how to cook great spaghetti

The parents wanted me to cook spaghetti tonight. Not only did I cook spaghetti, I made a darn good spaghetti dinner. Here’s how you can, too.

1. use angel hair pasta, not spaghetti. it’s thinner and cooks faster.
2. bring the water to a rolling boil. the pasta loses it’s flavour if it has to boil more than a few minutes.
3. strain the pasta, but let it sit a couple minutes. then, add some extra virgin olive oil and mix it up.
4. in one swift motion, put the pot back on the stove, add your tomato sauce, and put the pasta back in. the quicker this is done, the better.
5. over medium heat, stir the pasta and sauce until the sauce completely coats the spaghetti.
6. allow the pasta-’n'-sauce to continue simmering for a few minutes, say, ten or fifteen. this would be a good time to put your breadsticks in the oven.
7. put some water on to boil. go ahead and put in some tea bags.
8. rinse some lettuce, chop some vegetables, and make a salad.
9. your tea should be boiling. don’t let it boil over. mix in the sugar (or honey, if that’s your thing).
10. take out the breadsticks – they should be done by now.
11. pour the tea into a pitcher, and add cold water.
12. butter and spice the breadsticks. I prefer a simple blend of salt, pepper, and oregano.
13. get out some plates and serve your guests, you lazy pig.

The trick with the spaghetti is to let the sauce cook into the pasta… this can make up for a lousy store-bought sauce on a night you’re short on time. or when you or your family are cheap. It really brings out the best in both pasta and sauce.

next installment: how to cook great pizza

Industry Misintepretations interviews Carl Gundel

Industry Misinterpretations (geez, that’s hard to type) interviewed Carl Gundel about Run BASIC. They’ve already posted part one, and I’m told the conclusion of the interview will be posted next week.

Assorted commentary on the episode:

• I wonder if the issue with LB5 Carl mentioned has been resolved. I sure hope so…
• VB.NET is as bad as they say it is, and whoever is responsible for realBASIC should be tried for crimes against humanity.
• There should have been more warning before the guy started talking about advanced OOP stuff there at the end. That freaked me out.

You’ll hear here when the second episode is posted.

The RB-on-Linux tutorial

Do you use Ubuntu Linux? Want to use Run BASIC, but don’t want to wait until a Linux version is available? This guide will show you how.

Note that you’ll probably need internet access, and will definitely need a modern browser that supports JavaScript and cookies (such as Mozilla Firefox). Also, I’m using Xubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”. Different versions and distros may have slightly (or radically) different instructions. Your mileage may vary.

Part 1 – Wine
Before you start, make sure Wine is set up on your computer. If it is, you can skip to Part 2.

Okay, let’s install Wine. These instructions are not exhaustive, and if you run into issues, you’ll need to use your distro’s support channels (whether it’s IRC, a mailing list, or whatever).

Try your distro’s package manager, then apt-get (see below), then the Wine website. To install Wine using apt-get, run the following command in a terminal window:

sudo apt-get install wine

Enter your password at the prompt, and WINE will be automatically downloaded and installed.

Part 2 – Install Run BASIC
Once you have Wine installed, download the Run BASIC installer and save it to your desktop. Now, open up a terminal window, navigate to your Desktop folder, and type:

sudo wine rbp1setup.exe

Enter your password at the prompt. Once the Run BASIC installer opens, click the start button, making sure not to change the destination path. Once it is done installing, click the “OK” button. Run BASIC is now installed.
Part 3 – Running the RBP Console
Next, you’ll want to create a script to open up the RBP Console window. Don’t try to use the icons in the Application menu – they won’t work properly.

Open up your favorite text editor, and type (or copy-and-paste) the following code, and save it to your desktop as “runbasic.sh”:

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/rbp
wine rbp.exe rb.im

Next, try to run it by double-clicking on it. If it opens up in a text editor application, you’ll have to configure your system to run shell scripts in Terminal by default. In Xubuntu, this is as simple as right-clicking the script, selecting “Open With Other Application”, expanding the “Use a custom command” area, typing “bash” in the box, and clicking the “OK” button.

Part 4 – Using Run BASIC
Open up your browser and point it to http://localhost:8008/seaside/go/runbasicpersonal. Type in your username and password (since you’ve just installed, they’ll be “username” and “password”, respectively). Congratulations! You’ve just installed Run BASIC Personal on Linux.

Appendix 1 – Notes
Your mileage may vary. I’m running the latest version of Wine, Xubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon”, and Run BASIC Personal RC1. I don’t imagine anything will be horribly different on most other distributions.

Everything should work just like on Windows, but with one caveat: to serve on port 80, you’ll need to run it as root. You’ll probably also want to install it as root, too.

A home-made Christmas

Now, I know this may come as a shocker to some of you, but I’m not exactly made of money. This fact makes purchasing gifts for friends and family rather difficult.

What I do have, though, is duct tape and time to kill. It turns out that you can make a lot of things out of duct tape. Like a wallet, PDA, or even a purse. Apparently, if you have enough duct tape, the sky’s the limit.

To help increase readership (perceived and actual), I’ll be giving away custom-made duct tape creations. If you know me off-line, simply leave a comment asking for whatever it is you’d like. If you don’t, well, stay tuned. And leave a comment anyway, just so I know there’s interest.

