Author: johnno

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Black Beans (Frijoles Negros)

Here’s the recipe I’ve been using lately to make Frijoles Negros – black beans, Mexican-styles. The Flying Burrito Brothers can go take a leap. This is also surely one of the easiest things to make.

  • 450 g (1 lb) dried black or turtle beans
  • 900 g (2 lb, two tins) tomatoes
  • 750 ml (3 cups, two tomato tins-ful) water, or stock
  • 2 onions, finely diced
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic, diced
  • chili (to taste), seeded and diced
  • 3-4 bay leaves
  • ½ cup red wine
  • 2 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 tsp coriander seeds
  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • olive oil

Soak beans overnight in a large bowl with plenty of extra water to allow them to swell up.

Strain and discard the water from the beans and put them in a large casserole pot with the chopped tomatoes, water, onions, garlic, chili, bay leaves and wine. Bring to the boil gently and simmer for 2-3 hours or until the beans are al dente.

Crush the cumin seed, coriander seed and pepper together in a mortar and pestle. Heat a little olive oil in a pan and toast the spices until aromatic. pour into the beans and stir.

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Wide Aperture Photography

I’ve been trying out taking photos with the aperture set very wide. In full sun the shutter speed ends up at something like 1/2000th and I had to bump the ISO to 1600. Still, even with an unwilling subject I got some nice results.

Lucy Portrait 1


Lucy Portrait 1

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Plum Trees

I’ve been making plum jam from the plum tree in the garden, and strawberry jam from cheap punnets at work. Plum trees, or perhaps their feathered inhabitants, are also of interest to certain spotty individuals.

Help, I appear to be up a plum tree
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Coffee Roaster

For someone medically forbidden from drinking caffeine, I have perhaps an overactive interest in coffee. Well I inadvertently bought a home coffee roaster (I blame Matt), to go with Miss Silvia the espresso machine and Mr Macho the grinder, and I’ve started roasting green coffee beans. So far I have had really good results with Ethiopian Harrar, Colombian, and an Indian origin. Each has a distinct different flavour, and it is as much of a jump in flavour going from bought beans to freshly roasted as it is from going from filtered to espresso. I’ve ordered some decaffeinated beans to roast up and blend in so I don’t go overboard…

  • Batch 1, Arabica from Darjeeling
  • Batch 2, Arabica a little lighter
  • Batch 3, Robusta
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Compiling Javascript?

Okay Joel, interesting argument, and I sort of agree, but please don’t make silly stuff up to support your argument: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/09/18.html

“You can follow the p-code/Java model and build a little sandbox on top of the underlying system. But sandboxes are penalty boxes; they’re slow and they suck, which is why Java Applets are dead, dead, dead.”

Well that’s not really true. Java Applets died because when Microsoft swamped out the Sun JVM with its own crippled 1.1 VM, nobody could realistically write to the much better Applet APIs that came out after version 1.1, so we either wrote crap AWT applets or ActiveX controls instead (a whole other world of pain and silliness). Also, the JVM is hardly “slow” these days, and is certainly faster than your average JavaScript engine.

“What’s going to happen? The winners are going to do what worked at Bell Labs in 1978: build a programming language, like C, that’s portable and efficient. It should compile down to “native” code (native code being JavaScript and DOMs) with different backends for different target platforms”

What, so JavaScript/DOM in a browser isn’t a frickin’ sandbox? Hello?! It seems ludicrous to add another language compiler layer on top of JavaScript/DOM, when you may as well write it in Java and “compile” it into an applet, which will have the same access to browser capabilities, require the same security restrictions and functionality sandbox, run a lot faster, and not require learning a new round of language, compilers and APIs.