Category: It Happened to Me

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Food It Happened to Me The More You Know...

Last night’s side dish: “Layogenic” curried cauliflower

For the next five weeks, I’m teaching an online Python class from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. That means that on those days, I eat dinner a little earlier, which in turn means that I’ve got to have it prepped earlier.

Luckily, I have all sorts of tricks for this sort of schedule, one of which is the mid-afternoon veggie roast: Cut up some vegetables, drizzle with oil and seasonings, roast in the oven or turbo broiler for 45 minutes. It doesn’t take long to put together, and it doesn’t need to be attended to while in the over, allowing me to continue working.

Last night’s vegetable was a whole head of cauliflower in curry powder (I used Badia’s “Jamaican style” curry), truffle salt, and ghee.

While tasty, it doesn’t look pretty close up. It’s layogenic (pronounced “LIE-o-jennic”), a Filipino/English hybrid term that was BBC’s “Word of the Day” back in January. It means “attractive from a distance, but not close up,” — the “layo” part comes from the Filipino word for “far” or “distance”.

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It Happened to Me Life

Tonight’s dinner: Mapo tofu!

Photo: Cast iron pan full of ma po tofu (Cut-up tofu, ground pork, and spicy chili sauce, garnished with sliced green onion).
I love this stuff. Tap the photo to see it at full size.

One of my favorite Chinese dishes is mapo tofu, a Sichuan dish whose name translates as “pockmarked grandma’s tofu”. It’s a nice, high-protein dish as it’s made from ground pork and cut-up firm tofu, and it’s also a high-octane dish thanks to its use of Sichuan peppercorns. It also calls for lots of garlic, ginger, and green onion.

I was out of that really red Chinese chili oil that always ends up on whatever white that I’m wearing. I replaced it with a mix of Chinese chili sauce (not sriracha — this is different stuff), Sichuan pepper flakes, and sesame oil, and it still came out pretty tasty.

Here’s the real deal recipe, if you’re interested.

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It Happened to Me The More You Know...

Cheapass handyman hint of the day: Yea, though I walk through the valley of hex-wrench shelving, I shall fear no assembly…

Photo: Allen key duct taped to a screwdriver, in my hand.

…for I studied physics, and I have duct tape.

Here’s the story: I was assembling a set of shelves for our front hallway, and I was having trouble driving in its screws with the allen key provided. So I duct-taped the allen key to a screwdriver, which provided the necessary torque to finish the job.

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It Happened to Me

The synth I kept

A Korg Wavestation A/D rackmount synthesizer
The Korg Wavestation A/D. The best damned synth of 1991, and I’ve got one. Tap the image to see it at full size.

Moving to another country requires you to seriously pare down your belongings. I brought only what I could fit in my previous car — Rhonda the Honda — which meant I had to be choosy with what I kept. One of the things I kept is my trusty Korg Wavestation A/D rackmount synthesizer.

Long before that fateful day when Karl Mohr and I took our accordions out on the streets of Toronto, I was a synth player, and my favorite synth was the Wavestation, which I bought from my friend, TV/film composer Steve Skratt back in 1992.

I played it during back at Crazy Go Nuts University, in our grungy, Faith No More-esque band, Volume…

…and after I graduated in all sorts of projects including providing sound effects and background music for my work making interactive CD-ROMS…

…to synth jam sessions, such as the time when Steve Skratt, Karl Mohr, and I were part of the group providing the music for the book launch of The Lion in the Room Next Door, which was written by Karl’s mother, Merilyn Simonds:

As I’m in the process of reviving some old computers of mine and bringing them back to active duty, I’m also bringing the Wavestation A/D back to life. Expect to hear it sometime soon.

If you’re curious about what the Wavestation A/D can do, check out this video, which provides a grand tour of this classic synth:

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Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me

All my sins remembered: Playing accordion at SxSW 2008

Joey deVilla plays accordion onstage in front of a panel at South by Southwest Interactive 2008 while Rannie Turingan looks on. You can see Tim Ferriss' name card (but not Tim himself).
Still one of the best photos of me playing. Tap the photo at full size.

I’ve had many great first weeks on the job, but this first week on the job had a particularly unfair advantage: I was working at b5media, and the timing was such that my first week on the job was the same week the company went to the South by Southwest Interactive Festival 2008 — that’s the one where Airbnb launched and got only two bookings.

I arrived on Day 1 of the festival and was going to spend a long time in the registration line, when some friends — Min Jung Kim and Rannie Turingan — who were on the “How to Kick Ass at Your First SxSW” panel heard I’d arrived. They somehow used their panel host powers to fast-track me through registration, bring me up to their panel (which was full of big names), and then play accordion for the audience.

That’s what the photo above shows. The best part? I’m literally upstaging Tim Ferriss.

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It Happened to Me Tampa Bay

Flag of the day

I love this flag, which I saw on my daily bike ride this morning.

Seminole Heights’ seal, which depicts a two-headed alligator

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It Happened to Me Tampa Bay

The neighbor I need to meet (or: Ooh! Unicorn boat!)

Tap the photo to see it at full size.

Seminole Heights’ seal, which depicts a two-headed alligatorI saw this while going out for a neighborhood walk with Anitra this morning. I need to find out who the owners are, and make friends with them so th I too can cruise down the Hillsborough River in a unicorn boat!