David Ornstein's Blog

MHC Goes Molecular: Olive Oil Bonbons « My husband cooks

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 06:35:29 GMT

OK, this I've got to try.

I've been reading about minibar recently and I went looking for anybody who'd tried to figure out the olive oil bon-bons. Jackpot!

Guess I'm off to the hardware store in the morning for a piece of PVC pipe...

MHC Goes Molecular: Olive Oil Bonbons « My husband cooks

Foie Gras Brulee

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:35:53 GMT

So, the first item I'll talk about from the N ew Year's Day Feast is the Foie Gras Brulee. This is similar to a traditional creme brulee, but the custard is made with foie gras. The recipe is from one of my favorite cookbooks (Michel Richard's Happy in the Kitchen). Roughly, you make a custard base with diced foie gras in it, using a little ground corriander instead of any sweetener. Then you blend it before cooking in the oven. Cool the custards and then make the crust with some sprinkled sugar and a blowtorch. Brush with a bit of nut oil and balsamic and then add some pieces of seasonal fruit (I used oranges,blueberries and cherries). A final sprinkle of finely chopped pistachios and voila!

Pointui, the definitive user interface for mobile devices.

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:02:09 GMT

I'm trying out this new touch-based UI for my T-Mobile Wing. So far it's pretty nice, but it still need a little improvement. I would absolutely recommend trying it out.

Pointui, the definitive user interface for mobile devices.

New Year's Day Party 2008

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:57:24 GMT

We had our annual New Year's Day party again this year. We invited about a hundred people and about half that many showed up. Along with seeing all of the wonderful people who come visit, part of what makes this great is my chance to really have a blow-out cooking experience. For example, here's the menu:

Blueberry-Cream Cheese Tarts
Foie Gras Brûlée
Guinness Stout Ginger Cake
Marinated Olives
Moules Normandes
Onion Soup Grantinée
Chocolate Petits Pots with Coffee "Molecular Caviar"
Orange-Cardamom Shakes
Parmesan Crisps with Goat Cheese Mousse
Roast Beet and Mâche Salad with Goat Cheese and Toasted Walnuts
Shrimp in Garlic-Sage butter
Side of Salmon Slow-Roasted in Dill
Spinach Pie
Kids Casserole

Yum! All made very much from scratch (e.g., the beef stock for the onion soup started four days prior to the 1st). It was really great to build these things up at a leisurely pace. I did about 2/3 of them and my wife did her usual superb job on the others.

I'll be posting over the next couple of weeks with recipes and more about many of these dishes, but for now I'll post some pictures from the prep and the party so you can get a sense of the event...

The Recipes and Prep Lists: These are the (shorthand) recipes and the prep work laid out in the kitchen on the morning of the first. Orange stuff is what's been done do far.

Hovering: This was the assembly station and people were pretty much collected around this area of the kitchen for the whole party.

Prawns with Garlic and Sage: This was good (but not as good as previous times -- the sage wasn't crispy enough this time).

Coffee Molecular Caviar - Trial Run: I've made a number of different kinds of caviar before using spherification, but coffee was new and the process is pretty sensitive to varying ph-levels -- so we decided to try the night before. It worked out nicely. Here's my lovely wife demo'ing some of the equipment.

Coffee Molecular Caviar - Closer Up: Here's a better picture of the caviar.

Orange-Cardamom Shakes: These are so refreshing it's not even funny. Like revenge, they're best served nice and cold. This is prep'ing the milk mixture with the toasted cardamom seeds, oranges, etc.

Blueberry-Cream Cheese Tarts: Making the tarts a couple of days in advance. They freeze really well.

Guinness Stout Ginger Cake: A few ingredients (including molasses in the measuring cup).

The Workhorse: My favorite piece of kitchen equipment. The orange dutch oven on the front is full on onions beginning the five-hour caramelization process to eventually go into the onion soup.

Beef Stock: Bubbling away for 6 hours a few days in advance.

My Son And Somebody's Shoes: Not his :-)

When I get a bit more time, I'll start posts on each of the recipes. If you have a particular one you want to know about, let me know and I'll prioritize that one.

Getting Things Done using Outlook 2007 - Part 3 - IMPLEMENTATION: How to configure all of this in Outlook 2007

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 22:39:42 GMT

In the previous two posts, I described some basis of Outlook 2007 and using it for Getting Things Done as well as provided a walkthrough of how my configuration of Outlook feels once it's all set up. In this final post, I'll describe how to actually configure Outlook 2007 to get it set up this way.

