Cheater’s guide to Bread Sauce

I’m a huge fan of Bread Sauce. Not being in the UK, instant isn’t really an option (and I’m too snooty a cook to make it), but the Delia Smith method is a little too much of an effort to remember to do in time. So I’ve created homemade instant Bread Sauce

Feel free to adapt how you like, and bear in mind that I like my Bread Sauce to be like Porridge – Your Mileage May Vary.

425 ml of Milk, 1 teaspoon of Onion Powder, 1/4 teaspoon of Ground Cloves, 1/4 teaspoon of Black Pepper, 1 bay leaf. Stir and stick in the microwave until the Milk is bubbling happily: 5-7 minutes seemed to do the trick.

Take the bay leaf out. Add 1 oz of Butter. Stir. Add breadcrumbs – I zap the crusts every now and then from our loaves of bread and stick it in the freezer – so when making Bread Sauce I use the breadcrumbs from frozen. I add a lot of breadcrumbs, 3oz is the intended amount. I add until the consistency is how I like it. Stir.

Add bay leaf again. Wait 5 minutes. Put in microwave for 1 minute. Wait 10 minutes.

Remove bay leaf again. Add 1 oz butter. Add 2 tablespoons of double cream (heavy whipping). You’re done. Enjoy the huge quantity of Bread Sauce I treat it as a side, you may want to freeze some if it’s just a sauce to you

I need to try without the bay leaf. Not sure if it really adds much.

Two more sessions

Last night I introduced the eldest to gameQuery, and more importantly game design. We created a background and clouds for some parallax scrolling, then created a hero with animated legs who could be controlled to move around the screen.

Tonight eldest drew a castle to go on one side of the screen and a sun was added to arch in notably straight lines from one side of the screen to the other. He also used paper to design the animation of the hero (in Roman garb) hitting an orc.

Going well

Out loud thinking

It’s interesting the things that are frowned upon for a child to obsess over and the things that are considered holy.

Computers and TV are evil. Reading a lot used to be more frowned on (this article is a faint echo ( http://www.parents.com/kids/education/reading/reading-too-much/ ) where the notions of ‘okay books for their age’ and suggesting writing as a better outlet make me instinctively wince. Yet I can’t find anything when I google for “plays outside too much”, but surely there must be kids who are overbalanced in the direction of too much outside time or too much drawing of pictures (wtf do we do with all these doodles?).

So I had a ponder. Is this a core hypocrisy? Why would it be sane to ban TV for a child while still believing they could have a career as a director or actor, yet it sounds pretty inane to ban a kid from sports and expect them to play for the national team. As I started to write this, my aha moment was that it’s about their position as a consumer/producer. While outside, kids are generally producers, they are involved and create. While in a book, kids are generally consumers. Taking what I’ll coin as Grandmother’s Law (ie: everything is healthy in small doses), a healthy balance of consumer and producer makes sense. Only playing sports and not experiencing sports (both on TV or at a stadium) would be a limiting issue and should lead to the same kind of frowny faces from the external culture.

Consuming books is good, with writing books as a good outlet. Writing is an abused word, what it should be is creating books, especially as so few would actually write a book with pen and ink nowadays. [Mental note for the kids - encourage them to think up the synopsis for a book, multiple books in fact, encourage a series].

Same thing for video games. Play them, watch others play them, create the plots and ideas for them. N has as much fun playing scorched earth as he does drawing up designs for his replacement for it (if only my time/skills at game programming allowed for such to be created at the speed he demands). Similar for TV, though the over-commercialization of broadcast/cable TV makes that a dangerous space for other reasons (namely that your children are not the customer, they are the product). Encourage creation of synopsis for Toy Story 5 without blocking it with the pain of writing.

How to summarize this out-loud thinking?

There are two camps that are easy to fall into. The first is bringing up consumers – junkies of input with future lard arses and sheep like attitudes. This is what we fall into when we get lazy as parents. The other is bringing up producers – bull-headed obsessives with achievement addictions and a big shock awaiting them in the future (sorry ‘Timmy’, turns out your artwork is pathetic after all). This is what we fall into when we obsess about maximizing the value of their time by some arbitrary ‘Timmy did this today’ metric.

