Tummyrumble

links for 2007-03-24

• Ruby library for Web site thumbnailer service [ruby] [screenshot] [screenshots] [thumbnails] [thumbs] [bluga] [webthumb] [webthumbs]
  Really cool code snippet site with lots of useful source.
  (tags: api browser programming ruby web opensource archive inspiration)
• Ruby CSV to XML Converter [ruby] [xml] [convert] [parse] [csv]
  Code snippets galore in this open archive.
  (tags: api browser programming ruby web opensource archive inspiration xml)
• Spelfeber: Mario Kart på riktigt
  Har du tröttnat på att lira Mario Kart på DS:en kan du nu köpa en riktig bilbana och låta Mario och Yoshi köra omkring hemma i ditt vardagsrum.
  (tags: buy toys geek fun giftidea)
• Interesting about restaurants and credit cards to prevent no show...: Chew on this! | newsobserver.com
  My survey included only a tiny percentage of the hundreds of area restaurants that accept reservations, however. I wouldn't be surprised if other restaurants have credit card numbers too easily visible to prying eyes. If you own or manage one of those res
  (tags: restaurants booking livebookings ecommerce security)
• Insights from years of web development and software creation
  Why fixed contracts, detailed specs and waterfall style development models are bad for projects, developers and clients.
  (tags: development presentation programming video tips ruby)
• Gmail Craze: 30 + Tools and Hacks for Gmail » MakeUseOf.com
  All for Gmail: handy Firefox extensions, best Greasemonkey scripts, some desktop tools and lots of useful tips. Take this Gmail thingie to another level.
  (tags: email firefox google hacks tips storage productivity browser organization geek)
• Opentable - San Francisco - Yelp
  OpenTable certainly has created some raving fans. Massive reviews on Yelp: Opentable is so good that Friday is officially named Opentable Friday
  (tags: livebookings competition reviews archive online booking)

links for 2007-03-23

• Allrecipes - Ingredient Search
  Good implementation of ingredients based search: Join My Allrecipes today - the best way to save, organize, and share recipes, meals, reviews, photos and more. It’s free!
  (tags: cooking food recipes search archive)
• CookingByNumbers.com
  Another ingredient based search. But why can't these guys get a decent designer in on the job? Cooking By Numbers, are you ready to cook? Get clicking on what you've got and we'll show you what you can cook..
  (tags: cooking food recipes reference search archive)
• Best of Getting Things Done | 43 Folders
  I know new folks arrive here every day, so it seems like an opportune time to look back at some of my favorite GTD posts from the earlier days on 43F. They’ll be familiar to many of you but — as someone who re-read Getting Things Done this weekend —
  (tags: gtd lifehacks inspiration reference links tips productivity management)
• Laptop outdoor screen cap
  Come on. You can make one of these with two overlapping document folders and a piece of tape. 25 dollars? Pah: Laptop computers are frequently used in outdoor environments where sunlight and glare make screen viewing very difficult due to screen wash-out.
  (tags: toys geek design inspiration gadget)

links for 2007-03-22

• Whatever happened to serendipity? | v-2 Organisation | media + culture
  Because, as my friend and comrade Fabio Sergio reminds us, in this world where we're all issued the keys to the city as soon as we're old enough to grasp a palm-sized device, there's precious little room for accident. There's not much incentive to go offl
  (tags: mobile share online society)
• Dave Gahan to open restaurant? Not really - SIDE-LINE.COM
  Sorry fans, no Depeche Mode restaurant for you. But maybe a law suit from OpenTable for whoever made the joke: But it got less funny when we contacted Opentable.com, which is supposedly going to take the online orders for the restaurant so the site says.
  (tags: restaurants fun livebookings competition)
• BooRah and Embarcadero Publishing Partner to Enhance the Local Dining & Online Experience
  BooRah Launches Syndicated Reviews Platform - New Service Delivers a Summary of Local Restaurant Reviews and Enhanced Contextual Advertising: This new platform is designed to tackle the challenges of building and scaling quality local content as well as
  (tags: restaurants local search livebookings partners competition news online booking reviews)
• #haml
  I am in love. I have found my perfect match. I’ve been made whole… I’ve seen the name a couple of ten times but never checked into it. Well, lemme tell you Rails kittens… Never has there been a leaner, more sexy templating language for Rails/Ruby.
  (tags: ruby web2.0 xhtml rails development design)
• WDCS Life size whale – Das größte Banner der Welt
  Biggest banner in the world? Without a doubt. Really cool idea, a bit like navigating in Google Earth. How cool would that be? Zoom out and see which ocean the whale is in...
  (tags: creative fun biology nature online marketing)
• Amazon.com: Amazon S3, Amazon Simple Storage Service, Unlimited Online Storage: Amazon Web Services
  Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infras
  (tags: development online storage programming)
• Amazons lagringstjänst S3 driver nu vår MP3-blogg, Sounds Like Funday [Det handlar om fibrer, Fleecelabs]
  När Amazons lagringstjänst S3 (‘tjänst’ som i ‘web service’) lanserades tänkte jag att det kunde vara ett alternativ, men jag sorterade mentalt in det bland saker att titta på längre fram, eftersom jag antog att vi skulle få uppdatera de Py
  (tags: development online storage programming)

Japanese pickled vegetables, what a treat

Just Hungry, a blog about Japanese cooking that I read with great interest, recently started publishing tips and recipes on how to make pickled vegetables. I love pickled vegetables (like the pickled salad I did with pork chops the other day), especially Japanese style.

Link: Introduction to quick Japanese tsukemono (pickles)

Quick pickles, called sokusekizuke (instant pickles) or ichiya-zuke (overnight pickles) depending on how long they take to come to full flavor, are very easy to make as their names suggest. They are a great way to prepare vegetables without having to add any additional fat, though a few recipes do call for some oil.

It is indeed simple, and forget what you think about pickling taking a long time, these lovely taste explosions are made ready to eat or ready within one or a few hours.

Yesterday I tried a recipe for pickled spicy Chinese cabbage:

Link: Quick and spicy Chinese cabbage tsukemono

This has to be one of the easiest and tastiest ways of preparing Chinese or napa cabbage (hakusai) that I know of. All you taste is the fresh essence of the cabbage, with the heat of the red pepper and the slight twist of the orange zest.

Don't know why I have this liking of pickled veg, but this recipe brought back a memory from my child hood. I grew up in a small town in Sweden, and in the 80s Chinese (well, what passed as Chinese in Sweden at the time, usually a take on Cantonese with all the interesting stuff stripped out and I think made to work with the ingredients you could find in Swedish stors at the time...) restaurants was the thing. They popped up everywhere.

There was this particular place in my home town that I loved going to (yes mum, I mean Chai Hong), since they had this special treat for their customers. After you ordered at the counter you picked up a plate with what I realise now was pickled Chinese cabbage or iceberg lettuce, with corn. It must have been pickled using some sort of sweet mirin or similar liquid since the taste was acidic, fresh and sugary sweet at the same time. I could not get enough of it. Getting the recipe for that dish would be a dream come true.

Went back there a few months ago when on vacation in Sweden actually. The restaurant is still there, under the same name even, but the place has now switched owners several times and been turned into a boring buffet style lunch place with the mouth watering plates of pickled cabbage nowhere to be seen.

The recipe for spicy Chinese cabbage was good, but made me yearn for the pickled cabbage of my youth. Time to start experimenting methinks.

links for 2007-03-21

• Så rankas bloggar i Googles bloggsök | Webbsnack
  Google Ranking patent shows how blogs are ranked in Google blog search. In Swedish.
  (tags: google search seo)