seeds: pumpkin (roasted) redux

About this time last year I shared my world-famous Special Pumpkin Seed Roasting recipe with you. As I prepare to sink my hands into a goopy pile of pumpkin innards, I offer you once again the last pumpkin seed recipe you will ever need.

And unless you think I'm just re-posting because I can't think of anything new to say, this year I've made some small but cunning changes to the recipe, just to keep you on your toes and to (gasp) make it better.

Bob's Special Pumpkin Seed Roasting Process

Wetware

• Beer
• Large steaming pile of pumpkin innards
• Running water
• Olive oil & Canola oil
  
• Seasonings (I used Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning; Garlic Powder and Chili Flakes; Salt and Pepper)

Hardware

• Large pot
• Kitchen towel
• Oven, preferably convection
• Flat rectangular cookie sheets
• Tin foil
• Wooden spoon
• Oven mitt
• Paper towels
• Small paper (not plastic) bags

Instructions

Open a beer. Start drinking it.

Deposit steaming pile of pumpkin innards into the large pot and put it in your sink under running water. Get your hands into the pile and squish it around - your goal is to separate seeds from innards as quickly as possible.

Pull out large stringy bits and discard. You won't catch every seed, so don't try. Do try to pull out little chunks of pumpkin flesh, as those will burn later if they make it into the oven with your seeds.

Once you'd separated all the guts from the seeds, lay out the seeds on the kitchen towels to let them dry off as much as possible. You can cover them with a second towel or paper towels to accelerate the drying process.

Enjoy some more beer as you pick out the stray bits of pumpkin guts, small knobbets of pumpkin flesh and the occasional ammo casing from among the drying seeds. Also pick out any seeds that look nasty - black spots on seeds are a sure sign of Something Bad.

While the seeds are drying, clean and dry the big pot from earlier and set the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit with the convection turned on if you have it.

When you're content that the seeds are as dry as you want them to be, put them back into the big pot and pour a healthy glug of olive oil and a healthy glug of canola oil into the pot. Use your hands to make sure that all of the seeds are coated. The combination of two oils will help your seeds stand up to higher temperatures without burning and will reduce the chance of off-flavors from burned olive oil.

Just be careful at this step - too little oil is preferable to too much oil.

Tear off enough aluminum foil to cover the bottom of your cookie sheet, then pour out a quantity of pumpkin seeds to form a single layer over the entire sheet.

Choose your seasonings, then sprinkle them liberally (to taste) over the seeds. Once you've covered them all, use your fingers or a spoon to mix them up and make sure that all of your seeds are covered, on both sides if possible. Again, watch how much seasoning you put on, especially if you're not quite sure how much heat or salt you want. Too-salty and too-spicy seeds are No Fun.

Slide the sheet into the oven, and check them at 15 minute intervals for "doneness" - this means eating a few. This is another excellent time to enjoy some beer.

When you can smell the seeds in the kitchen and they start to look dry, slightly blistered and a little brown, pull them out.

Lay out a double-thick layer of paper towel on a flat surface and transfer the seeds from the aluminum foil to the paper towel. The goal here is to soak up any stray oil and let the seeds cool before you put them in bags for storage. Note that you don't want to use plastic bags, as they will trap moisture and make your seeds soggy - and as you know, a soggy seed is a bad seed.

hooray: joe girardi named yankees manager

It's not easy being a Yankees fan in Chicago. It was especially difficult this fall:

1. The Yankees imploded in the playoffs - again - with lackluster hitting and uninspired pitching. Teasing us down the stretch with great play made their post-season collapse all the more disappointing.
   
2. The Red Sox won the Series - again - with gutsy hitting and inspired pitching. Congrats. I take some small comfort in the American League showing the National League who its daddy is.
3. The artless stooge that is Alex Rodriguez failed in the playoffs - again - and then thumbed his nose at a deal that would have made him richer than Croesus. Phooey, good riddance to bad rubbish, and kudos to Brian Cashman for refusing to negotiate a new deal. For all Rodriguez' skills and ridiculous numbers, his selfishness was locker room poison and utterly inconsistent with what it takes to win a championship. There is no "team" in Alex Rodriguez.
   
