I’ve been learning about baking bread.

This all started by reading (most of) the book Ratio – which is a fantastic book about the fundamentals of cooking. I bought the Kindle version of this book for my iPhone so I could read it on the train – which is great – but it’s also horrible because I don’t mind getting buttery fingerprints on a cookbook but I do mind dropping my $400 toy into a bowl of wet dough.

From this book I learned that bread was not that mysterious and started making a few loaves.

After that I started learning a little bit more. The internets are full of wonderful, sloppy, contradictory information about bread making.

But I’ve learned a few things which I didn’t really understand before. e.g. Kneading is an option, not a requirement.

Before I tried any bread making I had run across a couple of “no knead” bread recipes. My gut feeling was that this was some hocus-pocus nonsense that resulted in some bread-ish product that wasn’t very good.

I was as surprised as anyone to discover that I was wrong.

The first several loaves I made were good. They looked good, tasted good, they were good. But I wasn’t getting that big open crumb you see at the fancy bakery. I thought maybe I wasn’t kneading enough, or I wasn’t letting it rise enough, or something. The problem was that I misunderstood kneading and bread.

Bread – not a cracker, pie crust, cake, or biscuit – is the way it is because it is built from an intertwined web of gluten. Gluten is what happens when the proteins in wheat get together with water and have a party. The resulting aftermath is a stringy network of proteins. Water also breaks down some of the starches in bread into simple sugars. When yeast shows up to the party, yeast is all like ’sup sugar, chows down, and farts out carbon dioxide.

The web of gluten holds the yeast farts in. Once the bread is baked, gluten hardens, the yeast is killed (the glorious bastards), but the shell of their fart bubbles remain as the only evidence of their existence. This also makes bread spongey, sproingy, and delicious.

So to make bread you have to have some water. If there’s a lot of water molecules can just slip and slide around, the yeast gets fed, and gluten forms all by itself. This takes some time – like 12 hours or better – but it happens all by itself.

If you have relatively little water, you have to help things along with kneading. Kneading is like pouring your shy protein molecules a drink (of water) and forcing them to dance. Yeast goes along for the ride. Yeast likes to party.

When there’s a lot of water, the naturally formed gluten network is random, open, and irregular.

When you knead bread you are mechanically forcing the creation of this network, which usually results in a much tighter and compact network of yeast fart bubbles.

This is your classic trade off.

If you want a tight, well structured dough that you can shape into anything you want (and have it ready to eat in a couple of hours), then you knead.

If you’ve got time to kill and you want something flavorful, rustic, with big holes you can fill with olive oil – you go for the no-knead-let-it-rest-in-a-bowl-overnight method and let the magic happen.

There are, of course, places in between on this spectrum.

We tasted each whisky first by smell. Whisky is commonly drunk from an old fashioned glass, which is just fine, but if you want to get a nose full of yummy aromas, try a proper whisky glass. The narrower opening concentrates the aromas so you can get a good whiff. Hold the opening of the glass a good 6 inches from your nose. That way you can enjoy the smell, but not inhale alcohol fumes and set your nostrils on fire.

Following the smell we sipped just a tiny bit – enough to wet the tongue – and then inhaled deeply through our nose (mouth shut tight). This has the effect of combining the aromas and the taste at once.

After all this silliness we just drank the shot.

Someone had the bright idea that we should write down some notes as what we thought about each whisky. Someone else had the bright idea that we should share the prices of each bottle so we could remember later what we liked and how much it would cost us to enjoy it again.

And now I have the bright idea to share it all with the internets. Hopefully this will introduce someone to something new and delicious.

Eagle Rare Bourbon 10 year – $28

• Sweeter than expected (but not too sweet)
• Smelled and tasted of licorice, cherry, and cinnamon

Corner Creek Bourbon – $28

• Nicely sweet, slightly spicy
• Grassy, fresh aroma with fruit

Bushmills Malt 21 – $116

This was the most expensive whisky we tried that night – I was pleasantly surprised. My only exposure to Irish Whisky has been cheap stuff at pubs

• Smells and tastes of vanilla and Anise
• Very, dangerously smooth

Bushmills 1608 400th Anniversary – $70

• Bright aroma, almost citrus
• Taste of vanilla and cherry
• Also dangerously smooth

McCarthy’s 2009 – $50

This was the first Oregon whisky we tried – again I was pleasantly surprised. I had tried some regional whisky once before and thought it was frankly awful. (I won’t name names). The McCarthy’s was quite good and each year varies quite a bit.

