Fiorini Restaurant

about 14 hours ago | Suman Thareja: Spice it up!..

Nothing satisfies the desire for carbs better than a good plate of pasta.  Fiorini Restaurant has some great dishes to satisfy the craving! This appetizer portion ravioli di verdura; hand crafted ravioli filled with roasted vegetables, porcini mushroom ragu ($19) is plate licking delicious.  The porcini mushroom ragu has a fresh lemon/lime zest, that leaves you wanting more. Thank heavens [...]

Miya and Elisabeth will style your life.

about 14 hours ago | Queenie Takes Manhattan: Queenie Takes Manhattan

Who are Miya and Elisabeth? Why, they're those lovely ladies you see right up at the top of this post, and they are simply fabulous. I've blogged about my friend Miya's incredible talents before - she is a true artist, and a designer extraordinaire. (She created my header, with which I am in deep, deep love.) Her newest venture is a joint effort with her equally talented friend Elisabeth, and is called You + ME*. (The "you" being, well, you, and the ME being Miya and Elisabeth.)

These two are life stylists. They will help you find the perfect gift, plan the perfect moment, or design the perfect party. Whatever your heart desires. Their goal is to make your life as pretty as a picture, something at which they excel pretty damn hard. Need proof? First, let me tell you this: Miya's wedding was one of the most beautiful, original, thoughtful events I've ever attended. Everything about it was pitch-perfect without being twee, and I've rarely seen a group of guests enjoy themselves the way they did that night. And don't get me started on the super awesomeness of that photo booth (again, see above) and those flowers.

Need more proof? Head on over to their new website, and make sure to check out their inspiring blog, full of cool gift, shopping and cooking ideas. I don't know about you, but I'm ready for some lemon-blueberry pancakes. Like, right now.

Have you RE-worked?

about 18 hours ago | Gurpreet Singh: Gurpreet's Blogs

What's in my DNA today?

about 21 hours ago | Yashasree Barve: Life is Beautiful !!

Around 4-5 years back, when I was a loyal reader of Times of India, I saw this advertisement of a new newspaper being launched. It read "What's BMC digging for? a) Water b) gold c) Petrol". It was so apt looking at the roads that are always dug by BMC for some reason or the other. I tried to give DNA a shot, and really fell in love with it. Today after 5 years, it has become a part of my life, and I really look forward to what's in the DNA today.

It brought in many concepts of Web 2.0 such as readers contributing to news, as well as opinions on latest happenings. It also has a separate edition for kids on sunday called YA! which my kids simply love.

DNA is celebrating its 5th anniversary, and enjoy a snapshot of the cartoons published over these 5 years !
Looking forward to a continued relationship with you DNA ! 

Is IT about process or technology?

1 day ago | Biju Bhaskar: Thoughts on enterprise application development...

Neither...... it is the people that matters  : )

Neither Scrum, XP, Kanban etc going to build any great IT/app dev organization. Nor, J2EE, RubyonRails etc.. Always there will be new processes and technologies. But what matters most is the folks you have.

Are you hiring the right people? Are you taking care of your existing folks by focusing on their professional development, giving them growth opportunities, challenging work etc.? Are you understanding their personal goals and aspirations and supporting it? Are you creating an environment for everybody to grow? Are you creating an environment where folks can try new things without fear of failure? Are you managing out folks who are not doing well and are a burden on the team? If you are saying yes to all of these, then I think your organization is on the path to greatness. Then the folks will make the organization great...technology or process doesn't matter at all...

Agree or disagree?

Agile NCR 2010

1 day ago | Shakti Choudhary: Shakti1985's Blog

Hi, Flashback: On 14th July 2010, my manager and my buddy asked me to join Agile NCR 2010 and my perception was ” OH MY GOSH, another conference!!” and also to make it more interesting, it was on a weekend and to make it more dramatic, my travel time to the location was 90 minutes. [...]

Biriyani Cart

1 day ago | Suman Thareja: Spice it up!..

With a cart at pretty much every corner around the city, its hard to know where to go to and what to get!  One of my favorties is the Biriyani Cart(s) on 46th and 6th. They have Lamb over rice (cart on the left) which they claim is the best,  I’m not so sure, I [...]

The Big picture - Tour de France

2 days ago | Rohan Kini: blog@BumsOnTheSaddle.com - Home

Enjoy some fantastic shots of the Tour (Part 1, Part 2)

The Big picture has snapped up the high’s and low’s of one of the toughest cycling races in the world, perfectly.

