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Wednesday, May 9, 2012

How To Cook Like A Man

Cooking is messy, complex, and a huge time suck — and that is as it should be. But learning a few fundamentals will make you a force in the kitchen.

By Manny Howard
Photographs by Travis Rathbone
Here’s the thing: every jerk — that is, anybody who has something to sell — insists there is a trick to cooking well. It almost always involves buying more stuff that miraculously makes the job easy. I’ve grown weary listening to cookbook authors and TV personalities preach the word of the convenience gods. Truth is, cooking well isn’t any easier with or without the mountain of crap that these hucksters are pressing on us, but nor is it harder than any other skill you wish to master. Like everything else we want to do better than the next guy, we must be willing — nay, eager — to get convenience behind us. As with other worthy pursuits, being adept in the kitchen requires seriousness of purpose, the right tools (not all the tools), some specialized knowledge, and plenty of practice.
Why, after all, do we try to master any skill? An honest answer: So we can say we have. But, as food sustains us, cooking may be the only exception. There are really two motives for cooking well: There is showing off, and there is self-reliance. I have cooked paella for 50 on a Weber grill, never having once attempted to prepare the dish even on the stove before. I have marched past the pizzeria on the way home from a long day at work and the gym and been perfectly satisfied picking at steamed broccoli over seasoned sushi rice, standing alone at the kitchen counter while listening to the evening news. One gets you respect, one gets you fed. Both bring joy.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Coding the future: HTML5 takes the internet by storm

The BBC's Ian Hardy looks at why companies have been rushing to embrace HTML5 - and the innovative ways it is being used
It's hard to imagine now, but original sites on the world wide web, written in HTML code or hypertext mark-up language, were made up of little more than text.

Corporate web designers were well aware that most of their customers had slow connections and would not tolerate much of a wait.
Even a simple black and white image could irritate a user, as it gradually appeared on the screen revealing itself one painful line at a time.
That began to change as modem speeds gradually crept up and content makers used more sophisticated methods to encode their multimedia content.
Macromedia's Flash, now an Adobe product, made all the difference when it arrived in the mid-nineties. Animations, video sequences and graphics became more sophisticated.
But since its invention in the early 1990s HTML has not supported video natively.
That is why HTML5 is being received so enthusiastically by businesses in particular. The latest version can perform all kinds of dynamic tasks and visual tricks. The web is progressing faster now than it has in a long time.
Going native
Application developers, like Kevin Sweeney who works at Vimeo, a video-sharing website based in New York, have already embraced the new tools that are built in to HTML5.
 
 
 It will take time before all systems are able to work with HTML5
"We've needed to rely on third parties like Adobe Flash or QuickTime and had to embed this inside web pages. What HTML5 will do is remove them from the equation so this stuff is supported natively," he says.
Put simply it means that there's now much less chance that customers visiting a website will come across a black hole in the middle of the page, or get endless prompts to "download a plug-in" which may take several minutes to install.


People will know what ingredients they have in their refrigerator and keep track of it using an HTML5 app on the screen”
Aaron Gustafson Author
By then it is often too late. The consumer has already clicked on a competitor's website.
The iPod Touch, iPhone and lately the iPad have been especially good at leaving black holes on the screen, because the former boss of Apple, Steve Jobs, would not allow Flash to run on any of his iOS devices from the start.
The success of these products globally means many companies cannot ignore the need to re-code their entire websites in HTML5, especially the multimedia content.
A lot of companies are not waiting for the HTML5 specs to be finalised and approved in a multi-year process. They have jumped right in, using early "unofficial" versions of the code to deliver a complete web page to every customer.
New horizons
Aaron Gustafson, author of the book Adaptive Web Design, says the versatility and dynamic nature of HTML5 means it can be used in new ways in different environments including the office and kitchen.
"We are starting to see devices that are not traditionally web devices becoming more web-enabled," he says.
"If you are a recipe curator with a website, all of a sudden you can build pages that work on a touchpad that's built into a refrigerator. People will know what ingredients they have in their refrigerator and keep track of it using an HTML5 app on the screen." 

Many of Google's famous front page doodles, like this Jules Verne-inspired interactive submarine, are built using HTML5 Google is pushing HTML5 hard, not surprising since the greater impact that web pages and apps have, the more advertising it can sell.
Its search homepage is traditionally sparse but many of the doodles, including the Jules Verne-inspired interactive submarine, are now being designed to take advantage of the newest code.
Jeff Harris, product manager for Google Docs, says HTML5 will change the way its services operate from the ground up.
"A simple example would be taking an attachment from your desktop and dragging it into the compose window in Gmail. That's a basic capability that you couldn't do five years ago because web browsers didn't support it."
HTML5 also represents another step to the "semantic web", a web structure championed by Tim Berners-Lee that cross-references, reacts to and displays multiple information sources from the internet in real time.
HTML5 is partly responsible for the browser wars in the past few years.
A decade ago Chrome, Firefox and Safari didn't exist, and browser updates for Internet Explorer were only occasional.
Today desktop and mobile browsers update frequently as new HTML5 functions get incorporated.
Companies favour HTML5 because it can also replicate experiences previously only available inside an app, on the web. This is especially true for the mobile environment.
And a lot of brand names don't like being part of someone else's ecosystem because they lose control of pricing and subscribers. The Financial Times recently announced it will shut off its iPad app completely following the success of its HTML5 web page.
This is a trend that is likely to snowball within month

