Monday Links from the Armchair Vol. XXIII

[NickFitz]

How many times can you re-use sunflower oil?

It depends, apparently.

[TimberWolf]

Potato chipper?

Use a knife! The chap responsible for the recipe has even posted a video showing how to cut them

That's the way I cut them currently, except I also use a knife to peal them. How many times can you re-use sunflower oil?

[NickFitz]

Hmm, French Fries Page bookmarked.

Sounds like a lot of work but I'll give it a go once I've bought some potatoes and a potato chipper.

Potato chipper?

Use a knife! The chap responsible for the recipe has even posted a video showing how to cut them

[TimberWolf]

Hmm, French Fries Page bookmarked.

Sounds like a lot of work but I'll give it a go once I've bought some potatoes and a potato chipper.

[Mich the Tester]

Bad Postcards doesn't have the classic one of Redditch Bus Station

FYI, Redditch has an equally spectacular railway station which is equipped with one parking space for a giant wheelchair.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...n_building.JPG

[HairyArsedBloke]

Bad Postcards doesn't have the classic one of Redditch Bus Station

[Sysman]

XML Bad Practices - Robin Berjon's exhaustive analysis of commonly-seen mistakes in the creation and consumption of XML vocabularies. "XML is now over ten years old and can euphemistically be dubbed a success. That being said, I don't believe I need convince readers that not all of its uses have been successful. Over time, many bright minds have attempted to describe how to best make use of it when designing vocabularies, but I believe it is safe to say that those efforts, no matter how excellent, have not been sufficient in ensuring that all applications of XML are produced in an entirely sane manner."

He can say that again!

[Mich the Tester]

[LIST][*]OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual - Bruce Schneier links to a PDF (2.3MB) of the manual produced by the US Office of Strategic Services in the run-up to D-Day, suggesting simple techniques for the residents of occupied nations to use in support of the Allies. I particularly like the section aimed at those involved in managing organisations and businesses: "(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for 'further study and consideration.' Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five."

Brilliant stuff.

My granny worked on writing these manuals during WW2, specifically the organisational stuff about sabotaging decision making.

[NickFitz]

Further evidence that, when you explore the vast and diverse range of humanity's intellectual creations, you might conclude that the destruction of the Library of Alexandria wasn't such a bad thing after all:

• OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual - Bruce Schneier links to a PDF (2.3MB) of the manual produced by the US Office of Strategic Services in the run-up to D-Day, suggesting simple techniques for the residents of occupied nations to use in support of the Allies. I particularly like the section aimed at those involved in managing organisations and businesses: "(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for 'further study and consideration.' Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five."
  
  
• The Burger Lab: How to Make Perfect Thin and Crisp French Fries - "I'm gonna come right out and say something that I'm sure you won't all openly agree with: McDonald's french fries are great. At their best, they are everything a french fry should be: salty, crisp, light, and not greasy. Granted, you get the occasional odd franchise that lets'em sit under the heat lamp for a couple hours too long, but on the whole, I find it remarkable that the bigwigs have discovered a way to create a frozen fry that even a one armed eyeless chimp has trouble screwing up." When chef and food writer J. Kenji Lopez-Alt set out to create a recipe for perfect fries he ended up going to tremendous lengths, including surreptitiously obtaining uncooked McDonalds fries and researching the chemistry of potatoes. If you're peckish and want to get straight to the cooking, here's the final recipe
  
  
• 10 Things We’ve Learned About Men From Having One-Night Stands - "If a dude says to you, 'I don’t like you in that way,' and then you bone, guess what? He still doesn’t like you in that way. Sucks, but it’s true."
  
  
• Jesus, Jesus, Jesus - "In the late 1950s, psychologist Milton Rokeach was gripped by an eccentric plan. He gathered three psychiatric patients, each with the delusion that they were Jesus Christ, to live together for two years in Ypsilanti State Hospital to see if their beliefs would change. The early meetings were stormy..."
  
  
• The Totalitarian Buddhist Who Beat Sim City - "Vincent Ocasla... spent four years wallowing in equations and graph paper building a totalitarian Sim City hellscape called Magnasanti, racking up a population of six million and claiming to beat an otherwise unbeatable game." In Vincent's mathematical dystopia, life expectancy of the sims is 50 - but they get a hell of a lot of work done in that time. Here's an interview with him.
  
  
• The New York Public Library Picture Collection Online - "For those who seek knowledge and inspiration from visual materials, the Picture Collection Online presents more than 30,000 digitized images from books, magazines and newspapers as well as original photographs, prints and postcards, mostly created before 1923."
  
  
• Towards a Sociological Theory of the Mobile Phone - "Seen in this very broad evolutionary perspective, the significance of the mobile phone lies in empowering people to engage in communication, which is at the same time free from the constraints of physical proximity and spatial immobility... however, this emancipation from physical constraints has to be paid for (1) with an almost exclusive limitation to bilateral contacts, and (2) with increased uncertainties about the current subjective states and environmental conditions of the contacted partners." Hans Geser thinks far too much about this stuff.
  
  
• XML Bad Practices - Robin Berjon's exhaustive analysis of commonly-seen mistakes in the creation and consumption of XML vocabularies. "XML is now over ten years old and can euphemistically be dubbed a success. That being said, I don't believe I need convince readers that not all of its uses have been successful. Over time, many bright minds have attempted to describe how to best make use of it when designing vocabularies, but I believe it is safe to say that those efforts, no matter how excellent, have not been sufficient in ensuring that all applications of XML are produced in an entirely sane manner."
  
  
• You Couldn't Make This Up Dept: "Why is Mars' Moon Phobos Hollow?" - "Mars' Moon Phobos has been analyzed as being one-third hollow according to European Space Agency reports, which has triggered some wild and utterly fascinating rumors and speculation that we've featured below." Now we know where Zeity keeps sneaking off to
  
  
• Bad Postcards - They are
  
  

Happy invoicing!