• Strong aromas of peat and smoke
• Flavors of grain (like bread) and butter

Rogue Dead Guy Whiskey – $56

I had mixed feelings about this whisky – it’s made with the same grains used in Dead Guy Ale. It’s tasty, very drinkable – but I hesitate to call it “good”- it’s more interesting. Like if a beer graduated to whiskey but not with honors.

• Peppery flavor
• Not very aromatic
• Quite smooth and sip-able

McCarthy’s 2008 – $50 (not that you’ll find any)

Very distinct from the 2009 – which is very Oregon of them. Wines very from year to year, because the weather changes, the landscape changes, etc. This Oregon whisky is the same.

• Light aroma of peat and smoke, but with the addition of caramel
• Tastes just a little like a crème brûlée

A’bunadh – $67

This is a cask strength whisky, meaning it isn’t cut with water before bottling. This means it will be approximately 60% alcohol by volume or 120 proof. It can be drank straight – but really should have a splash of water.

A’bunadh is made in small batches, and each batch (roughly one batch per year) can differ greatly from the year before. Each bottle is numbered with its batch. (I cleverly forgot to write the batch number down – but I think it was 26)

• Aromas of burning wax candles and peat
• Surprisingly sweet – I think in part due to the high alcohol concentration – but with a hint of fruit

Laphroaig 10 year – $50

This is the bottle I brought to the event – it’s the scotch I first grew to really enjoy. It’s an Islay scotch which means peaty.

“Peaty” is a hard quality to describe – you definitely know it when you taste it. It’s strong and aromatic. Smokey yet slightly vegetative. It tastes like walking through a wet pine forest on fire.

Peaty scotches are often considered for “advanced” drinkers and it’s definitely an acquired taste. Once you acquire it though you’ll turn your nose up at the various colors of Johnny Walker.

In my case, I use my Mac for web development in PHP so I had a couple of extra tasks to perform.

I prefer to use the internal Apache 2 web server provided by Apple – mostly because it can be enabled and disabled with a click on a System Preference panel and the built in system log browser (Console.app) reports errors in Apache and PHP. Handy.

In the past I used pre-built and packaged PHP module from Mark Liyanage – his package is the defacto standard for PHP development on a Mac, it’s linked from the PHP.net site directly. Mark’s packages always work very well and have anything and everything you could want in a PHP binary. His packages are intended to work with the built in apache web server.

But Mark is only one man, and he can’t be expected to crank out a PHP package the same day a new operating system is released. Man’s got to eat.

Apple has bundled PHP (along with Ruby, Java, Python, and other developer tools) with Mac OS X from the beginning. However Apple’s versions of PHP are not always the most current, or may be missing features. Fore example, in OS X 10.5 Apple didn’t include PDO drivers for MySQL – which is a weird thing to leave out – but there you go. Thus most developers either compile their own versions of PHP (and ruby, and python, etc) or rely on a prepackaged binary.

However this time around, Apple’s included version of PHP is up to date and full featured (enough to be useful).

PHP 5.3 is included in Mac OS X 10.6 by default and this time they didn’t forget the PDO drivers for MySQL. Whee! Here is the configure command from the built in PHP on my system:

