henager.net

The best darn arcade game of allMay 17, 2009

I just played a brilliant arcade game. It’s apparently extremely rare, and I had never seen it before. In fact, I hadn’t ever heard of it. It’s called Stone Ball.

It’s simplistic; two player teams of cavemen armed with clubs hit a stone ball around a field in a comedic, brawling version of soccer. The controls are flawless, the animation amazing for its release year of 1994, and it is absolutely hilarious with two or more players.

The cavemen can guide the ball around the field while using beat ‘em up style moves to keep their opponents out of the way while they try to knock the ball into a goal. They can execute flying tackles and beat the opposition into the ground. The zaniness ramps up when a rogue ostrich steals the ball and both teams are force to chase it madly around the field. You can almost hear the Benny Hill music. We had five people gathered around the cabinet all laughing and cheering at nigh uncouth volumes. It was great!

I got the images from the International Arcade Museum. This article is about the only information I could find on it.

Interests

Professionalism: Separating the Men from the BoysApril 30, 2009

A Stab at Definition

A project on which I have been working recently has prompted me to think about professionalism versus amateurism and what makes the difference between the two.

The project that stirred up my wool-gathering on the subject is a web application that I am developing for an individual on a contract basis. Web technology is an area to which I am fairly new, and I am striving to define and attain a solid level of professionalism in this area.

The first two things came to mind when I attempted to define professionalism were passion and experience, but these two things are the means to an end. The next thought that occurred to me was perfectionism. This word is not perfectly accurate either, because it has connotations of obsession-compulsion.

I realized that professionalism is the knowledge and the ability to hold yourself to a high quality of work in your profession. Amateurs rely on others to hold them to a standard. This standard may be high or otherwise, and they lack either the knowledge or the will to evaluate it.

The level of my professionalism with web technologies is lacking in the area of knowledge. I need to find out what constitutes quality in this field. My level of professionalism in desktop application programming comes from a personal work ethic, an understanding of cost-benefit, and a thorough knowledge of the industry. The first two transfer easily, but I will need to actively pursue the last item.

Apocrypha

I have seen this hypothesis borne out in recent and distant retrospect alike. Every person that I have admired required a high standard of themselves. Every person for which I have had to cover has relied on other people to require more of them. This has held true both inside the IT world and in other industries as well.

I want to pursue a solid definition of quality in every pool in which I dabble. I don’t want to wake up 20 years later and realize I’m still relying on others to tell me if my work is “good enough.”

Work

Saturday morning breakfastFebruary 28, 2009

I decided this morning to try my hand at poaching eggs. It worked out, and I was inclined to make a couple of fun sides to go with them.

Here is the result:

I have never been able to make poached eggs turn out right before. It occurred to me that I could use a ladle to lower the egg into the water. I don’t know why nobody seems to do this because it works wonderfully well.

Lamb breakfast sausage mixed liberally with maple syrup made a great accompanying dish. I’ve also recently formed the habit of using a spritzer to spray olive oil on my toast.

The coffee on tap this morning was my favorite of the five that I have been roasting: Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. It is the only coffee that I know of that can be accurately described as fruity — almost lemon-berry. It still has a nice rich flavor base, though. I have been preparing it at a medium-to-light roast.

Fail-proof poaching

It seems like the stars must be aligned to poach eggs with the traditional methods, but I’ve found a way that still retains the texture and flavor of poached eggs with a much easier process.

I used a tiny personal-sized sauce pan because my electric range hardly puts out enough heat to get a large pot boiling, especially in time for breakfast. The right heat level of the water seems to be just below a vigorous boil — the kind where pea-sized bubbles are regularly forming on the surface. This is probably normally too hot for poaching, but the ladle absorbs some of the heat.

On a tip from Food Network, I put about two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar into the pan. This is supposed help the texture of the egg.

I sprayed the ladle very lightly with olive oil just to keep the egg from sticking to it, and I broke one egg into the ladle. After this, I lowered the ladle slowly into the water and held it just below the surface for about 20 seconds. I let the ladle drift to the bottom of the pan after that. Once the egg was beginning to firm a little — after about 2 or 3 minutes — I turned the ladle over and gently dropped the egg onto the bottom of the pan. I waited until the egg had floated back to the top of the water before removing it with a straining ladle.

The balsamic vinegar left a ruddy residue on the eggs that was very aesthetically pleasing. They also tasted delicious!

Here are my utensils:

Food

Valentine's DayFebruary 14, 2009

Oh, I forgot food, didn’t I?

I should mention that Ruth and I are both foodies. So, food naturally played a part in our Valentine’s Day. Ruth got me some Tazo chai chocolates, Lindt dark chocolate truffles, and Bailey’s Irish Cream truffles. They are fantastic! Chai chocolate is brilliant.

I cooked breakfast on Valentine’s day and served it to Ruth in bed. This is the first time I’ve been able to successfully get up and make breakfast without waking her up. We had omelets with New York sharp cheddar, organic green olives, and Arkansas bacon from the food co-op. Along-side we had orange juice, twelve grain toast with butter and olive oil, and Tanzanian Peaberry coffee that I had roasted that morning. The coffee turned out to be less interesting than the other green coffees we have been roasting, but it was still good.

I also did some cooking on the night before Valentine’s Day. We had roast duck, served with buttered peas and pinot grigio. I smoked the duck lightly with pear smoke before roasting it in a homemade Asian glaze. It turns out that duck is amazing! We also found out that we both love Barefoot’s pinot grigio.

These meals were part of “three Valentine’s days” that I gave to Ruth. The day before the dinner I sent her flowers at her office. She likes this, though sending flowers on Valentine’s Day always makes me feel incredibly lazy. This is the main reason I felt compelled to put in some real work and make dinner and breakfast.

Flowers are sort of the ultimate cop-out for guys, but yet they are always regarded as “so sweeet!” by women. “Yep, that took me all of five minutes to order; could I possibly be more thoughtful?” :)

I have tried getting florists to let me help design them so I feel like I am at least doing something, but generally they ignore these efforts from males. I guess they don’t need some amateur telling them how to do their job.

Anyways, yes, I’m rambling about food, and probably will continue. This is definitely for my own benefit more than yours. Feel free to skip posts in the Food category if you don’t like bragging.

Food

WelcomeFebruary 07, 2009

Well, I’ve finally started a blog. I guess I’m a bit behind the times.

Anyway, I will post content as it happens upon me. There’s a good chance it will relate to either technology, music, or religion.