Brilliant !

Code record/playback using Rails 3 generators

2 days ago | Pat Shaughnessy: Pat Shaughnessy - Home

For a while I’ve been thinking that writing a Rails generator is a fairly difficult thing to do. First you need to learn about Thor and the Rails generator system: what sort of Ruby class you need to write, how to handle arguments, how to run commands like “copy_file”, etc. Then you need to write ERB files to produce the code that you’d like to generate, which is always a chore.

So last night I wrote a gem called generate_from_diff that let’s you create Rails 3 generators automatically using a code record/playback model. Here’s how it works:

• You make a code change in some Rails project, and commit it to your Git repo.
• You run a command from my gem to extract this code change from the Git repo into a new Rails 3 generator.
• You later run this new generator in any other Rails 3 app, and your recorded code changes are “played back,” or applied to your new project, using the Unix patch utility written by Larry Wall.

You’ve created a Rails 3 generator without ever writing a single line of generator code!

Disclaimer: I just got this working last night, so it’s still very rough; but if the idea seems worthwhile I’ll clean it up and try to make it more robust and useable. Another disclaimer: none of this will work on Windows since it relies on the Unix patch utility.

Example: recording code into a new generator

Let’s look at an example to try to make this a bit clearer. Support I create a new Rails 3 application:

$ rails new first_app
      create  
      create  README
      create  Rakefile
      create  config.ru
      create  .gitignore
      create  Gemfile
etc...

And let’s run bundle install to be sure I have all the required gems. This is usually not necessary for a new, empty Rails app, but I want to have my Gemfile.lock file created... more on that in a moment.

$ cd first_app
$ bundle install
Fetching source index for http://rubygems.org/
Using rake (0.8.7) 
Using abstract (1.0.0) 
Using activesupport (3.0.0.beta4) 
Using builder (2.1.2) 
etc...

And let’s create a new Git repo here and check the empty application into it:

$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/pat/.../first_app/.git/
$ git add .
$ git commit -m"New sample app"

This first Git revision will serve as the baseline for recording my new generator, which I’ll do in a minute. The reason I ran bundle install was to insure that the Gemfile.lock file would be included in the baseline... and so not included in the recorded code change.

Now let’s write some code that I can record into a new generator. Suppose at my company I want to create a controller that returns the build number, diagnostics and some other information about each of my Rails apps. I might do this by creating a new controller as follows:

$ rails generate controller build_info
      create  app/controllers/build_info_controller.rb
      invoke  erb
      create    app/views/build_info
      invoke  test_unit
      create    test/functional/build_info_controller_test.rb
      invoke  helper
etc...

And in this new controller I’ll add a single index action:

class BuildInfoController < ApplicationController
  def index
    render :text => 'Some interesting build info about this app...'
  end
end

Finally, I’ll add a route to send “build_info” requests to this action:

FirstApp::Application.routes.draw do |map|

  match 'build_info' => 'build_info#index'

...etc...

This is somewhat silly, but it’s simple enough to use as an example here. Now if I run my app I’ll get this fascinating page:

Next let’s “record” this sample code by using generate_from_diff to create a new Rails generator for it. First, we need to install generate_from_diff:

$ gem install generate_from_diff
Successfully installed generate_from_diff-0.0.1
1 gem installed
Installing ri documentation for generate_from_diff-0.0.1...
Installing RDoc documentation for generate_from_diff-0.0.1...

Next, let’s commit my new controller and routes.rb code changes:

$ git add .

$ git status
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#        new file:   app/controllers/build_info_controller.rb
#        new file:   app/helpers/build_info_helper.rb
#        modified:   config/routes.rb
#        new file:   test/functional/build_info_controller_test.rb
#        new file:   test/unit/helpers/build_info_helper_test.rb
#

$ git commit -m"Build info"
Created commit 037ca3b: Build info
 5 files changed, 22 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 app/controllers/build_info_controller.rb
 create mode 100644 app/helpers/build_info_helper.rb
 create mode 100644 test/functional/build_info_controller_test.rb
 create mode 100644 test/unit/helpers/build_info_helper_test.rb

One last detail: we need to edit the Gemfile to load generate_from_diff into this application:

source 'http://rubygems.org'

gem 'generate_from_diff'
gem 'rails', '3.0.0.beta4'
etc...