Configuration Steps

Here are the steps to configuring Outlook:

Categories
Creating the IN-Incoming search folder
Handling mailing lists: Tier2 rules and search folders
Creating the Age field
Creating the Next Action field
Shortcuts: configuring the navigation pane
The GTD custom toolbar
"Waiting For" Rules
Todo List Views

Creating the IN-Incoming search folder

To create the IN-Incoming search folder to show only unflagged mail, create a search folder using File-->New-->Search Folder.

Then pick Choose...

Pick Criteria... and go to the More Choices tab.

Select "Only items which" "have no flag" and hit OK.

Then pick Browse... uncheck your whole Outlook store, check your Inbox and be sure to uncheck Search Subfolders:

Click OK all the way out of the dialogs.

Handling mailing lists: Tier2 rules and search folders

I use rules to keep most of my mailing list subscription mail out of my Inbox. To do this, I have a subfolder under my Inbox called Tier 2 and then under that I have multiple folders, one for each mailing list:

I create these folders manually. Then I setup rules using the rules wizard to send mail from my mailing list subscriptions to the appropriate folder when it arrives. I won't describe how to use the Rules Wizard here.

Then I create a Search Folder that aggregates all of these Tier 2 folders AND all of my RSS feeds into one virtual folder that I can Group By folder and, voila!, I've got a quick an easy way to scan through all of my subscription mail quickly.

To create the Tier 2 search folder, create a Search Folder as above but setup the folders to include Tier 2 and RSS Feeds with subfolders included:

Creating the Age field

When I'm scanning a list of items in my Todo List, I often like to see how old they are quickly and easily. Having the date show for the item takes too much mental calculation, so I've added a custom calculated field that shows me something my brain can process at blink-speeds:

To create this Age field, switch to the To-Do List and bring up the Field Chooser by right clicking on the column headings (e.g., where it says "Received") and picking "Field Chooser."

The field chooser lets you drag fields out to the folder view, adding columns to the view but it also lets you create a custom calculated field. Do this by by clicking New...

This will give you a dialog that you can use to create the Age field:

For the Name, type "Age" and for the Type select "Formula." Then for the actual formula, paste this in (all as one line):

IIf(DateDiff("d",[Received],Now())<8,IIf(DateDiff("h",[Received],Now())<24,"Today (" & DateDiff("h",[Received],Now()) & "h)",choose(Weekday([Received]),"Sunday","Monday","Tuesday","Wednesday","Thursday","Friday","Saturday")),DateDiff("d",[Received],Now()) & " days (" & Left([Received],Instr([Received]," ")-1) & ")")

This will create a new Age field in the field chooser that you can now drag out to your Todo View (do this).

Creating the Next Action field

Create a Next Action field that shows the Next Action to take on a message or a task. This is the subject of the item unless it's been flagged -- in which case it's whatever you set the "Flag To" to be.

Using the field choosed, create another custom field just like in the last step. But this time, set the name to "Next Action" and the Type to "Formula" and use this formula:

IIf([Follow Up Flag]<>"Follow up",[Follow Up Flag],[Task Subject])

Drag this field into your To-Do List view and remove the Task Subject column that's there by default.

Shortcuts: configuring the navigation pane

OK. Now we've got everything we need to build out the navigation pane:

First, select the dropdown at the bottom of the navigation area and pick "Navigation Pane Options."

Put a checkmark next to the Shortcuts item and move it to the top of the list using the Move Up button.

Then shrink the navigation pane down so it only shows the Shortcuts. This will give you quick and easy access to the shortcuts you need.

Now use Add New Group and Add New Shortcut to add your groups and folders. I recommend the following groups (in this order):

Action
In
Out
File
Time

You can see from the screen shot above what I put under each of these. Your choices will vary under File and Time.

The GTD custom toolbar

I like to have quick and easy access to the tools I use when handling all of my mail. For that I create a custom toolbar. To do that, right click on the toolbar, pick Customize, then New... and name your toolbar GTD. Once you have the new (empty) toolbar, you can drag things on to it from the other toolbars or from the Commands list in the Customize dialog.

