Killer Carrot-Ginger Superfood Salad

If you're new the internet you'll know that it has a peculiar habit of falling apart as time goes on.  There's a bizarre kind of kill or be killed entropy to the web that causes many websites to fall off the internet, and others to live on forever( do yourself a favor and go relive the awesomeness of that old website). In this edition I'm perserving for posterity a recipe that I found on a tumblr blog. The original website the recipe came from and the original tumblr that posted it have all gone dark. To make it easier to find when I want to make it later I'm posting it here on my bloggy blog. I claim no credit for photos or recipe. I'm linking via the wayback machine and to the tumblr I found to give as much credit to where I found it as I can.

So credit to Chompandthrive.com for photos.

Ingredients:

Dressing:

1.5 cups of carrots, peeled and roughly chopped (about 3 large carrots)

1.5 cups of water

1/3 peeled and chopped ginger

1 clove of garlic

1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar

1.5 tablespoons of honey

juice from 1 medium lemon

1 cup of olive oil

Salad:

2 heads of broccoli, chopped

3 ounces of shiitake mushrooms

1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of pepper

6 cups of red organic kale

5 cups of shredded red cabbage

2 cups of edamame

2 medium avocados

1 pint of blueberries ( 2 of the smallest boxes)

1 cup of pepitas (pumpkin seeds without the shell)

Directions: 

Killer Carrot-Ginger Dressing:

Add the water and carrot to a saucepan and boil for 7-10 minutes, or until the carrot is able to be pierced with a fork. Remove from heat and let cool, about 10 minutes. Reserve all of the cooking liquid and add it to a food processor with the carrots, chopped ginger, garlic, apple cider vinegar, honey, and juice from 1 lemon. Blend until contents are smooth. Drizzle in the olive oil last until an emulsion forms.

Superfood Salad:

On low heat, in a saute pan, add the shiitake mushrooms and chopped broccoli pieces. Season with garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and drizzle with olive oil. Cook over low heat (2 out of 10) for about 10 minutes, just until the vegetables are no longer raw. Set aside. Chop the organic red kale and add it to a bowl. Layer on the shredded red cabbage, broccoli and shiitakes mushrooms, edamame, avocados, blueberries, and pepitas. Top with the carrot-ginger dressing and serve.

Oh look, Google finally got a clue...too late

The real name policy and google+ fucking nightmare is finally getting acknowledged as the clusterfuck that everyone said it was back when they started trying to make it a thing. It's largely why I've abandoned this shit hole. They held my blog hostage, use your real name or it's going to be read only, and I caved.

I caved because I've been blogging here for years, I liked it more or less and liked some of the people I'd met. Not so much after they purged all the good people, but the spammers are still thriving. They've driven adsense payouts down to the point that it's not even worth pursuing as a small time blogger.

So thanks for the memories Google, blogger used to be kind of awesome.

On Monetizing

This really came about because I was ruminating on ways for creative blogs like web comics, and web series, to monetize their product and how the limited ways that they can or do monetize ultimately limit and shape the edges of what those creative endeavors can or do become.  The first sentence that I managed to write down on this thought stream was about living in the cracks of fame, being known and loved by a small audience but not able to create broader appeal to take whatever creative project they are working on to the next level.  For reference much of this was in regard to Watch the Guild, SMBC Theater, various web comics and comedy blogs.

Shows like watch the guild and smbc theater don't make it on the large screen, even with their reasonably good production quality they won't draw mass appeal outside their niche for various reasons that are outside the scope of this little rumination.  This shortcoming  limits their ability to explore their craft and sharpen their story telling because at the end of the day they have day jobs and outside activities that will draw them away.  Various methods of democratizing payment have been floated and are being experimented with, but they rely on 3rd party infrastructure and require you to establish your base before you pitch your idea.  Indiegogo and kickstarter are clearly ways for established niche players to capitalize on their success and build bigger/better futures for those involved with longer running creative adventures they don't help sustain "micro level" production.  Blind ferret bundles comics together to form volumes on Looking For Group and SMBC Theater releases DVD's of each "season's" worth of sketch's, but a high percentage of that value is not going directly to the projects themselves but rather to pay for the physical goods, and also represents a real risk for those producers as most of the time they have to assume some risk to get the product made before they can sell it.  These avenues do pose risk for them loosing money.

Other experiments people are proposing call for direct contribution via Flattr (a kind of tip jar), but assumes people will remember or even consider giving money for things the creatives are just putting up on the web for anyone to consume. The urge to pay for things on the internet is not a strong one, and it represents another thing/service consumers have to sign up for and care about. The final approach I've seen is a hybrid subscription model with various twists.  They give some percentage and then charge for "deeper access".  In specific Me In My Place (MIMP NSFW) is pursuing this type of a model with their photography app.  They offer a mobile browser app that is supposed to give you additional pictures not shown on the MIMP tumblr (NSFW duh) blog.  On problem with this model is the push to move more subscriptions inevitably causes the creatives to show images that are supposed to be "subscription exclusives".  Since moving to the paid model I've found the pictoral quality is exceptionally repetitive, and the site appears to be having a harder time recruiting women to participate as models.  Whether this is a problem germane to erotic/semi-erotic work remains to be seen.  As a side note I've also seen a slight permutation of this model taken by a writer "retiring" work from her blog/site as it is compiled into books of stories for sale. For people just discovering her work the site's content can appear a bit thin, but she offers several books for sale.  You're left with an odd delemia as both a new and old reader.  New, you have to choose to buy her work based on a thin selection of current work which may or may not represent past work or as a long time reader your favorite stories have to be purchased to be enjoyed again. The site in question is Remittance Girl, a NSFW erotic story site, I'm not trying to be mysterious here, I just needed to get the warning in before I linked to it.  This may be an excellent model for the specific content being generated in this context, but I'm not sure how well it translates to other genera's.

