So I’ve talked before about little changes that helped improve my quality of life. Like no longer wearing a watch and not depending on an alarm clock to wake up (though university time demands no longer make that latter one possible.)
There’s another ‘lifehack’ I’d like to add to the mix: unplugging. When I’m spending all that time transiting each day, I make a conscious effort to avoid engaging in distractions. Whether that’s reading, listening to podcasts, watching videos on my phone, etc.
I’ll just turn it all off. Instead, I’ll look out the window. And I’ll think. Or I won’t. That’s good too. But I find some time to just let my mind breathe.
My days are already otherwise consumed between shifting between different states of distraction. It’s good, I find, just to be free of that – if only for a bus ride.
So the other day, I was doodling on a piece of paper this idea for a dessert I had. It was going to be a miniature cheesecake on a shortbread cookie base. I went at it, and after a few attempts, I’ve finally got a recipe!
Vegan Cheesecake Cookies
Makes six large cookies. About 450 calories per cookie.
Shortbread Cookie Base
1/2 Cup Cornstarch
1/2 Cup Icing Sugar
1 Cup Flour
3/4 Cup Vegan Butter (eg. Earth Balance)
Set the oven to 300F.
Mix the dry ingredients together.
Add in the softened butter until a dough forms.
Roll out a sheet of wax paper and place on working surface.
Take out a big ball of dough and place on the wax sheet. Then lay a second sheet of wax paper on top of the dough.
Roll over the dough and sheets with a rolling pin. You want the dough to be a centimeter thick.
Cut out the dough in a circle (you can use an upside down glass), and place on cookie sheet.
Put another ball of dough on the wax paper. Lay the second sheet of wax paper on top, and roll over it again – just like before. Also just like before, you want it to be a centimeter thick, and you want to cut out the cookie shape.
With this second cookie, you’re going to cut out a smaller circle in its center. So now you have two circles. Take the outer one, and lay it on top of your cookie on the baking sheet – making a rim for the “crust”.
Repeat steps 5 to 9 until no more dough remains.
Bake for ten minutes. Prepare the topping during this baking time.
Cheesecake Topping
1/2 Container Vegan Cream Cheese (eg. Tofutti)
3 Tbsp Sugar
2 Tbsp Water
1 Tsp Vanilla
Pinch Salt
Set the oven to 350F.
Use a mixer or whatnot to blend cream cheese until softened.
Add in sugar, vanilla, salt, and water.
Blend thoroughly.
Pour with a spoon in the center of the cookies.
Bake for 30 minutes, until topping becomes golden brown.
Let cool. Then refrigerate if they aren’t going to be served immediately.
Garnish
Vegan Whipping Cream (eg. Soy Whip)
Once the cookies are cool, add the whipping cream.
My Thoughts
I did half the quantity of topping, and it was still tons! I think next time I might even go for half that. But otherwise, this was a real success. I kind of wish there was a greater filling to cookie ratio, but I’m not too sure how I’d go pulling that off without having it crumble under its own weight or be unwieldy. Nevertheless – delicious.
I manually added 85 posts to this blog, covering a stretch from November 2003 to March 2005.
This covers the period when I first started blogging. At that time my blog was a text file that I updated by hand on a page from my website. The web server was an old Pentium 200MHz box hidden away in my parents basement. I was using a free dynamic DNS service and the domain nxseal.com at the time.
Then in September 2004, I bought jmcardle.com and started to use some real blogging software called BBlog. I then transitioned to WordPress the following March.
I never archived my posts during these transitions. I recovered all of these by using Archive.org’s Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get everything. In particular, it looks like there’s a good bit missing between February and September 2004.
Going back on what I was able to save, it looks like I was already ranting on ownership, involved in a few pranks, failing classes, working lots, navigating emotions, and I guess just being your average hacker-y/geeky teenager.
One thing is for sure: this Windows, Icon, Menus, Pointer (WIMP) paradigm we’ve been used to for our personal computing needs is going the way of the dodo.
KDE 4.10: The classic WIMP desktop.
We’ve seen with the rise of post-iPhone world the rise of intuitive software. It’s intuitive primarily because these programs have been stripped down to their core functionality. I think ease of use was always something developers strived for, and the iOS shook up just how far one could go with that.
That simplification in my view is a positive, and I think it’s a big reason for why tablets are so quickly replacing laptops. While I’m a big fan of this paradigm, I do wonder where does that leave power users like me. We want those features they’ve been throwing out.
They’re things we need when we develop software, edit videos professionally, or do anything at a level above and beyond what a handful of controls permit. So something more intricate will need to remain behind during this evolution to address those needs, but what shape will that take? That I don’t know.
Microsoft’s solution with Windows 8 is to package in a classic desktop. That works for now, but it doesn’t seem tenable. It’s a touch-hostile interface in a world that’s seeing that become the dominant form of interaction. It’s entirely disconnected from the main product. It does some things just plain worse in how it’s integrated.
Windows 8: The desktop of the future for most.
Microsoft is in an interesting place, because they’re looking to offer a unified experience whether you’re on the recently announced XBox One, a smartphone, a tablet, or a PC. That’s a great thing to strive for. None of those, except for the PC, are typically thought of as power user territory though – so I can see them not seeking to address these issues and instead continuing to bundle these two very separate experiences with their PC OS.
What appeals more on my end is the approach taken by GNOME. They’ve come up with a hybrid interface that works as well with the mouse as by touch. Meanwhile, while still adhering to the WIMP paradigm, they’ve also embraced simplicity. All their bundled applications are about doing few things and doing them well.
GNOME 3.8: An actual hybrid desktop.
But while GNOME addresses the issue of having both mice and touch screens as input devices, it is not as immediately approachable as Windows 8. It may not ever, given that it’s intended for an audience with more extensive needs.
That doesn’t answer where that leaves power users that rely on Windows. Will Windows continue to be that disjointed product, where the classic desktop takes on an anachronistic place like the command prompt does today? What about Apple? Will their next desktop OS continue the WIMP paradigm?
I don’t know about Apple. They’ve more or less had the same interface since 1984. That could be seen as a quality. Meanwhile, that design is also hostile to interaction through a touch screen, and their iOS powered devices have been immensely popular. So who knows. I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to create a uniform experience like Microsoft, nor would I be astonished if they kept their desktop OS solidly in WIMP territory.
I watched the news tonight, which is something I rarely do these days.
They had a piece on the Bank Street BIA, and how they wanted to clean up the place by getting rid of pawn shops, money lenders, and other undesirable businesses. It was going to go well with the new condos popping up everywhere. Fast forward to shots of people, expressing how they want to see high end shops take their place. Not a single dissenting opinion was presented.
The message is clear: poor people are not welcome here. Businesses that cater to their needs are not welcome here. Affordable housing is not welcome here.
What really bothers me is that the lower-income residents here don’t even register as people. They are being driven out of their own neighbourhoods and no one cares. Instead the focus is on how driving them away will make it more convenient for all the wealthier folk taking their homes.
It really bothers me that making areas beautiful is synonymous with this movement to remove undesirables. That’s fucked up. So is our solution to income disparity and income-related issues: ignoring it, and when we can’t, hiding it away so that we then can. It’s like that with the bylaws we passed against squeegee kids and panhandling near some entrances.
And I get that condos are naturally going to come into a downtown as our population goes up, and I get that that will instigate gentrification, and I get that there’s lots at play here. But the attitudes we take as these things happen are emblematic of how we view parts of society, and how we view those with lower incomes is with some pretty fucking bad othering.