Finally we create our new generator by just running this command:

$ rails generate generator_from_diff build_info HEAD~1 HEAD
    create  lib/generators/build_info
    create  lib/generators/build_info/build_info_generator.rb
    create  lib/generators/build_info/USAGE
       run  git diff --no-prefix HEAD~1 HEAD from "."

Ok - what happened here was that I ran a generator called “generator_from_diff” that is located inside the generate_from_diff gem. I provided it with the name of the new generator I want to create: “build_info” in this example. This is similar to how the Rails 3 “generator generator” works: it generates a generator. But next I provide two Git revisions, in this example “HEAD~1” and “HEAD,” the first and second revisions in my Git repo. The first value is the baseline revision: what to compare to. In this example, this is my new, empty Rails application. The second revision is what code to record and save into the new generator, in this example this revision contains all of my controller and routes.rb changes.

Example: playing back code using a generator

Now let’s see if we can use this new Rails generator to copy the build_info controller and route into a different Rails app. First, let’s create a second, new Rails application:

$ cd ..
$ rails new second_app
    create  
    create  README
    create  Rakefile
    create  config.ru
...etc...
$ cd second_app

And next, let’s copy the new generator we just created in the first app, over to this new app:

$ mkdir lib/generators
$ cp -r ../first_app/lib/generators/build_info lib/generators

And now we can just run our new generator to playback the code changes that I recorded above:

$ rails generate build_info
      gsub  lib/generators/build_info/build_info.patch
       run  patch -p0 < /Users/pat/.../second_app/lib/generators/build_info/build_info.patch from "."
  patching file app/controllers/build_info_controller.rb
  patching file app/helpers/build_info_helper.rb
  patching file config/routes.rb
  patching file test/functional/build_info_controller_test.rb
  patching file test/unit/helpers/build_info_helper_test.rb

That’s it! Now I can run the second app and see the same build status page that we had before:

How does this actually work?

Here’s what is going on under the hood. First, when you record your code changes into the new generator like this:

$ rails generate generator_from_diff build_info HEAD~1 HEAD

... the “generator_from_diff” code actually runs the “git diff” command like this:

$ git diff HEAD~1 HEAD
diff --git a/app/controllers/build_info_controller.rb
           b/app/controllers/build_info_controller.rb
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c44d83e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/app/controllers/build_info_controller.rb
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+class BuildInfoController < ApplicationController
+  def index

...etc...

This produces a list of all the text changes that were made from one revision (HEAD~1) to another (HEAD). These are then saved into a file called “build_info.patch,” saved inside the new generator.

Later, the text differences, the “patch,” are applied to whatever new or existing files are found relative to the current directory when you run the generator. This copies the new controller file as well as the new route inside of routes.rb into the other application. The patch file is applied using this command:

patch -p0 < lib/generators/build_info/build_info.patch

I use patch instead of git apply to avoid the need to match revision id’s; these will be different from one repo to another.

Ok sounds interesting - so where are you going with this next?

I think it’s cool to be able to “record” Rails generators without writing any code. If this seems like a useful idea, then I’ll spend some more time to clean it up and make it more robust. For example, I’m thinking of adding some code to warn you before the patch is run if there are unexpected files present, or if some expected files are missing.

Next, I’m considering enhancing the gem to perform search/replace using arguments or options that you specify when recording the generator. For example, suppose you recorded a series of code changes that had to do with a model called “Person.” But imagine that you want to be able to playback those code changes in a target application that might have a different model name, “User” instead of “Person” for example. Then the gem could search/replace on the patch file, both when it’s recorded and again when it’s played back, to cause the generated code to use User instead of Person.

60th and 1st, 25 July, 2:00 PM.

2 days ago | Queenie Takes Manhattan: Queenie Takes Manhattan

Is anyone else addicted to Hipstamatic? Because I am.

Apparently, I'm all about the peaches.

2 days ago | Queenie Takes Manhattan: Queenie Takes Manhattan

Summer's bounty is everywhere these days. On trips to the market, I'm typically overwhelmed by the options on hand: berries, tomatoes, corn, melon, greens, stone fruit...they all abound, and, more often than not, temptation overwhelms my reason. I wind up with three pounds of peaches, or two pounds of plums, and I'm left - all alone - in my apartment, trying to figure out what to do with all of it before it goes bad on me.