My toolbar has:

Categories
The "Custom" flag action (which lets me get right to entering in the Next Action in the Flag To field)
The Current View drop down (critical when I'm working in the To-Do folder)
The Move To drop down so I can file mail quickly

"Waiting For" Rules

95% of the things I find I'm "waiting for" are responses to mail messages I've sent where I'm asking for or expecting a response from one or more people. To make it easy to keep track of these, I simply cc myself on the message and then use a rule to flag all incoming messages from me that have me on the cc line. The messages get flagged for Followup and get assigned to the !Waiting For category:

Todo List Views

As mentioned, because you can't have search folders on the To-Do list, I use views on the To-Do list. Here are the views I setup:

[Action]

This view is the one I use when I'm going to actually do some work. It shows all items with an @context, group by context.

Fields
Add Next Action and Age and remove Task Subject

Group By
Categories

Sort By
Priority

Filter (SQL)
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811c000b" = 0
AND
("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '@%' )
AND NOT
("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '!%' )
AND NOT
("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '@@%' )
)

[Agendas]

This view is the one that shows topics I need to cover when I next see or talk with certain people. All items with an @@agenda category are shown, grouped by person.

Fields
Add Next Action and Age and remove Task Subject

Group By
Categories

Sort By
Priority

Filter (SQL)
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811c000b" = 0 AND "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '%@@%')

[Process]

This view shows me everything that I've moved out of IN-Incoming, but that is still missing either a context, a next action or both. When I do my daily processing, I use this view to make sure everything from this view has a context and a next action -- at which point there's nothing left in this view :-)

Fields
Add Next Action and Age and remove Task Subject

Group By
Categories

Sort By
Priority

Filter (SQL)
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811c000b" = 0)
AND
(NOT(
("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '@%' )
OR
("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '!%' )
OR
("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" LIKE '@@%' )
)
OR
NOT ("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x001a001e" = 'IPM.Task' OR "urn:schemas:httpmail:messageflag" <> 'Follow Up'))
AND ("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" <> '!Waiting For' AND "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" <> '!Someday')
AND
("http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x0e05001f" LIKE '%Inbox%' OR "http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x0e05001f" LIKE '%Tasks%')

[Someday]

This shows my items I'm going to get to Someday (Maybe!).

Fields
Add Next Action and Age and remove Task Subject

Group By
Categories

Sort By
Priority

Filter (SQL)
("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" = '!Someday' AND "http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811c000b" = 0)

[Waiting For]

This view shows everything I'm waiting for from somebody else.

Fields
Add Age (leave Task Subject)

Group By
None

Sort By
Received

Filter (SQL)
("urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office#Keywords" = '!Waiting For' AND "http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/id/{00062003-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}/811c000b" = 0)

There doesn't seem to be any way to control the order of these views in the list, or I'd put mine at the top.

_________________________________________________________________________

Phew! That's a lot of Outlook hacking.

That's how I've set up Outlook 2007 to work with the Getting Things Done method. It's working pretty well so far.

Please let me know what you think abotu this post. If it needs to be clearer, if you think there are better ways, if I made mistakes, etc. please let me know by leaving a comment!

Getting Things Done using Outlook 2007 - Part 2: WORKFLOW: The GTD basic workflow, my adaptation in Outlook

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 05:58:55 GMT

In my last post I gave an overview of the elements of Outlook that I leverage in my implementation of GTD. In this post I'll cover two things: the basic Getting Things Done workflow and how this shows up in Outlook as I've got it configured.

The Getting Things Done Workflow

GTD suggests a five activity workflow:

Collect - In this step, you collect all your stuff. This is about getting all of your thoughts and notes and email and everything else into one place so you do something with it. For some people, there's a lot of stuff in the physical world. For me, there's very little. A few notes here and there. For the most part, my collection process is non-existant because I don't have much that isn't already in Outlook somehow.
Process - In this step, you "process" all the stuff you have collected. The key to processing an item is deciding whether action is required or not. If action isn't required, you can delete it or file it. If action is required, the two most important things to figure out are: (1) the next action you'll take (call mom, read a doc, etc.) and (2) the context in which you'll take the action (when I'm on my computer, at home, etc.). Anything you can just do in two minutes you just do. There are other components, but that's the core for me.
Organize - As I understand it, this step is mostly about organizing the supporting materials that you need for your actions. For me, this is mostly about what I file away (since it's easy to find once it's filed -- in Outlook).
Review - On a regular basis (usually, once a week) review everything! See if there are new things on your mind you need to get into the system. Review priorities. See if there's stuff you're waiting for that you should have gotten by now, etc.
Do - "Doing" is about your previously identified "next actions." Also, doing happens in a particular context. One of the key things about GTD is that you figure out the action and context during Processing. You don't do the doing then. Later, when you find yourself with some time in a particular context (half an hour with no meetings and time to do something), you flip right to the context list that corresponds to where you are and just start doing!

