Saag Poutine

Poutine goes to India, Indian poutine comes to Canada

Cory Doctorow at 4:18 AM Sunday, Mar 6, 2011 

Poutine is a Quebecois delicacy made by combining french fries, gravy and cheese curds; when I was growing up, poutine was strictly Canadian, and you could always amaze foreigners by describing the salty, fatty, starchy goodness to be had from the poutine trucks. But gradually, poutine spread across the world -- first I saw it for sale in LA's Sunset Junction, and then I found it on the menu at a cafe in Mumbai's Juhu Beach (optional toppings included corn, pineapple and chicken frankfurters!). Poutine in India! What could be more global?

Turns out that the poutine-subcontinent fusion is bi-directional: yesterday, in Burger Bar in Toronto's Kensington Market, I spotted "Saag Poutine" on the menu -- "paneer cheese simmered in spices, cream and spinach, served over fries." I don't know what unlikely magic has brought Indian food and Quebecois food together, but it is magic -- albeit of the high-carb, salty sort.

At least this article had me learn just a bit more Hindi. I'd figured out that paneer is the cheese in Saag Paneer, the Indian buffet staple that most seem to call "Indian Spinach Casserole." The Wikipedia says Saag is a spinach and/or mustard leaf-based dish eaten in India and Pakistan with bread such as roti or naan, or rice (in West Bengal). Saag can be made from spinach, mustard leaves, or other greens, along with added spices and sometimes other ingredients such as paneer. No spinach, mustard leaves or any other greens in the Saag Poutine, however.

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Brad Morrison, sysadmin to the stars

Tracy Jordan nails it

Hats off to Harry Shearer [once again] for calling attention to something I completely missed with his weekly Apologies of the Week feature.

Surely all y'all heard about Tracy Jordan's blatantly honest remark last Thursday about Sarah Palin on ESPN's Inside the NBA pre-game show before the Knicks beat the Heat 93-88. If you haven't, I recommend that you go directly to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdmYAYBgDIo.

So how was that? Awesome, right? There are advantages to having a crazy image in the press, especially if you're also starring on a TV show that's doing well, whatever that means. In Harry's report of the incident, it was TNT who apologized, not Tracy. Whu-u-u-ut??

That's because he wasn't done yet! IMHO there's nothing sillier than apologizing for something that you're not finished doing. In fairness, Tracy may have simply been freestyling last week, but I think it had to be a feeling of positive reinforcement that caused him to elaborate on his observations of Ms. Palin at the SAG Awards (talk about your organizations with unfortunate acronym pronunciations) yesterday.

I think the problem here is that not enough Americans have seen Larry Flynt's Who's Nailin' Paylin? (sic). Or perhaps too many of us have seen it and have collapsed Sarah with Lisa Ann in our collective subconscious.

Wait -- is that a problem?

I think Tracy Jordan really is crazy. Crazy like a fox.

Fwd: Bruce Schneier RSS is now following you on Twitter!

So I just put a twitter widget on my phone and I decided to start following some people on my long forgotten twitter account to make the widget useful, and then:

The world's foremost expert on security, Bruce Schneier, re-follows me. 

Totally cool! Except I don't really tweet.  And even if I did, I would have nothing of import for such a person to read.

Now I feel impotent and unimportant.  Seriously, the most I could offer this man is a waste of his time.  Surely he has better things to do than read any of the dick jokes that I might tweet.

Holy shit, there are only 700 other people in the world following him?  Why isn't the entirety of the TSA following Mr. Schneier?  Or the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the Mossad, or every other law-enforcement/intelligence agency in the world?

What the fuck is wrong with everyone?  Do they get secret twitter feeds where they're not counted in the subscriber listings? 

I don't think I know anyone who doesn't know who Bruce Schneier is (or who doesn't own a copy of Applied Crytography, or who isn't subscribed to the Crypto-Gram), so where the hell are all his followers?

C'mon, even @oldwhitemansays has 42k followers.  

Now I really hate twitter.

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Dave Maez
You got a Benz, I got a busket: Gimme a dollar!

70s AOR DJ waxes ecstatic, briefly

Totally analog, circa 1978.

