nick.cash's site

Cacahuatl

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 22:48:49 +0000

Cacahuatl is the Aztec drink from where it is said we get modern chocolate. This, while not an outright lie, misrepresents cacahuatl as something you might actually want to drink. You don't. The drink is actually more akin to a thin molé sauce than hot chocolate. Only less drinkable.
The Aztecs said drinking cacahuatl gives you strength. This is probably a mistranslation of some sort--what they really meant was it takes considerable strength just to choke it down.

Recipe:

Gather together your closest friends and family and hope they talk you out of this. Abandon hope all ye who continue.
Into a small saucepan waste the following ingredients that you could be using to make something else:
- 16 ounces of water
- 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
- 1 stick of cinnamon, broken in half
- 2 dried hot chilies, crushed
Bring to a boil. It will start to give off a pungent aroma, something akin to chocolate cake mixed with the smell of death. If you've done it correctly, it burns as you breath it in.
Once it bubbles up, remove from heat. Allow to cool then return to heat. Repeat three times. This is supposed to improve the flavor, meaning it's actually worse if you don't. Fear that this could be true ensures that I stick to this tradition.
Decant into a mug (pour; leaving the solid stuff behind). Allow to cool completely before serving. Turn back now while there's still time.

If you've come this far, you might as well drink the stuff. Truth be told, it's really not that bad, if you have an appreciation for bitter flavors. If you're the sort of person that can't drink coffee without sugar, this isn't for you--it's even more bitter than coffee. The spiciness is also off-putting... there really aren't many spicy beverages in our culture to prepare you for this.
So, despite my warning to the contrary, this is actually worth trying if you have any sense of culinary adventurousness. It's not going to be something I drink frequently, but it may be something I make again--even if it is only to serve to the unsuspecting.

Brave Little Toaster

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 23:41:53 +0000

Poll: Most disgusting name for a bacterial infection

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:07:35 +0000

Toxic megacolon vs Bacterial vaginosis

Cryo

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 01:47:04 +0000

Well, it's settled. I am cryogenically freezing myself until October.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMDNpWEXhIo
also
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtTG0QqutiA

last.fm

Sat, 15 Jul 2006 08:14:54 +0000

I'm going to use this opportunity to extol the virtues of a little site called last.fm. It is to music what I wish the BYOND site was to games.

The basic idea is this: you install a plugin that keeps track of what music you listen to. Based on this data, last.fm gives you streamable radio stations of recommended music, automatic and user-supplied artist recommendations, groups, forums, and journals to discuss music, and whole social-networking-type-thingy to go along with it. It's very Web 2.0, but it's done nearly perfectly. I spend more time there each day than I do on any other site.

Anyway, this whole post is to say:
a) Try out last.fm
b) Join my BYONDers last.fm group

RSS

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 04:39:50 +0000

All I have to say is this:
finally!

Seriously, when Deadron writes: "When we first rolled out the Member pages, we immediately got a request to provide RSS feeds." -- that was me. members.byond.com wasn't even out of beta when I started my campaign of whining. Now that it's finally here, I may actually use my BYOND blog.

OS X Question (Mike?)

Wed, 23 Nov 2005 07:50:32 +0000

I spend all day with my laptop on various wireless networks--home, school, work. On each one are different file servers (FTP or SMB) that I need to work with. What I'd like to do is setup something to automatically mount different servers depending on what network I'm on.
It's not too terribly difficult to do by hand, but it's slightly annoying.
I've tried using automator, and I've looked at launchd, but don't seem to be able to find any way to conditionally act upon the network name at connection time.
Thus far OS X has been capable of doing all the weird stuff I want it to do, so I'll be dissapointed if this isn't possible :-)
Anyone know of any way to do it?

Gughunter goes to the moon!

Sat, 16 Jul 2005 08:31:29 +0000

Slashdot confirms: Space Tug to the Moon and Beyond!

Audioscrobbler

Wed, 21 Apr 2004 19:24:59 +0000

Audioscrobbler is a program that tracks what songs and artists you listen to and builds a profile online. It shows what you listen to most, what you've recently been listening to, etc. (You can see my profile here) I think it's really cool.

It also has a Groups feature where you can form groups around genres, artists, whatever. Although this part currently doesn't work, it combines together all of the users in a group to see what they collectively listen to most. I've made a group for BYOND users here. If anyone's interested, please join. It'll be interesting to see what other BYONDers listen to.

(They have an Audioscrobbler plugin for almost all major media players, by the way.. and it requires no extra work on your part, just install it and enter your username/password once and it automatically does its thing)