(no subject)

[figment]

I hate facebook's privacy shenanigans more and more each day. Just went through and deleted all of my "connections" that it had automatically set up, and set every privacy setting I could find to the max. Not sure if I'm quite ready to abandon ship there entirely, but I don't want to give them any more of my life than I already have.
Twitter is fun, but does not give much content; that's part of the point.
As far as I know, livejournal has not committed any terrible unethical acts lately or sold my privacy to anyone... So maybe I will post a little more often here.

... [money, meet mouth]

The other night for our veggie burgers-and-salad dinner I made the buns from scratch, because I didn't want to buy them at the store, all full of preservatives and nastiness, and because I'd seen this recipe that xatharine had posted. I modified the recipe with 1 cup of wheat flour, olive oil instead of canola, and some fresh rosemary. Mmm. And yes, they really only take 40 minutes to make.

Last night, dinner was mjadra (Lebanese lentil pottage, I can give the recipe if anyone wants it, it's delicious & vegan) and salad. And I had to make something using the rhubarb we'd bought, so I made a crisp, and it was good. I didn't really use a recipe, so here's what I did:
Ingredients:
2 bunches of rhubarb, washed & chopped; maybe this was 3-4 cups?
1.5 bags of frozen strawberries
half a lemon's zest and juice (probably this was not necessary, but I had it on hand to use up)
1/2 C or more sugar
2 T honey
1-2 T cornstarch

1.5 cups oats
1/2 cup wheat flour
10 T butter (or butter-like substance, I used Earth Balance margarine)
1 C packed brown sugar
1/2 t salt
1/4 C walnuts

Preheat your oven to 375.

Put the rhubarb, strawberries, and lemon zest & juice in a rectangular casserole pan, the kind I always think of as a lasagna pan. You could use a smaller pan but my goal here was to use up lots of rhubarb.
Sprinkle sugar liberally over the top of the fruit. Remember rhubarb is very tart and you just added lemon juice to that. What were you thinking?
Add a drizzle of honey, because you heard that honey goes well with rhubarb. Mix it all up.
Sprinkle cornstarch over the top of the fruit, trying to make sure it doesn't land in big clumps on the fruit, but that by the time you're done, you have a pretty significant dusting of the stuff.
Mix everything together until you can't see white from the cornstarch any more.

In a separate bowl, mix the oats, flour, brown sugar, and salt. Add the butter, chopped into small pieces, and cut it in using a pastry cutter (if you have one, which I don't) or two knives, until it looks blended. At the last minute, add the walnuts, because walnuts are yummy.

Sprinkle the oat mixture on top of the fruit. It should cover the top fairly well.

Bake at 375 for 50 minutes. Allow to cool for 10 minutes. Yum!


...

On another making-stuff note, I'm going to try to learn how to sew using LEDs and other electrical stuff. I think this will involve a trip to a Radio Shack, an order from SuperBrightLEDs or some such, some help from friends, and possibly a lot of patience. But I have a vision for a dress that I'm really excited about!

...

Today I feel unreasonably tired. The coffee has not done enough. I blame the rainy weather that makes me want to nap all day.

How are you, lj? Made anything good lately?

Comments

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

A living, just about.

(Do photos count as making something? I did create new patterns of electrons.)

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

A living is a good thing to make. And you make some pretty lovely photos. thanks for posting them.

[laffingbuddha.livejournal.com]

I made a crockpot dish with chicken, onions, mushrooms and wild rice. I rely on my crockpot suring member drives, it helps me eat good tasty things instead of take away. I also made a strawberry rhubarb pie but I "cheated" and used Trader Joe's pie crust which didn't have ingrdients I couldn't pronounce.

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

That sounds tasty. I usually use the crock pot a lot, but have been neglecting it for some reason. Good for you managing to eat real food during member drive; I'm sure it's crazy.

As long as the ingredients are pronounceable I think Trader Joe's is all right. As far as I know they aren't guilty of any terrible human rights violations...

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I made a lot of notes yesterday, and a very cool discovery that a book I want that is not available through the MNPals interlibrary loan system, is not on googlebooks nor on gutenberg is nevertheless available on archive.org.

I might have some EL wire for you.

Using "like" buttons on other sites may cause a connection between your site visits and Facebook that your friends have access to. :-( Several people have mentioned using a FB only browser, which I have not done yet. I do log out every time I stop using the site.