This weekend, I decided to make a cake. As I often do when I am in need of inspiration, I headed over to Smitten Kitchen and did a little poking around. I searched for plum recipes, peach recipes, general stone fruit recipes...and hit the jackpot. I wanted something tasty that would showcase the peaches and plums I'd bought, but also be easy to get into the office the next morning. (I made a blueberry-nectarine buckle last week that nearly did me in on the subway.) Deb's dimpled plum cake seemed the perfect solution.

I didn't have enough peaches to make a lemon-and-peach version, so I went half and half: lemon with peaches and green plums. I was also out of light brown sugar, so I used dark - and loved the results. The cake was moist, with a fine crumb, and fragrant with lemon and molasses. And, true to expectations, it was remarkably easy to make and to transport - and, given that it was more or less gone by 1 PM, I'd say it was a hit at the office, too.

What more could a girl ask for out of some Sunday afternoon interwebs poking-about?

Dimply Peach and Plum Cake
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
Scant 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
5 tbs. unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup canola oil
Grated zest of 1 lemon
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Two peaches and three plums, halved and pitted

Place a rack in the center of your oven and pre-heat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter and flour an eight-inch square baking pan, and place on a cookie sheet. Set aside.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a small bowl.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or using a hand mixer fitted with the beaters), beat the butter on medium speed until it is light and creamy, about three minutes. Add the sugar and continue to beat on medium speed, about three minutes more, until the mixture is light, fluffy and uniform. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well to incorporate fully after each addition.

Beat in the oil, zest and vanilla, then reduce the speed to low and add the dry ingredients in two or three batches. Using a spatula, give the bowl a good swipe around the edges to make sure the batter is uniform. Pour into the prepared pan.

Arrange the plums and peaches prettily, cut-side up, in the batter. Jiggle them a bit to make sure their tops are even with the top of the batter.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, checking every five minutes past twenty to see how you're doing. When a knife or tester inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean, you're done.

Set the cake on a rack to cool for at least fifteen minutes. (This will also give the fruit juice that's come out of the plums and peaches to seep into the cake.) When you're ready to serve the cake, run a knife around the edge and invert it onto a plate, then back onto a final plate. (In other words, serve fruit-side up.)

Serves 8.

Chin Chin

2 days ago | Suman Thareja: Spice it up!..

Its been around since 1987, the Chefs at Chin Chin must be doing something right.  There are a few dishes that I would go back for.  The cold string beans and bean sprouts they serve complimentary are worth the trip; wish they had them on the menu!! jumbo prawns szechuan ($29.50), they have a nice kick [...]

Perfect pancakes...and peaches.

3 days ago | Queenie Takes Manhattan: Queenie Takes Manhattan

A couple of years ago, during my annual visit to Nick and Louisa, we ate the most delicious pancakes I have ever tasted. They come to us - unsurprisingly - courtesy of the amazing Ruth Reichl, who added her own personal pancake recipe to the Gourmet cookbook. Their marvelous texture and flavor come mainly from an exorbitant amount of butter in the batter and from being cooked as pancakes should be: gently, in just enough fat, over a moderate flame.

In fact, no matter the recipe, those are the basic principles to making a quality pancake. Too many of us let the skillet get too hot, or fail to wipe it down between batches. Doing so results, respectively, in burned outsides and raw insides, as well as a smoky, gritty mess of a pan. By following a few simple steps, we can all avoid the dreaded "first pancake" syndrome, and turn out perfect specimen after perfect specimen.

First of all: use enough oil, but not too much. If you are using a non-stick skillet, you want only the thinnest film of oil, about half a teaspoon per batch for a large (8 to 12 inch) skillet. For a standard skillet, use just a bit more; you should be able to swirl the oil around a bit - but just a bit.

Keep the heat moderate; when you drop your batter into the pan, it should hiss slightly and not stick, but it should brown slowly to a golden hue, not quickly to dark brown or black. Just keep an eye on it; if the edges of your pancakes bubble rapidly immediately, the pan is too hot. Don't be precious about adjusting the heat as you go; the pan will change in temperature as you add or remove pancakes to it. You must compensate by adjusting the flame.

Wipe out the pan between batches, and add fresh oil. If things have gotten really sticky and icky, use a bit of water to get the brown bits up from the bottom before wiping with a paper towel.

Finally, pay attention! Pancakes are not something you can walk away from. Watch how they bubble, how they firm up around the edges; they will not cook on a perfect schedule, so you must pay attention to them and flip them according to their own time.

Now that you know how to make pancakes in general, why not try these in particular? I've taken Ruth's superlative version and riffed on it a bit; the butter has been browned, and I've added chopped fresh peaches to the mix, in a nod to a) the season, and b) the fact that I didn't have any blueberries in the house this morning.

