Take Me To Your Horse Meat

There could be two new tiger cubs at some zoological institution, somewhere. An exotics veterinarian who may or may not be my wife might have been photographed with one. I assert nothing. This is a Photoshopped picture.

The Meatrix (Recommendation)

The Meatrix is a short animation about how most meat is produced in the United States. It is light on information but clever, short, and worth watching. If you like the first one there are some sequels as well. And if you are interested in the message about agribusiness and sustainability, there is a lot more information at Sustainable Table.

The animation was produced by Free Range Studios, who have done a couple of other progressive animated pieces.

Kitchenarium Updates (Chow)

Tonight I whipped up some polpette di ricotta in a simple spicy red sauce. The recipe is now up on the Kitchenarium.

Kitchenarium Updates (Chow)

I made some soba salad for dinner tonight; instead of using it as a side dish, we each at a pile of it together with some sweet and sour cucumbers and a big steamed bun. The soba recipe is up on the Kitchenarium.
And while I'm here, this is the second pizza we made this week. Leftover dough, you know :-) With less toppings, this one developed a really nice puffy crust.

Good Old Vector Graphics (Reblog)

Someone has gone to the trouble of building hardware do display old vector graphics games. I have really fond memories of these things, and not just because I loved the PLATO console. My favorite was Ripoff, which is included in pictures on the site. There isn't a lot of other information available about it on the web. The best thing about vector graphics was the fade to invisibility from fast redraws.

Pretty Squidies (Reblog)

National Geographic has some excellent photos online from recent research at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. There are lots of really interesting species, from the functionally named spiral poo worm to the glass squid pictured above.

MGC's Music

MGC is starting to put his guitar licks online so we can listen to his progression from Howe to Santana to B.B. King.

'Shroom Stir Fry (Chow)

We had a few pounds of different kinds of mushrooms in the refrigerator, so tonight I made up a random spicy stir fry with some broccoli, bean thread noodles, and my usual stir fry sauce suspects: sesame oil, garlic, ginger, a variety of fresh peppers, rice vinegar, sake, soy sauce, and honey. And the reason this was a stir fry instead of a risotto or red sauce -- one of my personal favorites, azuki bean buns.
Everybody pitched in, including the puppies, here hard at work not barking their butts off at us for once. Note the glowing devil eyes on Mag.

Alas, despite all the help, I was too lazy to actually produce a recipe for the Kitchenarium. Who knows exactly what I did. But it was yummy.

Crazy Pizza People (Chow)

Experimenting with some pizza of our own today, NDM ran across a pizza website whose owner's dedication to his food not only magnificently exceeds my own but perhaps crosses over into the realm of mania. This is Jeff Varasano's take on pizza. Jeff has defeated his oven's safety features so he can use the cleaning cycle to bake his pizza at well over 500 degrees.

He's making the most spare type of Neapolitan pizza margherita, so his focus is quite different from my own. He doesn't even make a sauce, while for me, while I like a good crust, it is all about the sauce. I'm cooking one now:

1. I browned 6 roughly chopped cloves of garlic in a few tablespoons of olive oil on high heat.
2. I threw in about two tablespoons of spicy Italian peppers and crushed dried bird peppers.
3. Then, I splashed in maybe a cup and a half of a Shiraz I had open and reduced it with 3 large bay leaves.
4. We picked a tray full of fresh tomatoes (These are an unknown small red hybrid which EJB gave us the seeds for several years ago -- NDM grew them this year for the first time as a lark. They are excellent.) that I diced and threw in. They're still simmering, mostly filling a dutch oven.
5. I also threw in a fair does of basil, oregano, and freshly ground black pepper along with a dash of chili powder to stew with the tomatoes.

By the time we're ready to sauce the pizza, this will have cooked down to an incredibly rich and potent red sauce.

Of course for the wife it is all about the genuine buffalo mozzarella. Luckily I can live with her mozzarella fixation if she can live with my spicy sauce fixation.

Updated...
So here are the results!

FISA Court Commits Political Suicide (Reblog)

Of course with a willfully criminal administration in power supported by a craven opposition, this will come to nothing. Otherwise I'd be excited that the FISC has sided with the ACLU's request for disclosure about the scope of Federal secret wiretapping authority. The ACLU discusses the issue here. Of course, with the complicity of Congress the FISC has basically been eliminated and replaced with Alberto Gonzalez, the ideal shepherd of our personal and collective liberties.