I posit that hybrid "all of the above" approaches are needed to drive the continued creation of so called "micro content" single comics, stories and webisodes.  The compilation/tangible goods model via DVD, comic books, or real books, or other items for sale is one way for supporting the creation of independent creative material that has real draw backs for the creatives, where the flatr/tip jar has real draw backs for the consumers and Indie Gogo/Kickstarter success or failure could be an albatross for the artist in the future.  In the longest foreseeable future ad revenue and or sponsorship may be the lowest hanging and traditional route to cling to, but has a relatively low pay rate and places limitations to the type of content you can created.  For instance few advertisers want to be associated with profane, or pornographic material.

So sorry for serious adult face here to the people that actually read this silly blog from time to time, it was a though in my head and really the only place I had to plunk it.

Come for the Vampire Porn stay for the witticisms?

If you don't have analytics you should totally get an account if only for random joy's like this one.  2.09% of my traffic for the last year has been searching for vampire porn.  If that isn't a win, I don't know what is.

More on the Meritocracy

So I posted about this in M last month and have since purchased the book and am working on finishing it.  I'm taking notes as I go and here is why sometimes it takes me a really long time to write posts.  These are my notes.

For chapter 1.  I'm on page 46 of a 200ish page book.  FML.

Anybody else having issues with scheduled posts?

So I typically schedule posts at into the future so I'm not on the hook to be creative every day (it can be challenging I find), but this week not of the scheduled posts have posted on their own.

That is not acceptable!

Scheduled posts are my life line here, I am guilty of not checking my blog every single day so I need to know that time I did use was productive.  I've been with blogger since 2005 and for the most part I'm happy with it as a platform, but the push to modernize things seems to be breaking shit around here.  For the longest time I couldn't see the sections under posts where it said all posts, scheduled and draft posts.  I figured out the url and manually typed it in there to get to the various sections when I needed to, but I don't appreciate a wonky interface.  I'm not running blogger in draft stop fucking the mainline up, some people actually use this shit.

Also as a side note, I think the new interface for reader, and gmail are piss.  I use Reeder for Chrome to fix the interface on google reader and read my gmail on my phone to stop from being pissed off at you.  If you're going to update interfaces stop filling the page with so much white space my eyes bleed.  Ditto on the plus.google overhaul.  I don't give a flying fuck about the trending topics, stop trying to be twitter.  Twitter is it own shitty little nest I don't need you to try and fail at being a bad interpretation of Twitter.

Rawr, go back to executing well god damn it Google, I'm gonna jump to wordpress or tumblr so help me

Fracking awards season

Alright let's make this quick, some douchebags tagged me InfinitePlans and R probably some other jerk too, but I'll get to you soon enough.

So whoever thought up this blog version of a chain letter decided that they could arbitrarily add rules to this award, and in an act of extreme arrogance assumed that people would follow them.  Here's the deal, most do but I expect it's because they are sheep.  So the three rules to accept this award are that I must:

• Link back to the person who gave you the award. 
• Pick 5 people deserving of the award and notify them on their blogs. 
• Post the award on your blog and spread the love.

The point of this is to hightlight blogs with sub-200 followers that you think deserve a second look.  Well I give to you my two.  Why two because rules are dumb and I'm gonna do two.

Lord Phorzen over at Cirnopoly, I can barely understand the blog but hey what's life without whimsy?  also Dreadnaught tagged him already, but I barely give a fuck.
KingDota at the latest tech news, title says it all.  Click here to read about the suff you already read about on slashdot, engadget or gizmodo already.
ToTipota wanted to get an award so here he get's one

And I apparently need a nap, 'cause I'm feeling surly.  so whoever liebster is I hope you have really bad heartburn tonight.

500 Actual Posts!

So time for me to revel in some sort of a personal accomplishment here.

This dear reader will be my 500th post!  I thought I had passed it before, but that is because the new blogger interface is kind of confusing.   The short story is that I had 500 posts and drafts the last time, now it is 500 honest to goodness posts here on this bloggy blog.

Next up for reveling, I recently-ish passed my 100th follower.  Trish ish I think was number 100 so here's a shout out to her blog.  I trying to get through the back catalogue of her blog to catch up on what's going on.

And finally things are shaping up to look like another rhymes with Froogle Madsense check coming my way so thanks to everyone that comes by and tolerates the things I choose to write about!  Also, I was reviewing my "labels" I saw that I have one for Mudkips.  I find that hilarious.

That is all.

Daily posting, why I cannot

My friend V manages to post something almost every day, complete with an image that relates directly to the post. I do not. I expect my postings to be profound, but given that I lead a pedestrian life it shouldn't surprise me that the I record mundane events.

I suppose the reason so few journal is they don't want to be reminded how dull their lives are. The process of recording requires reflection, and that may be too much to bear. We have been watching Mad Men: Season Two[?]lately, the last one we watched was the episode with Freddie wetting himself. While Donald was talking to Sterling, Mad Men dropped this pearl of wisdom.

..its your life, you don't know how long its going to be but you know its got a bad ending. You have to move forward, as soon you can figure out what that is.

I suppose that can pass for reflection for today.

Is technology a Porn friendly business?

I was reading my Gizmodo feed today, and I was struck by the number of sex toy and porn references and even one outright posting.

After a Little review, it turns out it is not the whole Gizmodo staff that are porno festished writers, mostly the one and only Jason Chen.

tags: Gizmodo Sex Toy Blogging Jason Chen