4. The even more artless stooges that are Yankees management showed - again - that they don't know how to handle a management change with class. It may have been Joe Torre's time to go, but giving him a F--k-You offer only served to illustrate how the New Bosses are as boorish and classless as the Old Boss. Joe, you personify dignity and grace under pressure, and I will miss seeing you in pinstripes.

So it is with some relief that I see the New Bosses have done the right thing by hiring former Yankee catcher and Manager of the Year Joe Girardi as the new Yankee skipper. It is also the clearest sign that Old George will be spending his twilight years dribbling into a cup instead of making coaching decisions - if the Old Boss was still really in charge, Don Mattingly would be getting ready to move in. Sorry, Donny Baseball, but you've got to bear some of the responsibility for the Yankee collapses of recent years, and while that's probably unfair, that's how it goes.

I see a bright future for the Yankees as they nurture their deep bench of young talent under the tutelage of a coach who knows how to get the best out of young players. It might take them a few years to bring it all together, but when they do, those of us who are proud to call ourselves Yankee fans will have something to be proud of again.

focus: put the user experience first

On page 5 of John Siracusa's Ars Technica review of Apple Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" is a too-brief observation on Apple's kernel design philosophy (my italics):

Apple's focus is on system-level performance, not micro-benchmarks. The kernel team's job is to make the software at the higher levels look good. If improving the performance of some tiny aspect of the kernel tenfold does not provide a measurable performance increase for some user-visible feature or task, it's not an effective use of development time, benchmark bragging rights be damned.

The fact that some of the best and brightest minds at Apple put the user experience first doesn't surprise me - just as the fact that bright minds elsewhere will pillory them for being inefficient and inelegant doesn't surprise me either. There is an endless tension between wanting to make each component of a larger system as great as it can be with the knowledge that good may be all that is needed.

We all know that great is the enemy of good - but institutionalizing that realization is difficult. How do you set the bar for excellence lower and not have individuals feel that they are compromising themselves? When can you say you've done enough to make it better, and that any additional effort is a truly wasted effort?

On two occasions I've heard Guy Kawasaki pronounce in a keynote speech "don't worry, be crappy" - and on both occasions I've looked around when he's said that and noted wincing from both technical and marketing people. The fact that he follows up this exhortation with "churn, baby, churn" fails to dull the sting that we should ever settle for a release that isn't the best it could be, by gum.

A popular anonymous product management blogger recently observed that the two ways to earn the respect of development are (in order) to stop being an asshole and become an expert in the current customer base. I would argue that if you are an expert in what the customer wants, sometimes you have to be an asshole to get the point across to people who may feel a proprietary interest in making whatever widget they are responsible for better than it needs to be. Assholery is a useful skill when applied infrequently and selectively.

And what better time to apply this useful skill than advocating for the user experience, especially when some "you don't appreciate the power of my kung fu and I know better than you" developer decides to trump your requirements and spends a month on work that's the functional equivalent of painting the bottom of a chair.

Putting the user experience first is exactly what Barry Goldwater was thinking about in 1964 when he said, "I would remind you that compromise in the defense of the user experience is no vice! And let me remind you also that over-engineering in the pursuit of excellence is no virtue!"

Honest.

And so - if you want to be a good product manager, put the user experience first. A famous former IBM chief executive used to say that you should tattoo "customer" on your forehead so that the customer would be the first and last thing you'd think about each day. It's fine advice, especially if you've been looking for a way to be more like Gully Foyle.

This is also my way of saying don't bother trying to become a great product manager. By the time you figure out how to be great, you'll have missed the opportunity to move on to a job in which your greatness is both more required and more richly rewarded.

preparing: nanowrimo

(If you are interested in actually learning how to prepare for NaNoWriMo, read this.)

I am generally more successful setting short-term (1 month) goals than I am with grand resolutions. For example I set a goal back in August to go to the gym every morning during the work week. That goal worked out so well in August, I decided to renew it for September. . .then October.

And now it's a habit.

Beginning November 1, I'll be working on another discrete goal: to write 50,000 words in one month. That boils down to writing 1,667 words a day - habitually - for 30 days.

That's a lot of words. But I want to develop the habit of writing, so I'm going to participate in National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. Nanowrimo.

"Bob, don't you already have a habit of writing? You've been doing ack/nak for quite a while."

Blogging doesn't count, IMO.

"What are you going to write about?"

I'm not telling.

"So spell it out for me. What are you going to do?"