Prairie Wolf Dog Park (Pets)

We took the pack to Prairie Wolf Dog Park today, part of the Prairie Wolf Slough north east of us around Lake Forest. This is a 44 acre, fully fenced off-leash park with prairie, woods, and a lake for making doggies wet and stinky. And so it was.We learned that while 'Dolon loves the water, he doesn't seem to understand about or want to swim. The first thing he did at the pond was jump to his withers and them repeatedly submerge his head and whip water around from his jowls. He ran around in the pond quite a bit, but never went any deeper. Mag jumped in the shallows once or twice but mostly stood on the shore barking at 'Dolon.

It was fun, but at about 35 miles way from us, and a $10 per dog day pass fee for non-residents, I don't think we'll be going back there much.

Where Is My Candidate? (Reblog)

The Political Compass website has a little test that plots your political leanings on a simple graph. The Times Online has posted a graph of our Presidential candidates. I'm a -8.50, -5.54, which puts me south-west of all the candidates by a considerable margin.

I'd guess that this blog's slim readership averages out at maybe a -1, -1? Although I know we'd get some eastward economic skewing :-)

My Nap (Pets)

NDM now has her revenge for my ill-advised pictures of her sleeping, posted earlier this year. I almost never nap -- but our dogs are just so comfortable.
'Dolon, as I've mentioned before, is almost a perfect pillow. He doesn't care what position he ends up in or how much weight is on him, even if he's being crushed by my entire big fat head.
The only downside is that sometimes he wakes you up with a bath.

Modern Political Philosophy (Reblog)

Although I agree with this cartoon's stance on what passes for Neocon "thought", it does really miss the boat on Plato. In The Republic, Plato frankly demonstrates himself a casuistic liar and unreservedly endorses a few smart people hoodwinking the masses for...of course...their own good. If only Rove weren't a relentless idiot, Plato might really like him.

Couch Time (Pets)

Our dogs really have it rough. At the end of a hard day, there's nothing like kicking back on the couch.

EggMcNDM Breakfast (Chow)

This is one of my favorite uses of the orange heirloom tomatoes EJB seeded with us. Sure, it looks a bit like McDonald's fast food. But it is sooo yummy. The thick orange wedge under the egg is the sweet, mild, succulent tomato. Because of EJB's little European escapade this past year, I'm not going to be having many breakfasts like this.

Melting over open-face sandwiches is one of only two uses American cheese is put to in our household, the other being scrambled eggs (since it completely incorporates without separation).

Dog Park Acclimatization (Pets)

On Mag's third trip to the dog park she has started to get a bit more comfortable. She still spent most of her time getting reassurance from fawning dog owners, but in addition she sojourned a while with 7-month-old West Highland White Terrier Marty.
I must admit, though, her surprising timidity at the park is kind of nice. For example, she'll walk with me around the park. As if I existed. Which is more than 'Dolon will do.

Daisy Battle (Pets)

I apologize for the awful video; NDM is using our Canon Powershot A530 for this, and it isn't really its intended use. This is the doggies fighting over a very desirable wild daisy. The less desirable wild daisies are habitually crushed by doggie butts during the conflict.

Science Strikes Back! ZOWIE! KAPOW! (Reblog)

This is the winner of the Science Idol cartoon competition sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Some of the finalists are also pretty good...

Annotated Google News (Reblog)

Google has introduced a somewhat cumbersome mechanism by which those directly involved in news stories can comment on them with Google News. Ars Technica has a concise discussion. Here's a somewhat poor sample.

Personally, I'm really excited about this. As I'm sure everyone has noticed, whenever you have more than a passing acquaintance with the subject matter of a news story, it tends to packed to the gills with misinformation. This might be a more accessible method of correcting errors in news stories -- in addition to inevitably being a new platform for mindless punditry.

Wing

The world is a strange and beautiful...and strange...place.

There is an episode of South Park called "Wing" which features an awful Chinese emigrant chanteuse named Wing. At the end of the episode, the credits say that more information about Wing is available at www.wingmusic.co.nz -- and sure enough, she is a real person.

And her actual music sounds exactly like what I was sure was cheap mockery in the South Park episode. In fact, her actual music was used in the episode. Seriously. Check out her version of Dancing Queen.

I'm not sure I understand who buys her CDs, or why she is invited back for further performances at nursing homes. I just don't understand.

Maybe the wife and I should put on qi pao and start making some real money...

Happy Birthday 'Dolon (Pets)

Since we only have a general knowledge of his actual birthday, 'Dolon was awarded a statute birthday matching my own. Happy second!
In his honor, here he is in a pre-puppy dog park scrum with Riley (a vizsla Aphrodite whom 'Dolon loves but can't usually catch) and Scooter (a mix who really likes 'Dolon's butt). Below is a temporary chain of dominance.

