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So MLK Day was a Day of Eating for ol’ Matt as I met up with the fine people of DonRockwell.com at New Kam Fong in Wheaton, MD.  What transpired was a feast of Cantonese food partaken by 17 adults and 8 kids in all.

I apologize that there aren’t any pictures, but, well, FOOOOOOD. However, I hope to below list the order of food with my impressions of it. The “names” of the dishes are what I can either glean from the menu or remember from my head. There is also a chance I’ve missed a dish, but I think I got them all. Now, the food:

1. Three BBQ Meats/Marinated Delight/Platter: A platter of mystery meats. Our guesses were roast pork, roast chicken, and intestine/stomach/something. All quite good and yummy.
2. Watercress with Clam Soup: A soup chock full of clams and watercress. The broth was very good as was the watercress. The clams? Well, I’m not the biggest fan, but I was told these were good.
3. ByBa Duck (aka Pipa Duck): Perhaps the best roasted duck I’ve ever had. So good.
4. Fried Sliced Fish, Salt and Pepper Style: Slices of a white fish, coated with a crispy breading and fried. The breading itself had salty, spicy kick to it. In fact, it was probably the hottest dish of the day, spice-wise. Served with some preserved anchovies and jalapenos.
5. Oyster with Ginger & Scallion Roast Pig in Casserole: The first casserole of the day. Again, not the biggest shellfish fan, but the oysters I tried were yummy. The best part of this dish were the onions at the bottom. They had absorbed all the sauce and flavor…mmm.
6. Sauteed Abalone with Chinese Vegetables and Chinese Mushrooms: I really liked the veggies (mustard greens?) and mushrooms. The abalone? Eh. Still not a fan of its weird texture.
7. Braised Eel with Roast Pig Garlic Sauce: This too was very good. One issue I had was that the eel was not boneless or bone-cut, but rather just chopped. The eel had great flavor, but the picking the meat from the bones (the many, many bones) was annoying. However, see that “garlic” up there? In this dish were the most flavorful garlic cloves ever. I kept picking them out, perhaps to the consternation of my tablemates.
8. Salted Fish, Diced Chicken, and Eggplant Casserole: A classic of Cantonese casseroles. I’m a big fan of all the ingredients, add them together and you get a happy Matt.
9. Sauteed Kingdom Mushroom, Braised Tofu, and Snow Pea Shoots: The final dish of the day was a “on the board” special. It’s about what it sounds like, except the mushrooms were…odd. I have *no* idea what species they are, but the whole mushroom must be enormous. The slices of mushrooms were bigger than an Ike dollar. Still, a very good dish.

All in all, an amazing feast. The cost, while not cheap, was still a great bargain for the variety of dishes. In fact, the whole meal per person was probably about the same cost as one order of that abalone dish. And the kids held their own, let me tell you. They had their own table with, while not all this food, not exactly just a few dishes.

Now? Now I’m going to sit like a bump on a log and try and digest the feast.

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The People have spoken and the Word is Calvin Klein it appears:

My next question for you, the friendly masses, is what color to get? The frames above are the black version, but, I believe, they also come in gunmetal gray, blue, and satin brown.  If you’d like to see views of these colors, if I’m right, this is a link to the frames in question. If you select the colors down below the main picture changes to reflect your choice, so you get a good look.

I’m pretty sure I can’t pull off the blue ones, so those aren’t really on my radar. I suppose then the focus is on the brown frames.  Now, it’s hard to see in the pics I presented earlier, but the Guess frames are actually a brown/bronze/copper color, and Lady Optician of The Infinite Patience who helped me this morn seemed to think that the color suited my color better, and I think I agreed…but that could just be me agreeing with an expert.

Thus, I open the floor to the rest of my pool of experts. What say you?

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Went to the eye doctor this morn, and that means it’s time to consider new frames.  As I’m hopeless at this, I thought I’d present some options I tried on today.  I apologize for the crappy photos but, well, it’s an iPhone in an optician’s mirror and fluorescent filled space.  The pics are after the cut!

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If you are anything like me…well, no one is like me. I’m unique. But, if you want to be like me, here is an activity that you can do if you are stuck inside during a blizzard like I am now or want to pretend to be. That activity? Looking at old menus!

I know, I know, not that exciting, but, man, is it fascinating! The object of my focus this afternoon is the LA Public Library’s online Menu Collection. Just give it a whirl and I dare you not to be sucked in.  Marvel at what ten bucks would buy you 30 years ago compared to today.

