Dead Programmer's Cafe

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  • Starbucks Moonshine

    Livejournal has the best community blogs. I frequently read baristas even though it’s often full of petty grievances, tean angst and other Livejournal-flavored posts. But some are absolute gems. Like this story of an old lady who asked baristas to give her empty syrup bottles. After a month of getting the empties, someone curious asked her about how she was using them. Her response too honest for her own good, as she got no more bottles. It turned out that she was giving the bottles to her daughter for bottling moonshine.

  • People of Japan in 25 Pictures

    A policeman in his booth.

    Rikshaw and his passengers in Arashiyama.

    Outdoor eatery – Japanese really use a lot of space heaters.

    Ryokan owner in Kyoto.

    Snack vendors. The surgical masks are worn mostly by allergy sufferers – which due to a high number of pollen-producing Sugi trees planted are about 1 in 5.

    Some take pictures of the cherry blossoms, others take a more traditional approach.

    Riding on the Shinkansen.

    Kids visiting Zeniarai Benten temple.

    In a museum.

    Akihabara girl handing out promotional packs of napkins – kind of like a booth bunny without a booth.

    On a JR train.


    .
    Consulting a fortuneteller.

    I was rather surprised at home many people wear kimonos. I noticed that a lot of shopkeepers wear traditional clothing, it must help with projecting the traditional image

    Another snack vendor.

    Shinkansen driver. Don’t the white gloves make you feel safer somehow?

    Squid on a stick vendor

    Celebrating Hina Matsuri – Girl’s Day.

    Cloth painter. My wife bough a shopping bag with sakura blossom design.

    Fishermen.

    Lumber vendor in his shop.

    Restaurant worker.

    On bikes.

  • You Put The Beer in the Coconut

    I pick my houseplants following a simple rule: they either have to be very exotic or they have to be edible. Preferably both, like my pineapple plant.

    A couple of months ago I purchased a coconut plant, complete with the coconut it grew out of, all for something like $10 (at IKEA of all places). And this morning I found a bonus – overnight a few mushrooms spontaneously sprouted in the same pot.

    Do you think these are poisonous?

  • Deadprogrammer Visits Japan Part IVc : Day of the Tentacle

    Of course, seafood is not the only thing that’s sold in this gigantic market.

    You can buy just about everything seafood related around there, rubber boots, for instance.

    There are a lot of knife merchants around that sell mostly Japanese-style knives. I already have a decent set of Japanese Deba Hocho knives, but I just had to buy a souvenir gaff, a miniature version of a hook that everybody in the market used to grab boxes and fish (they are on the right of this display box.

    Here’s a merchant sharpening a knife on a waterstone. I have one of those too. Because of their single-sided concave edge, Japanese-style knives are significantly sharper and easier to sharpen than Western knives. Still, getting a really sharp edge is a bit of an art.

    There are numerous food stalls around the market. Here’s one of the cooler ones, with a giant steaming pot of something and a dude with a yakuza-like pompadour haircut. This was one of those few places in Japan that refused to serve us, gaijin.

    Instead, we went to a sushi place with slightly disturbing decoration: a doomed fish in an aquarium that watches you as you eat. The sushi was very fresh and reasonably priced, but not significantly better than what I am used to in New York.

  • Deadprogrammer Visits Japan Part IVb : Day of the Tentacle

    The variety of smaller sea creatures sold in the Tsukiji market is mind boggling. Here’s a small sampling of the pictures that I took.

    First of all, there are many, many different tentacled monstrocities.

    These seem to be destined for sashimi.

    Live tiger shrimp.

    Deep red color occures more in fish here more frequently than I am used to.

    I think this is some kind of sea robin.

    This seems to be Alfonsino.

    All kinds of unfamiliar bivalves.

    There’s stuff that I can’t even identify.

    And then, there’s stuff that I, sadly, can identify. This is whale meat. The price tag, if I read it correctly says 3800 yen per kilo. That’s about $20/lb.

    Japanese whailing is a highly controvercial practice, and I highly disapprove of it. Having said that, I have to mention that I’ve had whale meat a few times. In the Soviet times whale meat was sometimes sold in stores. People bought it not because it was particularly tasty (it wasn’t), but because regular meat was not available. Fried, it was very tough in texture, and in taste it was like a mix of pork and beef, yet with a fishy aftertaste.

  • Deadprogrammer Visits Japan Part IVa : Day of the Tentacle

    Tokyo has an awesome tourist attraction for those suffering from jet lag – Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market aka Tsukiji fish market. New York’s Fulton Fish Market used to be a similar tourist attraction, but now it moved to South Bronx, and I am not even sure if it’s still open to the public.

    Basically Tsukiji is a labyrinth of hangar-sized buildings and outside stalls surrounded by a sea of traffic.

    You are surrounded by running people, zipping bikes, scooters, trucks, forklifts and funny little vehicles propelled by a gas-burning engine of some sort.

    Some prefere a more old-fashioned method of transport.

    The heart of the market is the famous tuna auction, where buyers bid on giant frozen tuna carcasses. We arrived after it was already over. Sadly, the auctions were closed to the public in 2005, so it seems I missed my chance to see it.