My Birthday Cakes (Chow)

I just had to post some pictures of the sexy birthday cakes NDM made for me today. To warm up for cake, I made a sweet clam sauce with all the tomatoes that have survived the puppy holocaust in our garden. I use the clam juice as part of my red sauce reduction, and throw in some lemon juice and capers for finishing.
Because my wife is innately extravagant, or perhaps because this was my second birthday, I received two cakes! Above is a yogurt carrot cake courtesy of Alton Brown, and below is a pineapple and buttermilk carrot cake. Not to blaspheme against Mr. Brown, but of the two the second was lighter, moister, spicier, and more...um...carroty.
And because it was my birthday, I treated myself with laziness, and so won't be updating the Kitchenarium with these recipes :-)

My Antique License

Well, my driver's license is ancient and has an old address, but the state keeps telling me I can renew online. Since the wait at my local DMV is always hours, and since they've promised to test me should I ever show up at one of those places again, I'm once again deciding to keep my old ratty out-of-date thing.

I am, however, starting to wonder how much trouble the thing will cause me if anybody ever actually looks at it. And I'm a bit surprised that our Department of Excising Liberties (which has the gall to bill itself as "preserving our freedoms") lets me get away with this.

National Zuke Day (Reblog)

It should come as no surprise to those who know me that my birthday is also National Zucchini Day. What is not to love about this fecund veggie? I eat it by its lonesome as often as I can, sautéed, pan-fried, grilled, steamed, or even boiled. Mmm.

Rameniac (Recommendation)

If there is one thing we can all agree on, it is that if I like a particular food everybody else must as well. One of these foods is ramen, and Rameniac is the beginning and end of ramen on the web. If, like me, you are woefully uneducated about Japan's local ramen traditions, Rameniac is a great remediator.

More prosaically, It is also the key to the best instant ramen available at your local Asian food store.

KRM, Ad Critic

So McDonald's (say what you will, I love their trans-fatty fries) has been running this "bigger than the Big Mac" ad campaign. It isn't very visually interesting or funny, but every ad campaign can't be Honda's Cog commercial or "Got Milk?" But it is worse than just another lame, uninteresting ad placeholder. Here's what it is.

Some MacGuffin product is selling itself as "bigger than the Big Mac", generating lots of pre-release hype. Big Macs are big -- taken to mean, good. So this product will be great!

Then the MacGuffin becomes visible, and it is a teeny tiny flop. Not as big as the Big Mac after all.

But, is the ad agency responsible for this functionally retarded? You want something huge to not be as big as the Big Mac after all. You've just established the Big Mac as slightly bigger than a total joke.

How many millions were paid for this tripe? Where's the recognition of cognitive dissonance?

Molpe 2007 Kill #7 (Pets)

Molpe strikes again! A brief drizzle of rain kept the woofies inside long enough for Molpe to rack up another shrew. The proud girl herself:

Scene Culling

I can't speculate why, but on the way to a party yesterday NDM called me (I was puppy sitting, no party for me) and asked me about how video games render their images and we started talking about occlusion. As with any software junk, it was a little challenging to talk about with someone who has occasionally described my work as computer plumbing. This is a slightly more thoughtful but still math-free explication for her...one which will probably keep her from ever asking me about video game graphics again :-)

Rendering all of the terrain and objects in a 3D scene can be a very resource-intensive task. It is very helpful to be able to ignore anything that won't impact your final rendering. For example, if a person in the scene is standing behind a building from our point of view, we won't have to bother figuring out how to draw the person. There are a small number of basic techniques that we can use to throw out information to make everything simpler when we finally have to draw.

The Frustum Cull

One thing we can do is throw away anything that is not in our current field of view. Our field of view is generally described by a frustum, which is a section cut out of a pyramid by parallel front and back planes. If an object in our three dimensional world falls outside the area of our frustum, we can ignore it when we draw our scene. This is also called clipping.

We can also make our drawing task easier by moving the back plane closer to our point of view, reducing the volume we have to be concerned with. That back plane is why in many video games you can suddenly see objects pop into existence at a certain distance (and there are several techniques, including simple level design tricks, that are used to prevent you from noticing that distracting pop).

The Insignificance Cull

If there is an object inside our frustum that would be drawn so small that it would have little impact on our final image, we can safely ignore it. This is often called contribution culling.