'/var/tmp/apache_mod_php/apache_mod_php-53~1/php/configure'
'--prefix=/usr'
'--mandir=/usr/share/man'
'--infodir=/usr/share/info'
'--disable-dependency-tracking'
'--sysconfdir=/private/etc'
'--with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs'
'--enable-cli'
'--with-config-file-path=/etc'
'--with-libxml-dir=/usr'
'--with-openssl=/usr'
'--with-kerberos=/usr'
'--with-zlib=/usr'
'--enable-bcmath'
'--with-bz2=/usr'
'--enable-calendar'
'--with-curl=/usr'
'--enable-exif'
'--enable-ftp'
'--with-gd'
'--with-jpeg-dir=/BinaryCache/apache_mod_php/apache_mod_php-53~1/Root/usr/local'
'--with-png-dir=/BinaryCache/apache_mod_php/apache_mod_php-53~1/Root/usr/local'
'--enable-gd-native-ttf'
'--with-ldap=/usr'
'--with-ldap-sasl=/usr'
'--enable-mbstring'
'--enable-mbregex'
'--with-mysql=mysqlnd'
'--with-mysqli=mysqlnd'
'--with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd'
'--with-mysql-sock=/var/mysql/mysql.sock'
'--with-iodbc=/usr'
'--enable-shmop'
'--with-snmp=/usr'
'--enable-soap'
'--enable-sockets'
'--enable-sysvmsg'
'--enable-sysvsem'
'--enable-sysvshm'
'--with-xmlrpc'
'--with-iconv-dir=/usr'
'--with-xsl=/usr'
'--with-pcre-regex=/usr'

Look at all those goodies. This has everything I need for my current development needs, so I didn’t bother with building my own PHP.

Before I began the upgrade process I made a copy of my apache configuration files. By default, apache on OS X creates a configuration file for each user account on the computer. These configuration files can be found in /etc/apache2/users/ and are named with your short user name, followed by “.conf” e.g. “username.conf”

I keep all of my apache development configurations in my user configuration file, so I just made a copy of that file and stashed it on my desktop.

While I’m comfortable mucking about in the command line, I’m a visual person and I prefer to see what I’m doing. Mac OS X typically hides the unix system files in the Finder – this prevents horrible accidents – but you can still use the Finder to dig around in the hidden file system.

In the Finder (i.e. click the desktop) select the “Go” menu at the top of the screen, look for the “Go to folder…” option.

This will bring up the following screen, where you can type the file path you want. You can even tab-complete path names.

Now you can browse all those sneaky hidden files, right-click them and edit them in TextMate

From here I could just drag the httpd.conf file to my desktop, and then dig into the users directory find my configuration file, and drag that to the desktop.

Next I made a back up of my MySQL databases by opening Terminal and typing:

mysqldump -u root -ppassword --all-databases > mysql_backup.sql

Naturally you should use your own MySQL root password and not “password”. Naturally. This backup includes user tables as well as your databases, allowing you to reimport the whole kielbasa.

I ran a manual TimeMachine backup one more time to make sure I got everything backed up and then I ran the OS X 10.6 installer. Point. Click. Wait. Restart. Restart. Done. Easy.

After the update was done, I downloaded a new 64 bit intel installer for MySQL 5.0 here: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0.html#macosx-dmg – the site indicates OS X 10.5 but it works fine in 10.6

I reinstalled MySQL, the StartupItem, and the System Preference panel. From the command line I ran the following to reimport all of my data and users:

mysql --user=root --password=password < mysql_backup.sql

The 10.6 installer honored my existing apache configuration files, so I didn’t actually have to replace those. But if you have never enabled PHP, simply go to /etc/apache2/ and edit httpd.conf in TextMate (TextMate will ask for your administrator password to save the file). Look for the line which reads:

#LoadModule php5_module        libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Remove the pound sign (#) and save the file.

The default PHP installation on Mac OS X does not ship with a php.ini file. You’ll need to create one in order to configure PHP to find MySQL.

Go to /etc using the “Go” menu as indicated above. You should see a file entitled php.ini.default. Open this file in TextMate and save as “php.ini”

Set the server time zone by searching for “date.timezone” and setting the appropriate time zone ID from the lists here: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php

I’m on the west coast, so I use date.timezone = America/Los_Angeles

Note that there are no quotes around the time zone ID.

Next, you’ll need to point PHP to the mysql.sock file. The default values are incorrect. Search for “mysql.sock” and change each configuration to point to /tmp/mysql.sock – you should find three instances to change.

pdo_mysql.default_socket=/tmp/mysql.sock

mysql.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock

mysqli.default_socket = /tmp/mysql.sock

(In previous versions, Mac OS X kept the mysql.sock file at /var/mysql/mysql.sock – the new location is more standard)

If you are a seasoned PHP developer you may wish to make other configuration changes at this time. If not, leave the rest alone.

Save and close the file.

All that is left to do now is to open System Preferences, launch the MySQL system preference and start the server. Show All, select “Sharing” and check the box next to “Web Sharing” from the list of options.

