Posts by Maida
Published by Maida
Thursday, May 28th, 2009
So I made homemade pasta today. This is the second time I've done it, so I wasn't totally confused about what to do this time around. The recipe - which makes a single serving - is very simple:
3/4 cup of flour (note: I used all-purpose flour, and cannot vouch for the proper "durum" flour or whole-grain flour)
1/2 tsp extra virgin olive oil (good quality olive oil is important!)
1 large egg
Salt and pepper to taste
Note: You'll also need a rolling pin. Or a cleaned-off, empty bottle of wine.
That's it. Those are the ingredients.
To start, put the flour in a bowl. Make a hole in the middle, and put in the olive oil and the egg. Stir it all together (I used a fork) until the flour, egg, and olive oil are blended. The two times I've made pasta with this recipe, I quit "mixing" the dough once it turned into a collection of floury balls in the bowl. At this point, I used my hands and formed it all into a single pasta-ball.
Next, use your rolling pin (or your bottle of wine ... which I used the first time around), and roll it out until it's really thin. In the interest of space, you might consider breaking the dough into two halves before starting.
Once the dough is sufficiently thin, cut the noodles. Make them as narrow or wide as you like (I aimed for an average size). As you move through this stage, make sure to sprinkle flour over the dough, the roller, and the finished noodles.
First Picture: The dough has been rolled out, and most of the noodles cut. Since you won't end up with a perfectly rectangular strip of dough, there will be discards. I balled the remains (at the top of the picture) and used those for some experimental ravioli.
.jpg)
Second Picture: All of the noodles have been cut, some parmesan cheese has been grated, and the pasta discards were reformed, rolled out, and made into raviolis (into which I stuffed some shitty mozzarella cheese. I cooked those later. Didn't come out so well because the filling was lame and the pasta was too thick).
.jpg)
Next, you'll want to have some boiling water handy. I made the mistake this time of waiting until after all the noodles had been cut before I began heating the water. This resulted in the noodles drying out a bit more than I would have liked. You'll want to add salt to the water for some flavor.
Third Picture: Boiling the noodles. The white bubbles at the top are starches. Make sure you have enough water in the pot to allow the noodles to roam around.
When it's all done, strain the water out, and put whatever you want on it. I used a store-bought pesto and some grated parmesan cheese.
Voila!
.jpg)
Published by Maida
Friday, April 10th, 2009
I thought this was a really brilliant find on Reddit. The comments, of course, find some faults in the information (for example, Polaris is not one of the brightest stars in our sky, and not all of the characteristics of flight are properly explained), but I still think this is fantastic.
Note: I probably still could not do anything with this set of information. What does the pancreas of a dog look like? What does tungsten look like? Let's not delve any further and just hope it will save humanity anyway after we obliterate each other.
Published by Maida
Friday, September 26th, 2008
Nevermind ....
.jpg)
So I gaffed when I asked both Garvey and Kizi to post. The offer is still up for you, Kizi, to unleash your creative potential upon this site and it's ... many ... readers. Of course, standard rules apply. One of those rules posits the requirement of interesting and not really weird or utterly useless content. Sorry Garvey. Your last post violated all three of those stipulations, and thus you're not allowed to post anymore. Just try to sign in. You can't!
Kidding. Garvey, we miss you. Just know that if you post something inexplicable, you will get trashed in the comments by the authorized bloggers on this site and it's ... many ... readers.
Musak
I recently obtained access to the Kings of Leon's new album, "Only by the Night." Rolling Stone awarded it 3 stars, but as Jon pointed out, "yeah; those reviews are becoming suspect though; The Jonas Brothers get 4 stars? wtf?" I've heard only two songs off of the album - "Sex on Fire" and "Use Somebody," and enjoyed both. Can't vouch for the rest of it, but hopefully it has some hidden gems. Note: "Sex on Fire" is currently the #1 single in the United Kingdom, so I mean ... if the Brits like it, it's probably good. They're more sophisticated than we Americans, and thus everything they like is better than what we like, unless the two likes are identical.
Secondly, I've been listening to Kasabian, a fairly popular British band. They've got two albums out so far, one self-titled, the second one called "Empire." The only song I can recognize is "Club Foot" from their first album - good driving music. With fairly limited experience with these albums (I know, it's like I just listened to a few songs and then recommended three albums ... cough), I suggest Kasabian sounds like a cross between a modern-Beatlesish sound, Linkin Park, The Clash, and the Dandy Warhols. I emphatically point to their song "Me Plus One," off of their second album, Empire. It lacks the Linkin Park elements of their other work, but I dig the harmonies. Old-School meets New-Skool.
Sleep Study!