    I did get to see the aftermath of the auction – floor littered with 300-500 pound frozen fish that fetch about $20/lb (wholesale). I guess there’s a few hundred thousand dollars worth of sashimi in this picture here.

    The fish get picked up by dealers

    and taken to be cut up. They are frozen solid, so they can use woodworking saws to cut them up into blocks.

    Once thawed, tuna looks much more appetizing.

    In fact, big chunks look like giant rubies.

    Even the smaller pieces get special treatment.

  • Empire Strikes Back

    As I was channel surfing, I caught a snippet of one of the terrible new Star Wars episodes. As I could not pay any attention to the wooden acting and turgid dialogue, I noticed something interesting in the background. What is Empire State Building doing on Coruscant?

  • Mr. Anonymous-No-More

    Those of you who only read the RSS feed, might not have noticed that I added two new sections to Deadprogrammer.com: About this site and About the author.

    Now you can learn my secret identity, find out what equipment and software I use, and even add yourself to my Linkedin network.

  • Quotin’

    I am currently reading Douglas Coupland’s latest book, “Jpod” and absolutely loving it. My favorite quote so far:

    “Here’s my theory about meetings and life: the three things you can’t fake are erections, competence and creativity. That’s why meetings become toxic–they put uncreative people in a situation in which they have to be something they can never be. And the more effort they put into concealing their inabilities, the more toxic the meeting becomes. One of the most common creativity-faking tactics is when somebody put their hands in the prayer position and conceals their mouth while they nod at you and say, “Hmmmmm. Interesting.” If pressed, they’ll add, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” Then they don’t say anything else”.

    By the way, according to his website, on 14th of June 2006 at 7 pm, Coupland is going to be at Barnes & Noble Union Square, apparently promoting “Jpod.”

    One of the running themes in the book is the never ending references to the Simpsons cartoons. By my estimation, probably good third of my posts have an Simpsons quote. And you know what, I feel rather pathetic while watching old episodes I stumble upon obscure references that are not even documented in very, very obsessive snpp.com.

    Here are two latest ones that I found. I’ll let you guess, and then announce the right answer. My hope is that some of you are at least as nerdy as I am for knowing this.

    What is the significance of Bob Terwilliger’s prisoner number, 1211 in episode [9F22] Cape Feare? (this one’s is too easy for some of my friends :)

    Answer: Newscorp headquarters are located at 1211 Avenue of the Americas

    In episode 9F19 Krusty Gets Kancelled what is “Eastern Europe’s favorite cat-and-mouse team” based on?

    Answer: They are based on Kazimir Malevich-designed costumes for a futurist opera “Victory Over the Sun”. This 1913 opera was written in Zaum, an artificial avant-garde language, similar to glossolalia or “speaking in tongues”. And I thought that Malevich only drew black squares…

  • Homemade Sashimi

    I did not get to go fishing as much as I wanted to lately, and a recent winter flounder trip that despite amazing weather resulted in only one keeper fish is not a highlight of my fishing career. But the flounder sashimi that I made out of it was absolutely awesome.

    Fluke Sashimi

    Here’s a picture of striped bass sashimi that I made a few years back. I’m told that the dark brown (looks red in the picture for some reason) meat should be removed from fillets. It was very tasty anyway.

    Striped Bass Sashimi

    Food safety is not something to be taken lightly, of course. A lot of people gasp – homemade sashimi? That’s suicide! But if you ask me, food police, fear of lawsuits and American germophobia goes a little too far.

    Over the years I ate a lot of potentially deadly stuff. Street vendor food, for example. Did you ever wonder how those guys go to the bathroom? Cafeteria food. Oh, and not only American street vendor food and cafeteria food. Soviet too. I ate a lot of sushi and sashimi. I’ve had raw Korean beef. A lot of oysters, some rare steaks (usually I order medium-rare). In Ukraine I liked to snack on raw chicken eggs. I ate fish that I caught in the uber-polluted Black Sea. I even ate raw mussels (and they concentrate all the bad sea crap) there.

    And you know what? While long term health effects of my omnivorous eating are not known yet, I had a very mild case of food poisoning only once. From a reportedly unexpired can of Alaskan salmon.

    Alleged time traveler John Titor wrote this about American food:

    “What are people thinking? You willfully eat poisoned food. It’s very hard for me to find food here. It all scares the Hell out of me. I am amazed at the risks people here are willing to take with processed food. All of the food I eat here is grown and prepared by my family or myself.”

    I am scared myself. Food here for the most part does not taste right. The large scale growing and processing does something to it. I highly suspect that it’s one of the major contributing factors in the obesity epidemic.

    In any case, I remember watching Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” where he sat in a French bistro and pointed out half a dozen things that would be completely illegal in an American restaurant, but actually make a eating in that bistro amazing.

    As far as homemade sashimi is concerned, I hear a lot of talk about freezing fish overnight in a freezer to kill parasites before eating it. I’ve tried this, and it makes the texture of the fish mushy. I am not sure about this, but it seems to me that the only fish that gets that treatment is tuna – I’ve seen huge frozen carcasses in the Tsukiji fish market. In any case, raw fish that I caught myself if probably the freshest that it can be. The only way this sashimi could be any fresher is if I cut and eat the still alive fish right on the boat.