K.

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

I never use those "like" buttons; I find them creepy. But I don't log out of FB much or use a FB only browser. Maybe I should.

Spare EL wire would be awesome!!

Good find on the book - how cool that it's available somehow, and that you found it.

[earlapricot.livejournal.com]

The FB thing is totally frustrating - esp the automated connection-making bit and the automatic editing and streamlining of anything you enter in manually. It is unfortunately probably in FB's best interest to push this idea forward though for the sake of creating the social graph data that has already made them an "earned advertising" jackpot (http://www.davecoombs.net/2010/04/paid-advertising-vs-earned-advertising.html).

Earned advertising is cutting edge right now in one of the few industries that's actually still booming and madly innovating during the recession (online advertising). However FB's current behavior must (hopefully) be producing for them a lot of unintended and unexpected consequences in the form of ppl like us simply deleting all of the information we used to store on FB and vigorously deleting any new information that appears. I have a feeling, though, that the younger generation doesn't care as much, so FB's objectives may after all be met. I'm still hoping another more responsible social network will swoop in and steal FB's customer base away, but even if that happens, the generalized striving toward enabling earned advertising and leveraging social graph data is probably here to stay.

I definitely try not to put anything remotely sensitive or even too introspective on FB because it's right in the middle of the critical path right now for online advertising innovation. LJ is a way better venue with a smaller more intimate and trusted readership for me personally. But FB continues to hook me up with intriguing long lost connections (like, recently, my very first best friend ever in the whole world who I haven't seen in 20-some years!). So I'm nowhere near ready to abandon FB entirely, much as I wish I were.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"it's right in the middle of the critical path right now for online advertising innovation"

That's a great way to put it.

K.

[fayde.livejournal.com]

NPR was talking about FB today. They said that even if you delete and/or disable your account. FB still keeps, uses, and distributes all info gathered on your account up to that point. If you mearly disable vs. delete your account, they will also still [be able to] use your contact info to contact you and sell, actively.

NPR also said that FB had half a billion users, so the amount of data out there at its disposal is quite huge.

[earlapricot.livejournal.com]

Yeah I was afraid that was probably the case. However, FB will always prefer up-to-date data to out-of-date data, so removing/withholding info and disabling accounts is still something they're going to wish you didn't do.

I've set up my FB account to use an email address that I only use for FB and can disable at any time (I can quit any time i want to! I swear!). I've done the same for LJ, and until I deleted my accounts, I did the same for MySpace, tribe, and friendster. It's easy for me to do, though, because I have my own domain. I have found that using a different email address for every social network I use has mucked up the robots' work enough to keep me off of Spokeo so far. Seems that our email addresses must be relied upon heavily as a unique identifier, tying everything we do on the internet together.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

That's clever. I use different addresses for various things, and will extend this practice.

K.

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

I like how you explain what they're doing, but I continue to dislike FB's shenanigans. I should have used a separate email address to start with, but I don't know if it would make much difference if I changed it now... Hm. I suppose it couldn't hurt!

I also have enjoyed the reconnections on FB. So I'm trying to balance.

[sinister-dr-x.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I never really thought I would type this, but ... I make mjadra, I'm wondering if we should compare notes. If you want to keep the FB thread distinct from the food thread we could e-mail if you prefer.

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

If you already make it then this will probably not be news. But I am curious to see how our recipes compare!

From memory:

Takes about 45 minutes to make, all told, and makes enough for 6 people or more.

1 onion, chopped
1/2 C olive oil
4 C water*
1/2 C rice
1 C brown/green lentils
1/8 t cumin (or so)
1/8 t pepper (or so)
2 t salt (more or less to taste, you can easily add salt when it's done)

Saute the onion in the olive oil. I usually put it on medium heat and put a lid on it, and only stir it a few times while it cooks for about 20 minutes.

At the same time, bring the water and lentils to a boil. If you are using brown rice, add it now. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.

See how you can do those two parts at the same time, and they take very little effort? How nice.

Dump the onions and olive oil into the pot with the lentils and water. If you're using white rice, add it now. Add cumin, pepper, and salt. Leave the lid off, and cook it on medium heat for another 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve with bread & salad, either warm or room temperature. The mjadra thickens as it cools.

*Sometimes, for a variation, I use stock instead of water, and reduce the amount of salt accordingly.

