Almost ten months ago, I mentioned on this blog I bought an ARM laptop, which is now my main machine while away from home a Lenovo Yoga C630 13Q50. Yes, yes, I am still not as much away from home as I used to before, as this pandemic is still somewhat of a thing, but I do move more. My main activity in the outside world with my laptop is teaching. I teach twice a week, and well, having a display for my slides and for showing examples in the terminal and such is a must. However, as I said back in August, one of the hardware support issues for this machine is: It has sadly not yet been solved While many things have improved since kernel 5.12 (the first I used), the Device Tree does not yet hint at where external video might sit. So, I went to the obvious: Many people carry different kinds of video adaptors I carry a slightly bulky one: A RPi3 For two months already (time flies!), I had an ugly contraption where the RPi3 connected via Ethernet and displayed a VNC client, and my laptop had a VNC server. Oh, but did I mention My laptop works so much better with Wayland than with Xorg that I switched, and am now a happy user of the Sway compositor (a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager). It is built over WLRoots, which is a great and (relatively) simple project, but will thankfully not carry some of Gnome or KDE s ideas not even those I d rather have. So it took a bit of searching; I was very happy to find WayVNC, a VNC server for wlroot-sbased Wayland compositors. I launched a second Wayland, to be able to have my main session undisturbed and present only a window from it. Only that VNC is slow and laggy, and sometimes awkward. So I kept searching for something better. And something better is, happily, what I was finally able to do! In the laptop, I am using wf-recorder to grab an area of the screen and funnel it into a V4L2 loopback device (which allows it to be used as a camera, solving the main issue with grabbing parts of a Wayland screen): (yes, my V4L2Loopback device is set to /dev/video10). You will note I m grabbing a 960 540 rectangle, which is the top of my screen (1920x1080) minus the Waybar. I think I ll increase it to 960 720, as the projector to which I connect the Raspberry has a 4 3 output. After this is sent to /dev/video10, I tell ffmpeg to send it via RTP to the fixed address of the Raspberry: Yes, some uglier things happen here. You will note /tmp/video.sdp is created in the laptop itself; this file describes the stream s metadata so it can be used from the client side. I cheated and copied it over to the Raspberry, doing an ugly hardcode along the way: People familiar with RTP will scold me: How come I m streaming to the unicast client address? I should do it to an address in the 224.0.0.0 239.0.0.0 range. And it worked, sometimes. I switched over to 10.0.0.100 because it works, basically always Finally, upon bootup, I have configured NoDM to start a session with the user user, and dropped the following in my user s .xsession: Anyway, as a result, my students are able to much better follow the pace of my presentation, and I m able to do some tricks better (particularly when it requires quick reaction times, as often happens when dealing with concurrency and such issues). Oh, and of course in case it s of interest to anybody, knowing that SD cards are all but reliable in the long run, I wrote a vmdb2 recipe to build the images. You can grab it here; it requires some local files to be present to be built some are the ones I copied over above, and the other ones are surely of no interest to you (such as my public ssh key or such :-] ) What am I still missing? (read: Can you help me with some ideas? )

• I d prefer having Ethernet-over-USB. I have the USB-C Ethernet adapter, which powers the RPi and provides a physical link, but I m sure I could do away with the fugly cable wrapped around the machine
• Of course, if that happens, I would switch to a much sexier Zero RPi. I have to check whether the video codec is light enough for a plain ol Zero (armel) or I have to use the much more powerful Zero 2 I prefer sticking to the lowest possible hardware!
• Naturally The best would be to just be able to connect my USB-C-to- HDMI,VGA adapter, that has been sitting idly One day, I guess

Of course, this is a blog post published to brag about my stuff, but also to serve me as persistent memory in case I need to recreate this

