Michael Langlois's Blog, page 4

The Coffee Siphon

Mad science isn’t just for breakfast anymore.

My pal Erik is a coffee snob aficionado, who is constantly laboring to educate me in the ways of the bean.  He’s thinking about stuff like roasting times and water temperature, while I’ve just recently stopped drinking coffee flavored sugar and cream.  I’m basically a coffee luddite.  It’s hot.  It has caffeine in it.  I’m happy.

Or so I thought.  Every once in a while, and almost always when hanging out with Erik, I’ll have a cup of something that surprises me.  Something more than just a cup of scalding bitterness. Something that makes me think that there might actually be something to this whole coffee thing.

The picture above is from today’s lesson in coffee: the siphon.  We stopped in at Ascension Coffee in Dallas and had the gurus there perform some coffee magic for us.  I have to admit, the whole thing was kind of surreal to me, but the coffee was excellent.  I’m all about experiencing new things, especially if it involves food of any kind, and this was without a doubt the most delightfully cool coffee thing I’ve ever tried.

Here’s what the whole operation looks like if you’re curious:

Filed under: Blog Posts, Food

Dog Plus Hammock Equals Saturday

 

You know how sometimes your wife catches you doing stuff and then shows everyone proof of your weird “dogs and hammocks and god knows what” shenanigans?   

Yeah.  Me, too.  Hope your Saturday was equally delightful.

 

Filed under: Blog Posts

Candy Revival: The Turtle

Growing up, I was never much a fan of turtles.  They were okay, I mean I’m not exactly going to turn my nose up at a blob of chocolate, caramel, and nuts (duh), but they were nothing particularly special.  I saw them at the holidays, typically heaped in a bowl, fresh from being extracted from their crinkly plastic trays, but I usually passed them up in favor of better, more exciting delights sitting nearby.

Turns out, I had no idea what a turtle actually was.  First of all, take a good look at the picture up there.  Notice that those babies are not flattened disks of waxy chocolate with a few half-hearted bulges on offer.  There’s chocolate, but it’s the good stuff.  And the bulges?  They cannot be contained.  There’s literally too much good stuff bursting out of there to cover up.

Of course, that’s not the whole story.  The real reason that the nuts are exposed (ahem) is that it’s the only way to let them retain their toothsome crunch, not too crisp, not too soft.  A great pecan or almond or cashew is a complex mix of texture and sweet and salt, and should not be allowed to smother inside the candy.

The caramel that glues the insides together is critical as well.  It has to be soft and buttery, with just enough presence to add richness to a bite without overpowering it, silky and not stiff and gluey so that it provides a luscious lubrication to each turtle instead of presenting a defiant challenge to your teeth.

Creating real turtles, the kind that deserve the name, turns out to be an art.  And a difficult one.  Which is why we see them so rarely.

My guess is that you can get real turtles somewhere in your city.  There’s a chocolate shop out there with your name on it if you look.  But if you want to be sure, and I think you do, then I’m gonna recommend you give Turtle Alley a shot.

And if you really trust me, get the chipotle ones.  Really.

Filed under: Blog Posts, Food

A Word About Daylight Savings Time

For the record, I’m not a fan.  I’m already deathly allergic to the cruel oppression of dawn (by which I mean anytime before noon), so when the powers that be deliberately inch morning closer to me like a cat shoving half a field mouse under my nose?  Not cool.  Notice that I’m posting this WAY after the event, which should tell you how lazy traumatized I am.

Anyway, here’s CGPGrey to explain things in an entertaining, logical manner, instead of comparing world events to half a rodent like I just did:

Filed under: Blog Posts

Game Review: Space Cadets

I think it’s obvious by now that I really want to fly a spaceship.  I mean, duh, I’m kind of a huge nerd.  And by fly a spaceship, I don’t just mean dogfighting and banking turns in a vacuum as if I were flying a P51 Mustang in space (although, god help me, I love that, too).  I mean being part of a bridge crew and working together to not die in an expanding ball of plasma and velour uniform scraps.

For video games, I love Artemis.  For my phone, it’s Spaceteam.  And for board games, it’s Space Cadets.  Here’s what it looks like:

All party, no labels.

All business, labels. Click to embiggen!

This is set up for four people, each running a couple of stations.  It plays 3-6 people, and for this game, the more the merrier.

In a nutshell, each player has a job to do in a 30 second window.  Before and after these timed windows you have plenty of time to discuss strategy, but when it comes down to getting your Spock on, you need to take care of business in short order.  Each of the stations is essentially a mini-game, which the player can become more skilled at over time.