I’m not the first to find this site, but I’m damn sure not going to be the last!

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A while back it was announced that Bing would be using Wolfram|Alpha as their math engine.  Which is cool, because Bing is a pretty interesting engine, and W|A is a very cool one, indeed.

However, there is a bit of an issue with its integration, I believe. Namely: they give different answers!  I know this because I tried out an example in the first link up there, that of 2^2^2^2^2.  It turns out the answer to this is a bit vague, so differing solutions are not unexpected, but still…

Why? Exponentiation is not associative, unlike addition or multiplication (it might satisfy the Lie algebra equivalent of the Jacobi identity, I dunno), so the order matters. A lot.  Thus, while 2+(3+4) = (2+3)+4, and likewise for multiplication, 2^(3^4) !=  (2^3)^4. This being exponentiation, it really doesn’t. The latter is 4096, the former is 2417851639229258349412352. Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust a bit different. So without parentheses, things are vague.

Now how about the example in the article? We’ll get to that. Let’s start with 3 2’s. (2^2)^2 = 16, 2^(2^2) = 16. Phew safe. So, 2^2^2 is fine.

2^2^2^2? Given that, Bing outputs the “bottom-up” answer: ((2^2)^2)^2 = 256. W|A outputs the “top-down”: 2^(2^(2^2)) = 65536. Ah ha.

The disparity is growing, but not bad. So adding one more ^2 shouldn’t be too horrible, right?

Wrong.

Exponentiation grows quickly so order reaaaaaallly matters.

2^2^2^2^2? As expected from above, Bing should do 256^2=65536 and it does. W|A? Well, it does 2^65536. This is a big number. How big? Well…

20035299304068464649790723515

602557504478254755697514192650

169737108940595563114530895061

308809333481010382343429072631

818229493821188126688695063647…

…8091458852699826141425030123391

That is a 19729 digit number. Big.

Therein lies the difference, but which is right? Hmm. Most mathematicians think of repeated exponentiation as “top-down”. So, my main question is why isn’t Bing using W|A as it says? Or is there some extra option I need to assemble?

Oh well. Just an odd thing I noticed.

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So, this afternoon I was looking at a bottle of fuel additive and the instructions confused me. What it said was to only pour the additive into a nearly-empty tank and then fill it up.

My confusion is…why? Why couldn’t I just pour it into a half-filled tank and then fill the tank? It’s still one bottle of additive in one full tank.

My first thought is that maybe the additive isn’t very miscible, so it needs the physical action of the fueling to help mix? But, really, a fuel additive that isn’t miscible in fuel?

I suppose the real answer is that some yahoo had some overfilled gas tank and then added a bunch of flammable hydrocarbons to it and boom or something.

I dunno. Just irked me. Feel like they could just put “add to one full tank of gas”. But, well, we are the culture that came up with “Careful: Contents Are Hot” on a cup of coffee and all.

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Not the Clash song, per se, but the question itself. Should I stay or should I go…from the ACS and APS.

For many moons, I’ve been a member of both the ACS (American Chemical Society) and APS (American Physical Society), the former for ten or more, the latter for a few.  As a theoretical chemist, having a membership to these societies was quite useful. You get a subscription to a very good “popular” magazine, Chemical and Engineering News and Physics Today, discounted registration at conferences, and, perhaps most importantly, access to the respective job banks.

All this, though, comes at a cost. When you are a grad student and recent postdoc, the membership cost isn’t too expensive and the benefits well outweigh the costs.  But once you are a “professional member” the costs double–I think–at least to $140 and $118 per annum.

Okay, that’s not bad, not great, but not horrible. *But*, I am no longer a practicing chemist/physicist. I’m a code monkey. A membership to IEEE or ACM would make more sense, really. Heck, I’m kind of attending SC09, the supercomputing conference, next weekend.

But, but, but. I am a chemist. I am a physicist (according to Feynman, no less). I still think of myself as such and I suppose a part of me thinks one day I might be a practicing chemist/physicist again.

I’m not sure what to do.

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Saturday has been a busy day…well, busy by my lazy standards.  This morning I went to have my blood let and got a sweet button and pin proclaiming that. I then went to my local library’s “Friends of” semi-annual booksale.

But the main event: cookie making! Specifically, a recipe my grandma used to make back in the day for Christmas. There is a Don Rockwell picnic tomorrow and this is my contribution. Now, to the picto-recipe after the cut!