The trick of sprog raising appears to be balancing the experiencing and the doing.

First session complete

Hour 1 of teach a nearly 8 year old to program finished. We discovered the basics of HTML, described our game inside a <p> tag and watched Daddy create a JavaScript example of the random Football league games he wrote when he was 8. Coding style was to hard code the numbers, then learn about random functions, variables, if statements and basic maths. Then the fun part – finding many ways to cheat so that N’s favourite team (the Lions in this case) always won. Lastly we renamed ‘Goals’ to ‘Kills’ to fit with the original intent of Nathan’s game (“Total Battle!”).

Language chosen

Thinking on the ‘what to teach eldest’, I went back to the first principles. Many of those reading learnt BASIC first because it was the core building block to the machines we were using. It wasn’t the one professionals used; that would be the variants of assembly aka machine code. Machine code always blew my brain as an 8 year old, it made no sense. Admittedly neither did the higher data or algorithm requirements I had of BASIC. Sorting a football table by points obtained as the bane of my existence in my first life as a programmer. I could never quite get it right.

So looking around at various languages etc to teach, the answer is obvious. Teach HTML5/JavaScript. The Internet is the computer now, not the piece of hardware in front. The Internet as displayed on a tablet.

Thus I was surprised (given my history of not using Microsoft tools due to their expense) to see the MIT licensed Microsoft/Atari hook up. The Atari SDK looks very nice ( http://atari.com/arcade/developers/building-html5-games-atari-arcade ). I’m not interested in publishing into the arcade, but as a tool to write games at home in JavaScript, it looks excellent.

So move aside Squeak, Greenfoot etc, Atari is the goal

Old Thesis code found :)

Greenfoot is somewhat akin to my cruddy thesis code (no surprise, same drivers giving the ideas). So I wondered if I still had the code. Did a search and found it in the following:

Keep/Machines/kiaora-burnt/hen-yak-home/turtlehen/Piglet/Backup/Internal/thesis

That is, in a directory from my last laptop (Keep), in the backups from servers (Machines), specifically the Kiaora server, which had a directory from the Yak server, which had files from an old Windows machine (Turtle), which had a backup from Piglet, my Psion Netbook.

Old code doesn’t go away, it just gets deeper and deeper in the tree.

And it still works!

Greenfoot, first look

I didn’t get very far before the desire to yell idiot emerged. I spend far too much of my time dealing with software licenses to read the following commentary about a GPLv2 application:

“The Greenfoot system and this tutorial are available ‘as is’, free of charge to anyone for use and non-commercial re-distribution. Disassembly of the system is prohibited.

No part of the Greenfoot system or its documentation may be sold for profit or included in a package that is sold for profit without written authorisation of the authors.”

Pretty sure it’s a bug (ie: old text) in their tutorial. Annoying though given it’s practically the first thing newbie me gets to read.

Teaching to program…

Our eldest bundle of joy is nearly 8. The time hath come to distill the zenlike/stoic/cynical/manic art of programming upon said tadpole.

Initially I pondered the classics. “Here my boy, this be LOGO, and this be a virtual turtle”. “No da, it’s a real turtle”. Hmm. Something Pratchetty about this boy. Back and forth we go and I realize he’s been playing with Logo at school.

Realized after a bit that LOGO isn’t for teaching programming, it’s for teaching Maths. Wondered if anyone has created N-dimensional LOGO to teach the higher Mathematics. Back to Pratchett it seems.

ROTATE 90
FORWARD 5
TIMESLIP -3 & WORMHOLE -5y
Event: Hit self.

Obviously that’s a higher level version of LOGO that eschews the underlying Maths for a sci-fi level language. I leave the completion of the underlying logic to the reader.

After playing with the Arduino in a Robothon at work and enjoying the code (very like LPC on MUDs, you write most of your C above libraries and it all feels like a generic C/Java/LPC/something language), I decided that writing in Java was the way to go, but without having to learn the structure of Java programs.