To verify everything works – create a text file in your Sites directory called php_info.php and include the following:

<?php phpinfo() ?>

Load this file up in your browser at http://localhost/~username/php_info.php (replacing ‘username’ with your user name) and you should see a nicely formatted list of all your PHP configurations.

Enjoy.

UPDATE: Rob Allen has some instructions up which include configuring Xdebug – very handy: http://akrabat.com/2009/10/05/setting-up-php-mysql-on-os-x-10-6-snow-leopard/

One tablespoon of raspberry syrup (preferably made the night before for your wife’s dessert), 2 ounces lime juice, 2 ounces of vodka, over ice, fill with soda water and stir. Sip while in sunshine

The URL shortening service tr.im is closing up shop, promising to maintain redirected URLs until December 2009.

There is a lot of noise on Twitter and tr.im’s blog about the shut down. Apparently many users were using a feature of tr.im to generate ad hoc web site statistics – which was foolish even before tr.im shut off its service.

There are many little remora-like services that piggy back on Twitter’s success, Twitpic, Audioboo, and various URL shorteners.

Since I’m an old timer on the internets, my first reaction when one web site asks me for my username and password for another web site (under completely different ownership no less) is to get suspicious. I wonder how hard it would be to convince people to give up their bank website username and password, if you promised to print funny pictures of cats on their checks.

The folks at tr.im seem to be earnestly trying to prevent their domain name from falling into the hands of spammers, which I applaud. But it’s only a matter of time before one of the other services fails and sells out, and we get a web full of link rot and spam.

Twitter’s absurd 140 character limit is based on a primitive SMS limitation that is no longer relevant. It’s this arbitrary limit which creates the need for URL shortening services in the first place, which Twitter strangely doesn’t provide internally (Twitter apparently hooks into bit.ly for URL shortening, but who knows how long that will last.)

If Twitter provided this service itself it would accomplish two things:

• Less link rot (if twitter dries up and blows away, so do the broken links)
• Twitter could check for spam or malware laden links as a service to their users

While I think shorter URLs are generally nicer to use (assuming they are somewhat intelligible when you read them) I think URL shortening services are just a tragedy waiting to happen.

A poorly authored (or a deliberately shady) URL shortening service can be used to obscure links to phishing sites, sites which try to install malware, or create links which actually contain malicious scripts themselves.

Since I’m not an active Twitter user, the only ‘follow’ requests I receive are from spammy, porny, fake twitter users with only one ‘tweet’ – the tweet containing, of course, some shortened URL from some service I’ve never heard of. (it’s interesting that most of my actual activity on the Twitter site itself is to block these spambots from following my account).

The giant gaping security holes in URL shortening services notwithstanding, I am a little surprised by the number of services who’s only business model seems to be “fill in a missing feature for Twitter and worry about making money later”.

A simple change at Twitter, say allowing Tweets to be 255 characters long, would basically shut down a number of web sites before they ever make any money.

I know some folks do off site backup the old fashioned way; by duplicating their existing backup drive and storing it at a friend’s house. (In this scenario, the friend usually trusts you to store a copy of his backup too.)

The theory behind this approach is that the drive stored at your friend’s house should be relatively safe if your house burns down or gets broken into. And hey it’s all “free”.

However. I would never:

• Trust a friend with my personal files (my friend may be trustworthy…but what about his friends? or his wife? or his kids?)
• Burden my friend with that responsibility
• Take on that responsibility myself (do I look stupid to you?)

That whole approach, while “free” seems like a good way to get your files stolen or damaged, get your heart broken, or just ruin a friendship. Besides, how often can you really expect you and your friend to swap drives? What if you miss a week or three ? What if one of you decides to move? Short version: This is a stupid idea.

I also looked into using Amazon S3 (and companion products). S3 is a clever product and is a bargain for any company with vast storage needs. For the home consumer though, the price is prohibitive, and it’s a little clunky. I do like the idea of a web-based back up system that I can use from anywhere.