So two nights ago I travelled to Baptist Medical Center in downtown Jacksonville to spend the night covered in electrodes. As some of you might know, I've been struggling to sleep for the last three months. Trouble falling asleep, trouble staying alseep, no energy, the works. Interesting experience. I get out of the elevator, and walk into a dimly-lit room with two chairs. A sign reads, "please ring the bell." There is no bell. I idle confusedly for ten seconds, then a voice booms, "How may I help you?" I state my purpose. "Ah yes, Joseph, here for the sleep study! We'll be right there." A nurse shows up and directs me to my hospital room. It looks like a hotel room - hotel bed, hotel table with hotel chair, hotel television with a hotel-like number of channels. My own bathroom and a window I can't open. For roughly an hour I sat at the desk, studying for my Torts midterm next week, until the nurse reappeared. 6 electrodes were placed on my scalp to read brain waves, 1 electrode was placed on either side of my eyes to detect REM, 1 electrode was placed on either side of my mouth to detect jaw grinding, 2 electrodes were placed on my legs to detect leg movement, and a breathing monitor was placed just above my mouth. All the while, a camera watches you while you sleep.
Creepy moment: At around 1:30 in the morning I woke up, fumbled with the wires next to me so I could turn to my side. A minute later, the nurse booms in on a microphone by my bed. "Is there anything wrong, Joseph?" Negative. "Okay, just checking on you."
Finally, they woke me up at 6:30 with a free-breakfast voucher. Free grits and fried eggs!
I should get my results within a couple of weeks. They can't come too soon. I'm desperate.
Published by Maida
Monday, September 1st, 2008
.jpg)
.jpg)
Kizi? Garvey? Where are our contributors? We need you guys to keep up. Not that I'm a specimen of consistent posts, but what gives? I want my hetero-life-mate and my Monkey back. So come back! I took all this time to photoshop your heads onto the same google-searched milk-carton image.
In other news, I heard a tidbit from this band called Beach House. Retro-sounding. Sort of reminded me of the Dandy Warhols, maybe with a smidgen of the Mamas and the Papas, a spot of some other bands, and some other influences and such. I forget the name of the song I heard - maybe it was called Gila.
In other news, 4 days until Florida State plays Western Carolina.
Revised Prediction: Florida State 27, Eastern Carolina 10
You gotta figure our defense will give up something stupid.
| Posted in: Life
Published by Maida
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
After much incubation, bug-fixes, theme tweaks, and other neat things that I don't even know about, Firefox reached it's third iteration yesterday, June 17. I must say, it was sad to let my Minefield (Mozilla's name for pre-release nightly builds) go, but it'll be nice to use a finalized browser for the first time in months. Some fairly significant changes under the hood should hoist this browser as top dog for the foreseeable future.
Maida's favorite new features (aka the only new features Maida has noticed, uses, or understands):
1) It's prettier.
The Vista theme looks way nicer than the default ugly-as-shit Firefox 2 and 1 themes. It's more integrated into Vista's native look, and frankly, it's just shinier. No word on whether Mac, Linux, and XP users are pleased, but I have a feeling they prefer this to earlier native appearances.
2) It just runs faster.
Firefox clearly loads web pages with greater speed, beating previous firefox versions and Internet Explorer 7 in just about everything. I'm not sure if it beats Safari 3 in Javascript, however.
3) It uses way less RAM.
Maybe I should lump this guy into point #2, but then I'd have a smaller list.
4) Add-ons Manager way better.
Like way better. I can check which ones I'm using, disable/enable them, and find new ones within a much more streamlined interface. Maida cheers silently.
5) A Password Manager that actually works the way it should!
No more saving of wrong passwords! Hurray!
Published by Maida
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008
Dearest Robots, I've finally begun streaming content from my PC onto the television in the Media Room upstairs. Glorious, glorious, glorious. The Xbox 360 can stream only WMV and MPEG-2 video, which pretty much eliminated my entire collection of videos. Then came Xilisoft! All Hail Xilisoft and their grandiose video conversion software! Next up, .mkv files (which house my HD movie content, like Saving Private Ryan, The Matrix, and No Country For Old Men). Since my Xvid Avi files can be converted quite easily (though it takes some time), I should have all my videos ready to watch in no time. South Park and Family Guy marathons abound!
Oh, and Happy Easter, you fucking atheists!
Published by Maida
Monday, February 25th, 2008
Dearest Evil Robots, I've found an amazing video. Come! Witness this with me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs3RKZjSzYg
- Maida
P.S. Watch this until the end. You'll be treated.
Published by Maida
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
Tired of an inaccurate kill-cam, host-quits, and a plethora of other fuck-ups and bugs in Call of Duty 4? Well ache no more, for a patch is on the way!