I hope you enjoy them!

Browned Butter Pancakes
Adapted from the Gourmet Cookbook

1 cup buttermilk (plain old milk will work, too)
2 eggs
3 tbs. canola oil
8 tbs. (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup flour
4 tsp. granulated sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
3-4 ripe peaches, peeled, pitted and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
Additional canola oil, for cooking

In a small skillet or saucepan set over medium heat, melt the butter. Continue to cook just until the butter turns slightly brown and smells nutty. Set aside until cool.

In a small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, eggs and oil, then whisk in the cooled, browned butter. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, backing powder and salt. Stir in the milk mixture until just combined.

Heat 1/2 teaspoon or so of oil in a large skillet over moderate heat until hot but not smoking. Working in batches of two, pour 1/2-cup measures of batter into skillet. Drop five or six peach cubes into each pancake and cook until bubbles have formed on top and broken, about two minutes.

Flip pancakes with a spatula and cook until undersides are golden, about a minute or two longer. Remove from the pan to a warmed plate. Wipe out the skillet between batches, adding oil for the next batch to the clean skillet. Continue until all the batter has been turned into pancakes!

Makes about eight pancakes.

Taksim

3 days ago | Suman Thareja: Spice it up!..

Taksim.  The food is delicious and prices are reasonable at this middle eastern / turkish restaurant. One can survive just on the meze platter: eggplant salad, stuffed vine leaves, zucchini eggplant and peppers, cacik, tabuli and hummus.  Served with unlimited bread. But Why stop there..try the Lamb Adana Platter ($14.95) Squeeze some extra lemon for [...]

Indian state population and crime plot

4 days ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

 

 

 

 

Indian state crime plot

4 days ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

 

• Daman & Diu has the highest crime rate per person. This territory has liquor license whereas the state close to it, Gujarat doesn't. Could that be a contributing factor?
• Bihar, Assam, Jharkhand and Rajasthan don't surprise as the most dangerous states but its interesting to see Kerela with high crime rate per person given its 100% literacy rate
• The safe places to live include Nagaland, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh.

India crime trend

Queenie's Treasury

5 days ago | Queenie Takes Manhattan: Queenie Takes Manhattan

Happy weekend, guys! It's yet another sweltering day here in New York (95 and super-humid, yay!), and I've taken refuge from the sun in my apartment. Before I get down to figuring out what to do with the pound each of plums and peaches I bought this morning, it's time for an edition of the Treasury!

First up this week, an intriguing, slightly haunting story from the New York Times. Rokeby was built by the Astor family in the 19th century, and now, despite its crumbling state, it plays home to a motley crew of Astor and Livingston descendants, most of them artists. The piece is a captivating portrait of the decay of the American aristocracy; at Rokeby, an oval skylight installed by Stanford White co-exists with peeling paint and a lack of adequate heating. The photos have an eerie beauty, and I kind of want to poke around the place on my own.

J. Kenji Lopez-Alt has done it again. The MIT grad's Food Lab series for Serious Eats is one of the most awesome things on the interwebs, and his latest installation - instructions for making an In-N-Out Double-Double, Animal-Style - is the bomb. For those of us who live out here on the East Coast (read: sans In-N-Out), the ability to make a replica of the original right in a home kitchen is a pretty brilliant thing.

If you follow the interior design blogosphere at all, you've probably heard the news: Brides.com is now playing host to the Domino archives. Stories are being added slowly but surely, which is super-exciting, especially for those of us who don't have back issues on hand at home. One my favorite Domino stories of all time featured the design of editor Tori Mellott's 450 square foot apartment. Small space decorating is near and dear to my heart, and Tori's place is downright inspiring. I especially love her kitchen. That toile wallpaper and those kelly-green cabinets make me so, so happy.

Oh. Em. Gee.

6 days ago | Queenie Takes Manhattan: Queenie Takes Manhattan

The march of the peaches continues, my friends, and I couldn't be happier about it. Last week, I spotted a recipe for peaches poached in wine and basil over at Food52 and instantly intrigued. I've always been more of a baker than a poacher, but something about the simplicity of the recipe (wine, basil, sugar, water, peaches) called to me.

The fact that I'd bought two pounds of peaches to no particular end might also have had something to do with it.

