The other day I was craving freshly-squeezed lemon juice, again! Every once in a while I have to have it, not unlike my chocolate cravings that attack me like a pittbull every few weeks. In any case, I had always thought the lemonade thing was brought on by a specific type of thirst from salty food or something. But this time, I noticed I had been feeling sleepy all day along with the rainy weather and low atmospheric pressure. Which got me to thinking…how much our bodies and their functioning are affected by weather. It seems that doctors can find nothing completely conclusive about how rain causes people with arthritis to suffer more or how excessive heat causes criminals to act up. But Belfast Telegraph in the U.K. came up with an interesting list of 12 different natural weather conditions and their possible human symptoms, from humidity-induced migraines to insomnia brought on by wind.

I ordered the cutest boots last fall from endless.com with free overnight shipping, having seen their link through amazon.com. On the endless.com website, I was taken aback by their truly endless selection of shoes, from every (it seemed) designer in any color or size. Navigation through the site is easy, and you can choose by alternate categories such as type of shoe (flat, heel, etc) to narrow down your choices as well.
When I got the package in the mail (the next day, exactly as they said), I immediately noticed how big the box was - it was pristinely padded and packed with the manufacturer’s box inside. The boots looked great, but I had ordered the wrong size! A simple email and page on their website explained what to do — I would order the right size (paying for a 2nd order) and return the 1st package as soon as possible, for which I would get a refund within a month or so. The next day, I had the boots in the right size waiting for me in the mail. How easy was that?
Now I see that they have expanded - check out these shoes….so cute, and they look comfortable too!!!

In honor of Earth Day, yesterday, I would like to share my research on LED lighting, the most efficient way to illuminate space. Right now, LED’s are relatively expensive, though; but hopefully that will change in the near future, when demand and manufacturing increases. Basically, LED lighting can be broken down to these pros & cons:
PROS:

• very efficient use of energy, which means:
  –doesnt give off heat –> no burns, no unwanted heat
  –less wattage –> save money
  –last longer –> rarely need to change lamps
• easily dimmable
• directional light (can also be con, see below)
• can be made to give off any color
• LEDs do not give off nfrared nor UV light, which damage objects such as paintings and textiles

CONS:

• expensive
• hard to find, especially for regular indoor lighting
• not easy to make — need a driver for use with AC power, plus considerations about R, max current, etc
  –expensive to make for retrofitting into standard bulb sockets
  –should really be utilized in a different manner than the current standard
  –> more electrical work to convert to LEDs
  –> this is why LEDs typically only used for outdoor or accent lighting

for more general information on LEDs, check out these pages:

• toolbase.org - great breakdown on LEDs and their current benefits
• gizmology.net - more technical info on LEDs, lots of details

For LED manufacturers:
[Note: for retrofitting into standard incandescent bulb …, look for ‘retrofit’, ’standard’, ‘Edison-type’, or ’screw-in’. Also keep in mind the COLOR of light you wish to have. For indoor lighting, I would suggest ‘warm white’.]

• LEDtronics - excellent supplier, with all types of LEDs. includes an “incandescent to LED” converter
• HollySolar - page with their ‘retrofit bulbs’
• lc-LED - this page has their ‘replacement LEDs’ for halogens, standard incandescents, and more
• theLEDlight - offers various types of LED lights for the home and more

For those wanting to tinker with making their own LED lighting from scratch:

• theLEDlight - great starter page on technical details about LED circuitry
• taskLED - supplier of LED drivers
• allelectronics - link to their ultra-bright Cree LED light
• Cree - manufacturer of ultra-bright LEDs — link to their new high-output XLamp LED
• Arrow - supplier of all types of LEDs, this page searches their catalog

Being one-quarter Silesian that I am, I am completely infatuated with Mohnkuchen, one of my absolute favorite desserts. Actually, anything filled with mohn, or poppyseed filling, is a must-eat-right-now for me — this includes Austrian Germknoedl, Jewish Hamentaschen, etc. It must be something in my blood…or maybe not, because I do inadvertently convert people who try it.
On my last trip to Berlin, I ate so much Mohnkuchen that if I had been tested for drugs, they would have institutionalized me on the spot. (you do know, poppy seeds are from the opium plant…) With no way to actually bring some home (you know, U.S. Customs), I decided to, at the very least, bring back a pack of Mohn-Fuelle (or poppy seed mix).
This meant, of course, that I’d have to find a decent recipe to put the poppy seed filling into. I found this and this online, which, along with this handy-dandy converter, allowed me to create the following recipe:

1 stick butter
1/3 cup sugar
1 large egg
dash vanilla
dash lemon extract
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
dash salt
3 tbs milk
poppy seed mix

For those of you lucky enough to get your hands on ready-to-bake poppy seed mix (they do sell an overly sweet version in the states in cans in the baking section), there is no need for a poppy seed mix recipe. Once I got a mohn-fuelle that needed only milk added — it was a 250g package, and I had to add 75g (or 5 tbs) milk to mix. If you want to work completely from scratch, say, from ground poppy seeds, then you will need to add some sugar and vanilla or lemon, as well as milk. One of the links above had more of that info, but in German. If you need a translation, let me know.