For me, this translates into the following condensed "zones" in Outlook:

In - Similar to my inbox, this is where fresh stuff arrives in my system and it lives here for a short period of time until I decide if I need to take action on it, file it or delete it. In Outlook, I implement this with search folders.
Process - This is where I deal with everything that needs action. Stuff needs processing once I've flagged that I know I need to take action but I haven't figured out what I need to do (next) or the context in which I'll do it. This is implemented as an Outlook view on the To-Do list.
Do - When I have time in a context, I start working through the next actions previously identified for that context. This is implemented as a set of Outlook views on the To-Do list.

For the rest of this post, I'll show how these three "zones" feel in Outlook. In upcoming posts, I'll describe how the implementation works in Outlook.

In

My "In" is split into two search folders:

The first folder is called "Incoming" and it's a search folder that shows me all unflagged mail in my Inbox. I look at unflagged mail because once mail is flagged, I've decided that I need to take some action on it and I don't need to see it until later when I'm able to either do the next action or think through what the right next action will be. My other "In" folder (I call it Tier 2) is for all of the mail I get on mailing lists. Outlook rules move these all out of my Inbox so they don't clutter things up.

Mail sits in my Incoming folder for typically no more than a day or two. Sometimes it's only there for a few minutes. When I'm looking at my Incoming (something I do very briefly 10-15 times per day), I can do one of four things with an item there: delete it, move it to a file folder, reply very quickly or mark it for later action. When marking it for action, I could just flag it () if I'm in a hurry, or I could process it right then and there by selecting a context and a next action.

Contexts in my implementation are done with Outlook categories. Here's a partial list of mine:

My categories break down into three main groups:

'@@' - Agendas for discussion with specific people. Above you'll see Cynthia, Ron, etc. Having items categorized using these agenda contexts mean that when I finally get time with these people I don't forget to bring something up.
'@' - Normal contexts ala GTD, like "Computer" and "Work." For me I have an additional one called @Focus. This is what I use for when I have an extended stretch of time that I can really use to work on something that takes uninterrupted concentration at work. I actually book time on my own calendar for @Focus work (not usually for specific items but just multi-hour blocks for whatever focused time is most important when that time arrives).
!Someday and !Waiting For - Someday is for the GTD Someday/Maybe items. Often the next action isn't clear and you don't have time to do it anyway even if it were :-). !Waiting For is how I mark anything that I am waiting for back from somebody.

Next actions are indicated differently for mail messages and tasks. For tasks, I just put the next action in the Subject of the task. For email, I use the Flag To field when flagging the message:

So, to summarize: mail leaves the "In" zone in one of two ways. Either I just quickly flag it to indicate I need to take action but don't have time to think about it more now (I'll figure out action and context when I process next) or I set the context (using a category) and next action (using Flag To). Either way, it just disappears from the Incoming view.

Process

When I have a bit of time (on average once per day), I put my attention on the Process zone. This is where I have everything that I know needs some action but I haven't thought through the specific action and context. To get here, I go to the To-Do list and then bring up my [Process]. This view filters everything on my todo list down to those things that need action and/or context identified.

Here's how my Process list looks right now:

When it's time to process, I go through each one of these items and identify a Next Action and a Context (including Waiting For or Someday). Again, the Next Action is done by flagging using Flag To and setting Context is using a category.

There are two fancy things to note about this view.

The first is the Age column. I've setup a custom field that will show the Received date for the item in an easier to use format than just a full date/time. Just a bit easier on me when scanning.

More importantly is the Next Action column. This column shows the next action that's been identified for the item in the list. If no action is defined, then the subject of the item is shown. While the actual logic to make this custom column work is somewhat complex, the basic rule to remember is that the Next Action for a task is its subject and the Next Action for a mail message is the Flag To. So a task, by definition, always has a next action. A mail message doesn't. When a mail message first shows up in the Process queue, the Next Actoin column will just show the subject of the message until you flag it for a specific next action -- at which point the column will, quite nicely, show you the next action to take.

