice cream is super-delicious, but we’d love a more extreme lactic tang. This stuff is pretty refreshing, but a little more sourness might be fun.

IPA Upside Down Cake

This is a seriously bitter IPA ice cream inspired by Gigantic Brewing Company’s Imperial IPA. It has an almost mentholy hop flavor, and the ice cream base is filled with chunks of pineapple upside down cake and candied tangerine zest. “The pineapple comes through, and the tangerine zest. The flavors are all really nice,” commented Reis. “But then you get that earthy, pine-like bitterness.” All in all, the ice cream tastes a bit more like hops than like beer. “You’re left with that plant-matter hop flavor,” says Reis, and the bitterness reminded us a bit of bitter grapefruit pith.

Smoked Hefeweizen

Rather than making an ice cream inspired by Widmer Brothers’ classic hefe, Salt & Straw went a more extreme route here, smoking wheat malt and steeping it in the ice cream base. “Oooh man, that’s really smoky,” reacted Reis immediately. This ice cream has a pretty prominent bacony flavor—it’s a lot like the Schlenkerla Rauchbiers. We could see this being served with a savory dish, or with bacon crumbles on top. A little dulce de leche might help, too.

Seriously, you know what would have been awesome on last night's Doctor Who? If Sarah Connor had popped up, preferably the Lena Headey version, and told the Doctor and his friends there's "no fate but what we make." And then blown up the Great Intelligence with a pipe bomb or something. That's not what happened, though.

Read more...

Spanked

There are tons of great crowdfunding projects running this week, from tiny robot sculptures to a book by the Godfather of Anime. You can also crowdfund a short film about dinosaurs on the hunt, simple programmable robots, and much more.

Read more...

hypnosec writes "IBM is taking its COBOL server platform to the next level by updating the mainframe platform in a bid to extend and enable its mainframes to host cloud based applications and services. The latest update is looking to add XMLS Server as well as Java 7 capabilities to the System/z COBOL platform and this update would extend the overall lifespan of COBOL by taking it up a notch and gearing it towards the cloud computing arena."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

notcanonyet:

I demand an answer.

(snicker)

overcoke:

!!!

tattooedtaint:

Evah Fan

carmem:

adocica meu amor, adocica

Favorite Looks of the 2013 Grammy Awards

Janelle Monáe

meme4u:

http://memeblock.com/

Color me impressed! I figured the next generation of designer-relevant input devices would come from Apple or Wacom, but surprise—it's Adobe. The software giant is venturing into hardware, and their resultant Project Mighty looks pretty damn wicked so far.

The Adobe Mighty Pen is designed for sketching on tablets, and it's got at least two brilliant features integrated with their drawing app: Since the screen can distinguish between the pen's nib and your mitts, you can draw with the pen, then erase with your finger. No more having to click a submenu to change the tool. And when you do need a submenu, you click a button on the pen itself to make it appear on-screen.

The truly awesome device, however, is the pen's Napoleon Ruler. Adobe's VP of Product Experience Michael Gough was trained as an architect, and wanted to bring the efficacy of sketching with a secondary guiding tool--like we all once did with our assortment of plastic triangles, French curves and the like--to the tablet experience. What the Napoleon does is so simple and brilliant, you've just got to see it for yourself:

Presumably they're still working out the kinks, as the release date is TBD.

(more...)

starknip:

smallworldofbigal:

mangowow:

Every time I promise myself that I will work on controlling my temper, I always end up making a scene.

This time, it wasn’t my fault. All I wanted was a bagel. A bagel, a cup of coffee, and perhaps a spot near a window where I could idly watch the traffic go by as I browsed through the newspaper and licked creamcheese from my fingers. But apparently the Gods were not on my side.

Read More

As someone who works in the food business, I completely agree.

“The phrase ‘The Customer is Always Right’ is the single worst philosophy that has ever been adopted by American culture.”

I wouldn’t say “single worst” but I agree with the sentiment.

FUCKING PREACH. 

Board games are more intriguing now than they’ve been in decades, but it’s still rare to see a boardgame map as beautiful and enticing as that of Magic Realm, pictured above. Originally released in 1979, and designed by Richard Hamblen (designer of the original Merchant of Venus, the updated version of which I reviewed recently), Magic Realm was a complex board game of fantasy adventuring, something of a cross between Dungeons & Dragons and its precursor, the miniatures wargame Chainmail, set in the context of a board game. Though now difficult to find an original set, an updated print-and-play version can be found online, and tons of information is available at the Magic Realm wiki and elsewhere. Part of what makes the map so interesting is the fact that — like many contemporary video games — the board is generated in a different configuration each time you play. The game has also inspired some fantastic 3D versions, as seen at the end of this post. I’ve never played it — and only stumbled on it for the first time this morning — but a visit to the Magic Realm is definitely on my list now.

3D Magic Realm: 

steampoweredstucklock:

onetwo-freefour:

killmytime:

University application

I AM SCREAMING

YES

(heh)

In addition to being a world-renowned physicist, Richard Feynman was also an amateur artist, one who was fascinated by the power of lines and forms. He felt that his appreciation of art was deeply connected to his love of physics, representing an appreciation of the complexity and beauty of the world.

Read more...

CNBC.com

Wait. Didn't Yahoo Try a Deal Like This Before? CNBC.com When Yahoo announced its headline-grabbing acquisition, it boasted that the deal gave it access to an "unduplicated" audience of users and that its target was a "popular personal publishing" platform. "Yahoo will be able to integrate and distribute a powerful ... Yahoo reaches deal for TumblrNorthwest Arkansas News Analysts urge Yahoo to foster Tumblr autonomy in deal - USA TodayUSA TODAY Yahoo's rise in Asia offsets risk from Tumblr betReuters Businessweek -New York Times -The Guardian (blog) all 1,405 news articles »

“The Internet will kill everything you love. But by the time it dies, you won’t even...

decarceratepa:

Picture This! The Real Cost of Prison Expansion in front of a foreclosed home in West Philly.

Governor Corbett’s proposed budget for 2012-2013 will eliminate funding for Pennsylvania’s Homeowners Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program (HEMAP). For the past 28 years, the program has provided loans to homeowners who have fallen behind on their mortgage due to a job loss or other temporary hardship and are in danger of losing their home. Governor Corbett already slashed the program’s budget to $2 million last year - such a drastic cut that the program announced it would not be able to continue operating. According to the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, HEMAP has saved the homes of more than 46,000 Pennsylvanians from foreclosure.

At the same time as Governor Corbett is taking away a critical safety net that helps keep Pennsylvanians in their homes, he is spending $685 million to build three new prisons and expand nine existing facilities. Instead of helping Pennsylvania residents maintain safe, stable homes for their families that will allow them to grow and succeed, Governor Corbett is choosing to invest in more unnecessary prison cells. Tell Governor Corbett and the PA legislature that we want homes, not prisons!

For more on HEMAP’s years of success in helping people stay in their homes, see: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704561004575013263982822140.html

For more on Decarcerate PA’s demand for a moratorium on prison construction, visit: www.decarceratepa.info