Best of My Blog 2004

These are my pick for Best of My Blog 2004.

Bose-Einstein Condensation
Flores Man
Public Domain
Reuters TV
LED House
Sonic Vision
Space Elevator
Ocean Biogeographic Information System
If Ignorance is a Source of Crime
Many Japanese indies Video
Global Platform Japan

Spice and Herb: French Tarragon

French Tarragon is my herb of the day.
Today I use it with chicken thigh fried with olive oil.
This spice has very sweet aroma, so result is very noticeable.
Very easy but taste professional!

In the other pan, I put garlic, onion, Oregano (herb), and whole tomato.
Oregano matches with tomato.

And in the another pan is boiling water for spagetti to be cooked.

Spagetti to a plate, then layout the chicken, and on top of that is the tomato sauce!

It was a good and nice meal for the night. I drunk two cups of Kenya coffee after that.

Good night!

Coffee: KENYA (from Starbucks)

KENYA is one of the most popular coffee.
This is by far the most normal coffee I've ever tasted. I mean it is great for night and day. Great with meal or desart. I love it very much.
It is not as dark and bitter as Smatra, and not as uniquely aromaed as Sulawesi, but it is not really a normal coffee. It has a nice flavour to it, but not too strong.

Kenya - Starbucks

Indian Melody

I am into Indian food. Every supper I cook with a lot of spice right now.

Now I found great place to learn Indian music.

Indian Melody
Here you find and listen to songs from 1940's 50's 60's and more.

Christmas: Free Holiday Songs for Download

You can download them free in music.download.com'sHoliday Music.

More free music in
Amazon Free Music Download

iPod Lounge has links to free music.

Clean Fish: Pacific Saury (サンマ） , jack mackerel（シマアジ), Calamary(ヤリイカ）

Because I care about fleshness of food I eat, I decide to clean fish by myself.
The first atempt was Pacific Saury. This fish is long but small kind of fish.
It was surprisingly easy. I fried it with olive oil and basil. Because it was not very big fish, also the bone is small enough and can be eaten after fried.

It was not grotesque as I expected.

I tried bigger fish next, and it was jack mackerel(? I think.)
It was bigger and tougher to clean fish. The final result was not very beautiful.

The third attempt was Calamary (squid). It was very easy, and I use it for last night meal.

Next attempt? maybe Pacific Saury again. I am going to cook it with newly learned spices. I cannot wait!

I am using Comprehensive Ocean Dictionary to translate name of fish in Japanese to English.

My Own Masala

Masala means mixture of spices. In India, each house has their special taste of food, because of difference in kind and amount of spice they mix. There are more than 20 spices you can add, so the number of resulting taste is uncountable. This fascinated me and I decide to create my own Masala.

Yesterday I made curry rice. This was my first experiment of creating curry rice without using products on the market.

This is the recipe:
Tomato Souce(AGNESI's Polpa di Pomodora) - About 350g
Onion - 1
Garlic - 3 pieces

Spices
------------------------------
Black Pepper (Malabar) - N/A
Laurel - 1 leaf
Cardamon Powder - N/A
Cumin Seed - N/A
Clove - 3 pieces
Basil (whole) - N/A
Coriander Powder - N/A
Nutmeg Powder - N/A
Turmeric Powder - N/A

Tomato souse and minced garlic and onion all in the pot, then heated till boiled.
Other spices mixed and grinded, and add water to make paste.
Put the spice paste to the pot.

This time I put squid in the curry.

It was delicious. I feel my stomach warm because of the black pepper.

Coffee: Mandeline G1 (GIN-NO-MAME COFFEE)

What I am enjoying right now is Mandeline G1 from GIN NO MAME COFFEE in Tokyo where you can select green coffee beans and they will roast for you. (No website yet.)

Mandeline G1 was my first bean not from Starbucks. It tasted little bit more acidic than the previouses. I don't know if it because just roasted and fresh, I tasted little raw and green.
I prefer previous 2 than this one.

Price: 350yen (100g)
Roast: French Roast (4/5)

Top 10 Breakthoroughs of the Year 2004 Anncouced

Science Magazine has annouced top 10 breakthroughs of the year 2004.

These are the top 10. (Red colored are my interests, and will be studied)

# Winner: Water on Mars. Nasa's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity discovered compelling evidence for the prolonged existence of salty, acidic water on the surface of the Red Planet.