Of course, once an item has a context and a next action, it just disappears from the Process view -- ready for actually Doing (the Getting Things Done part of Getting Things Done :-)).

Do

Phew! That was a lot of work before actually doing any work...

The good news is that once you've done the processing, when you finally get around to being ready to "do," you're hyper-prepared. When I find myself in the car ready to make some calls, I have my "@Calls" list already done. When I have a free half-hour at my computer, I consult my @Computer list and just start doing Next Actions.

All of these items show up in context-based views of the To-Do list:

We've already discussed the [Process] view.

The [Someday] and [Waiting For] views are simple -- they just show the items that are categorized with !Someday and !Waiting For, respectively.

The [Agendas] view shows a list of items that I need to talk to people about -- grouped by person for easy access:

The [Action] view shows all of the core action contexts: @Computer, @Home, etc.

And in all of these action views the most important thing is that the the Next Action shows up right there in front of you. (Yeah, I did blur them out because they're private).

So, that's pretty much it. I check my Incoming fairly regularly but it's very fresh stuff and things don't stay for more than a day. Once or twice a day I 'process' and figure out next actions and contexts for everything I need to take action on. Then, when I find myself in those contexts -- I just do!

In the next post I walk through how I make all of this work with Outlook.

Getting Things Done using Outlook 2007 - Part 1: BASICS Navigation, Key New Outlook Capabilities

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 06:14:09 GMT

I recently had the David Allen company come to Microsoft to present their two-day seminar on Getting Things Done: Managing Workflow, Projects, and Priorities. I spent some time a couple of years ago trying out this method based on the book and the Outlook add-on from Netcentrics. My implementation failed for a number of reasons. One of them, I think, was that the tools in Outlook (even with the pretty good add-in) just didn’t work well enough for me. Some of these limitations of Outlook have now been removed and the seminar was a catalyst for me to try a new implementation – this time using Outlook 2007’s new capabilities. From my perspective, the most important new capability in Outlook 2007 is the ability to have a blended treatment of tasks and mail – the two primary sources of action (for me, at least). And from this basic capability, I’ve built my implementation.

A number of my colleagues at work (as well as the folks from David Allen) were interested in how I pulled off what I did in Outlook and so I figured I’d go ahead and bite the bullet and write it up. This blog entry is the first entry in a series in which I’ll describe how I’ve done this.

The posts are as follows:

Part 1 - BASICS: Navigation, Key New Outlook Capabilities [this post]
Part 2 - WORKFLOW: The GTD basic workflow, my adaptation in Outlook
Part 3 - IMPLEMENTATION: How to configure all of this in Outlook 2007

The Basics

Before I move on to the next few posts describing how I have configured Outlook to match how I'm using GTD, let me describe just a couple of key Outlook capabilities that make this all possible:

Easy and Quick Navigation - For me, it all starts with having a simple and clear launching pad from which to dig in to the various activities I need to use to manage action using Outlook. This breaks down into a set of folders across various types (email, tasks, calendar, etc.) While I really like many of the things about the new Outlook UI, for keeping myself focused on the right GTD workflow, I find that I need to get rid of many of those choices. In particular, the ability to easily get at my whole, unfiltered Inbox is actually a big problem. Checking what's in the inbox is so ingrained that I've removed it from anything I have easy access to. Instead, I use a filtered list (called "IN-INCOMING" built with a search folder -- see Part 3) that only shows me mail about which I haven't yet decided if I need to take action. I take a shortcut to this folder and all the other regularly important folders and put them onto the Shortcuts area in Outlook:

To-Do: Tasks + Flagged Mail - Outlook 2007 provides a new "virtual folder" called To-Do that will show all Tasks and all Flagged Mail together in one combined list. This is great and is the basis for my GTD implementation.

Search Folders - Normally when you look at a folder, you see all the items in it. When I look at my Sent Items folder, I see all the mail in Sent Items. When I look at my Inbox I see everything in my Inbox. You've probably noticed that you can create Views on folders that combine filtering, sorting, etc. This lets you, for example, create a view for "all flagged mail that is older than a week" or "all mail to me." I find views OK, but Search Folders are better. With a Search Folder, you can create a new "virtual" folder that has a set of filter criteria defined and it'll look like a folder with only items that match a certain set of criteria. And the results can be pulled from across many folders (e.g., "all flagged items in my Inbox, Sent Items or File folder").