[ilexcassine.livejournal.com]

That's how I make it, except I add a tiny bit of powdered clove. Don't know where I came up from that, except maybe I was trying to copy the flavor of my favorite Med Deli version.

[pants-of-doom.livejournal.com]

I'm still on facebook because it's the only contact I have with a number of people, but have switched to a fake name and have started wondering what the next step looks like. I frankly prefer lj - more content, more privacy control - but a lot of people I want to talk to aren't on it and a lot of others never post anything here but will post single-sentence updates or links to facebook. I kept hoping for a while that facebook would become more like lj (with blogging options and fine-controlled privacy stuff) and instead it's become more like Orwell's wallscreens. And still everyone is there. It's frustrating and I don't know how to resolve the issue.

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

The biggest problem with lj is that people have abandoned it for fb. And Twitter and so on.

I don't know how to resolve the issue either, although earlapricot's solution of separate email accounts seems helpful.

[whitefox77.livejournal.com]

FB: Their privacy policy was never up to par in my opinion, certainly not up to the standard I came to expect from LJ. The LJ privacy policy makes it very clear that they only use personal info to provide you the LJ service and for things you specifically say it can be used for.

What have I made lately... I made things go boom! Pyro training on Saturday was a blast :P I am also in the process of planning a fireworks display for a couple of weeks from now when my grandmother will be visiting.

If you need assistance or tools related to LEDs feel free to contact me. I've built all kinds of things with them. I also know good places to order electronic components (not to mention the boxes of them I have on hand).

[thisc0rrosion.livejournal.com]

I'm not in any way an expert on the fabric circuitry stuff, but i did see some presentations on it in December and some neat stuff at trade shows. Here's one cool trick I read that did not seem to be wide knowledge:

Use metal snaps as reliable connectors to your wires, you can just sew the wire to the snaps, and have a reliable connection as you snap on your battery / circuitboard / whatever. (The presenter in Berlin had major struggles with wire strength and hot wax)

Yah, okay, maybe it's common knowledge now, found this in 20 seconds of google searching: http://chebe.dreamwidth.org/17644.html

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I hadn't actually gotten that far yet. I am trying to take this one step at a time. First step: just installing things that glow. Second step: programming them to make them do cool things.

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the offer! I think I am going to order a batch of LEDs today but I may hit you up for other assorted help.

2 things

[thisc0rrosion.livejournal.com]

1. I made American Breakfast for 50 europeans at a little squat cafe that friends of mine run (read that as "community run neighborhood cafe" in Amsterdam). They have NOTHING like it here, so it's well received and exciting for them. Buttermilk pancakes, huevos rancheros and a mexican egg bake (had a Mexican tone, due to Cinco de Mayo)

2. I have made a roof terrace lately. Reused the old lumber, bought some new stuff, extended it on to my old neighbor-lady's shared roof so she could also enjoy it too.

Lots of work, but not as stressful as most of my carpentry adventures: Just planning + slow steady work. I'm quite proud of it, although it's still cold and rainy to enjoy it much.

By the way, my only problem with LJ is that it's been getting empty here. Normally I only friend people I know in person, but at this point I'd be happy to take recommendations from friends for semi-active posters/commentors. Any recommendations for folks I'd have a good connection with? (May grab some people from these comments, I know I've met Minnehaha a few times...)

Re: 2 things

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

Making the roof terrace has sounded like a lot of work - I've watched your progress. Goodness. Glad you're able to use it now (or when the weather cooperates).

I will think about who to virtually introduce you to. Other than people who commented here, perhaps you'd enjoy cloudscudding; she posts fairly frequently about writing and photography. dubaiwalla also posts regularly, very photo heavy, usually of Dubai and interesting architecture there. Sometimes he also has some international political insights. Don't know if that region of the world is of interest to you though.

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

I made a stirfry out of kimchi and spinach. It was not bad.

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

did facebook really create new friends for you?

[birdfigment.livejournal.com]

Create friends? No. Put me back in touch with people I'd long since lost contact with? Absolutely. Some of those people I'm tickled pink to be in contact with again. Some are, "eh, okay, whatever, it's nice to know you're all right". But I have no doubt that I would lose touch with many of them again without a forum somewhat like facebook (or a well-populated livejournal). And I would not trust a classmates.com or other sleazy for-pay site to help me find more of those long-lost connections.