Regardless of motivation, the fact remains that I decided to make the poached peaches on Sunday afternoon. I tweaked the recipe in the smallest way (using rosé instead of white wine, since it's what I had on hand), but the results were still heavenly.

After only a few minutes of poaching (and a very easy peel), the peaches were even more luscious and heady than they'd been in their raw form. The syrup heightened their sweetness, and the slow poaching process coaxed the peaches from delightfully ripe to lusciously, sensually soft. The rosé wine lent itself to a rosier syrup than I'd expected, delicately scented with basil. Its remainders will, no doubt, make for amazing cocktails.

Guys, I gotta tell you: this is pretty much the sexiest dessert ever. For reals.

Enjoy. (Insert lascivious wink here.)

Peaches Poached in Wine and Basil
Adapted from TheRunawaySpoon on Food52

1 cup (dry) rosé wine
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 large bunch basil (about two cups' worth of leaves)
6 ripe yellow peaches

Place the wine, water and sugar into a wide-bottomed saucepan and stir to dissolve the sugar a bit. Bring to a boil over medium heat, and continue to boil for five minutes. Turn the heat down and allow the syrup to simmer gently while you halve the peaches.

Cut the peaches in half and gently remove the pits. This can be a delicate undertaking, depending on how ripe the peaches are. Add half the basil leaves to the syrup, then place the peaches in the pan, cut side down. (If all of your peaches don't fit in one go, you can do multiple rounds.)

Poach the peaches cut side down for about three minutes, then turn them (I used my fish spatula) over and poach for an additional three or four minutes. When pricked with a knife, the peaches should give way easily.

Using a slotted spoon, remove the peaches to a plate. Add any peach juices from the cutting board to the pan, along with the remaining basil. Bring the syrup to a boil and cook until reduced by half. Pour in any juices that have collected from the peaches, and let cool to room temperature.

Serve the peaches drizzled with the syrup; whipped cream or vanilla ice cream would also be lovely. Reserve most of the syrup for use in cocktails. Trust me.

Serves six.

Eddie’s Pizza Truck

6 days ago | Suman Thareja: Spice it up!..

You gotta love NYC for its creativity; not that selling food out of a truck is a new concept; just the sheer number of trucks and the type of food they are selling is growing tremendously. Eddie’s Pizza Truck like many others have embraced technology as part of their business and marketing; they are on [...]

Hasgat - A book by Dilip Prabhawalkar

7 days ago | Niranjan Sarade: InLoveWithNature

Yesterday, my father gave a marathi book - 'Hasgat' to me. It is written by a well known and my favorite marathi actor Dilip Prabhawalkar. I could not resist myself to read his book. The book made my travel to office and back to home journey jovial.

The book is a collection of short stories which can be enjoyed any time. The common thread that binds these stories is the element of situational humour and the naive characters in each of these, reminiscent of the P.G. Wodehousian style, which has admittedly been one of Prabhawalkar's literary influences.

Dilip Prabhawalkar has done a great work in theatre, cinema, television and as a writer as well. Please take a look at his website :- http://dilipprabhavalkar.com/v1/indexHtml.htm

I have watched his drama - 'Hasvaphasvi' at least 8 to 10 times. You can see the pictures of six different character roles that he played in that drama at : http://dilipprabhavalkar.com/v1/hasvaphasvi.htm

Isn't it awesome ? :-)

Enjoy reading ...

Haandi

7 days ago | Suman Thareja: Spice it up!..

Haandi is symbolic of roadside truck stops in India/Pakistan; though in NYC its a cab stop.  If you can bear the hole in the wall feeling you could be in for a treat! Not everything is great (stick to the grilled stuff).  The chef is surely liberal with the oil in his/her cooking, though there [...]

Kalustyans

8 days ago | Suman Thareja: Spice it up!..

A proud post for Spice it up! Given Kalustyans in curry hill is known to sell over 4000 amazing spices, tea, snacks, cheeses, olives and a ton more from around the world. Rack after rack filled with spices one might not have even heard of.  Everywhere you look there is the bright yellow label describing [...]

Easy as tart.

9 days ago | Queenie Takes Manhattan: Queenie Takes Manhattan

I think I might have mentioned how much I love blueberries. And how much I love peaches. What, therefore, could be better than a recipe that combines the two into one delicious whole? Not a whole lot.

I'm a big fan of peach-blueberry pie, made with mountains of peaches and a very few berries, but I wasn't thinking far enough ahead to such a creation when I did my marketing last Saturday. The result? A pint of gorgeous, plump blueberries, and two small peaches left over from half a week of snacking on their companions.