Views - OK, I know I said I prefer Search Folders. Unfortunately, with Outlook you can only have search folders that search for mail items. Because the foundation of my approach takes advantage of the blended treatment of tasks and flagged mail, I can't use Search Folders all the time. In particular, to build filtered ways to look at the To-Do list, I need to use vanilla views.

Complex Filter Criteria - When defining filters for a view or for a search folder, you have probably used the UI that lets you specify various things like when something is due, whether it's flagged, what the categories are, etc. However, if you look closely on this dialog, you'll notice that there's a SQL tab. On this tab you can define very, very advanced queries that let you build more complex filters that are possible on the rest of the tabs. In some of my implementation of GTD, I've had to build some pretty complex queries. The good news is that I've figured them out and I'll just provide you the text to paste into the SQL field.

Custom Toolbars - I like to have quick and easy access with one or two clicks to the actions I use when I'm trying to deal with all of my email and tasks. So I've created a custom toolbar and put certain buttons right on that toolbar for easy access. On my toolbar, I have (from left to right): the categories button, the Flag (Custom) button [with a slightly customized icon], a quick drop-down to show the views available for the current folder (I only use this for the To-Do list) and the Move To button to quickly move items to a folder when I'm organizing and filing things away.

Those are the building blocks. In the next post, I'll describe the basic workflow for Getting Things Done and how I experience Outlook when I use it for this workflow. In the posts after that, I'll describe how to configure all of this in Outlook.

Crab Salad with Corn Sheet Sauce

Mon, 04 Sep 2006 05:23:11 GMT

So I've been reading about Grant Atchez, chef at Alinea in Chicago. He worked for a while at the French Laundry (the source of my favorite and most-dirtied cookbook). Then he branched out on his own and has been creating some pretty wild stuff (molecular gastronomy).

Last weekend I was reading The Way We Eat in the Sunday New York Times magazine and found an article about Grant -- and also a molecular gastronomy recipe that's adapted by Grant for us poor home chefs.

This weekend, I tried it out. Here's the recipe with my notes (in red). The verdict? Yummy and startling.

Adapted from Alinea

8 ears yellow corn (or 7 cups frozen kernels)
[I used fresh ears]
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons sugar, plus more to taste
2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
Cooking-oil spray
½ cup coconut milk
1 tablespoon mild curry powder
1 avocado, peeled, cored and cut lengthwise into 1/3 -inch slices
[As usual, I always manage to forget an ingredient. I'm sure the salad would have been even better with the avocado -- but I forget it. Sure didn't notice at the time, though, it was so tasty anyway :-)]
1 lime
40 small or 20 large basil leaves
[I only ended up using about half of this. It seemed like way overkill to use more.]
8 ounces crabmeat, preferably large leg sections, cleaned
[I used Alaskan King Crab; yum]
½ red bell pepper, cored and cut into 1/8,-by- 1/8,-by-1 ½ -inch strips.

1. Cut the corn kernels from the cobs. Set aside ¼ cup for the garnish. Over a bowl, scrape each cob with the back of a knife to release the juices.
[There was almost no juice in my corn ears. Nevertheless, the measurements below about yield for the corn juice were right no the mark.]

2. Place the kernels and juice in a blender. Blend briefly on low to break up the corn, then on high for about 2 minutes to make a purée. If using frozen corn, add ¼ cup water to the blender. (If the corn will not blend, stop the machine and loosen the kernels with a spoon before trying again.) Strain the purée through a sieve placed over a saucepan and lined with 3 layers of fine cheesecloth. Press on the solids with a ladle to release the juices, then wring out the corn-filled cheesecloth to extract the remaining juices. You should have about 2 ½ cups corn juice.

3. Add the butter, 2 tablespoons sugar and ½ teaspoon salt to the saucepan and place over medium-low heat. Season with more sugar and salt to taste. Whisk continually until the butter melts, then stir until the sauce lightly coats the back of a wooden spoon, 12 to 16 minutes. Transfer to a heatproof container and cover with plastic wrap to cool.
[I was a bit worried at this step. Within about one minute of the butter melting, the sauce was already thickened like a custard. And already coating the back of a spoon. I wasn't sure how much longer to cook it. In the end I settled on about 8-9 minutes. Seemed like it might burn if I went longer. The sauce -- and, thus, the corn sheets -- seemed to turn out fine.]

