A Leslie Wong Blog

Ben, over at digg.com writes: “It’s that time of year. Here are some funny cards to show your family and friends you have a sense of humor.”

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If you have a cell phone (of which I do not), you should try this:

I hope you didn’t throw away that turkey carcass that’s been sitting in your refrigerator since Thanksgiving. Maybe you’ve sliced off all the breast for some sandwiches with toast slathered with mayonnaise, and your uncle ate that drumstick Thursday night, but there’s still a lot left in that turkey.

If you break up the carcass, throw it in a big stockpot with some celery, an onion and maybe a carrot if you have one – you’re on your way to making some great gumbo. If you saved all the bones from your turkey, throw them in there too, everything except the skin. Cover it with cold water and bring it to a boil then let it simmer it for a couple of hours. You have great stock now. Smells good, doesn’t it?

Now take some kielbasa, chorizo or some other sausage and slice it up and throw it in a cast iron pot with some oil. Add some onions and sliced okra. Brown everything until the okra isn’t slimy anymore.

Pour the stock through a colander into a big pot. Throw the sausage, okra and onions into that pot. Now you have to pick through the bones and take all those little pieces of turkey – there was a lot on that neck, wasn’t there? – and put it in a bowl.

Start with a clean cast iron fry pan or Dutch oven and heat up about 3/4 cup of oil until it starts smoking. Throw in an equivalent amount flour. Get your whisk, keep the burner on high and cook the flour until it’s the color of espresso. Paul Prudhomme calls this roux, Cajun napalm. You’ll know what he means when you splatter some on your arm. When the roux is the right color, turn off the heat and throw the turkey in there. Now heat up the stock with the sausage, onions and okra and stir in spoonfuls of the roux and turkey. Heat it to a simmer and congratulate yourself. You just made some great gumbo.

Hubblesite has some amazing space imagery that is in the public domain – it’s produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach.

“NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus. This Hubble Space Telescope composite view of the gorgeous island universe was released at this week’s (ed. 01/12/2005) meeting of the American Astronomical Society as one of the largest Hubble images ever made of a complete galaxy. NGC 1300 spans over 100,000 light-years and the Hubble image reveals striking details of the galaxy’s dominant central bar and majestic spiral arms. In fact, on close inspection the nucleus of this classic barred spiral itself shows a remarkable region of spiral structure about 3,000 light-years across. Unlike other spiral galaxies, including our own Milky Way, NGC 1300 is not presently known to have a massive central black hole.” – Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)

The images in the galleries make thoughtful desktop backgrounds for your ‘puter. Kinda makes your mind expand, looking deep into space and time at something that may be long gone…

3:16 PM.

The gOS, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution that is used on the recently released Everex PC, has exploded into popularity. The $199 Everex TC2502, is sold out at Wal-Mart.ClubIT has a $59.99 gOS Developer Kit based on the VIA C7-D processor and the Via PC-2500 motherboard. This is the same processor and motherboard that is used in the Everex TC2502.

Via’s main selling point for this processor and chipset is its Carbon Free Computing Initiative. Via has introduced a new benchmark called the TreeMark Tree Rating.Via emphasizes the lower amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) created in generating the electricity used in computing with the VIA C7-D processor compared to other computing platforms.

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My Alfa Romeo.

I ordered an Ultrafire C2 flashlight after reading Ernest Sanada’s great review on CandlePower Forums, but delivery from DealExtreme.com in Hong Kong took 5 weeks. They have good prices, but you can’t expect your stuff right away.

I got impatient and ordered another C2 from BatteryJunction.com (highly recommended) – they only took 4 days for delivery.

The Ultrafire C2 uses a Cree XR-E-7090 P4 LED which puts out up to 87.4 lumens @ 350 mA, according to Cree. What this actually means is this flashlight is really bright. The manufacturer also says, “White XLamp LEDs are tested for luminous flux and placed into luminous-flux groups.” Your flashaholic calls it binning -they test the LEDs, then throw them into “bins” depending on their output. These Ultrafire C2s use a P4 bin LED.

The Ultrafire’s exterior aluminum is available in two anodized finishes. One C2 I bought is hard anodized to type III specification – it’s gray. The Battery Junction Ultrafire uses the type II specification anodizing – it’s black.

A couple of days ago, DealExtreme came out with an Ultrafire C2 that uses the Cree XRE-7090 Q5 LED, which has a maximum luminous flux of 114 lumens @ 350 mA. What this actually means is this is really, really bright. I ordered two Cree XR-E Q5’s on star boards from Kaidomain.com, maybe I can stick one in one of my C2s.

I’m becoming a (noob) flashaholic. The last photograph in this group proves it. It’s a beamshot comparing the AA Maglite (using fresh AA alkaline batteries) and the Ultrafire C2 (using RCR123A 3.7v Li-Ion batteries), taken with a Nikon D70, 18-70mm lens at 55mm, color temperature – 5700K, ISO 400, .7 sec., f8. I’m not sure how meaningful this beamshot is, because it was taken from about 15 feet, but it shows the relative brightness for comparison.

I took the Alfa off the jack stands today, after several months.

It’s been up there so long, that the car looks very low to me now. The top of the roof is about chest high.

Back in July, I put it up on jack stands to replace the three flex discs (Giubos) in the driveshaft and the clutch – probably a seven hour job at the shop. I ended up getting the gears in the transmission lightened too.

I also replaced the three engine mounts, replaced the front and rear stabilizer bushings with polyurethane bushings, changed the oil, replaced the oil filter, replaced the Spica oil filter, bled the clutch, replaced the rear brake discs, replaced the rear brake pads, replaced the brake booster, bled the brakes,

replaced the top radiator hose, replaced the short radiator hose, replaced the bottom radiator hose, replaced the water pump hose, had the radiator flushed, replaced the driveshaft center support and bearing, replaced the second gear synchro, changed the transmission and final drive oil, replaced the clutch shaft bearings and replaced a heater hose. Don’t ask me why it took so long…I didn’t have anywhere to go anyway.