This is the secret sauce of this game and the reason why I love it.  Unlike other games, *cough*Space Alert*cough*, your ship is actually not a piece of crap.  In fact, with a skilled bridge crew, you can be really friggin’ powerful.  The crew of the USS Hull Breach never managed any real level of badassery, but it was totally possible.  In this game, player skill trumps all, which makes it incredibly addicting.

If you’re interested in how the stations work, the game designers put up some fantastic short tutorial videos for each.  Here’s the one for operating the helm:

None of the stations are particularly complex, but each one presents just enough of a challenge that you’re going to see a wide range of success in your thirty second window.  Hats off to the Engelstein brothers who designed this game, it’s pure genius.  A novice weapons officer can get the basic job done, loading and firing a torpedo for a bit of damage, but a master can load a spread of three, maybe even four torpedoes and wipe out all the enemies in a sector.  The same holds true with pretty much all of the stations.  Moreover, since many of the stations have a direct impact on the others (sensor locks increase damage, helm and shields work together to present an effective defense, etc), a strong officer winds up helping the entire ship.

If you have any interest in this kind of thing, and you should, then I recommend you pick this one up.  Especially if you can put together a regular crew.  While fun at a party or occasional gaming session, this one strongly rewards continued play.

As usual, here’s the clever and handsome Tom Vasel with a video review where he totally agrees with me:

Filed under: Blog Posts, Gaming

The Bookshelf Dilemma

This is the bookshelf in my office.  When we moved in, this was a blank wall.  The room had no shelves of any kind.  Hell, no closet either.  So we had this built across one entire wall, with deep cabinets underneath to hold my board games and zombie heads.  As is proper.

It’s hard to see from this picture, but each shelf is double stacked, with a row of books behind the ones you can see.  There are more books, naturally, stacked all over the place: next to the bed, in the bathroom, on the kitchen counter, but this is where the ones I want to keep track of generally are.  It’s where people who visit eventually end up, eyes roving up and down and side to side, looking for something good to borrow.

To me, that’s the best part of having a bookshelf.  I get to pluck stuff off the shelf and talk enthusiastically about the plot or a particular character or whatever.  I get to practically re-live the book while talking about it.  Usually it’s a book I haven’t seen in some time, and if the person doesn’t borrow it, I’m likely to pick it up myself.

Now for the dilemma.  While I love books, I don’t really think of the physical object itself as a book.  I’m only interested in the word parts.  So, for the last year or so, I’ve been buying ebooks if they’re available.  Sometimes they lag behind the release of something I’m dying to read, so I go ahead and get the paper one, but if I can read something in seconds instead of hours or days, then that’s what I’m going to do.

Which means that my bookshelf isn’t growing like it used to.  There was a time when we had to fill up a trunk full of books to donate or sell at Half Price Books every couple of months, but that’s becoming a lot less common these days.  I can see a time when my bookshelf just stops growing.  It’ll still have my favorites on it, no doubt about that, but more and more the things I recommend to people will be books that I only have electronically.  Either because that’s what I’m enthused about at the moment, or because they’ve already read all the stuff I have on the shelf that they’re interested in.

And that’ll be sad.  I find that while I love to own books, I like sharing them just as much.  It’s a fundamental part of reading culture, this sharing of the books we love, almost like trading bits of our lives with each other.  It’s how I became a reader, and eventually a writer, same as nearly everyone else I know.

So, even as ebooks become more commonplace, don’t forget to share.  If you have a Kindle, you can still lend your books to a friend. Same thing if you own a Nook.  And check with your local library, you’ll be surprised at how many lend ebooks as well.

Speaking as both a reader and a guy who sells books for rent money, I encourage you to lend your books.

I want to see a hell of a lot less of this and more of this.  Much more.

Filed under: Blog Posts, Essays

Today’s Inspiration: Shane Koyczan

I like to think, and I don’t say it out loud, that I’m a writer.  But compared to Shane, I’m just some clumsy guy, fumbling around.  Nobody can do what he does, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try.  Shine on.

 

Filed under: Blog Posts

KS Alert: There Came An Echo

I want to tell the truth here.  I would never have taken a look at this Kickstarter if Wil “Look at my manly beard while I brew this beer” Wheaton hadn’t been associated with it.  He tweeted, I clicked like a lemming, and things got interesting.  In that order.

First of all, I learned that TCAE is a tactical squad game that is controlled entirely by voice.  Yes, that’s weird.  But also brilliant.  If you’ve ever played a squad tactics game, maybe the recently released X-COM:Enemy Unknown for example, then you’re familiar with the ubiquitous voice that follows you around telling you what you should be doing in every mission.  You know the one: “It’s an Atomic Skulleater!  Quick, try diplomacy!”  and “We had to identify the last team we sent in here by their teeth.  They were collected over a one mile radius.  Good luck!”  Well, in TCAE, you get to be that disembodied know it all.  FINALLY.