4. Whisk the cooled sauce until smooth. Cover an 8 ½ -by-12-inch rimmed cookie sheet with wax paper. (Make sure the cookie sheet fits in the freezer and that its surface is perfectly flat.) Spray the wax paper with cooking oil, then pour the sauce over it in a thin sheet (about ·2-inch thick). Drain off the excess sauce and place the sheet in the freezer. Repeat with a second cookie sheet.
[My sauce was pretty viscous. I actually had to spread it around with a rubber spatula like a loose frosting almost. From the description I had expected it to be runny enough to spread out on its own, but it needed a bit of help. Again, it didn't seem to suffer as a result.]

5. Combine the coconut milk, curry powder, 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 ½ teaspoons salt in a small saucepan. Simmer for 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat and chill.

6. Cut the avocado slices in half horizontally. Zest the lime, then peel and segment the lime and cut the segments in half horizontally. If using large basil leaves, tear them into small pieces.
[Note that the published recipe tells you in this step to segment the lime, but never mentions the segments again. I just added a couple to each salad as a nice bite-sized surprise. They fit in well and were great when you reach them.]

7. Cut each of the frozen corn sheets into 4 3-by-8-inch rectangles, slicing through the wax paper. Return the cookie sheets to the freezer.

8. To serve, arrange a few pieces of crabmeat, avocado and red pepper flat in a 2-by-6-inch area on each of 8 plates. Do not pile the ingredients. Top each salad with a few corn kernels, a little lime zest and basil. Dab with a touch of coconut sauce. Remove a rectangle of corn sauce from the freezer. Peel the wax paper from it as you lay it directly over a salad. Work quickly — the sauce melts rapidly and will stick to the wax paper unless frozen solid. Do not worry about breaks in the sheet. As the sheet thaws, the sauce will envelope the ingredients below. Garnish with corn kernels, lime zest and basil. Repeat with the remaining 7 salads.

Serves 8.

Next up - Grant's craziness with Grapefruit and Broccoli.

Extra items in ASP.NET controls beyond what's data-bound

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 03:26:50 GMT

Found good info about how to add extra items above and beyond those data bound in ASP.NET.

See DataSource controls really do work in ASP.NET Whidbey

Delete confirmation dialogs with ASP.NET

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 04:01:40 GMT

Quote:

DetailsView and FormView controls support delete operations and delegate the execution to the underlying data source control. If the data source control is configured to execute the delete operation, all works fine, otherwise an exception is thrown.
The DetailsView generates command buttons automatically and doesn't expose them directly to page code. How can you add a bit of Javascript code to ask for confirmation? Here's the code...
Smart Delete on ASP.NET

SqlDataSource and identity columns

Mon, 03 Apr 2006 17:08:26 GMT

Everybody seems to think you need a stored procedure to get back the identity of a row inserted using a SqlDataSource. You don't. Instead, you can just tack on a select to the end of the insert and use that to get back an output parameter -- that's available in the inserted event for the SqlDataSource.

For example, in the insert do this:

InsertCommand="INSERT INTO [Customer] ([Name]) VALUES (@Name); SELECT @NewID = @@Identity"

Then add an additional parameter to the <InsertParameters>:

<asp:Parameter Name="Name" Type="String" />

<asp:Parameter Direction=Output Name="NewId" Size=4 Type=Int16 />

</InsertParameters>

Then you can check for the ID of the returned item here:

protected void SqlDataSource1_Inserted(object sender, SqlDataSourceStatusEventArgs e)

{

object newId = e.Command.Parameters["@NewId"].Value;

}

Thanks to Fredrik Normén for this!

Performance this past weekend of my Grandfather's music

Wed, 01 Feb 2006 07:30:58 GMT

Quote:

Leo Ornstein’s Piano Quintet - Up Close and Personal

I've been wanting to hear this smashing piece live for years, ever since hearing the New World CD featuring Janice Weber on piano, an experience that changed my musical life forever. When I heard that Weber was doing it with the Ives Quartet at three concerts in the Bay Area in late January, I decided to fly out there from Philadelphia for the occasion. It turned out to be even a little more exciting than I had anticipated.

Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Windows Desktop Search APIs

Sun, 22 Jan 2006 19:16:18 GMT

Someday I'm going to do some work with the Windows Desktop Search APIs. It's great to have such an engine available to build things on top of.

How to put a DIV over a SELECT in IE?