Amounts are to taste:
[Stage one]
Chopped red onion
Chopped garlic
Chopped fresh ginger
Chopped big red chillies (mild)
Chopped birds eye chillies (red or green, quite hot)
Chopped scotch bonnets (hot)
[Fry onion in some olive oil. When getting translucent, and rest of ingredients. May need to add some more oil. When the garlic is browning. On to stage two.]
[Stage two]
Some tins of chopped tomato
Some tomato puree
Some basil
Some thyme
Bay leaf optional
Some sliced mushroom
Some chopped capsicum pepper
Some kidney beans
Other beans optional (butter beans are nice)
Lentils optional (Pro tip: if adding lentils to adding lentils, especially red lentils, I recommend adding some garam masala as well. Lifts the flavour.)
Veggie mince optional
Pearled barley very optional
Stock (some reclaimed from swilling water around tom tims)
Water to keep topping up with if it get too sticky or dry
Dash of red wine optional
Worcester sauce optional
Any other flavouring you feel like optional (I quite often add random herbs or spices
[[Secret ingredient: a spoonful of Marmite]]
[Cook everything up together, but wait until there is enough fluid before you add the dry/sticky ingredients in.]
[Serve with carb of choice. I currently fond of using Ryvita as dipper instead of tortilla chips.]
[Also serve with a a cooler such as natural yogurt, soured cream or something else. You want more than one type of chilli in there to broaden the flavour. I use all three, plus occasionally others as well. If you are feeling masochistic you can go hotter than scotch bonnets, but I although you may get something of the same heat, I think you lose something in the flavour. BTW if you get the chance, of all the tortilla chips, I think blue corn ones are the best. Only seem to find them in health food shops. There you go. It s a Zen recipe, which is why I couldn t give you a link. You just do it until it looks right, feels right, tastes right. And with practice you get it better and better.

See also parts 1, 2, and 3. I am a person that enjoys food that s different from what s at home, and Rhodes didn t disappoint. Terah and I used to live close to an excellent Greek restaurant in Indianapolis, so we were already familiar in some way with the food. But there isn t any Greek restaurant at all in the Wichita area, so we missed it. Our favorite restaurant on Rhodes was Kalypso of Lindos. Everything there was just excellent, starting with the saganaki, one of my favorite Greek appetizers. I had yogurt with honey there for dessert both times we visited, a surprisingly tasty desert. Like many restaurants in Lindos, Kalypso had the option of eating on the rooftop, or at ground level. We ate on the roof, which had a nice view of the Lindos Acropolis. Being outdoors, there were sometimes cats around. This kitten enjoyed playing games with my shoestrings for awhile. Kalypso is at a 17th century captain s house. Here s a view of it from the rooftop: We, of course, had the chance to eat at quite a few different places during our visit, and I d go on way too long if I mentioned them all. Terah particularly enjoyed the gelaterie.gr ice cream shop in the square in Rhodes. We liked our lunch at Maria s Taverna in Lindos and enjoyed chatting with the staff there. I recently talked about shopping in Mexico, and perhaps learned a thing or two from that. I won t say we never buy them, but in general we don t buy souvenirs like t-shirts, plastic things made in China, etc. We prefer to buy local. Those items tend to be higher quality, more interesting, and we like to support the local economy. We also don t have lots of room for things, so we try to choose carefully. So it was something of a surprise to Terah, and perhaps even to me, when I suggested we go shopping one day. Terah typically enjoys shopping a lot more than I do. Anyhow, off we went to Lindos. One of the first things that had caught our eye in Lindos was the shop selling glass. But it wasn t just any glass; it appeared to be made with some sort of layered process, and has a distinctly three-dimensional feel to it. As you move around, it looks like the background shifts. We wound up with this item, which was made in Athens: By the time we visited Lindos specifically for shopping, we had a good feel for when the busy times of day were, so we could avoid them. It gave us the opportunity to visit with people and when they weren t busy, many shopkeepers liked to chat. I enjoy hearing people s stories and we heard several. One ceramics shop the Musa Shop -caught Terah s eye. They had such incredible and beautiful pieces outside that we just had to go in. We wound up with two pieces from there, both in shades of blue: Both remind me of the Aegean Sea and the deep blue sky of Rhodes. And then, as we were walking along, I pointed inside a shop and said to Terah, Hey, those look different. We went in, and eventually wound up buying these: The appearance, and even feel, of them is unlike anything I d seen. Quite interesting. And seeing those particular items in the Lakis Place shop led to making some new friends I ll write about it in the next post.