From N4G.com:
"The new feature patch fourzerotwo talked about last week (with new Kill Cams, Host Migration, and other new features) for the Xbox 360 has finished it’s internal testing and development and has officially been sent off to Microsoft for Certification. It’s only a matter of Microsoft putting it through the certification paces and it will be available for download for all Xbox 360 players."
Hopefully the download should be available soon.
2:00 PM Update, Exclusively from Maida:
The Update will include:
1) More Kill-Cams (like viewing your untimely demise from the aerial perspective of a bomb dropped from an airstrike
2) Host Migration to preserve games when a host quits
3) The ability to quickly mute an annoying player within the game (instead of having to mull through the Dashboard)
4) Improved Sniper/ACOG accuracy ... not sure how I feel about this one
5) Much better spectator view, including full 360 view while in 3rd person mode, and the ability to switch to a 1st person view
| Posted in: Games
Published by Maida
Monday, February 18th, 2008
Most of you out there reading this - perhaps all of you out there, in fact - know me as one hell of a lazy mother-fucker. Call it malformed genetic execution within the womb, call it an egregious environmental background. Whatever you want to chalk it up to, the empirical result is the same: I sleep 14 hours a day.
Anyways, like most people, I clamor for tidbits of self-validation every so often to keep the engine purring and the transmission, well, transmitting. If anyone feels the same as I, then avail yourself to two fabulous links:
www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html (Bertrand Russel's "In Praise of Idleness")
and
http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=2447 ("Child-Man in the Promised Land")
Enjoy!
P.S. Ironically, or perhaps not ironically, I didn't really read all of either essay, as each was too long.
Maida
Published by Maida
Sunday, February 17th, 2008
God, what a miserable title. Almost as miserable as the movie "Jumper," staring emotionally flat (how does he get work? Actually, how the fuck did he land the role of Anakin Skywalker? Oh, wait...) Hayden Christensen and a slowly-decaying-as-a-worthwhile-actor Samuel L. Jackson. Anyways, I digress.
A few things I'd like to talk about today.
Number one, I've purchased a book by Todd Perkins, called Adobe Flash CS3 Professional. I'd like to get proficient, or at least somewhat useful, with Flash and ActionScript in order to provide all you readers out there with some interesting multimedia content. Right now I'd be happy with a working button, but as it stands I have a beautifully shaded (thank you, gradient tool!) circle and nothing else.
Secondly, iTunes 7.6 has been on my proverbial nerves. The latest edition has brought even more bugs into an already-slow application. I've always noticed that the sound-quality on iTunes lagged behind Winamp, at least on my system, and today I switched back over to Winamp. The latest version, build 5.52, runs smoothly, and sound reproduction is superb - far better than iTunes, and I'm not sure why. How come iTunes lacks the beauty and elegant functionality of the iPod and iPhone? Can't say I'll be switching for good; I don't trust 3rd party applications with my iPod.
I feel like a poor man's Andy Rooney right now.
Finally (and the reason behind this post), I stumbled upon a fantastic physics-based game, reminiscent of the "falling sand" and "crayon" games I've played in the past. It's not really a game, per se, since the only goals are those you set for yourself. I wouldn't say it's as addictive as SimCity or Counter-Strike, but it is, well, phun.
You can find it here (it's not browser-based, and won't work on a Mac just yet): www.acc.umu.se/~emilk/downloads.html
Enjoy!
Published by Maida
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
As many of you readers out there know, we've been working long and hard on a new logo for Bigevilrobot. Something catchy. Something beautiful. Mostly, something totally fucking sweet. As the Lead Art Director of this site, let me promise you that we've dedicated over 100 hours to this project, and you shan't be disappointed. 
What shall our new logo be? Stay tuned to find out ...
Published by Maida
Friday, January 11th, 2008
So anyways, a few days ago I was forced - due to circumstances uncontrollable yet entirely foreseen - to move out of my apartment. Well, it wasn't exactly my apartment, and I was living there for free. Anywho. I'm currently living out of my car and sleeping on a couch, with my computer and tv/xbox set up ... well ... just check out the picture below. As it stands, I'm operating out of the most ghetto set-up known to mankind. It's a real dandy, and I'm proud to say I sit in that lazy-boy every day. At least for the past few days. Figure A) Maida's new porn drive Figure B) Maida's TV sits atop a minifridge Figure C) Ping-Pong table. We made it ourselves. Congratulations, Maida! You graduated from a highly respected institution of learning! Way to go! Here's your new life!
Published by Maida
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
I'm typing this only four you. Just you. The only people in the hole world will see this. Is you and myself. MySpace. My Buddy my buddy my buddy my buddy, wherever hi goes, I (Vincent van) Gogh.
| Posted in: Work