I plan to write 50,000 words in the month of November, then I plan to edit the crap out of it in December. Come January 1, 2008, I will make every effort to sell it.

"What is this nah-no-wry-moe thing?"

You can read about it here.

"When and where are you going to write?"

I take the Metra Union Pacific Western line train to and from work that gives me time to prep, edit and brainstorm. I plan to write at home in the evenings.

"You've written about writing before, I think."

Yes. But to prepare for November, I'm not going to write about how to write. I'm merely telling you that I'm getting ready to write. I won't pretend that I know how to write, and I certainly won't pretend that I have any advice to offer you of any real worth.

"Will you be updating ack/nak with your progress?"

Oh yes. For better or worse.

simile: how vista is (not) like a candy store

An individual commenting to Rupert Goodwins' rambling (but ultimately interesting) article Vista versus The Gutsy Gibbon - Ubuntu 7.10 has raised the bar for all of us when it comes to picking apart bad marketing metaphors similes. Here's what he wrote:

Microsoft's now promoting Vista with a campaign called "100 reasons why everyone's so speechless (about Vista)". (MSFT source link)

I looked. #23 is "Because it's like a digital candy store."

Puh-leeze. Bring up the Adept Manager in Ubuntu. Now _that's_ a digital candy store. Over 20000 applications for doing almost anything you can imagine, and quite a few things you can't. Running Vista is like being in a candy store that only sells black liquorice (I _hate_ black liquorice) at exorbitant prices. Oh, and you're only allowed to eat the candy in the store. Plus each individual piece is really small and is wrapped in seven layers of cellophane, and the store won't let you throw the wrappers away. You have to take them with you and throw them away at home. Plus they set off a grenade in the chocolate store across the street in the middle of the night and mugged the proprietors of the penny candy stand. Oh, and Microsoft are the ones behind the urban legend that red M&Ms cause cancer. That's the kind of candy store Vista is.

Ouch. In case you're wondering what it is that some fine product marketing person at MSFT wrote that stimulated this, it's the following:

#23. Because it's like a digital candy store. You choose the fun—TV, games, music, movies, home videos, or photo slide shows—Windows Vista has all of your entertainment in one convenient place. Enjoy it on your PC, or gather friends and family around your home entertainment center, and let the good times roll!

Is it just me who doesn't fall for this sort of thing anymore? Does letting stuff like this on the street do more harm than good?

I think so. Product managers beware - there is a thin-ish line between harmless hucksterism and damaging hyperbole, and you need to be aware when that line is crossed. Because you will pay the price if marketing sets expectations for your product that can't (or for design reasons won't) be met.

moyashimon: anime for microbiologists (updatedx5)

This is a show about a guy who can see microbes. Not just some, mind you, but all microbes. No kidding. All you microbiologists out there, your day has come.

A few links:

Introduction and Scientific Notes to Moyashimon

Moyashimon home page (in Japanese)

Links to torrents of the BSS fansubbed version of Moyashimon episode 1, care of AnimeSuki (h264, XviD) (Note - ack/nak does not host these files, and does not host anything related to BitTorrent such as trackers or torrent files. I am merely providing links to other websites that ack/nak is not affiliated with nor in any way responsible for. Enough said.)

UPDATE - The subtitles on the fansub referenced above are horrible - it's almost like they released the fansub before they had gone through final QA. Oh well. When a better one shows up, I'll update the links with new ones.

A note from whatapath on the BSS page informs me that the issue isn't the subs - it's the videoplayer I've been using. To wit:

"bob– that’s likely a problem with your choice of codecs and video player. if you aren’t using cccp and media player classic (or atleast zoomplayer) you’re probably failing in more than one way. VLC _cannot_ handle softsubs."

I'm downloading MPlayer for Mac OS X to see if that makes a difference. My bad for shooting first and testing second. Sorry for the bad feedback, BSS.

UPDATE 2 - It took some doing, but I got softsubs to work for .mkv files in MPlayer, no small thanks to this page.

UPDATE 3 - MPlayer is working like a champ - it's replaced VLC as my player-of-choice for anime.

UPDATE 4 - Another fansub group has picked up Moyashimon; visit the Shinsen Subs site for more news. It looks like they're doing both a hard-subbed avi and soft-subbed high-quality mkv version.

