PhatBoyG.com

Seems the folks over the big pond know how to decorate for the holidays:

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At work tomorrow we are having a chili cook-off. Since there were only a couple of folks signed up, I decided to go ahead and give it a shot. Rather than play the fool and throw a dozen cans of Wolf brand into a crock pot and laugh as people choose it as the best of the day, I pulled out an old recipe from 1991. It’s an adaptation of a recipe I got from a buddy named Keith C. He was (well, is I hope, but I haven’t talked to him for a while) quite a cook and enjoyed a spicy meal as much as me. In fact, we got some crazy props for taking 4 and 5 spoons of Chinese red pepper sauce at the Great Wall restaurant. Talk about some crazy times, Leon sure could Wok.

Anyway, I decided to write up the results of my evening adventures as a record of what actually went into the pot. I’ll even document the process in case somebody wants to try and make it themselves or improve upon it.

To make this chili recipe, you’ll need the following:

• 1 lb ground sirloin
• 1 lb mild Italian sausage
• 1 large white onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
• 1 28 oz can diced tomatoes
• 1 15 oz can chunky diced tomatoes
• 1 8 oz can tomato paste
• 8 tbsp chili powder (Williams FTW)
• 2 tbsp ground mustard
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 2 cups whine (I used a cheap Reisling)
• 2-3 tbsp olive oil (I used a brand my wife picked up in Italy, so airfare may apply here)
• 2 15 oz cans pinto beans
• 1 15 oz can kidney beans (can use two, but if you do add the second can about 15 minutes before serving to vary the texture)
• Chinese Red Chili Powder to taste (Cayenne pepper, whatever you want, it’s the heat, you gotta bring it)

In a six-quart saucepan, heat the olive oil and add the finely diced garlic and chopped onion (I dice my onions to about half an inch) and cook until the onions are transluscent. Once the onions are cookied, add the sausage and the ground sirloin. Once it starts to brown, add maybe half a cup of the whine to help the meat cook evenly (oh, do NOT chill the whine).

While the meat cooks, take out your 8-10 quart stock pot and dump all the tomato goods into it. Take a quart bowl and add a cup of whine, all the dry spices and wisk until a smooth sauce is prepared to ensure a nice even distribution of the powders into the chili. Once it is smooth and clump free, dump it into the bowl with the tomatoes and continue to heat it up. Open the cans of beans, drain them in the sink and add the beans to the tomatoes.

At this point, your meat is probably done. Dump the meat mixture into a strainer in the sink to lose the bad-for-you stuff and to avoid making the chili too wet. If you like it wet, feel free to skip the drainage and go straight into the mix.
After the tomatoes and beans get up to temp, add the meat pan contents (drained of course) to the tomatoes, let them cook for at least 30-40 minutes and check the flavor. Be sure to stir often as the liquid will probably rise to the top causing the beans to get weird in the bottom of the pan. Gotta keep it wet and moving as the liquid will gradually cook off. If you need to add more flavor/spice, be sure to pre-mix the powders in a bowl with some more whine and pour the mixture into the pot to avoid getting dry clumps of chili powder in your bowl later on.

That’s basically my way of making chili. Mind you, it takes time compared to the quick and easy methods of buying chili style tomatoes but the extra time can be worth if you are sharing with friends.

For this event, I also created a habenero pepper sauce on the side. I didn’t want to run people off with the main pot, so I mixed up some sauce on the side. It’s a simplified scotch bonnet sauce recipe using habenero peppers that isn’t as hot as it could be, but has a really smooth flavor for dipping. Some might be tempted to add a spoonful or two to their chili tomorrow, if they do I hope it tastes good. I’m holding off until tomorrow, but I gave it a test spin on some tortilla chips and after about four chips I was feeling a solid burn (that’s about one teaspoon of the sauce I would imagine).

I’ll be sure to follow up with the results of the contest, but either way I’m having myself a nice bowl of chili for lunch tomorrow. Since we’re going from the 70′s to the 30′s tomorrow, the warm lunch will be a nice complement to the soon to be snowy and freezing weather transition.

This is a pretty cool site. I found the link on Lifehacker, but it lets you create a font with your own handwriting. All this without knowing a thing about fonts. Check it out!

Fontifier

Well. This one is out there. For sure.

Fiat is introducing a fart-powered car. No shit!

“In addition to the higher-output Panda Sport, Fiat will be showing two new methane-powered vehicles at the Paris show at the end of the month. Over the past year, across Europe, Fiat has sold 24,000 methane-powered cars; the major advantage being reduced CO2 emissions.”

