John Prine + Bob Wills = Dan Hicks.
A former Rolling Stone cover model, and there’s probably zero chance I’ll find the new album locally. Somebody send me a copy, willya?
March 19, 2009
In case you forgot, he’s back.
new vs. old facebook
There’s been all sorts of knee jerk whiny criticism leveled at the “new” facebook interface. At first, the new interface was a generally annoying, but I decided to dig a little deeper and figure out what exactly does and doesn’t work for me. The “new” layout, like any website layout, is pretty much a matter of personal taste; what ultimately matters to me is functionality.
The Good:
Notifications, Applications and Chat are all still one click away on the bottom Bookmark bar. The left Applications sidebar makes for less clicking; the Photos, Links, and Videos pages are a single click away and seem optimized for quick publishing, fixing my one big nit with the “old” Facebook; ie., previously to upload pics from the Home page, I’d have to go to Photos, then to My Photos, then to Edit Albums, then, blah blah, blah… Now, I just hit the Photos sidebar button, and I’m faced with an upload box.
The “old” way is still available: the Applications Bookmark Photos tab still returns the “old” Photos page. Filtering the newsfeed by friend groupings feels more intuitive now, although I doubt many people have gone through the hassle of setting up friend groups…
I like how almost anything can be Commented, Liked, or Shared.
The Bad:
The newsfeed. It sucks. The only line-item filtering option is now to hide/unhide all feeds by friend, whereas the “old” had options for seeing less/more/none/all of particular news story types from all/individual friends. Now you just get everything, all the time.
Your current “Status” is missing from the Home page. The “What’s On Your Mind” tag is vague; I understand that it’s an attempt to move away from a tweet-like status to a more general mini-blogging, but it’s not obvious. I liked when FB removed the compulsory “is” from the status line, but this last change is too random. Also, carriage-returns in this Share box actually return a line break, instead of submitting the field; I don’t generally type out multi-line Status entries.
The right Highlights bar should have some filters/settings options; so equipped, this sidebar could be great, but now it’s just another unfiltered catch-all feed.
Generally:
Overall, I think many of the complaints are coming from people who never had a great grasp on the “old” interface in the first place, and/or had never/seldom really gotten into the Options and Settings. I’m reading many complaints that you “shouldn’t be able to see private conversations between other friends on your Home feed”; this is entirely up to the settings those other friends have enabled, and generally taken as being a feature of facebook.
In my opinion, the “new” facebook is okay, but it’s just okay. Rather than being a wholesale improvement or worsening over the “old” version, I feel it just shifts the problem areas around a bunch. At very least, I have to give the people at facebook credit for their progressive thinking and attempts at a guided evolution of a service that many of us are becoming increasingly dependent on.
March 11, 2009
Allium Stew
Once the borscht was finished off, I made up a batch of my potato-leek soup. My version of this simple classic has been changing over the years, moving away from traditional definition so far as to be renamed: Allium Stew.
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6 large leeks
2 large white onions
2 heads garlic
4 Yukon Gold potatos
1/2 pound butter
2 quarts chicken stock
salt, white pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg
Trim Leeks rather deeply; remove rootlets and most all the green portion, leaving 3″-4″ of white leek intact. Peel off the outer layer. Th goal here is to avoid any tough leaves, and preserve a pale/mild colour.
Slice trimmed leeks lengthwise, then finely slice crossways. Collect cut leeks into a large bowl brimming with cold water, agitate well, then allow to soak; this is to get any sand in the leeks to settle out.
Trim, peel, and small-dice the onions. Peel and small-dice the potatoes. Trim and peel all the garlic cloves.
Melt the butter in a large pot, and hold over medium-low heat. Run all the garlic through a press into the butter, followed by the onions. Double-check the leeks for sand, then shake off the excess water and add them to the pot. Add a pinch of salt. Cover and sweat the alliums until they reduce in apparent volume by about a third.
Now season with another pinch of salt, a few grinds of white pepper, a bare shake each of cinnamon and nutmeg.
Mix up well, raise heat a little to get the butter bubbling, then add the stock. Let the stock come up to temp a bit, then in with the taters. Add a quart or more of water as you go from here.
Barely simmer until potatoes are just getting fork-soft, then off the heat and run the whole works through a food processor and/or work it over with a stick-blender. Back onto medium heat and stir away any mealiness. Hey, maybe there’s a better cooking schedule here, but this is just how I’ve been doing it… Suggestions welcome.
My favourite part of this is that there’s no cream/milk, and I don’t think it needs it. Enjoy!