I also learned that Mr. Wheaton is doing voice work for the game.  Woot!  If you’re fan of his acting, and I totally am, then you’re going to be happy he’s involved.  But if you’ve listened to his voice work narrating books, then you’re already reaching for the pledge button.

Then I watched the gameplay demo and my wallet fell completely out of my pants. I love the idea that the squad talks back, asks specific tactical questions, and that’s not even getting into the challenge of guiding a group of operatives through a combat mission just by yelling at them.  The whole idea is bananas.  And awesome.

I have no association with the game or the studio, but I am a game nut who wants more developers to take chances and do something unique.  There are plenty of me-too Diablo/CoD/Bioshock clones already.  As a gamer, I want to support and encourage this kind of thing because I know how risky it is.

So give Jason Wishnov at Iridium Studios a minute and watch the pitch video.  Then join me in throwing money at the screen:

 

Filed under: Blog Posts, Gaming

Food Heaven on Wheels: ssahmBBQ

Last night we went to this:

And it was awesome.  Street performances, paper lanterns, live music using traditional Chinese instruments…all fantastic.  Also, not what I want to tell you about.

See, this event was part of the Chinese New Year celebrations that started last weekend on the official day.  As such, it was partly inside the museum and partly out in the surrounding streets, where throngs of cold but jubilant celebrants could watch martial arts demonstrations and a spectacular traditional dragon dance.

It was basically a big old street party.  And you know what street parties bring, right?  Street food!  I know, I’m a bad man.  I was standing next to twenty-foot-long gyrating dragon and gazing longingly at the row of world-class food trucks down the block.

Specifically, this world-class food truck:

It was too dark to get a good shot, so you’ll have to settle for this one from their site.

If you look closely, you can see that the side of the truck says, “Gourmet Korean Tacos”.  What it should say is, “Minds blown, line forms to the left”.

First of all, the tacos.  Soft flour tortillas filled with kalbi (beef), daeji (pork), ddak (chicken), or dubu (tofu) and a stunning collection of crisp veggies, sesame soy vinaigrette,  Korean salsa roja, spicy mayo, and carmelized kimchi.  It’s amazing.  I had the kalbi and the daeji, and they were tender and sweetly spicy, and the taco itself was crunchy and bursting with tangy flavor, followed by a deep and mellow heat.

Next, the ssahmdog.  Ssahm (or ssam) is a traditional Korean dish where a crisp lettuce leaf is wrapped around meat, usually accompanied by rice and a spicy condiment.  Now, imagine that for the meat, you wrap some bacon around a hot dog and fry it, add caramelized kimchi and two kinds of spicy mayo, Monterrey jack cheese, and put the whole thing in a bun.  It looks like this, and it absolutely blew me away:

That stuff on top?  That’s what caramelized kimchi looks like.  I know, looks weird.  Tastes like pure unadulterated joy.  Spicy and dense and tangy, I could probably just eat that and call it a day.  I probably don’t have to tell you about a fried, bacon wrapped hotdog.  Should be illegal, glad it isn’t.  The spicy sauces were just short of scorching and perfectly offset the complex flavors of the dog, making every bite a blissful combination of meaty and crisp textures, sweet and spicy flavors, and hot and cold sensations.

Finally, KIMCHI FRIES.  I’m not going to say much about these except that the only thing that could possibly make caramelized kimchi better is to smother french fries in it and drizzle spicy sauce and shredded cheese over it.  I honestly don’t know how many of these you get in an order, because they almost didn’t make it to the table.  My advice, order two and eat them hunched over like Gollum so your ‘friends’ can’t steal any.

So.  I totally enjoyed celebrating the Year of the Snake.  I did.  But I may have enjoyed celebrating the Truck of the Ssahm a little more.  If you want to join me in stalking them around the city, go here to check their schedule of appearances.

Filed under: Blog Posts, Food

Yeah, That’s WAY Too Close

I’m sure you’re aware by now that an asteroid is going to pass about a cat’s whisker away from the Earth today.  It weighs in at about 130,000 metric tons, and has a diameter of about 50 meters, or 150 feet.  If it were to hit the Earth, and it’s not, the force of the explosion would be around 2.4 megatons.  Not quite equal to the Tunguska Event, but pretty impressive nonetheless.

The spooky thing is how very, very close this pass is going to be.  The Moon is pretty close, yes?  It’s going to come closer than that.  A lot closer.  In fact, it’s going to pass through the Geosynchronous Ring, which is where we park satellites.  Meaning that it’s going to pass UNDER them.

Not cool, universe.  Not cool.

Here’s a quick peek at what it will look like.

/shudder

Filed under: Blog Posts