# Runner up: Indonesian "hobbit". A team of archaeologists made the mind-blowing discovery of a new species of human that stood only one metre tall and lived on the Indonesian island of Flores.

# Human cloning. South Korean researchers made headlines across the world after announcing they had cloned human embryos, the first published and "peer reviewed" evidence this technique could work with human cells.

# Understanding condensates. In 2004, scientists made giant leaps in understanding ultra-cold gases called condensates, shedding light on some key problems in physics.

# Hidden DNA treasures. Stretches of "junk DNA" proved to be far more important than previously thought. They turned out to be essential for helping genes turn on at the right time and in the right place.

# Pulsar pair. Astrophysicists discovered the first known pair of pulsars, spinning neutron stars that shoot out jets of radiation.

# Declining plant and animal diversity. There was disturbing news this year about the decline of species diversity from large studies that surveyed amphibians, butterflies, plants and birds.

# Water on tap. New results on the structure and chemical behaviour of water could reshape fields from chemistry to atmospheric science.

# Medicines for the World's Poor. "Public-private partnerships" emerged as a force in 2004, according to Science magazine, affecting the way medicines are developed and delivered to emerging nations.

# Genes in a Drop of Water. This year, researchers hit on a new way to identify lifeforms too small and too remote to see. They collected water from diverse environments and sequenced the genes floating in it.

If ignorance is a source of crime

If ignorance is a source of crime, we should know the history of human violence. This site show you the world crime with pictures and videos. What I disgust the most is when people smile and laugh on other's death and sadness.

History of violence... In 21st Century, we are adding. When will we stop killing others?

http://www.thenausea.com

Rumor: Flash memory iPod with Bluetooth!?

If this story is true, it will be a great product.
It says Apple's new product is Flash iPod w/ Bluetooth. iPod would not have display, so how do you control? Use cell phone everyone has. It will be wireless. Comunication between cell phone and iPod is by Bluetooth Technology. I don't know if your cell phone has to be Bluetooth ready or not.
If they sell under $100 product for this (probably with only 256MB - about 50 songs) , then it will change the world once again. If under $200 (probably with 512MB? - about 100 songs), it will be still a big seller. But if over $200 (maybe with 1GB? - about 200 songs), it will be a disappointment, because I don't know if I want have one.

Browser, Mailer, Calender

These are what I am currently using in my work.

Browser: Firefox 1.0 [website]


Mailer: Thunderbird 1.0 [website]


Calender: Sunbird 0.2b [website]


...yes, they are all from Mozilla.

I highly recommend Firefox and Thunderbird if you are on Windows machine.
If you are using Mac, then use Safari and Mail and iCal (They are standard application on Mac).

Apple provides iCal Library which is very useful place to find free calenders to be downloaded.

And better is iCalShare where people create many kinds of calenders to be downloaded.

iCal format is standard calender format, and I think it will be very popular in near future.

iTunes Radio

I found out that you can add your favourite radio station to iTunes.
What I did was go to http://www.shoutcast.com and search for text "india" (because I wanted india radio station to match with today's meal), then open it with iTunes. You can create your play list called "India Radio Station" and add the radio station to it.

Up next, I am going to transform my room like indian house.

http://www.itunes.com

BitTorrent - Ultimate File Sharing Software

BitTorrent is the ultimate file Sharing Software, and almost 50% of the file sharing traffic is generated by this. People use this to transfer large files like movies and games because of its efficiency. Below is quotes from Yahoo! news.

"It is unusual, perhaps unique, in that the moment you start downloading you are also uploading," he added. "It's what makes it so efficient."

"Bandwidth has been a big barrier,' he said. 'BitTorrent solved that."

" The files on the Web sites are not songs or movies but serve as markers that point the way to other users sharing a given file. BitTorrent then assembles complete files from multiple chunks of data obtained from everyone who is sharing the file."

If you want to know in detail, read this news.

Official Site

Coffee: Sulawesi (from Starbucks)

Sulawesi is what I am enjoying after Sumatra. This is also straight (not blend).
Comparing Sumatra, the aroma of Sulawesi is more unique. There is little acidity also.
I like it. I bought 100g this time.

Starbucks - Sulawesi