Beat the butter and sugar together till a bit fluffy, then add in the egg. Beat more, then splash in some vanilla and lemon extract for flavor. Pour in the flour, baking powder, and salt, and mix. It will be dry, so you will then need to add the 3 tbs of milk until the dough holds together.
Take any shape pan, medium sized (I used a 9″ diameter circle), and press half the dough down. Make sure the edges turn up a bit, to hold in the poppy seed mix. Pour in the poppy mix, then cover the top with strips of dough. Bake at 350 degrees til done.
Note:
On some ovens, the top will brown too quick while the bottom stays uncooked underneath the poppy mix. In this case, cover the top with aluminum and bake longer. Or, pre-bake the bottom layer (without poppy mix), so that it gets at least half-done beforehand. Be careful, though, because overbaking will make the cake part of the Mohnkuchen a bit dry.

In our fast digital age, how often do we take the time to write a letter by hand, send a gift (self-picked and self-packed), or even walk over to a friend’s house? Many time-taking social rituals have become near extinct, as our digital, virtual, and electronic lives rush into the future.

Well, the other day, I had the true pleasure of receiving a REAL package from my loving grandmother in Europe. She is from a time when people took effort to perform simple(now) tasks in their daily lives, and when everything was done by hand. No generic envelopes or force-fed commercial packing. Here is a picture of her package:

And inside:

And inside that? Well, you know, some german toothpaste I asked for (for my birthday), plus some typical german chocolate (Milka - you can’t get it here, really), plus some other little things, all neatly packed tight - you could tell she put thought into the whole thing.

You should have seen my face walking out with it at the post office: gleaming. I felt so special! Also, you should have seen all the passersby eyeing my box - they knew it was a special treat you don’t see too often nowadays.

Very easy to make - great as a desert or breakfast. What I do is prepare it at night after dinner - eat some hot as desert, then put in fridge overnight to have some cold in the morning with coffee…the best!

4 c milk
1/2 c sugar
1/4 c cornstarch (4 tbs)
1/4 c cornmeal
1 tsp vanilla
dash of salt
lemon rind
cinnamon

Pot on stove, pour in milk. Add in sugar, cornstarch, & cornmeal. Start mixing and don’t stop. Add in the dash of salt, a bit of vanilla, and the lemon rind. Keep mixing until the pudding starts to boil. Remove from heat, mix more, & allow to cool a bit. Pour into bowls. Sprinkle cinnamon on top.

adapted from:

Goya package majarete ingredients - uses sugar, cornstarch, & cornmeal
El Colmadito’s rice majarete recipe - a rice pudding adding coconut milk
Que Pasa’s rice majarete recipe
Pastry Sampler’s Vanilla Cornstarch Pudding
Welcome to DR’s corn pudding recipe - uses cream of corn
and other recipes actually using corn to make corn pudding

I chose to make my recipe simple, using cornmeal instead. This way I’m sure to have the ingredients on hand. Keep in mind, my majarete came out thick - once cooled, it’s almost like cake. Some people prefer it like that, others like a softer, creamier version: just reduce the amount of cornmeal, cornstarch, and maybe even sugar. The lemon rind gives off great flavor! If you don’t have lemon, you could use lime or orange rind instead.

Straight from AOL. Funny, I never thought I’d be recommending something from them, but here it is: Send to Cell. You’ll find a helpful little list of AOL Mobile applications, such as MovieFone, Mapquest, AOL Mail & AIM, etc. Actually, these are not really applications, but links that will be sent to your phone as a text message so you can easily find them online on your cell, which you then bookmark for later access. Can come in handy, so why not?

But if you really want to hack your non-smartphone cell, check out Pogue’s post “How to make your cellphone act like a Blackberry.” There he outlines a bunch of neat tricks to make your regular phone step to the next level.