UPDATE 5 - You can read a long review of Moyashimon episode 1 here.

black humor: national weather service alert

(my bold)

STRONG DOWNBURSTS TO 70 MPH ARE POSSIBLE WITH THESE STORMS THURSDAY

AFTERNOON AND EVENING. LARGE DAMAGING HAIL ARE ALSO PROBABLE. IF NOT THREATENING ENOUGH...A FEW TORNADOES ARE ALSO POSSIBLE.

"If not threatening enough?" WTF!

evangelism: the transitive property

It's hard to be an evangelist. You have to carry the flag you're given, read the lines that show up in your briefing books, and make it sound like you really truly believe what you're saying.

You need to tread the fine line between being a thoughtful, credible commentator and being a shill.

And you need to do it over and over and over again.

Want an example of how hard it can be? Consider the following uttered by evangelist Richard Bullwinkle in a recent interview with ipTV News:

“I think that when you give consumers tons of choice on how they purchase the (video) content, they will buy more – consumers want to feel good about their use of it. We need to work on technologies that enable honest consumers to enjoy the content they want.”

Like all evangelists, he needs to transition from general statements of truth to specific applications of whatever it is he is selling in a way that can be logically connected back to the general statement of truth. The evangelist's success depends on his ability to do this right, every time, whilst treading that fine line I described earlier.

Let's parse the quote from above to watch this in action:

1. I think that when you give consumers tons of choice on how they purchase the content, they will buy more. He's off to a good start. Consumers love choice, no doubt there. The argument here is that consumers wait to buy until you make it possible for them to buy in exactly the way they want to. And once you do, they'll go apeshit and start running up their credit cards.

2. Consumers want to feel good about their use of (content). His choice of the phrase "feel good about their use" gives you the feeling he can imagine individuals who don't or shouldn't feel good about their use of content - namely, those who didn't purchase their content, or more to the point, who chose not to purchase their content.

3. We need to work on technologies that enable honest consumers to enjoy the content they want. This is the payoff. Technology enables choice which is a prerequisite to creating an honest consumer, therefore technology is a prerequisite for enjoyment, QED. At least as far as the vendor is concerned.

Mr. Bullwinkle needs to convince skittish studios and broadcasters and other purveyors of rich media that they can grow their businesses by doing exactly what they've been resisting - giving consumers choice.

The interviewer concluded that Mr. Bullwinkle's position was the following:

"Consumers will buy more content if they are given more purchasing options enabled by robust Digital Rights Management (DRM)."

While I think this speaks to the concerns of the publisher, I'm not sure it really speaks to the concerns of the consumer. Consumers want choice not just in how and where they buy but how and where they choose to consume content. If the technology solutions Mr. Bullwinkle is evangelizing fail to meet the needs of both constituencies, the technologies will not deliver on their promise.

Then again, what do I know. In any event, my hat is off to Mr. Bullwinkle for constructing an elegant evangelical argument for the publisher - I'm keen to see him do the same for the consumer.

olive branch: muslim scholars call for peace with christians

A wonderful article, and a wonderful sentiment.

I think a condition of the negotiation should be that Jews get to come to the table too.

Ann Coulter would disagree, I fear. Too bad.

resting: why so few pm posts of late?

"I thought this was a blog about product management."

"It is. Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"Yes. Which is to say I write about product management topics, but I also write about. . ."

"A lot of hooey. What was that thing on lapel pins? On lab signs? You've gone all 'pop culture' on us. I think I'll go read User Driven. At least he stays on-topic. Or something by that nice Tyner Blain fellow."

"Those are good blogs too."

"You used to write more product management stuff. What happened?"

"Well, I'm kind of resting."

"What does that mean? Resting?"

"Exactly that. Resting. It's Q4."

"Oh."

"Yes. I'm writing things that are fun and amusing to me because right now, I'm up to here in product management during the day, so when I get to sit down at night I like to have a little fun."

"So you're going to stick to. . . stuff like lapel pins for a while."

"Maybe."

"Your readers aren't going to like it."

"You'd be surprised. Product managers have a sense of humor."

"Really?"

"Really."

snl: mp3 of i ran by andy samberg

A link for your convenience. Enjoy.

colbert: lab work safety signs

In the "Threat Down" segment of last night's Colbert Report, M. Colbert shared three work safety signs he proposed for display at laboratories.