BTW, some of you “real” friends will be getting things anyway. I’d still appreciate a comment.

Spell Check Synchronizer?

As a homeschooler (red squiggly line), geek, word inventor, and friend of someone who has a very uncommon name spelling, I find myself entering a lot of words into spell checker dictionaries. Compounding the problem is the fact that I use more than one application. Firefox’s spell checker uses a separate dictionary from WL Writer, which I’m pretty sure uses a separate dictionary from Word, and none of those are the dictionary used by Google Docs. It gets pretty frustrating after a while, having to enter all these words in different places.

So, my question is, does anybody know of an application that can synchronize the spell check dictionaries used by different applications? A preliminary search of Google and Lifehacker (red squiggly line) yielded no useful results. I’ll keep looking around, but if you know of any software that does this well, I’d really appreciate if you’d mention it.

My Favourite Firefox Extensions

I am a big fan of Mozilla Firefox. While I do occasionally turn back to the dark side (IE7), it only lasts a few days – that’s all I can handle. Firefox by itself isn’t enough to make me a user. What keeps me hooked is the awesome extension system.

All of Firefox’s extensions are managed inside the browser – no clogging up the Add/Remove Programs list. Google Gears and Adobe Reader are notable exceptions, but because of their nature (Reader is an application, Gears installs itself for IE and Firefox), this is excusable.

What’s so great about extensions? They let you make the browser your own. My mom is an average Firefox user – not particularly web-savvy, but smart enough to not use IE. She uses large icons, the Google Toolbar, and the bookmarks bar. On the other hand, I’m a web power user who couldn’t imagine using Gmail without Greasemonkey. Firefox lets both of us have just what we need, no more or less.

So, what extensions do I use? Glad you asked.

• Adblock Plus – It’s not stealing, it’s selective content filtering! Besides, way too many ad providers have usage trackers. Spybot S&D does a good job of getting rid of them, but why deal with it in the first place?
• All-In-One Sidebar – If you like the sidebar in Opera or Favourites Center in IE7, you’ll love AiOS. It lets you view your favourites, history, downloads, extensions, and even another web page; all in your sidebar. Great stuff.
• Compact Menu 2 – this lets you hide your menu bar, and put a small “Menu” button on your toolbar. It also has a “Bookmarks” button, which is very handy if you use Firefox’s in-built bookmarking system.
• Fission – shows the page-loading progress inside the address bar, like Opera or Safari. This helps conserve space on the statusbar.
• Forecastfox – One of my favourite extensions. This lets you put weather information right on your statusbar. It’s completely configurable, so you can have anything from a three-day forecast (the default) to just the current conditions right on your statusbar. One click on  the icon sends you to AccuWeather.com for information about the weather in your local area.
• FoxyTunes – I installed this before, but didn’t really get it. FoxyTunes is a remote control for media software, like iTunes or WMP. In the default configuration, it displays all sorts of buttons and icons that can control just about any aspect of your media software. Luckily for me, it can be configured to just show the standard play, pause, stop, back, and next buttons. One feature I like a lot is the collapsible panel that shows the currently playing track. FoxyTunes also has an alarm clock, which I have yet to play with.
• Gmail Manager – I use this extension primarily for Gmail notifications. It’s primary feature, though, is letting you switch between different Gmail accounts. One other useful thing it does is display the amount of free storage in your account.
• Google Reader Watcher – This highly configurable extension watches your Google Reader account for new feed items. Small, but very handy.
• Greasemonkey – Greasemonkey lets you inject your own JavaScript code into pages you visit. This extension truly lets you make the web your own. I cannot recommend it enough.
• Organize Status Bar – the name says it all. If you have a lot of extensions that put themselves on the statusbar, this is very useful.
• Titlebar Tweaks – Ever wanted to change what gets displayed on Firefox’s titlebar? This extension lets you to just that.
• Update Notifier – This automatically downloads and installs updates to Firefox, themes, and extensions. With this extension, you’ll never have to hunt down new versions of your extensions again!

Well, those are my favourite Firefox extensions. How about you? What Firefox extensions do you like?

I am officially cool

In case you didn’t know, my dad is an assistant football coach for the local centre for education in the public interest. Somehow or another (food), I wound up producing the game film for the coaching staff. This was my first full year. Apparently, I did the job so well that they decided to give me a letter. You know, like they put on letter-jackets? I don’t think it’s exactly rocket surgery – but they were very impressed.

So, tonight, I got to “dress up” (ooh, a polo shirt!), and go to the team’s annual banquet; which featured culinary masterpieces like mediocre spaghetti, dinner rolls with margarine, and sheet cake. Seriously, though, the spaghetti was probably thick enough to drive a semi truck through.

After an uncomfortably long time, basically by myself, eating cafeteria food, with public high schoolers, it was finally time for the awards portion of the banquet. Which was also uncomfortably long. The head coach thanked me for my work as the team’s “video grapher” (whatever the heck that means), and gave me a letter. Then, I shook hands with the coaching staff. And sat back down. And waited again. Finally, the banquet ended. Naturally, I stayed a lot longer than I wanted to afterwards. I’m happy to report that I made it home alive. I think.

So, I’m going to get a letter jacket. And put my letter on it. I am officially cool.