8:45 into http://brad-morrison.com/KEXL-part-one.mp3, the studio version of Country Joe & the Fish's Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag winds out its weird ending that couldn't decide between SFX with extra cheese and a classically classic rock ending. Then the late Allen Grimm lets go of the LP he's cued up, and track #4, side 2 perfectly syncs with the final chord of Country Joe's single, right at 9:00, and at 9:04 or so you can hear him vocalize his approval in stereo.

-- 

Come on mothers throughout the land / And pack your boys off to Vietnam / Come on fathers, don't hesitate / and send your DAUGHTERS off before it's too late / And be the first one on your block to have your KIDS come home in a box.

~self-revised lyrics to the Country Joe song

Shit Just Got Old School

Using HTML5 canvas tags as framebuffers with JavaScript.

I saw a post on Buzz with some dude playing around with HTML5's canvas tag.  And I noticed he was accessing the pixel data just like I used to do on my 80286's VGA card!  AWESOME!

So I quickly coded up some color bars for old times sake.



Neato. 

It's kinda lame that Javascript has no means of quickly duplicating arrays of objects, so the only way to handle virtual frames is to use extra canvas objects and push/pull the buffer data to/from them.

Then I went for some classic shade bobs.



Chrome's Javascript interpreter is lightning fast.  Unfortunately Firefox's is slower and has mixed behavior depending on versions.  For example, some versions of Firefox handle the pixel data as unsigned char's correctly, and incrementing a red value that's 255 will set it to zero.  Other versions handle pixel data as integers (even though the allowed range is only 0-255) and decrementing a pixel that is 0 will cause it to become -1.  Chrome handles the data as 0-255, but doesn't allow rotational incrementation without using a modulus on it so incrementing a value that's 255 simply stays at 255.

Finally I whipped up some multicolor plasma.




This effect was a lot easier than on MCGA mode 0x13, since we're not limited to 256 colors, but to a full 24 bit pallette (plus another 8bits of alpha channel data).  I don't have to combine sine tables in one pixel, just in different color channels.

The only reason I ever learned to program was to make my computer make pretty things.  I'm so happy!  And since I'm not on a 12.5mhz CPU anymore, I don't have to do things like inline assembler or pre-computed trig tables.  JOY!

I got my 286 back!  Now to ditch enough work to code up a Mandelbrot roto-zoom...

--
Dave Maez
Helping to code a better tomorrow.

Re: Prop 19 buzzkill

On 11/3/2010 6:12 PM, Brad Morrison wrote:

Well, shucks. Major bummer. I was sure that the citizens of the Golden State would overwhelmingly approve. I guess I should have relocated in time to have citizen voting status.

I have to say that having 46% of voters agree to decriminalize a drug that has been persecuted and demonized for over 60 years is pretty amazing.

Still, I disliked Prop 19.  Besides the fact that it violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution (though as Karl Lehenbauer pointed out, NY had done a similar thing during Prohibition) I thought there were too many problems with the measure: it was worded terribly, it touched on things it didn't need to (employee drug testing), it further gave power to the localities to make things an even bigger legal mess, it still wouldn't make marijuana legal in the eyes of the Feds, and it's fairly redundant since the current state of medical marijuana in California means it's pretty much already legal to smoke pot as everyone knows it's a fucking joke.

The proposition was conceived and sponsored by Richard Lee, douche-bag extraordinaire.  Yeah, he's that gimp in a wheelchair that proclaims himself the Mayor of Oaksterdam and appears in every news special about pot.  If Marc Emery wasn't incarcerated I'm sure he'd have helped fund it as well.  Richard Lee has amassed a small fortune as a "Medical Marijuana Dispenser" (dope dealer). 

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to get high without fear of arrest just as much as everybody else, but to abuse the legitimate use of marijuana as a medicine to do so is fucking wrong.  Richard Lee has done this.  He illegally sells illegally grown weed to many people without any medical problems.  The guy is a tool.  I support recreational drug use, but I support medicinal drug use more, and this asshole has abused and bypassed the law to make a killing without fear of arrest and made a mockery of CA medical weed laws.  Meanwhile the black and latino dope dealers still face large jail sentences if they are caught.

