Monthly Archive for July, 2006

Temple of Heaven: Special Gunpowder

Published
by
sherman.boyd
on July 27, 2006
in Recipes
. 0 Comments
special-heaven

Temple of Heaven: Special Gunpowder
I found this menacing looking box at Haji’s. I’ve been cold brewing this green tea, as it’s much more convenient than coffee. Supposedly it’s good for you too. It doesn’t give me the shakes like too much coffee does. Anyway I have a simple method of preparing this tea which I will share:

  1. Dump a handful of green tea in the pitcher
  2. Next fill the pitcher with water
  3. Put it in the fridge

The green tea expands and floats and sinks in the pitcher. For the first 2-3 days it is in a state of continous motion, I don’t have a scientific explanation for that. It’s ready in an hour and this nice Ikea pitcher filters out the debris as I pour a cold glass. The tea is never bitter, which can be a problem when hot brewing green tea. Admittedly I’ve had better tea than Special Gunpowder, but you really can’t beat the name.

Brutally Hot in Phoenix, Arizona

Published
by
sherman.boyd
on July 25, 2006
in Arizona and The Weather
. 0 Comments

You think you know. Yes, it’s hot in Arizona, but honestly you don’t know what hot is. Get a load of this:

July 18th Partly Cloudy 113 Degrees Fahrenheit

July 19th Partly Cloudy 112 Degrees Fahrenheit

July 20th Partly Cloudy 109 Degrees Fahrenheit

July 21th Thunderstorm 118 Degrees Fahrenheit

July 22th Partly Cloudy 116 Degrees Fahrenheit

July 23th Thunderstorm 114 Degrees Fahrenheit

July 24th Thunderstorm 114 Degrees Fahrenheit

Sandwiched between the hot city pavement and the gray monsoon sky, one point four million mortal souls bake in this deadly convection oven. Welcome to Phoenix.

Tristram Shandy and the status of e-text in this modern age

Published
by
sherman.boyd
on July 19, 2006
in Books, Movies, Philosophy and Tech
. 0 Comments

I had the pleasure of watching A Cock and Bull Story last night. It was chaotic, funny and fresh. Obvious, low brow jokes are woven into a tapestry of delicious philosophical irony in this retelling of “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman” by Laurence Sterne. A book I had never heard of before now.

After consulting Google, I decided to read it in an electronic format. Crazy huh? The last e-book I read was this text file, and my horrible flickering Packard Bell monitor left me with a massive headache. I’m hoping my iBook LCD will treat me better.

Also Tristam Shandy isn’t a book that lends itself to a dot txt file. Sterne includes non-textual data in his books, like including an all black page when a character dies. The format would have to be html.

I’ve found a couple of sources:

Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1079

The html version looks good. The yellow around the text doesn’t sit well with me (I suppose I could alter the .css file). At least there is a lot of text on each screen which means less scrolling. It looks like only volumes one through four are available. Like any other Gutenberg file, you can download it for offline viewing.

The Tristam Shandy Web:

http://www.tristramshandyweb.it/home.htm

This one looks beautiful, but doesn’t display much text per screen, which means lots of scrolling. Also you must click on a icon to move to the next page. I don’t see any way to download it (short of using a web ripper). Still, in my totally unqualified opinion this is the most accurate representation of a first edition available on the web. It is complete, with all nine volumes.

Laurence Sterne in Cyberspace:

http://www.gifu-u.ac.jp/~masaru/Sterne_on_the_Net.html

You can skip the Google search, as Masaru Uchida maintains this excellent directory on all things related to Laurence Stern.

I think I will begin with the Gutenberg version, I just like to be able to hit the down arrow as I read. If I reach the end of the first four volumes then I will switch off to the Tristam Shandy Web.