DebConf 11 -- Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina I'm writing this on my way back from my fifth DebConf, waiting in the Frankfurt Airport for my flight to Munich then another wait for a flight back to Los Angeles. DebConf is the annual convention of Debian Developers and other interested in how Debian Linux (or Debian BSD) works, and want to help make it better. Debian is an international volunteer project, and Debconf is held each year in a different city, normally not on the same Continent two years in a row. Only one so far has been held in the United States, last year Debconf 10 was in New York City. (Mexico and Canada have also hosted Debconfs.) DebConf is a week long conference, with one day designated as "Debian Day" with more introductory level talks, frequently in the local language, and local people are invited to learn about Debian. The rest of DebConf is held in English. This year had over 350 attendees from a couple of dozen countries. Unlike most computer conferences, DebConf is free to attend. (Professional and Corporate memberships are available for those who would like to financially support DebConf.) If you apply early enough, you can request help paying for food, lodging, and travel as well, but such support is limited and you have to justify it. This is all make possible by our generous sponsors, who include some major corporations who use Debian. This year DebConf was held in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian bid won partially based on the generous support of the Bosnian government, not only financial and letting us use one of their buildings for the conference, but also help with getting visas and other such aid. (Visas are not required from the US or most of Europe, but they are from some other countries.) I arrived on Saturday about 24 hours after I left home, starting with too little sleep. I actually managed to eat dinner before passing out in my hotel bed. The hotel room I had in Hotel Vidovic (accent on the c) was nicer than any I have stayed at in Europe (although I always chose by price), and the conference price was less than half what a similar room goes for at a US hotel. There was a nice breakfast buffet included in the hotel cost. (Hot omelets and sausages as well as the usual cold cuts, cheese, fruit, juice, coffee, tea, cereal, yogurt, etc.) The in-room ethernet connection worked all the time except one morning, although it was not particularly fast. The hotel is relatively new, the Lift (elevator) had a date of 2005 on it and I suspect that is when the building was constructed. Sunday was Debian Day, and I went to a couple of sessions before deciding to take a nap in the afternoon. My nap wound up being from 3pm to after 11pm, sleeping through dinner. I was awake for an hour or so checking my email, and then slept till 4am. That was the morning I made it to breakfast before 7am. This was the first time I ate breakfast at normal breakfast hours for a full week for many years. After breakfast Monday, I spent several hours at the front desk helping give out badges, conference bags, and t-shirts. Lunches and dinners were in the Hotel Bosna, across the street from venue. For lunches we were served soup, salad, a plate of food, and desert. For dinners there was a buffet. The food served at Bosna was fairly good, but repetitive from day to day. (I've had much worse hotel food in the US for much more money.) Tuesday was more or less a repeat of Monday, with me opening the front desk by myself and not nearly as many new arrivals. The sessions varied of course, and I played "Debconf Experimental 5-card Mao". (Mao is a card game, popular in Cambridge and at DebConf.) Wednesday was the Day Trip. One day at DebConf is dedicated to socializing while seeing some of the local culture of the hosting city/country. This year there was an option of rafting (with some white water) or visiting a historical monastery and hiking to a waterfall with several grain mills powered by diverted water. This is the first time I had seen one actually grinding grain. (It's mainly a historical tourist attraction, but I don't know what happens to the flower made.) We then met at the rafting location for a BBQ lunch. Apparently there was some miscommunicaiton and the rafting place was not prepared for 70 or 80 people who wished to go rafting, so some did not get to raft until after lunch, and I'm not sure all that wanted to did. Dinner was back at Bosna. Thursday was another normal conference day, with the new wrinkle of distributing food tickets since Bosna was not willing/able to follow our instructions on who should be allowed to eat at Debconf expense. Those who wished to dine with the other Debconf attendees could purchase the tickets from the front desk, although this was not well publicised and few people took us up on it. The special "Conference Dinner" was Thursday night. This was held at a restaurant on the 14th floor of a building a few blocks away, and was a fancier buffet. There didn't seem to be much difference between the first and second course, and they ran out of desert before many people got any. This one was not as memorable as the one in Mexico, but that one was for the wrong reasons, including an unplanned indoor waterfall. After the dinner I played Mao again, this time till 2am. Friday was the only day I did not arrive at the venue in time for the first session (10am). Saturday I opened the front desk by myself again. In the afternoon was the "Debbugs Skills Exchange" that was requested by several people, so Collin Watson, Ian Jackson and I gave some information about it and Don Armstrong (who has done most of the recent coding on debbugs) participated via voip. (Debbugs is software for the Debian Bug Tracking System, often called the BTS.) Collin and Ian are emeritus members of the BTS team, and not active in it, while I am handling the spam filtering and haven't done much with the rest of the BTS. This was in the small "Meeting Room" (rather than the Auditorium or the round room) so we don't have to worry about video archives of it being available. (All the sessions is the two main rooms were streamed live on the internet, and will be edited and archived on http://meetings-archive.debian.net/pub/debian-meetings/2011/debconf11/.) We created a mini intro to the BTS document at that session that should be cleaned up and published. Less than two hours after that talk, the conference was over and teardown was started. As usual, the teardown and cleanup of what we had set up over several days was done is several hours, with many people helping. Sunday was leaving day. I was one of the people on the 11am charter bus to Zagreb DebConf arranged. The two such charter busses were an excellent idea, since the normal busses and trains would not have been able to manage that many extra passengers. This actually took longer than the planned 4 hours due to the long lines at the border crossing on Sunday afternoon. Both Bosnia and Croatia check passports both coming and leaving, so it is checked on both sides of the river that is the border between the countries. The check is pretty cursory unless you are from a country that needs a visa. I then had a plane flight to Frankfurt, and am currently in the middle of my 11 hour layover here. After that I fly to Munich early in the morning, have an 8 hour layover, and fly to Los Angeles. This schedule was in order to get flights at something resembling reasonable cost when I did it. From what I saw of Banja Luka, it's a nice place to visit, although most of the people do not speak English. Vegetarians may have a hard time finding meals, and sometimes they try to serve fish to them. (Assuming vegetarian means "no meat".) Transportation to Banja Luka is a bit hard, there are only six or so flights per week to the local airport, and one of the airlines is not on the international ticket sites. Most DebConf attendees flew to Zagreb then took busses, trains, vans, or taxis to Banja Luka (a 2.5-5 hour ride depending on border lines, road construction, etc.). The weather was rainy off and on throughout Debconf, but the day of the Day trip the rain held off until most of us were back and we had a lovely day. Temperatures were warm but not overly hot, and I never needed my jacket. There are many large alarm clocks in Banja Luka, (such as the one pictured here, across the street from the venue) but there doesn't seem to be a way to change the time setting or put them on snooze.