Somehow I’m not the ‘tag’ type, though I could possibly become one, if somebody were to go and tag all my bookmarks properly for me. With thousands of bookmarks, that is too much of a chore! So I still work with categories, which can be highly irritating when trying to find a well-nested favorite. Since I use Firefox, I sync my bookmarks with Foxmarks (a GREAT little add-on).
But last week, I was having a bit of an overheating problem on my laptop, and I blamed it on Firefox, which eats up so much CPU & memory that it can cause my Ubuntu Feisty to heat up and shut down. (never had the problem with Dapper, nor with other browsers). Another guy here is having similar problems, related to Firefox, and here is a post touching upon stability issues in Feisty. So I actively searched for other browsers and, of course, bookmarking systems.
I tried Epiphany, the “gnome browser”, again, and LOVED LOVED LOVED how it used almost no CPU or memory. In that respect, Epiphany is a real cool winner. However, the way in which it handles tabs, focus, new tabs, etc, with no real way of tweaking anything with plugins or addons/extensions, really really irked me.
I searched online and saw that many people recommend Iceweasel. I had never heard of the thing before that. I tried it, and really, it’s just a knockoff of Firefox made for Debian. It loaded up all my Firefox settings, tabs, and toolbars, and heated up my laptop just the same.
I almost tried Opera on Feisty, but decided to leave that alone, since I already had it on my Windows partition as a backup (it replaced IE), and though it’s very promising, it didn’t always work as I wanted or expected. (wow, now I see how Firefox has molded me into a different sort of browsing maniac.)
Anyways, back to the bookmarking issue. I truly believe that the ability to easily bookmark and open existing bookmarks is the most important aspect of a good internet browsing experience. The worst thing that could ever happen is I browse, find, and then can’t bookmark. (or go online and can’t find a previously bookmarked page). So, my choice of a browser clearly hinges on this issue, and I just did not have a good time setting up a new bookmarking process!
I exported, imported, uploaded, etc. I researched, then tried Furl & Blinklist. In the past I had attempted del.icio.us, but could never find anything in my “big blob ‘o bookmarks.” I thought other newer alternatives would be better, but none were able to tag my bookmarks according to the categories (notice the plural) they were in. For instance, I could have a page under “websites” –> “design” –> “html”, but these services would only use the “website” tag. Later, when I test-searched my bookmarks, I could never find anything. Plus, I hated having to go to a separate webpage to access my bookmarks. They should be accessible directly from the menu, just like regular bookmarks are!
So, what did I do, in the end? I came back to Firefox & my Foxmarks, which, by the way, has a new button to bookmark from all browsers…and of course I’m trying to keep my laptop as cool as possible…

It’s been quite a while since my last post about the best free voip setup. A lot has changed. Small startup companies that I dismissed earlier now offer pretty amazing services, and other more established ones have continued to grow. Look at Skype, for instance. Although they are the most closed and proprietary of the entire group, their range, breadth, and ease of services, along with their huge (and growing) customer base, has clearly kept them on top. If my friends and family are on Skype, by default, I have to be too, even if I am “pro-SIP.”
Basically, I have Skype but only actually run it when I need to. I had been waiting for a way to call Skype users through a regular phone, and I’ve finally found one! Check out Mobivox. This is a spanking new service which allows you to call your Skype contacts through any phone. I tried it out the day it became available. I had problems connecting, but I emailed customer service, and it was working within hours. I used it, and even though still in beta, the service was very good! All I had to do was call an access number and tell the voice-activated robot which Skype contact I wanted to call. So easy it’s cheesy.

Now what do you do when the person you would like to call does NOT have a computer nor internet service? You set up yourself and that person (make an account for them) on Jajah. This is what I did to call my grandmother in Europe. We both were talking on our regular phones, but were connected through VOIP by Jajah. Amazing, and the quality is great! My grandmother couldn’t believe that such a clear long-distance call was free. You do, however, need to beware all the limitations that keep your account ‘active’. Calls are only free when you call an ‘active’ user. Gizmo is touting a similar ‘All Calls Free‘ plan, but I their limitations seemed way too stifling.

Another mover-upper is Gtalk-to-Voip. I had visited their site months ago, and saw nothing spectacular. Now I go there, and it’s like “WOW!” They have truly integrated different VOIP services (even on different protocols!) over the internet for open and free internet calling. It looks like all the major players (except Skype, of course) are included, such as GoogleTalk, Gizmo, Yahoo, SIP providers, etc. I’m very excited to explore this service further.(..thanks Yannick!)

My original favorite, Ekiga, has been making moves lately as well. With a new version out, a Windows version, and some new features, oldie-but-goodie Ekiga is still up in the running. I particularly like their new “presence” feature - you can add a button anywhere online to show your status and allow people to call you with just one click.

Great list by Mashable has all the info you need to download videos embedded in websites such as Youtube, Google Video, etc. It’s really a “must-bookmark” webpage…
(I used KeepVid and it worked perfectly!)