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December 9, 2007

Pittsburgh scribe predicts Pats victory; Gifts for foodies; Free Xmas game; Net pioneers celebrate;

Interesting read: Game 13 Matchup: Steelers vs. Patriots by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sportswriter Gerry Dulac. Friday, in his NFL Forecast: Week 14, he made his prediction: Patriots, 23-13, saying

Do not fret about a loss to the Patriots, at least not now. This can be a fact-finding mission for the Steelers, just as it was in '05 when they lost in Indy to the 10-0 Colts.

Today he looks at likely strategies.

I'll predict the Patriots thrive being home again at last, and win by at least two touchdowns.

I hope we see Troy Brown back; Providence Journal photographer Mary Murphy snapped this photo of him running a drill at practice Thursday.

My colleague Pam Cotter will be at the game, rooting for her hometown's Steelers, unfortunately, and standing (SRO tickets) in the predicted sleet and freezing rain at Foxboro. I'll be cozying up to the warm TV with the whole family hoping we're not in for another nailbiter.

Foodie gifts

Gifts of homemade vanilla extract

Food & Foodie Gifts: Ten Ideas & Ten Links for More Ideas by Alanna Kellogg at BlogHer.

Ten Great Homemade Food Gifts, and No Cooking Required for Some!. Kalyn Denny (Kalyn's Kitchen) offers lots of links to other food bloggers' recipes for treats worth giving.

I've been disappointed when buying flavored oils for dipping bread, so I clicked Carrabbas Italian Grill Bread Dip Mix at Sidewalk Shoes. Definitely worth a look.

Similarly, a formula for Herbes de Provence from French Kitchen in America

In this list, How to Make Vanilla Extract at Andrea's Recipes also caught my eye. It requires vanilla beans, good vodka and eight weeks, so your lucky recipients get to watch your gift "ripen" if you start any time before Christmas.

(Following Andrea's links, I end up at Arizona Vanilla's extract page, with a recipe for Vanilla Bourbon Extract

1/2 cup Kentucky Bourbon (pick your favorite!) 4 or 5 vanilla beans

Chop vanilla beans into small pieces. Do not lose any of the little black seeds. Drop the pieces into a clean jar and cover with the bourbon. Cover with a tight-fitting lid and keep in a dark place, shaking every other day. Vanilla Extract will be ready in about 2 weeks. The mixture can be added to indefinitely. Use just as you would regular vanilla extract. Store it anywhere, and it will keep for several years.

Or you could just give it as very special bourbon.

Global Gourmet - Food Gifts From Around the World. Peter Greenberg spotlights four sites, and gives you a sense of what to look for there.

Today only: The Game Giveaway of the Day is Foxy Jumper 2: Winter Adventures. The full version is free, but you have to download and install it today.

(When you download it as a zip file, extract it and run the activate.exe file before you run setup.exe; this registers the game.) You won't be able to burn it to disk, it will only run on the computer you active it on. But it's a fun holiday-theme platform game that one or two players can play.

This downloader's mini-review in the comments has a lot more information about playing it.

History lesson: The Team That Put the Net in Orbit . NYT today,

AS a young NASA engineer during the 1980s, Milo Medin liked to irritate his managers by building scientific computer networks using freely available Internet software that outperformed more costly commercial systems.

He was a member of a rebel generation of engineers and scientists that created what would become the commercial Internet during a tumultuous decade. And this group did so by ignoring conventions and adopting a cooperative spirit that turned into the hallmark of the open source software movement.

Some 220 of the original Internet pioneers met here at the end of November to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the NSFnet, the scientific data network that was originally constructed to tie together the nation’s five supercomputer centers and that would ultimately explode into today’s Internet. By the time the academic network was shut down in 1996, it connected 6.6 million host computers and extended to 93 countries....
“The model of a network where no one is in charge is a model that can scale,” said Douglas E. Van Houweling, the chairman of the Merit Network when the NSFnet backbone was constructed.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 4:15 AM | Permalink