From what I understand, gà rô-ti is the Vietnamese approximation of rotisserie chicken. By boiling off the sugary marinade you can emulate the sweet caramelized glaze flavor that you might expect from cooking it on its namesake. The recipe that follows is one that my mom has passed down to me, passed to her in turn from bà ngoại, and probably a good number of mothers before that. Even if it’s not the best recipe, it’s my mom’s, and therefore mine.
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Condolences
The other day I learned I was truly an Nth year graduate student. I ran into a fellow graduate student who started in the same year as I did, and instead of “hey! How’s it going?” I was greeted with “oh, you’re still here?” “My condolences,” I replied. “Likewise,” he answered.
Caramel
Following the instructions at Serious Eats, I made some caramel sauce, to go with the apples we’d picked at Shelburne Farm (in Stow, MA) last weekend. After my sugar mixture caramelized, I added some amount of heavy cream, removed the saucepan from heat, and stirred until the foaming subsided. I took a small spoon and dipped it just so, into the still piping-hot caramel. I cooled it before tasting it. It was deliciously rich, tasting somewhat like butterscotch (perhaps because I burnt some of it and mixed it back into the caramel).
The world's most advanced compiler
People have many opinions about compilers. Some say GCC is the best. Others say LLVM is the bee’s knees. I disagree. The best compiler is PowerPoint. Here’s why. PowerPoint understands all languages. It even understands pseudocode! PowerPoint produces no errors or warnings during compilation. If it crashes, it even creates an auto-saved backup. PowerPoint, a truly internationalized compiler, supports colored syntax, symbols, and ClipArt. It contains a fully graphical IDE, greatly lowering the learning curve for beginners.
Sourdough
I’d reasoned that the best way to use excess fresh basil from our previous pizza night was, of course, to make more pizza. Not any pizza, however, but a margherita pizza, replete with those mozzarella cheese chunks, tomato slices, and, of course, fresh basil. I’d also been looking for a particular crust; Area Four Pizza makes a very excellent, tangy, thin sourdough crust, but their prices are a little steep for my taste.
How to pump your bike with Presta valve tires
Locate the bicycle pump and place by your bike. Rotate the wheels so the valve is near the ground, to make the subsequent steps easier. Check the current setting of the pump head. If it looks like below, it’s already configured for the Presta valve, and skip to step 10. If it looks like this, it’s set for the Schrader valve, and you’ll need to flip the core around.
Provincetown Tour
Introduction It was only after two years living in Cambridge, Mass. that I realized that bicycling is far and away the best way to get around, with walking a close second. So, in October 2016, I fetched myself a $55 light blue Schwinn Collegiate from the MIT Police Bike Auction. From a time when steel bikes were the only kind of bikes you could get, it weighs a hulking 40 pounds.
First Hugo-powered blog post!
I’ve decided that I should centralize my blogging – that is, place everything in the same place. It’s more convenient that way, and I can organize my thoughts for you all to see. How’s that sound? It turns out that I wrote quite a few blog posts in my two years on WordPress. I’ll start by porting some of those over, just to get a feel for Hugo, which I’m already starting to like.
Vivian's Mom's Fried Tofu (and other things)
One summer evening in 2010, when I was being very bad at being a gentleman, I went to visit Vivian Wang at her house in Rowland Heights. Her mom had graciously decided to allow me to stay for dinner. For dinner was a tofu dish: small, domino-shaped and -sized blocks of tofu, deep-fried until crispy and coated in perfectly-fried garlic. I’d been trying to replicate the recipe ever since, but I have remained unable to quite match the texture, no matter what variations I try.
(WordPress) and naming things
In the course of my C programming (the pinnacle of which has been work on the Linux kernel), I’ve grown accustomed to the Linux kernel coding style. It’s great. Now every bit of C I’ve written follows, more or less, this standard. It feels clean and crisp. It addresses naming conventions (i over loop_counter, for instance), but it doesn’t address a more subtle issue—the naming of functions that perform an action.