The solution? A recipe for a smallish, easy-to-make tart that emphasizes the berries, treats the peaches as a luscious garnish and generally busts any myth claiming that pastry is tricky to prepare. You can use your food processor to make the dough, which you then press into the pan. No rolling means no flour-strewn counters. This recipe is a one-paper-towel-clean-up kind of deal, friends.

Hope you like it!

Simple Blueberry-Peach Tart

For the crust:
1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 stick (1/4 lb.) very cold butter (cut into bits)
1 egg yolk

For the filling:
1 pint blueberries
Juice of half a lemon
Scant teaspoon of cinnamon
2 tbs. turbinado sugar, divided
1/8 tsp. salt
2 peaches, sliced
1 tbs. milk or cream

Lightly whipped cream, for serving

Place the flour, sugar, salt and butter in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the blade attachment. Pulse until the mixture resembles a coarse meal. Add the yolk and pulse a few more times, until the mixture becomes to come together.

Dump the dough into the middle of a tart pan (I use my eight by ten inch rectangular tart pan; you can also use a nine or ten inch circular pan.). Using your hands or the flat bottom of a measuring cup, press the dough evenly into the bottom. Press the dough up the sides to the rim of the pan and set the tart pan on a baking sheet. Refrigerate the dough-lined pan for 30 minutes.

Place a rack in the center of the oven and pre-heat it to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Meanwhile, mix the blueberries, lemon juice, cinnamon and one tablespoon plus one teaspoon of the sugar together in a medium bowl. Allow to sit while the oven pre-heats. Once the oven is ready, remove the tart shell from the fridge and pour the blueberry filling into it, distributing evenly.

Place the peach slices on top of the berries, arranging them evenly over the top of the tart. Sprinkle the entire tart with the remaining sugar and lightly brush the exposed crust with the cream. Place the tart in the oven and bake until the berries are bubbling and the crust is golden, about 25-35 minutes depending on your oven's personality.

Cool on a rack until nearly cool before serving. You can also cool the tart completely, cover it well with plastic wrap, and serve it the next day. (Note: if you are in an area with a lot of humidity, the crust may soften a bit overnight. It's still tasty, though!) Serve topped with whipped cream.

Serves six.

Dhaba

9 days ago | Suman Thareja: Spice it up!..

Since Indian food is so readily available to me at home, I usually don’t venture towards Indian restaurants, especially not buffets.  For $13 this buffet at Dhaba is worth trying.  Authentic flavors (not crazily spiced) and good ambiance (surprising!). Buffet typically has an appetizer, atleast two non veg dishes, 2-3 veg dishes, a ‘salad’ bar, [...]

10 important things while considering a web app

10 days ago | Gourav Tiwari: easy_software = Agile.find(ruby_on_rails)

I came across an interesting article by Fred Wilson:
http://thinkvitamin.com/business/fred-wilsons-10-golden-principles-of-successful-web-apps/

Easily add/remove Vim scripts

10 days ago | Ryan Kinderman: kinderman.net :

I like being able to easily add and remove Vim scripts, whether it's to try one out or easily upgrade to a newer version down the line. Since the directory structure of a script almost always follows the standard runtime directory structure, I simply wrote a script that adds each directory under $HOME/.vim/vendor to Vim's runtimepath, so that Vim includes the vendor directories in its script-searching behavior. That way, I can simply download something like rails.vim, which has files in autoload, doc, and plugin, and would be very annoying to remove manually, uncompress it into its own directory under $HOME/.vim/vendor, restart Vim, and the script is loaded. Removing the script is as easy as removing the directory under vendor and restarting Vim.

To add this behavior, simply put the following in your $HOME/.vimrc file:

let vendorpaths = globpath("$HOME/.vim", "vendor/*")

let vendorruntimepaths = substitute(vendorpaths, "\n", ",", "g")
set runtimepath^=vendorruntimepaths

let vendorpathslist = split(vendorpaths, "\n")
for vendorpath in vendorpathslist
  if isdirectory(vendorpath."/doc")
    execute "helptags ".vendorpath."/doc"
  endif
endfor

For the latest and greatest version of this code, refer to my vimrc.