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Sometimes, when I’m alone in my apartment…

Okay, that’s redundant.

Sometimes, when I’m in my apartment…

…

…

…I make car noises as I walk around.

Vroooooom! as I move forward.

Vreeeewww! as I turn a corner.

Skreeeeee! as I stop.

Sometimes I sound like an F1 car, sometimes a Cup car, sometimes a World Rally Car.

Yup.

See what you are missing, ladies?!

Yours in you know you do it too,

Matt

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Nothing like completing a sudoku puzzle in 4 minutes to make one feel better.

Okay, yeah, it was an easy puzzle.

Okay, a really easy one.

Yes, I am doing the Jumble next. The really hard Jumble!

Shut up.

Hugs,
Matt

ETA: Completed the crossword in ten minutes as well. Woo! Gotta love Tuesday puzzle easiness! (Easiosity?)

ETA2: Found the 12 differences! And it was an advanced puzzle as well!

Originally published at Oh So Boring.... You can comment here or there.

This post is part warning about the perils of autocomplete with Gmail and part a whine fest for ol’ Matt. Thus comes the Cut!

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Oh! I forgot to mention that I recently bought some of that new fangled AquaFresh Isoactive toothpaste. If you don’t know it, it has the fun property of getting really foamy (I suppose to get fluoride everywhere).

The science-y part is that it does this by way of isopentane, a substance with the cool property that it boils right around room temperature (28 degrees C or so).  So, the isopentane is in the gel that is put in your mouth, which is at 37 degrees or so, and, voila, the isopentane boils causing the gel to get foamy!  I imagine the heat generated by the friction of brushing helps move things along as well.

Right now I’m trying to figure out any cool demos or something that I can do to have fun with gelled isopentane.  Everything I think of seems to use equipment I’d have in a chem lab, but not at home.  But, then again, are a Bunsen burner and a gas range really that far apart?

The answer, by the way, is yes! A thousand times yes! Don’t use a gas range burner as a Bunsen burner! Sigh…time to find a lawyer…

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I’m hoping to have a better, longer post soon, but I just wanted to say that SPX was quite fun.

Decided to take the Metro which, surprisingly, got me there early. That is pretty rare in my experience when you take a long Metro journey on the weekend. So, I sat around waiting for the expo to open reading Report from Iron Mountain. (It’s an interesting read if you’ve never picked it up. I’ve always wondered if someone could translate it into today’s political landscape.)

Then, huzzah!, the doors opened to us attendees and the scrum commenced.  I did my usual pre-buying journey up and down the aisles seeing what was there. After the first go-around, started buying and talking.

I’ll try to get pics or links to the things I bought up soon, if I don’t have them now.  First item was a “She Blinded Me With Library Silence” totebag from the estimable Jeph Jacques. Or well, bought from the inestimable Cristi as Mr Jacques seemed to be a bit busy/overwhelmed with sketch requests.

I also grabbed “DAR! Volume One” from Erika Moen who was gracious, beautiful, and who looked pretty much exactly like she does in her comic!

I got to meet R Stevens and picked up a copy of “CRUSH ALL HU-MANS!“. He seemed happy to be paid in ones (which were gathered as change as I made my way over to his table). I can only imagine the sheer number of twenties that are gathered each day at SPX…

Let’s see, I picked up a cool graphic biography of Niels Bohr. I’m assuming cool as I haven’t read it, but, come on, Niels Bohr! And a variety of cool minicomics. The type that are one or two bucks and sometimes more amusing/distressing/amazing than the more mainstream comics on offer at SPX.

Fun day! If you’ve never been to SPX, I highly recommend it. I just wish I had more money to buy more books. But, luckily, most of what I saw is available on internets of various types, so I’m sure they’ll be finding their way to me soon enough.

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Much to the astonishment of many a high-school or college student, us old folks like to attend lectures for fun.  And since I am old…

That’s right, tomorrow night I am going to a lecture on Frank Lloyd Wright at the Pope-Leighey House, one of his Usonian houses on display here in Virginia (moved to the site of Woodlawn).

The lecture is being given by Thomas Schmidt, Director-Emeritus of Fallingwater, usually considered Wright’s masterpiece–and rightly so. (One of these days I’m finally going to tour Fallingwater, though its distance from me is just enough that I’d probably have to make a weekend of it. It’s about a 4-hour drive from DC to southwest PA, which isn’t bad, but if I tried to do it in one day…hoo boy, that’s a lot of driving.)