Apparently this statements also holds true for frozen yogurt. An Austrian A1 spokes person has confirmed that the HTC Magic will not receive a 2.1 or 2.2 Android update. One can only wonder about the sugar HTC puts on top of regular Android that hinders themself to update their products. The Austrian A1 carrier sells you the device for a 18 month contract, but actively only supported it for 6 month. I must revise my previous positive review of the HTC Magic. Some HTC speaker had promised earlier this year an upgrade to at least 2.1: HTC Magic 2.1 upgrade. A SFR speaker had promised an update to current Android: HTC Magic and Nexus One 2.2 upgrade. The Webkit Android Browser can be easily tricked into leaking your user and passwords: Android Luecke. Beside the obvious that as a user one shouldn't give out to much data to untrusted third party this opens lots of Google accounts for criminal activity. The inability of the carrier to provide a secure and uptodate device is massively deceiving and certainly not appropriate handling of their defects liability.

It s hard to do a healthy diet outside the home? Whereas many of the activities carried out. Try some tips refer to following a healthy diet that you can do outside. re Dieting to reduce consumption of fats, carbohydrates or sugar? That does not mean you can not eat well. With a few tricks and cunning look of food, you can even a good meal in a restaurant also order food from fast-food restaurant. Try it voyeur tips from DASH, Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension. With these healthy tips you can still eat well and avoid high blood pressure or high cholesterol levels. Well, try telling refer to the following tips: 1. Avoid foods with saturated fats and cholesterol High
But avoid foods that contain saturated fatty acids and also high yan foods contain cholesterol. You can avoid these foods but still give priority to taste, a variety of menus to choose from, even a favorite. If you re eating out make sure the following things:
- Make sure your food is cooked using olive oil instead of butter or
fat if the dish was a stir-fried or something.
- Ask for salad dressing or salad dressings are low in fat.
- If mkan meat or chicken, remove the parts that contain fat such as chicken skin.
- Choose foods with dimaska burned, boiled, or baked. In addition to not using oil, usually healthier. 2. Watchful Against Salt
Another thing to note that this works DASH diet is salt. Because salt can raise your blood pressure, while salt is often used in a variety of restaurants to make food more delicious. You still can control the salt in your food when eating out by doing:
- Ask the waiter to not put salt or MSG in your food.
- Beware of any food that a high salt content such as pickles, soy sauce, broth, bacon, and others.
- Keep the salt from your desk, because usually you will reflexively add salt to the food.
- Reduce the use of mustard, ketchup, pickles, and other Condiment a high salt content.
- Choose fruits or vegetables as the opening menu. 3. Avoid foods with a portion of
But avoid foods with large portions. In addition you will feel
unfortunately if the foods are not consumed, you will feel sick if you eat too much excess. We recommend that you order enough food. Or if that portion is too big, shared with friends is much better. 4. Always Instill Healthy Living Patterns in the Mind
More and more people realize how important a healthy life, making a lot of restaurants started to state that low-fat or rich in antioxidants to the food they sell. Actually do not stop until the food alone, you
also have to think about drinks or dessert healthy what happens to the balance. For example:
- Choose a drink that does not cause side effects, such as mineral water, fruit juice, or herbal tea.
- Expand vegetables and fruits as well as the opening menu to avoid overeating at the main menu.
- If you decide to eat a salad, choose low-fat sauce or put the sauce on the plate edge so that its use is not excessive.
- Avoid mouthwashes that contain high fat like cheese cake. We recommend that you choose desserts such as fruit, sorbet, or fruit jelly. 5. Order careful in Resto Fast Food
Fast-food restaurant is the most dangerous enemy to your diet. But if you are careful, you can still enjoy fast food without the fear of cholesterol or high blood pressure soared and certainly does not ruin your diet program. Here are some tips if your food in the restaurant inginmemesan fast food:
- Take your time choosing foods, read the content carefully to what
contained in one serving. And do not be shy to ask the waiter about
Andapesan food.
- Combine your foods such as grilled chicken with whole wheat and yogurt drinks or low-fat milk.
- Do not order more servings.
- Be aware of and avoid salad dressings containing Condiment bleak high salt soy sauce, ketchup, and pickles.
- To drink mineral water should choose, even if others want to order to avoid fizzy drinks.