Auto-saving sessions in Vim

10 days ago | Ryan Kinderman: kinderman.net :

Back when I used Textmate, I liked that you could save projects to a file so that you could quit Textmate and come back later, load the project file up, and have all the files and tabs set up and open the way you had them. Since switching to Vim, I've gotten the same functionality (and more!) using the :mksession command. One thing that's missing in Vim, however, is the ability to auto-save a session. There are a few add-ons that do this, but add a bunch of other functionality that I find unnecessary. Below is a little script I wrote that adds auto-saving sessions to Vim:

function! AutosaveSessionOn(session_file_path)
  augroup AutosaveSession
    au!
    exec "au VimLeave * mks! " . a:session_file_path
  augroup end
  let g:AutosaveSessionFilePath = a:session_file_path

  echo "Auto-saving sessions to \"" . a:session_file_path . "\""
endfunction

function! AutosaveSessionOff()
  if exists("g:AutosaveSessionFilePath")
    unlet g:AutosaveSessionFilePath
  endif

  augroup AutosaveSession
    au!
  augroup end
  augroup! AutosaveSession

  echo "Auto-saving sessions is off"
endfunction

command! -complete=file -nargs=1 AutosaveSessionOn call AutosaveSessionOn(<f-args>)
command! AutosaveSessionOff call AutosaveSessionOff()

augroup AutosaveSession
  au!
  au SessionLoadPost * if exists("g:AutosaveSessionFilePath") != 0|call AutosaveSessionOn(g:AutosaveSessionFilePath)|endif
augroup end

To begin auto-saving sessions, simply run:

:AutosaveSessionOn <session filename>

Your session will then be automatically saved to the given session filename when Vim exits. Also, if you have globals in your sessionoptions list, when you load the auto-saved session, auto-saving will continue to occur to that session file. To turn auto-saving to the session file off, run:

:AutosaveSessionOff

For the latest and greatest version, refer to my vimrc.

Indian state population plot

10 days ago | Prasoon Sharma: Enterprise Software Does not Have to Suck

Here's a quick R plot of population in Indian states and the breakdown by the religion people practice. The data was obtained from this Indian government site. I'm looking for other state-level data to overlay on this to find interesting patterns e.g. crime, literacy etc.

OSCON

10 days ago | Pat Shaughnessy: Pat Shaughnessy - Home

Update: OSCON was a lot of fun... if anyone is interested in seeing the slides Alex and I wrote they’re up on slide share.

I just arrived in Portland for OSCON; my friend Alex Rothenberg and I are going to talk here about on Thursday about using Rails in the Enterprise… about some of the things he and I do at our day job while working with Rails and legacy technologies. We'll post the slides online later this week.

I won’t be blogging here, but if you’re interested in what’s going on at OSCON follow me on Twitter @patshaughnessy2, or the official tag is #OSCON. If you are in Portland definitely drop by and say hello!

Not too cool for school.

10 days ago | Queenie Takes Manhattan: Queenie Takes Manhattan

One of the coolest things I'm doing this summer is going to school. That's right, I'm back on the books! The School of Visual Arts recently created an MFA program for Interaction Design, and I'm taking one of their Summer Intensive courses. So far, it's been a great experience. I'm working on a group project and seriously enjoying the assigned reading.

Our first individual assignment was to write a short essay about one of our design heroes. None of you, I'm sure, will be surprised to learn that I chose one Mrs. Julia Child. I thought I'd share my little essay with you, since I know you love her as much as I do - or, if you don't, you soon will!

Julia Child is widely credited with revolutionizing the way mid-20th century Americans cooked and ate - and rightly so. But while we typically think of Julia's influence flowing primarily from her television shows - The French Chef in particular - it was her innovative way of writing a recipe, more than anything else, that led to her enormous influence on American home cooking and cuisine.

Traditionally, a recipe is written as a list of ingredients followed by a set of instructions in paragraph form. Julia, however, knew that, when presented with recipes in this format, people tend to forgo reading through the recipe ahead of time, instead assembling the ingredients and diving in head-first. This method - cooking a recipe cold, without reading through the steps required - can often lead to confusion, mishaps and a frantic search for necessary equipment.

In Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia and her co-authors addressed this issue by listing ingredients and equipment alongside the relevant steps in the recipe instructions, instead of ahead of them. The result? Cooks were forced to read through the entire process ahead of time, ensuring a firmer grasp on the principles of the recipe and a far sunnier outcome.

Add in the book's incredible helpful, beautiful line drawings that assisted readers in the trimming or artichokes and trussing of chickens, and it becomes clear that Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking is a masterpiece of design as well as of cuisine.