Why? US labs reported more than 100 accidents since 2003 involving such biological threats as anthrax, bird flu virus, monkeypox and plague-causing bacteria, that's why.


The signs:





















I'd pay cash-money for a full-sized version of sign #3.

considered: the buttered cat halloween accessory

As gedankenexperiments go, the Buttered Cat Paradox is plenty of fun, but it also has a bright future as a smart cat accessory for Halloween.

Necessary Ingredients:

1. a bit of toast-shaped brown foam painted with a splash of butter-colored acrylic paint
2. elastic strap
3. cat

Connect 1 and 2 then wrap around 3 with 1 oriented upward.

When asked "what is that attached to your cat" you may respond "an anti-gravity device".

When asked "how is that an anti-gravity device" you may respond "it is buttered toast".

When asked "how is buttered toast an anti-gravity device" you may respond "since cats always land on their feet and buttered toast always lands buttered-side down, when you drop a cat with buttered toast on its back the cat will approach the ground and then hover, QED."

When asked for a demonstration you may respond "go throw your own cat."

Hilarity ensues.

(photo: care of Wikipedia)

sony bmg: "copying cds you own is stealing"

Hold on to your head because when you read this article, it will be inclined to fly off your shoulders.

In related news, Sony BMG declares that listening to songs on the radio constitutes theft, as does any instance in which an individual listens to a CD that they do not own. Oops, sorry, Sony BMG doesn't believe you own your CDs, they believe you "have purchased a non-transferable, exclusive and limited license to transmit the IP contained on the physical media through a DCMA-approved CD player".

Astounding.

review: gfeller moleskine cover

In late June, I reported that Gfeller Casemakers had decided to produce covers for the popular Mokeskine line of notebooks. Two months later, Steve Derricott, the proprietor of Gfeller wrote to let me know that the covers were ready to order, and was kind enough to include a few pictures.

Since then, ack/nak has enjoyed a steady stream of visitors interested in the Gfeller Moleskine covers, and a week ago my own cover arrived. It is made of Gfeller's traditional English kip leather - other leathers are available.

The cover itself is about 1mm thick, made of a smooth leather with a natural finish. My large moleskine notebook slid into the cover and fit tightly. Over the last week it has "relaxed" a bit, so it doesn't gap open when closed without the elastic engaged.


Note the clever way that Gfeller has exposed the moleskine elastic closure; when not in use, it rests flush against the back cover. When "engaged" around the case, it is tight enough to compress the leather slightly on the top and bottom edges, but not too tightly.

The design of the back cover leaves the envelope enclosure on the moleskine's back cover accessible.

Like all leather goods, the Gfeller moleskine cover accepts surface scratches and soiling without a lot of complaint, so keep your cat away from it. Over the last week I've only had to wipe it down after daily use; I'm sure I'll have to apply some manner of leather care product down the road, but for now, it's low maintenance.



As promised, Steve has imprinted the Gfeller "cartouche" and a serial number on the inside front cover. I'm #8, w00t!



You may not be able to see it, but in the last picture (sorry for the quality, a Blackberry phone is what it is) you can get a sense of the workmanship involved in creating the seams and getting a precise die-cut.

Overall there are no irregularities in the seam-line anywhere on the piece, and all edges are straight and true.

I'll keep you posted over time on how the leather "ages" - out of the box (so to speak) it lacks the character that only time can provide. But given the high quality of workmanship and materials that have gone into its creation, I have no doubts whatsoever that it will stand up to whatever I can throw at it.

For more information on the Gfeller Moleskine cover, visit their website.

UPDATE 1 - ack/nak reader Sharon Delman has asked for a better description of the leather.

Yes, Sharon, it is a pretty light brown upon arrival, almost the color of slightly tanned flesh. My experience with leather goods that start out this color is that they don't stay that color for long; exposure to the elements, especially oils from contact with skin, lead to a progressive darkening of the leather first to a darker brown then almost to a chocolate brown. For example, Hartman has a line of luggage made with what they call "belting leather". Out of the box they're light in color, but before too long they mellow into a really cool golden brown that's quite characterful and unique.

All that said, you'll be dealing with a light-colored moleskine cover for a while.

UPDATE 2 - To assist in color comparisons, here is a picture of my Gfeller-covered moleskine and my Filofax A5 York Director in Calf Leather.

The Gfeller is much lighter by comparison - but it is not white.