I love rice.
But not just any rice, Japanese rice. For some reason, I just love it. I think it has something to do with the fact that I just love Japanese food: sushi, sashimi, miso, soba, rice, etc. The thing that makes Japanese rice Japanese rice is that it is a short grain rice, versus our usual long grain. This gives it its unique sticky behavior.
Over break, I got a rice cooker from my grandparents, and now every night, I make rice. I prefer the Nishiki brand rice, which is imported from Japan. Rice is a great alternative to Ramen noodles, and provides high protein returns for the amount of rice consumed.
After cooking it nearly a hundred times, here is the recipe for Japanese rice that I find to work quite well.
- Rinse the rice in your rice cooker bowl or some other bowl by swirling water around, draining, refilling, swirling, draining, repeating that process until the water you are pouring out is clear.
- Measure 1 cup and a hair more than a teaspoon water to every 3/4 cups rice.
- Let the rice soak for at least 40 minutes, longer is better.
- After soaking, cook the rice in your rice cooker.
- When the cooking is complete, then let the rice steam for at least 10 minutes. The longer you steam it, the drier it will be.
- Take the rice out of the cooker and shape/serve however you please.
I know you think I am weird, but before you think such thoughts, maybe you should try it.
A fresh batch of my Nishiki rice with some black sesame seeds on top.
No, I am not lost. But, I have been really getting into LOST.
I am usually not one to like TV, since I never had it growing up as a child. But now, I feel myself being rather intrigued and entertained by two shows: the Office, and then LOST. Now this being said, I would definitely say that I am not an avid TV watcher. In fact, I don’t even watch those two shows on TV, I watch them on DVD or from iTunes.
Why do I like LOST? I have to blame my cousins for that one. They were all watching LOST and talking about how great it was, so I watched the first two episodes and then asked Leslie, “hey, do you want to watch the first two episodes of LOST?” She agreed and after the first one, which was kind of creepy, we were like, “well, we have the second episode downloaded, let’s just watch it.” Again, it was kind of creepy, and we didn’t think we would continue watching them. But lo and behold, the next day, we both admitted to each other that we kind of wanted to know what happened. So we rented Season 1 disc 1 and 2, and then watched episodes 3-5, each time a little creeped out, but then still wanting to continue following the characters and the story. Now, I would say we both want to finish watching all of the seasons. It’s a good show, with an interesting premise, and it’s rather entertaining.
I would usually categorize TV as an unnecessary waste of time, and I still do believe that most of it still falls in that category. However, ever so often a rare show will appear and I will find myself getting into it like a really good book or movie.
Do you all like LOST?
There is something about college life and staying up late to work on stuff where at about 11:30 - midnight, you become vastly hungry. At least, one of my roommates Andrew and I do. So last night, we got hungry, and we needed some sustenance. We began scouring the little coupon booklets they send in the mail, and in doing so, we found a deal for Dominoes where if you buy a pizza on Tuesday, you get one for free! “Hey”, we thought, “this is exactly what we want.”
We called them and asked them for their “2x Tuesday” deal, and as a result, we got two large pizzas fresh out of the oven delivered to our Bromley doorstep for the price of one. And anything at that hour of the night tastes good.
But the best part about this is what you do while you eat your yummy midnight pizza. I choose to eat my comestible and work on Computational Theory. In theory and in practice, they are a great combination. 2x Tuesday means more than just two pizzas, it means getting pizza and doing what college students do best on a Tuesday night.
Why is it that often times, we can’t just watch one of something, but we have to watch at least two of that thing. Like LOST episodes, for example?
My class list has been tentative for the last week, but now, I have “finalized” it. I have debating if I should try to finish one year early, as opposed to just one semester. Over the last week though, I have finally reached my decision, and am going to stay that “extra” half of a year, and thus just graduate that one semester early.
Any way, my class list (and accompanying descriptions from the UIUC course catalog) is:
- Computer Architecture II: Second-level course in computer architecture. Machine-level programming, instruction sets, data representations; subroutines; input/output hardware and software; linking and loading; relation to high-level languages.
- System Programming: Covers the basics of system programming, including POSIX processes, process control, inter-process communication, synchronization, signals, simple memory management, file I/O and directories, shell programming, socket network programming, RPC programming in distributed systems, basic security mechanisms, and standard tools for systems programming such as debugging tools.
- Theory of Computation: Finite automata and regular languages; pushdown automata and context-free languages; Turing machines and recursively enumerable sets; computability and the halting problem; undecidable problems.
- Universal Physics: Quantum Physics: Interference and diffraction, photons and matter waves, the Bohr atom, uncertainty principle, and wave mechanics.
It seems like a lot, but it’s actually not going to be too bad. I am most excited about System Programming and Computer Architecture II, those should be sweet. Physics, ugh. Computational theory, ugh.
After many painful hours of struggling with the server, I finally got my blog back, and it’s better than ever. What was the problem? Here is an excerpt from the server-guru Josh that got this thing back for me:
I configured Squid to regard Apache as an origin server. Apparently,since squid servers commonly sit in a (usually multicasted) hierarchy, squid mangles the REQUEST_URI so that the next Squid proxy in the chain can figure out where it needs to go to fix cache misses. But we only have one squid proxy, and so by letting squid know that Apache is the origin server, it doesn’t mangle the REQUEST_URI.
So Josh is a genius, and the problem is all fixed. Thank-you Josh!
So yesterday I got braces. I needed them, considering I had a gap in between my teeth for which I could fit like a quarter and a dime in. My orthodontist is Dr. Allen in Wheaton, and he and his staff are quite nice. The braces went on smoothly, and for the first few hours, I was like: “This isn’t so bad. It doesn’t hurt at all!” That was until my Advil wore off. Now they just, well, ache. But eventually that will go away.After getting them off, I went immediately to Jewel to buy some ice cream. Yummmy! My dinner consisted of soup. Well, all of you who have had braces know the drill. You’ve paid your dues, and now it is my turn. 8 months to go!