- AutoBlog

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working almost every night on a new project at work. Yes, it’s heavy JavaScript. Yes, it’s taking advantage of more and more that Atlas has to offer. It’s embracing all that the Enterprise Library Jan 2006 release has to offer and extending it to take advantage of some of our existing systems features. The server side is all based on web services and .NET 2.0. And it is designed to work in multiple browsers while still taking advantage of all the latest JavaScript application design paradigms (async everything).

But tonight, I just gotta have a break. Of course, I’ve said that several times over the past few days and always end up digging into something only to tweak and object, streamline a page component or somehow improve things in a way that doesn’t normally get addressed in the 9-5 timeline. It’s all for the good in the end, and since a lot of this stuff is a continuous iteration from one day to the next, it’s cool to see it all coming together.

So, on that note, new topic.

I listen to a lot of electronic music. I really get into artists like Shpongle, Ott, Entheogenic, Hallucinogen, Celtic Cross, and several others in the same genre. You can add Shulman to the list, and a few compilation discs. When I first got into electronic music, it was a long mix on DI.fm that got me hooked. An arrangement (oops, sorry, REMIX) by Morlack called “Ott Times” and it consisted of a number of Ott and Shpongle tracks, with a few other things mixed into the fold. It was awesome and I scrambled to setup a streaming recorder to catch it again. Over the next two weeks, I captured the entire Chillout channel until I managed to snag it and listen to it again. From that point on, mainstream music was not in my playlist.

After a lot more research, I hooked up with PsyShop and ordered a stack of discs to start listening. I found myself really enjoying the music and the ability to enjoy it at work without being distracted. I bought more and more and built up a pretty decent collection. I also started to realize that I really liked the sound and style of Shpongle more than the others. I began to immediately discount trance-style as annoying, dance style as not for me, and a variety of other noisy and distorted tracks as a waste of space on my computer. Yes, my computer. But more on that later.

I think my first experience with electronica was Kraftwerk in the 80′s. My best friend’s girlfriend got me hooked on it (Sparrow, you still alive?) and I quickly snatched up all the albums I could find. Yes, albums. I’ve recently completed my collection of Kraftwerk on CD through some eBay purchases and have the discs of those I find memorable. I also was a big fan of Styx, Thomas Dolby, and most of the synth bands of the 80′s. Bring on the late 90′s (I gave most of the mid 90′s to bands like Collective Soul, Pearl Jam, and a laundry list of others) and Crystal Method hit the scene. A solid electronic outfit with a hard driving rock sound. Electronic music was back with power and I was in it for the long haul.

So since probably late 2001 I’ve been mostly listening to electronica of the psytrance/chillout/ambient style. It’s great to enjoy at work and even in the car if you select from the more powerful stuff. The real enjoyment of personal music began in early 2002 when I got into building custom headphone amplifiers for high-end headphones like the Beyerdynamic DT880. I got a lot of enjoyment out of that set of cans before moving down to a pair of Shure e4c (and now the e500 is my daily setup driven by a 30G iPod photo).

Which brings me back to today and I’m starting to wonder what other good music in the style of Shpongle is available today. It’s hard to keep up with all the new releases and hearing something new on DI.fm got to be a very rare thing. In fact, I setup the streamer a couple of months ago and there was hardly anything new to be found. A real disappointment as I’m hoping to add a few new discs to my collection of great stuff. I still listen to a huge variety of music at times, but for heads-down coding a solid Shulman or Entheogenic album wins every time. Heck, today I even dug out the Fight Club soundtrack for some variety (those good old Dust Brothers).

So, if you happen to pick this up on a Google search or something, and can relate to the distinct lack of new material on your playlist, feel free to suggest a new disc (with a link to a preview if possible)!

I’ve moved the site to a new server, so if you’re seeing this, you’re already here. If you aren’t seeing this, well, you’re still pointing to the old DNS zone. Wait, you don’t care if you can’t see. Wait, I’m just being retarded at this point.

Anyway, new server, hopefully faster and at least as reliable as the old server.

I found an energy drink that I actually like. It’s Monster Khaos and it’s a juice-based energy drink with great taste that isn’t overly carbonated. It packs a punch (drink one at 6pm and you’ll have trouble getting to sleep before 1am) and doesn’t taste artificial like so many other drinks on the market. Plus you can buy it anywhere, MedX, QuikTrip, etc. Wal-Mart has 4-packs for a decent discount as well.

The Monster Lo-Carb is a respectable alternative for those watching the sugar content or trying to avoid a rush/crash that can hit some people. I haven’t had a rush/crash with Khaos yet, but I typically eat something within an hour or two of downing one. I do use the Lo-Carb when I’m not going to be eating though so that I’m not yawning in an hour due to the exodus of sugar from my veins.

Tab Energy is OK, has sort of a cotton-candy taste to it (read: artificial) but you look like a girl drinking it from a pink can.

This was on The Daily Show last night. It’s hilarious.