Marijuana will never be fully legalized.  We'd have to break the Single Convention on Narcotics to do that, and breaking treaties isn't cool or likely to happen.  The best we can hope for is for Marijuana to be rescheduled, and for social change to cause local and federal authorities to not even bother with enforcing marijuana laws (like the Netherlands). 

There is currently a proposal under review to reschedule marijuana, but this will take several years to be (most likely) denied again.  Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that they do not wish to prosecute medical marijuana users.  This violates Federal law, and still makes it illegal for said patients to OBTAIN weed.  Under the Controlled Substances Act the Attorney General has the ability to reschedule drugs at his discretion.   So a simple solution would be for him to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II.  This would then allow states with medical marijuana laws to operate as they should.  The government could then close down the illegal dispensaries, and patients could go to the pharmacy and get their Ole Miss grown weed legally (well, after the government cracks down on NIDA, and makes them grow real weed, and not schwag, and either relieves them of their duties or bitch slaps them into not being retarded).

The first step in my book is making sure patients can legally obtain and use quality product without fear of arrest.  After that, then we can look at the rest of us lighting up for fun.

--
Dave Maez
You got a Benz, I got a busket: Gimme a dollar!

Film Adaptations of Comic Books in the New Millennium

Sweet Jebus!  There have been over 50 films released since 2000 that are based on comic books.

Marvel and DC have by far the most comics made into movies, with Marvel being extremely dominant. 

Marvel has released 20 films (12 of which were sequels) since 2000.  All of them were super-hero films, and all but Punisher: War Zone made money.  Unfortunately, while these films grossed a ton of money, only 3 of them were actually any good: X-Men, Spider-Man, and Iron Man.  Marvel has plans to release many more bad but high-grossing movies including more X-Men and Avengers sequels, another Ghost Rider movie and a Spider-Man reboot.

DC has only released 10 movies since 2000, with both Catwoman and Jonah Hex failing miserably.  Though they haven't release as many movies as Marvel, or made as much money, DC also has the Vertigo and Wildstorm imprints that rely on other themes besides super-heroes.  So we don't just have to witness lame Superman and Batman movies (though Christopher Nolan's Batman reboot has been excellent).  We get Alan Moore's characters in Constantine, V for Vendetta, and Watchmen, and other non-super-hero movies like The Losers and Red.

Thankfully independent comics and comics from small publishers give us a much wider variety of topics (though still giving us shit like Hellboy and LXG).  300 is the top small publisher comic adaptation to date, and had a 601% return of investment (larger than any other comic book film) and was probably why producers decided to back Frank Miller's The Spirit which was a box office disaster.

Marvel / DC
2000 - X-Men (Marvel)
2002 - Spider-Man (Marvel)
2002 - Blade II (Marvel)
2003 - Daredevil (Marvel)
2003 - Hulk (Marvel)
2003 - X2 (Marvel)
2004 - Catwoman (DC)
2004 - Blade: Trinity (Marvel)
2004 - The Punisher (Marvel)
2004 - Spider-Man 2 (Marvel)
2005 - Elektra (Marvel)
2005 - Constantine (DC)
2005 - Fantastic Four (Marvel)
2005 - Batman Begins (DC)
2006 - X-Men: The Last Stand (Marvel)
2006 - V for Vendetta (DC)
2006 - Superman Returns (DC)
2007 - Spider-Man 3 (Marvel)
2007 - Ghost Rider (Marvel)
2007 - Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Marvel)
2008 - Punisher: War Zone (Marvel)
2008 - Iron Man (Marvel)
2008 - The Incredible Hulk (Marvel)
2008 - The Dark Knight (DC)
2009 - Watchmen (DC)
2009 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Marvel)
2010 - The Losers (DC)
2010 - Jonah Hex (DC)
2010 - Iron Man 2 (Marvel)
2010 - Red (DC)