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 19:43:48 GMT

Never heard of this bug before -- until it bit me when I was building tooltips for a DHTML menu system. Looks like there's a workaround: How to put a DIV over a SELECT in IE?

Blink - A very good book

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:26:41 GMT

Nice book on "thin-slicing." I just finished this. There is a very interesting survey of social science experiments that demonstrates how much we're functioning at two levels -- and how unexpectedly relevant the second, more unconscious level is. I strongly recommend this book.

New official release of FlexWiki (build 1677)

Sun, 27 Mar 2005 19:48:09 GMT

Craig just updated SourceForge to make build 1677 the "official" release. It is in every way identical with interim build 1677. We (the core developers) talked about it, and realized that while we still want to get to a 2.0-type release, it was going slower than we'd like, and in the meantime the answer to too many questions was "Upgrade to the latest build". We figured if we had that much confidence in the latest build, it should be the one we recommend for new installations.

Here are the release notes:

This release contains many, many new features and bugfixes. Here is a partial listing. See the change notes for a complete history. Thanks to the many contributors who wrote all these goodies in their spare time.

Added support for colored text via the %color% tag.
A completely rearchitected storage engine that allows for pluggable stores.
An implementation of the pluggable storage engine that allows a namespace to be stored in SQL Server.
RSS feed format improvements.
A new URL scheme. Topics can now be accessed using URLs like

http://www.flexwiki.com/default.aspx/Namespace/TopicName

Fixed newsletter functionality.

Improved anti-spam technology, like nofollow support and URL blacklisting.

Improved testing - the automated build installs FlexWiki and verifies correct behavior via a browser.

Support for page and page fragment templates.

Many WikiTalk improvements, including improvements to forms-building support.

Improved support for Windows 2000 installation.

Support for setting page title using page's Title property.

Better support for Firefox.

Support for "breadcrumb" functionality to display user's most-recently-visited pages in a sidebar.

A day with Ed Tufte

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 17:12:48 GMT

Excellent post summarizing things Chris learned from spending some time with Ed Tufte. All really good. Really...

Quote

The Sells Spout
My Day With Edward Tufte
Friday, June 25, 2004
I spent most of Thursday in a seminar given by Edward Tufte, the author of several seminal books in the area of data analysis and presentation $with another, Beautiful Evidence, in the works. I enjoyed it thoroughly and here's what I was able to capture...

Getting Things Done (Flex)Wiki

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 18:33:55 GMT

Jeff Sandquist (a bud here at Microsoft) has launched a Wiki (using FlexWiki) on Getting Things Done. This is my favorite time management methodology and my favorite Wiki software. :-)

FlexWiki supports NoFollow NoSpam

Thu, 27 Jan 2005 16:30:27 GMT

As of yesterday, FlexWiki supports the new NoFollow initiative. This should help reduce LinkSpam on flexwiki.com and other FlexWiki sites on the Internet.

And to help spammers know that the site uses this technique (so they actually realize they're wasting their time spamming the site), I've created the new NoFollowNoSpam logo -- grab it and use it if you'd like.

Wiki spam and nofollow

Wed, 19 Jan 2005 05:15:55 GMT

OK. Well, maybe there's some hope.

Spam on wiki's is quite annoying. It's been a problem recently on www.flexwiki.com. And it's been a huge problem on blogs. In FlexWiki, we've been building out infrastructure to prevent spammers ("link spammers" who want to raise their page rank in search engines). We've made lots of progress and have a few more tricks up our sleeves.

But today Google announced that they (and a pile of other folks including Yahoo and MSN) are going to support a new attribute on HTML links that tells their search engines to ignore links marked with the attribute.

Obviously this is a good thing and I'm going to get support for this built into FlexWiki in the next few days. But real success will only come with a strong and broad education campaign to make sure spammers realize they're wasting their time. That's why it's good to see folks like Google and MSN on board with this.

Book List: Book List

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 15:25:22 GMT

Malcolm Gladwell: Blink
Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant.
Thomas Keller: Bouchon
Bistro cooking next to the French Laundry
Death by Meeting : A Leadership Fable
Make meetings better?
David Allen: Getting Things Done
Keep *my* inbox empty? Hah!
Robert Herbold: The Fiefdom Syndrome
War at work

Blog list: Blog list

Sun, 05 Dec 2004 04:54:11 GMT

Scoble
Dare (Carnage4Life)
PM on the MSN Contacts and Storage team