The Back-Face Cull

This elegant method of ignoring objects is performed automatically by modern rendering technologies. If all of the objects in our scene are closed volumes described by a set of adjoining polygons (as above), then we know that any polygon which doesn't face our point of view can't be seen. Back-face culling takes the point of view vector and each polygon's normal vector, and if the angle between those two vectors is over ninety degrees it ignores the polygon.

You can see the effects of this sort of culling in video games when the point of view is somehow forced inside a supposedly solid object; in many games this is easy to accomplish by entering confined spaces using third-person camera. When inside an object the back-face cull doesn't work any more, and you can see the undefined interior of the polygons making up the object your point of view has entered.

The Mighty Occlusion Cull

This is where we figure out that we don't have to draw the person standing behind the opaque building. Occlusion culling is a meaty topic in the realm of simplifying our drawing, and is always about partitioning our frustum into areas (called cells) which are only viewable through a certain number of two dimensional portals. If we can figure out that all of a cell's portals are occluded, we can safely ignore everything in that cell. There are many subtly different ways of doing that, but the principle is always the same. With the occlusion cull, it is nice to rely on predetermined computations done for your environment's known geometry to speed things up.

You can apply several different occlusion culling passes before rendering your scene. Perhaps the first is based on precomputing what rooms of the house are visible from the room your point of view is located in -- in this case each room is a cell and the doors and between them are portals. After we've done that, we might start partitioning our visible areas into smaller and smaller portions and checking for occlusion among the objects they contain. This final step is called potentially visible set rendering.

Punting

After we've done all the culling we care to do on our scene, there is a final rendering trick to make sure things look OK even if we've screwed up and are trying to draw an object which is partly hidden by something else. We know the three dimensional coordinates of the anchor of every object we're drawing, so we can determine each object's distance from our point of view. By drawing the most distant objects first, the nearer objects will be drawn over them. Since this drawing doesn't happen in human-noticeable time (in fact, the whole scene is "drawn" to computer memory first and only when complete is it sent to the display), everything still looks great to the viewer.

Despite this trick, when doing real-time rendering you really want your culling to be as comprehensive as possible. That is because when we think we can see one of the polygons describing an object's surface, we still have a lot of work to do for drawing it -- figuring out how to color and pattern the surface, applying different optical effects for special surfaces, etc.

Now, as computers (and especially their video cards) get more and more powerful, one of two things happen. We can get lazier with all of our culling, because our video card is able to render more objects in the same amount of time; who cares if we render some stuff that doesn't end up visible. Alternately, we can keep making our frustum larger and larger; video game frustums do tend to have disturbingly close horizons when you are out of doors. We've seen a bit of both over the last decade of video card performance increases.

Mag's First Dog Park Trip (Pets)

Mag got her final shots this last week, so we got her DuPage County permits and headed off for our local dog park. 'Dolon nearly exploded in the car on the way there -- he's been in withdrawal for the last several weeks while he's been grounded with the new puppy.
Mag was a little more timid than we thought she would be, considering how assertive she's been at our house. She still did fine. On Saturday mornings there are tons of dogs at the park, and they all came by the bench we set up camp at to greet Mag. Above you can see her tucking her ears and tail in while she lets the giant Pete sniff her.
From the safety of the bench Mag had herself a good time. She was mostly shy with the other dogs, and eating up the attention all the dog owners pay to puppies. Meanwhile, 'Dolon was off ignoring us, busy with his normal water deprivation and humping activities.
When Mag had enough, she actually came up into my lap, something she never does at home.
We stayed for almost two hours, at the end of which both dogs were exhausted. 'Dolon wasn't good for anything but shoving his entire head in somebody else's bucket of water.
There was no bouncing around in the car on the way back home, just lots and lots of panting. We all had fun, but I think it will be a while before we're comfortable enough to take both disobedient doggies there without both humans along to chase after them.

My Poop-Inspired Taciturnity

I'm sure my two readers are grateful that I haven't been posting much recently. You have our puppy, Mag, to thank for that. In addition to all her delightful puppylike behavior, she has an issue. She is a stealth eliminator. No whimpering, no whining, no bark, she won't come over to you, she doesn't go through a circling ritual -- everything is fine one moment and the next puppy miasma is saturating the house while Mag plays on unconcerned.

I'm not really experienced with puppies, but this seems like fundamentally abnormal behavior to me.

So I have the area around my desk fenced off into a little poop camp, and I'm the poop warden and get to watch Mag all day long. Every time Mag makes anything approaching a subtle signal that she might have to go, I say the magic elimination words to her and take her to the door and let her outside and watch her play for a while before bringing her back in to resume the poop vigil.

Speaking of which...