So, I recently signed up to use Backblaze for my offsite file backup provider. Blackblaze works wonderfully. It has the following killer features:

• Native Mac client
• Cheap
• Secure
• Well thought out and easy to use

Backblaze, at the time of this writing, charges $5 per month, per computer, for unlimited backup over the internet. Purchasing 1 year at a time costs a little less at $50. It would take me 2 to 3 years of service before I covered the cost of a new external hard drive – and external hard drives don’t come with off-site data centers, encryption, or web based file retrieval.

The software installs a control panel (Mac or Windows) and a little menu bar or system tray icon which lets you quickly see status or bring up the preferences.

The control panel itself is very simple, with a big fat “backup now” button and a simple status report.

Clicking “Settings…” will allow you to throttle the upload speed, schedule backups, or customize which files are backed up.

Backblaze, by default, assumes you want to backup everything except some commonly not backed up files, like caches, virtual disk images, and so forth. You choose what items that you explicitly do not want to back up. I think this approach makes a lot more since, especially for non-technical users. In my case, I omitted my downloaded TV programs (because I throw those away after I watch them anyway), my secondary user account, and some other non critical files (folders full of aliases). It would be nice to have an “advanced” mode to specify rules for backing up certain types of files, or to finely tune the backup schedule – but it’s not necessary.

Blackblaze has a few limitations imposed upon what you can back up. Backblaze limits backed up files to 4GB in size, they will not back up drives mounted over a network, and versions of files are only kept for 30 days. These limitations are perfectly reasonable to me – but Backblaze goes to the trouble of explaining each of their limitations in their FAQ.

Once you install Backblaze you must make your initial back up. This can take a long time, depending upon your network speed.

Obviously a web based backup system is going to require a speedy internet connection. Most home broadband internet providers give you a pretty good download speed, but the upload speed can be poor. Backblaze includes a bandwidth speed test on their site to help you determine how long your first back up will take. Mine took about three weeks, one of those weeks I was traveling and had limited access to the internet – so I’d wager that two weeks over a home DSL connection should be enough for most people.

Once my initial back up completed I immediately tried out a file restore to see how the system works (if you’re running any kind of back up system, you should periodically test that you can recover your files from your backup).

I used the web-based tool to select some arbitrary files from my backup. Backblaze presents you with a pretty nice tree-view browser to select your files. You can choose entire directories, individual files, or mix and match. Once you make your selection, Backblaze tells you you’ll get an email once your ZIP file download is ready. Mine came in about 2 seconds.

Following the link in the email, I discovered that not only does Backblaze keep your files, it keeps a record of the files you’ve restored. The restores are listed by date, can be downloaded again, or deleted if you don’t need them.

The ZIP file I downloaded retained the original directory structure of my hard drive, even though I only selected individual files, that is the zip decompressed to a folder with the name of my hard drive, with a “Users” folder, with my home folder, with a “Documents” folder, etc, etc. This would allow you to pretty easily reconstruct a destroyed system, or at the very least know where to find your files in your backup.

Overall, I’m very happy with this service. I hope I never really need it.

I was traveling over the weekend and got a much needed dose of Nigella Lawson on Food Network.

This dish (cribbed shamelessly) is pan-seared sirloin steak with white beans sauteed in olive oil with arugala, paprika, garlic, and lemon (with a Vesper cocktail).

Gently fry this egg, sunny side up, in butter, in your grandfather’s cast iron skillet.

Sprinkle a small pinch of kosher salt on top.

While the egg is frying, toast a piece of soft potato bread. When the toast is ready, lay it on a plate and top with a single slice of provolone cheese.

Place the newly fried on top.

Break the yolk with your folk, allowing it to run down onto the plate to be absorbed by the toast.

Cut a large slice, making sure to get some cheese, yolk, bread, and egg together. Shove this into your mouth in one bite. Follow with a sip of hot, strong coffee.

In my old job I was “working in IT”. In my new job, I’m working on software. The difference is astounding. I have vague memories of this difference from my days as a struggling yet clueless freelancer. Working on software and working in IT are two entirely different things no matter what the job description says.

In my old job I got to play with Java, .Net, legacy garbage, and a smattering of other things.

In my new job I’m working in PHP in the infamous LAMP stack – I’m far happier.

I have recently come to terms with the fact that I prefer a Gibson cocktail to the standard Martini/

I hate Twitter, but I’m learning to appreciate it’s potential.

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