So, when I like something, I tend to yap about it for weeks and weeks. Take Icelandic Yogurt, for example. After re-discovering it a month ago, I went on a mini-binge (not a mega as it is too expensive) and spread the word to anyone who would listen. The stuff, especially with fun flavors like ginger and orange, just made my morning. Another fine fine thing out there is the performance group What We Know So Far who give performance-based lectures that mix intellectual insight with artistic flair. They put us regular academics to shame who are a bit more staid, to put it mildly. After seeing them a few weeks ago at the 3rd Ward, I snagged them to give a version of their A-mazing talk on Memes in my class and am organizing a much larger event at NYU for the fall of 2009. This is a sort of long winded way of announcing their up and coming show on April 27th the Hannah Complex, which entertains, among other topics, the nature of common sense: Can there be more than one common sense? they ask on their site. And I can t wait to hear the answer as this is a recurrent topic that anthropologists like to entertain. And in fact one of my favorite essays to teach is on this topic, Clifford Geertz Common Sense as Cultural System, a short excerpt which I found here and below is his thesis in a nutshell:

There are a number of reasons why treating common sense as a relatively organized body of considered thought, rather than just what anyone clothed and in his right mind knows, should lead on to some useful conclusions; but perhaps the most important is that it is an inherent characteristic of common-sense thought precisely to deny this and to affirm that its tenets are immediate deliverances of experience, not deliberated reflections upon it. Knowing that rain wets and that one ought to come in out of it, or that fire burns and one ought not to play with it (to stick to our own culture for the moment) are conflated into comprising one large realm of the given and undeniable, a catalog of in-the-grain-of-nature realities so peremptory as to force themselves upon any mind sufficiently unclouded to receive them. Yet this is clearly not so. No one, or no one functioning very well, doubts that rain wets; but there may be some people around who question the proposition that one ought to come in out of it, holding that it is good for one s character to brave the elements hatlessness is next to godliness. And the attractions of playing with fire often, with some people usually, override the full recognition of the pain that will result. Religion rests its case on revelation, science on method, ideology on moral passion; but common sense rests its on the assertion that it is not a case at all, just life in a nutshell. The world is its authority.

So, when I like something, I tend to yap about it for weeks and weeks. Take Icelandic Yogurt, for example. After re-discovering it a month ago, I went on a mini-binge (not a mega as it is too expensive) and spread the word to anyone who would listen. The stuff, especially with fun flavors like ginger and orange, just made my morning. Another fine fine thing out there is the performance group What We Know So Far who give performance-based lectures that mix intellectual insight with artistic flair. They put us regular academics to shame who are a bit more staid, to put it mildly. After seeing them a few weeks ago at the 3rd Ward, I snagged them to give a version of their A-mazing talk on Memes in my class and am organizing a much larger event at NYU for the fall of 2009. This is a sort of long winded way of announcing their up and coming show on April 27th the Hannah Complex, which entertains, among other topics, the nature of common sense: Can there be more than one common sense? they ask on their site. And I can t wait to hear the answer as this is a recurrent topic that anthropologists like to entertain. And in fact one of my favorite essays to teach is on this topic, Clifford Geertz Common Sense as Cultural System, a short excerpt which I found here and below is his thesis in a nutshell:

There are a number of reasons why treating common sense as a relatively organized body of considered thought, rather than just what anyone clothed and in his right mind knows, should lead on to some useful conclusions; but perhaps the most important is that it is an inherent characteristic of common-sense thought precisely to deny this and to affirm that its tenets are immediate deliverances of experience, not deliberated reflections upon it. Knowing that rain wets and that one ought to come in out of it, or that fire burns and one ought not to play with it (to stick to our own culture for the moment) are conflated into comprising one large realm of the given and undeniable, a catalog of in-the-grain-of-nature realities so peremptory as to force themselves upon any mind sufficiently unclouded to receive them. Yet this is clearly not so. No one, or no one functioning very well, doubts that rain wets; but there may be some people around who question the proposition that one ought to come in out of it, holding that it is good for one s character to brave the elements hatlessness is next to godliness. And the attractions of playing with fire often, with some people usually, override the full recognition of the pain that will result. Religion rests its case on revelation, science on method, ideology on moral passion; but common sense rests its on the assertion that it is not a case at all, just life in a nutshell. The world is its authority.

Growing up in Eugene, Oregon, which like Berkeley or Boulder could have the label "People's Republic of" applied to it, I always thought of "business friendly", as something along the lines of helping huge corporations avoid laws against pollution, or other antisocial behavior. Only after moving to Europe did I begin to get an idea of what the very positive side of "business friendly" is in the US. Truth be told, all countries tend to protect their 'big players' to some degree, be it the US propping up creaking airlines after September 11th, Italy finding various clever ways to get around rules about funding Fiat and Alitalia, or France finding it in their 'national interests' to discourage a potential bid for Danone (yogurt!) by PepsiCo. Some are better or worse (the UK has been pretty good about not interfering), but there is a tendency to want to intervene. Leaving be the discussion over whether those sorts of policies are good, bad, or ugly, the biggest difference between continental Europe and the US is the ease with which new companies - 'startups' can be created and enter a market. As a first hand example, I decided this summer to create DedaSys as a real company in order to better separate my business and personal financial dealings. Were I to do that in Italy or Austria, we would be talking about fees upwards of 3000 Euros (about 4000 dollars at market rates), which is a great deal of money for something that is not making a lot of it at this point in time. Contrast this with what it took to create a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in Oregon, my home state. To have things done up professionally, it's certainly possible to lay down a bit of cash there too, but by trading my time for money, and with the assistance of some nolo.com books about the creation and maintenance of an LLC, I was able to register DedaSys with the state of Oregon for the grand total of 55 dollars, and was actually able to complete the process remotely from Austria prior to going home on vacation, where I did the only thing I needed to do in person: open a bank account. So it costs 1% of what it costs in Italy or Austria to open a company that provides limited liability... a very impressive difference, especially to a small, new company that does not have the connections a Ford or a Fiat will likely have to enable it to deal with all the other paperwork, rules, and regulations to deal with. Add to that a culture of greater risk taking (meaning also more acceptance of failure), better funding opportunities, and... one comes to the conclusion that Paul Graham is right. It's a pity, because the people in Europe are top notch. In Italy alone, I know a bunch of really bright hackers. Granted, some of them aren't interested, and are probably better off not starting a company or otherwise dealing with the business side of the equation, but it's always nice to have that opportunity. In closing, here is another example of bureaucracy in action, from my personal on line journal about life in Italy, and now Austria, which I recently revamped by moving it to the Typo platform: Confronting the bureaucratic beast - registering an Italian domain Two months to accomplish what can be done in ten minutes with a .com!

On a real cooking kick right now. For some reason I felt this strong urge to download and watch Iron Chef shows, which I'd not seen in years. In between watching those, I've been cooking quite a few things, nothing directly related to the shows except for mapo tofu. I've got untried dishes in the fridge, which is very unusual for me, but then I don't normally cook at 11 pm either.. So for the whatever's-available-in-Joey's-fridge battle, the menu is:

• mapo tofu
• frozen yogurt with clementine infused chocolate sauce
• rice salad with balsamic parsnip and carrot garnish
• paprika fried baby squash rings and green beans (planned)