One obtuse view I have from MUDs is that you don’t have to teach OO. OO is natural, it’s teaching invisibleness that’s hard. Tell someone they have a turtle, with a bunch of functions and they’ll happily come up with instructions for it. If they want a Tortoise, they’ll happily create a Tortoise object.

A colleague then poked me in the direction of Greenfoot. Sounded interesting, and familiar. It’s related to the work at UKC that I was briefly exposed to when writing my monkey’s vomit of a thesis and has since left me a crippled brainwashee of Piaget & Papert.

Anyone used Greenfoot?

Lego Lessons

I’m finding that building a little Lego late at night is a great way to maintain my sanity. Bear in mind however that this is the sanity of someone who chose to buy the Super Star Destroyer; I’m not sure there’s much left to maintain.

Some lessons:

Perfect isn’t important. When you’re ~2,000 pieces in and you realize something is off by one lego bit, the important thing is being able to backtrack and figure out the off-by-one mistake. Lesson: Debugging skill is more important than Developing skill.

When you’ve got 80 of some tiny 1×2 piece coming out of one bag set, it takes zen-like skills near the end to trust the 3 year old hasn’t lost one of them. The lesson here remains: Trust the Lego QA above all else. Perhaps a more generic lessons is “know the quality of your upstream QA”. In this case – global supervillain quality (ie: awesome and let down by the megalomaniac pointing the device in the wrong direction).

The SSD uses a huge amount of usually core architecture pieces as cosmetic features. Usually you know that this piece and that piece are going to be a hinge and you wait to discover how they’ll lock into place. With this set I have no clue. The rule of thumb seems to be that the more versatile the piece, the more likely it’s there for the cosmetic look of skyscrapershipness. Lesson: Sometimes your best practices are going to hold you back.

It’s big. I tend to work through the manual for a while building pieces and then go back to the main piece to add them. I try to minimize how often I have it sitting on the floor waiting for the next block to add on. Lesson: Don’t keep Lego on the floor? . It does make me wonder what it’d look like if built with agile methodologies.

“Lord Vader, we have the throne room built. See how it flies around very nicely and can go into production immediately. “
*force choke*

Lastly, the new Dengar sucks. He looks like he just finished swabbing the deck in Pirates of the Caribbean. Lesson: There’s always a bug

–

Now to build a table size curve of the Death Star and video the SSD crashing into it.

Comcast customer support

[Setting the scene. A few weeks back I was getting some weird lag/bad ping. Comcast decision was that I needed a new modem, that my amazingly ancient 5 year old modem was amazing to even be working (modems are simple tech, and much more complicated machinery is happily working... reality, I suspect, is that their support for the older tech has gotten flakey). No ping problems noticed since the new tech, so their support for the current hardware is at least there.

Go forward a few weeks. Things generally fine, but every now and then I get redirected to a comcast/xfinity signup page and told to download software and activate my computer. Grr. Finally, tonight, I click on the "talk to a support specialist" button. Below is the transcript, comments are in bold. ]

user HENRI has entered room

HENRI>
analyst Gustavo has entered room
Gustavo>
Hello HENRI_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Gustavo. Please give me one moment to review your information.

Gustavo>
Welcome to Comcast Self – Install Kit Activation support! My name is Gustavo, it is a pleasure to have you on chat. I hope you haven’t waited long to be assisted. How may I help you today?

HENRI_>
I had a modem swap a couple of weeks back [all going well there]. I’m having problems going to websites occasionally where it tries to send me to xfinity install-kit. How do I stop being sent to that?

Gustavo>
I am really sorry to hear that.

Gustavo>
So I understand that you are having problems with your Internet service, am I correct?

HENRI_>
my current approach is to hit refresh until it goes away, but it’s a nuisance.

HENRI_>
not problems with the service; more that something seems to want to sign me up to xfinity.

Gustavo>
I know how important for you is to get your service working, so do not worry about it, I will be more than glad to help you and will fix this as soon as possible.

Gustavo>
I would just like to inform you the process could take 15 minutes or more. Do you have the time right now to go ahead with it?

