Monthly Archive for December, 2008

dead headphonist

Peanut Butter Granola

Current Mood:Mischievous emoticon Mischievous

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This is the PB Granola in it's glory

I managed to get the peanut butter granola just about perfect this time. Here’s the recipe, since folks have been asking. This stuff makes your kitchen smell wonderful for several hours.

2 1/2 cups rolled oats (do not use instant. get the large flake rolled oats from the health food store)
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup flax seed meal (not whole flax seed)
1/8 cup unsweetened flake coconut
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup honey
2 1/2 tablespoons butter
3/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp kosher salt

Note : spices/salt are to taste.  Feel free to experiment

Pre-heat oven to 275 degrees F.  Prepare cookie sheet by covering in parchment or tin foil.  Use a cookie sheet with raised edges (no “air bake”) as you need to turn the granola over while it cooks.

First, in a large pot melt together the honey, butter, and peanut butter over low heat.  Mix well and add vanilla, spices, and salt.  Mix well.  Mix grains and coconut together lightly in a separate bowl. Add grains to the wet mixture and quickly mix well to coat.

Spread mixture evenly on a cookie sheet and press together into a solid sheet.  Keep the mixture away from the edges of the pan or it will burn easily. Bake for 20 minutes, turn over and press back into a solid sheet.  Bake another 20 minutes or until the oats start to slightly brown. Remove from the oven, press the sheet together again and allow to completely cool before transferring to the storage vessel of your choice.

dead headphonist

I’m a switcher!

Current Mood:Esctatic emoticon Esctatic

I look nothing like the advertising material Apple has so ubiquitously spread around the airwaves.  I am neither a hip and cool twenty-something with no responsibilities and a distaste for everything “business” nor am I a fourty-something stodgy business type.  I am an overweight, not particularly stylish thirty-something who works all day holding down a desk in a manufacturing and engineering company.

I have growing distaste for Microsoft’s OS business, but I am particularly fond of products like Office 2007 and OneNote from them.  I have no particular love for Apple, but I’ve come to respect their OS, and now that I own one of their flagship products, their really slick and useful hardware.

I work in IT and I work with Windows machines all day long.  In fact, I’ve worked with what amounts to pretty much the same GUI since 1995 and Microsoft has asked me to spend what precious free time I have doing exactly the same thing into the foreseeable future.

Microsoft expects that I will continue to do my blogging, music production, social networking, and very little else on an OS that constantly gets in my way, is difficult to customize, lacks modern window management that even free software has managed to implement pretty well, and generally has the look and feel of that radical departure that Windows took with Windows 95.

Everything else has been evolution in design; great for business which relies on not having to re-educate user bases of the barely computer literate on new paradigms.  Hey… I can dig that.  I face these issues every day in my day job.

The problem for me is exhibited in a simple activity that I participate in at least once every couple of weeks.

A few months ago, I bought an Axiom 61 MIDI controller so that I could start practicing piano again and so that I’d have a keyboard to adding parts to tunes and building percussion loops.  To do this in Windows took me no less than an hour of prep to get the keyboard working and then a $100-$300 piece of software to get a convincing enough piano to want to practice with it.

On Friday, I got the Macbook Pro.  On Saturday, I took it downstairs and hooked up the Axiom and turned it on. Nothing happened; no pop-up, no “I need to install a driver for this”, nothing.  I figured what the hell and started GarageBand, an app that is bundled with the Mac.  Within seconds, I was playing a reasonable sounding piano sound through the headphones.

So what does this mean?  To me, it’s that OSX is purpose built for folks exactly like me; folks who want to be able to get their creative job done with as little trouble as possible in a convienent and stylish package that actually works.

And work, it definitely does.

The touchpad and new “chiclet” style keyboard are worth the cost of admission alone.  The new Macbook has what would say is the single best keyboard and “mouse” input hardware of any laptop ever.  The unibody build is very solid, the laptop is unbelievably thin, light, and powerful compared to the Dells that I previously used.   The screen is really bright with excellent contrast compared to other laptops I’ve owned and used.  The headphone circuitry is excellent.

As I work more with the Mac, I’ll probably write more with my experiences in the realms of computing that mean the most to me.

Please share any thoughts you have on alternative operating systems to Windows and what effects they’ve had on your work process.