When I saw this come up, I thought it’d be fun to attend.  As an architecture fan, and a fan of Wright, it was a no-brainer.  Wright is not my favorite architect (that’d be Niemeyer followed by Salmona–discovered at an exhibit I attended here in DC), but he is way up there.  I’ve always had a dream of living in a Wright house, even if I’d be whacking my head on every doorframe and ceiling. The “if I had all the money in the world” Wright house for me? The Ennis House, Wright’s textile block apotheosis, which would be a money pit to restore, but it’d be worth it.

And, yep, give me textile block over the Prairie or Usonian Wright works. (I also like his commercial works like Johnson Wax more than most of his homes.) In fact, that’s probably why I’m so enamored with Salmona, who was a master of using bricks. Something about that sort of modernism-meets-solid-stone that lights my imagination and wonder.

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I am sad to report the end of the Goatee of the Summer of ‘09. Its end was swift-ish, and blame is placed on the brutal Braun.

Yes, this morning, as I was shaving with my (admittedly old) Braun shaver, that weird cutter bar thing in the middle of the foils decided that the best course of action was to grab onto some beard hairs. Too many hairs. At once.

This was…painful, shall we say. Apparently, when pain is greater than a stubbed toe, but less than a kidney stone, I swear. A lot. Voluminously.

After swearing and blinking away the tears the pain brought to my eyes, I groped around and finally groped for and found some scissors, I was able to extricate shaver from beard. At this point my beard was suddenly and severely lop-sided, so, after clearing out the shaver, the rest went away as well.

Au revoir, mon barbe!

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I think I’m in the mood to do some baking this weekend…but bake what?  I have a recipe for some brown sugar peanut-butter cookies which sounds yummy…

…but I also have some low-fat cream cheese in the fridge which is keening for a cheesecake.  Maybe a Key Lime Cheesecake? Marble Chocolate? Hmm…

Any ideas from internetland?

Originally published at Oh So Boring.... You can comment here or there.

I’m thinking about shaving off the goatee I’ve been sporting.  I’m hesitant to do so because, well, I kinda like how I look with it.  Makes me look like I have a chin and reminds me that, hey, I can grow hair. Maybe not on top of my head, but on the head, at least. But, the downsides of the beard are beginning to annoy me.

First, the itching is back. Now, all beards itch and, for me, it usually comes and goes in waves. We’ll it’s back now and annoys the crap out of me.

Second, there is the occasional beard dandruff. Despite shampoo and conditioner, it seems as if the skin under the beard just wants to dry out.  It’s annoying, especially with dark shirts. (I know there are all sorts of treatments for this, but I’m not spending $10-20 on tea tree oil that might not work to fix it.)

Third, it’s getting all tangly and I’m too cheap to buy one of those beard trimmer kits. And if you’ve priced those, that means I’m pretty cheap.  Maybe a sale will happen soon…

Finally, maybe I just want a change? I dunno. My (almost-) Daily Mugshot is getting pretty boring.  Perhaps the appearance of Matt No-Chin Potato-Face will spice things up, eh?

Hmm…

Well, what say you my readers and Russian spammers? Keep the beard or lose it?

Matt

Originally published at Oh So Boring.... You can comment here or there.

Welp, it’s the time for school to begin for elhi to college students alike. And, perhaps feeling the vibes, I’m actually thinking about taking a class or some classes myself. Part to learn something new and cool and part, if I’m being honest, in the hope of meeting new people.  Though, really, hard to do in a 3-hour one-time class…hmm…

Still, classes!  As a resident of Fairfax County, I’m looking over the Fairfax County ACE courses.  I’ve looked at them all, and most of  them sound cool, but FC is a big county and I’m not really looking to have to drive 1 hour in rush-hour traffic after work to get to a class.  So, I’m focusing on ones near me (Annandale-ish area, the Plum Center is ideal).

To that end, I’ve identified two courses that I might do.  First is Lebanese Cuisine: Vegetarian and the other is Indian Cuisine: Vegetarian. Very veggie of me, eh?

I’m also looking at Thai Cuisine as well, but it conflicts with the Lebanese course. I suppose right now I’m trying to decide, do I do Lebanese or Thai?

So, my two or so readers and my 5603242237 Russian spammers, which one should I choose?  (I thought about doing a poll, but polls on Wordpress aren’t as easy as I thought so I said screw that. It’s relaxing weekend time!)

Yours in student,

Matt