HENRI_>
sure.

Gustavo>
Just for security reasons, may I have your full name, full address and the phone number related to the account please? They already know my account number at this point as it showed on the previous page, and they know I’m connected from the client side of the service they provide

HENRI_>
no clue on the phone number. name is Henri Yandell. Address is #### (though you can Google for this easily enough…awesome security system)

Gustavo>
May I have your city, state and zip code please?

HENRI_>
#### (also in Google – pathetic security, not that I’d have given them anything given that I didn’t trust my network connection due a man-in-the-middle situation (even if Comcast were the man in the middle) )

Gustavo>
Thank you very much for the information Henri.

Gustavo>
Henri while I work on your settings, I would like to remind you about the Setup Guide that were given to you with the Self Install Kit. There we have a diagram that is easy to follow and will assist you in case you have problems in the future with connections of our equipment. If you do not have this setup guide, you can get it in any Comcast Center. No, I wasn’t given such a thing

Gustavo>
Please allow me a moment while I check the status of your modem.

HENRI_>
why do I need to setup? I’m already setup and working fine.

HENRI_>
2 installers installed the modem etc.

Gustavo>
Henri while checking your account, I found a great opportunity for you to try. It’s the Comcast Triple Play package for only $119.99, you will be able to enjoy during the next 12 months, High Speed Internet, the finest cable services and the #1 clarity phone service. By taking advantage of this offer, you will save a considerable amount of money. Isn’t that a great opportunity? The great thing is that it has a 30-Day Money Back Guarantee. I highly recommend you to take advantage of the awesome price.

Gustavo>
Would you like to take advantage of this great offer?

HENRI_>
no thankyou. (I’m so polite)

Gustavo>
Henri I see your point of view but I strongly believe that you should take advantage of this package, especially because the promotion rate is amazing. Besides, you will be able to experience the best out of the best in a very low rate. Why don’t we do something! Try it out for 30 day and if you don’t like it, I will give you the money back guarantee. Should I sign you up with a 30 day money back guarantee?

HENRI_>
no thankyou. (really, I’ve got this English polite thing down pat. Drag me through hot coals and I’ll thank you for keeping me warm. I don’t at any point point out that their service is overpriced and not a money saver or a low rate)

Gustavo>
No problem, thanks for your time Henri.

Gustavo>
Now I will send a signal to your modem as part of our activation. You might be able to catch the lights in the modem turn off then turn back on. It will cut off our connection for a few seconds so we might not be able to continue to send messages to each other during that time. Just make sure not to close our chat, thanks.

user HENRI has entered room

analyst Gustavo has entered room

Gustavo>
Henri can you open a new browser such as this one, click here please —> http://www.yahoo.com Let me know if you are able to get online.

HENRI_>
yup.

Gustavo>
Are you able to? At this point I’d read about 3 articles on the BBC waiting for Gustavo, so yes I was able to

HENRI_>
yup

Gustavo>
Great! your internet service is active now.

Gustavo>
I would like to recommend visiting http://www.comcast.com/security
It’ll take you to one of the great deals we have for hooking up comcast internet in your home. You’ll have the option to download Norton Security Suite to protect your computer when you surf the internet. It’s the full retail application you can get absolutely for free, I guarantee it.

Gustavo>
Also I would like to recomend you visiting http://www.comcast.net/help ,in case you have any problems with your services this link can help you.

Gustavo>
Henri as a recap, you have contacted us today to fix your internet service, we have verified your account information, then I have sent signal to your modem and now your internet service is active and working properly.

Gustavo>
Would there be anything else I can assist you with today?

HENRI_>
what was wrong before?

At this point Gustavo was typing, I tried to type something but the next message I got was a new page saying “No room provided” – ie) I was cut off

WTF Comcast. What scares me is that Gustavo might be a human. I hope, really hope, that it’s an automated system, but given that 9/10 screw ups prefer incompetence, I bet it’s a real person who sits and copies blurbs without reading what the customer says. Localized monopolies SUCK.

Here’s hoping that going through ‘activation’ will stop it trying to activate all the time.