There are more single men than women in Malaysia

Published: Tuesday May 8, 2012 MYT 4:30:00 PM


KUALA LUMPUR: About 2.5 million of Malaysians aged 25 and above are unmarried and more men are unmarried than women.
This includes those who are divorced, widowed and those who had never married.
The Population and Housing Census of Malaysia 2010 showed that this figure comprised 60.4 per cent men and 38.6 per cent women, said Deputy Women, Family and Community Development Minister Senator Heng Sai Kee.
She told the Dewan Negara Tuesday that the average age of men marrying for the first time had dropped to 28, compared to 28.6 in 2000.
"For women, they marry at the average age of 25.7 compared to 25.1 in 2000," she said in reply to a question from Senator Datuk Boon Som Inong who asked for the number of unmarried men and women in Malaysia and the reason for it.
Heng said the Fourth Malaysian Population and Family Survey conducted by the National Population and Family Development Board revealed that 32.1 percent of respondents had never tied the knot.
She said of this number, 55.6 percent were men and 44.4 percent women.
"According to 44.7 percent of the male respondents, they didn't marry due to financial problems, others cite no suitable candidates (19.3 percent), career (12.8 percent), family commitment (6.3 percent) and other reasons.
"Forty percent of women said they did not marry as they have not found eligible suitors, while some mentioned financial problems (14 percent), career (8.4 percent), comfort in being single (8.4 percent), family commitment (7.4 percent) and other reasons," she said.
Heng said the ministry has no plans to set up a matchmaking agency or online matchmaking service as it was already being done by private companies, non-governmental organisations, religious bodies and even political parties. - Bernama

      
         
      
    
  




Saturday, May 5, 2012

Mukesh Ambani VS Pretty Lady

A reply from Mukesh Ambani (Reliance Group) to a pretty girl seeking a rich husband

A young and pretty lady posted this on a popular forum:

Title: What should I do to marry a rich guy?

I'm going to be honest of what I'm going to say here.

I'm 25 this year. I'm very pretty, have style and good taste. I wish to marry a guy with 100 crore annual salary or above.

You might say that I'm greedy, but an annual salary 2 crore is considered only as middle class now days..

My requirement is not high. Is there anyone in this forum who has an income of 100 crore annual salary? Are you all married?

I wanted to ask: what should I do to marry rich persons like you?

Among those I've dated, the richest is 50 crore annual income, and it seems that this is my upper limit.

If someone is going to move into high cost residential area on the west of New York City Garden(?), 50 crore annual income is not enough.

I'm here humbly to ask a few questions:
1) Where do most rich bachelors hang out? (Please list down the names and addresses of bars, restaurant, gym)
2) Which age group should I target?
3) Why most wives of the riches are only average-looking? I've met a few girls who don't have looks and are not interesting, but they are able to marry rich guys.

4) How do you decide who can be your wife, and who can only be your girlfriend? (my target now is to get married)

Ms. Pooja i Chohan.

A philosophical reply from Mukesh Ambani-

Dear Ms. Pooja,
I have read your post with great interest. Guess there are lots of girls out there who have similar questions like yours. Please allow me to analyse your situation as a professional investor.

My annual income is more than 100 crore, which meets your requirement, so I hope everyone believes that I'm not wasting time here.

From the standpoint of a business person, it is a bad decision to marry you. The answer is very simple, so let me explain.

Put the details aside, what you're trying to do is an exchange of "beauty" and "money" : Person A provides beauty, and Person B pays for it, fair and square.

However, there's a deadly problem here, your beauty will fade, but my money will not be gone without any good reason. The fact is, my income might increase from year to year, but you can't be prettier year after year.

Hence from the viewpoint of economics, I am an appreciation asset, and you are a depreciation asset. It's not just normal depreciation, but exponential depreciation. If that is your only asset, your value will be much worse 10 years later.

By the terms we use in Wall Street, every trading has a position, dating with you is also a "trading position".
If the trade value dropped we will sell it and it is not a good idea to keep it for long term - same goes with the marriage that you wanted. It might be cruel to say this, but in order to make a wiser decision any assets with great depreciation value will be sold or "leased".

Anyone with over 100 crore annual income is not a fool; we would only date you, but will not marry you. I would advice that you forget looking for any clues to marry a rich guy. And by the way, you could make yourself to become a rich person with 100 crore annual income.This has better chance than finding a rich fool.

Hope this reply helps.

signed,
Mukesh Ambani