Small Publisher / Indie / Foreign Publisher
2001 - From Hell (Indie/Top Shelf)
2001 - Ghost World (Indie)
2002 - Road to Perdition (Paradox Press)
2003 - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Indie/Top Shelf/DC)
2003 - Bulletproof Monk (Indie)
2004 - Hellboy (Dark Horse)
2004 - AVP: Alien vs. Predator (Dark Horse)
2005 - Sin City (Dark Horse)
2005 - A History of Violence (Paradox Press/DC)
2006 - 300 (Dark Horse)
2007 - 30 Days of Night (IDW)
2007 - TMNT (Mirage)
2008 - Hellboy II (Dark Horse)
2008 - The Spirit (Indie/DC)
2008 - Wanted (Top Cow)
2008 - Speed Racer (Shogakukan)
2009 - Surrogates (Top Shelf)
2009 - Astro Boy (Kodansha)
2009 - Whiteout (Oni Press)
2009 - Dragonball: Evolution (Shueisha)
2009 - Solomon Kane (Dark Horse/Marvel)
2010 - Kick-Ass (Indie/Marvel)
2010 - Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Oni Press)
2011 - Priest (Daiwon C.I./Tokyopop)

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgAGaKD0clcNdGtJaDFiM0libnpndUZ5ZGdaay1Jc0E&hl=en&authkey=CKLq46UG

Actors doing multiple comic book characters:

Chris Evans is the king of Comic Book films with 5 different characters:

•     Fantastic Four (2005)  [Johnny Storm]
•     4: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)  [Human Torch/Johnny Storm]
•     TMNT (2007)  (voice)  [Casey]
•     The Losers (2010/I)  [Jensen]
•     Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)  [Lucas Lee]
•     Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)  [Steve Rogers/Captain America]
•     The Avengers (2012)  [Steve Rogers/Captain America]

Character actor Jason Flemyng gets around, too:

•     From Hell (2001)  [Netley, the Coachman]
•     The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)  [Dr. Henry Jekyll/Edward Hyde]
•     Solomon Kane (2009)  [Malachi]
•     Kick-Ass (2010)  [Lobby Goon]
•     X-Men: First Class (2011)  [Azazel]

Ryan Reynolds with 3 different characters:

•     Blade: Trinity (2004)  [Hannibal King]
•     X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)  [Wade Wilson]
•     Green Lantern (2011)  [Hal Jordan/Green Lantern]
•     Deadpool (2012)  [Wade Wilson/Deadpool]

The same for  Morgan Freeman:

•     Batman Begins (2005)  [Lucius Fox]
•     The Dark Knight (2008)  [Lucius Fox]
•     Wanted (2008)  [Sloan]
•     Red (2010/I)  [Joe Matheson]

And Scarlett Johansson:

•     Ghost World (2001)  [Rebecca]
•     The Spirit (2008)  [Silken Floss]
•     Iron Man 2 (2010)  [Natalie Rushman/Natasha Romanoff]
•     The Avengers (2012)  [Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow]

And Bruce Willis:

•     Sin City (2005)  [Hartigan]
•     Surrogates (2009)  [Tom Greer]
•     Red (2010/I)  [Frank Moses]

And Jeffery Dean Morgan:

•     Watchmen (2009)  [Edward Blake/The Comedian]
•     Jonah Hex (2010)  (uncredited)  [Jeb Turnbull]
•     The Losers (2010/I)  [Clay]

And Nick Cage:

•     Ghost Rider (2007)  [Johnny Blaze/Ghost Rider]
•     Astro Boy (2009)  (voice)  [Dr. Tenma]
•     Kick-Ass (2010)  [Damon Macready/Big Daddy]

And Ben Foster:

•     The Punisher (2004)  [Spacker Dave]
•     X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)  [Warren Worthington III/Angel]
•     30 Days of Night (2007)  [The Stranger]

And finally Samuel L. Jackson also plays 3 characters:

•     Iron Man (2008)  (uncredited)  [Nick Fury]
•     The Spirit (2008)  [The Octopus]
•     Astro Boy (2009)  (voice)  [Zog]
•     Iron Man 2 (2010)  [Nick Fury]
•     Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)  [Nick Fury]
•     The Avengers (2012)  [Nick Fury]

* Information gathered from Amazon's IMDb and Box Office Mojo sites.

--

Dave Maez
sellout:DM.upYP1ZArCc:0:0:Dave Maez:/us/SC/Greenwood:/bin/ksh