Day: November 26, 2003

• XML-RPC support in MT
• Blogger API
• MetaWeblog API
• Python:
  • PyMT – Python MT XML-RPC
  • xmlrpclib
  • PyBlogger
• XML-RPC RFC

Sort of like CafePress
Web link of note: Zazzle
(At http://www.zazzle.com/)

Web link of note: What is the Creative Commons License?
(At http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/comics1)

An XML API / format to syndicate, archive, and edit (like XML-RPC) blogs.

At one point it was called Pie.

I think the API is called Atom….
Web link of note: Atom, Echo, Pie
(At http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie)

check out Six Beasties and Plantearium
Web link of note: Beholder (puzzles)
(At http://www.beholder.co.uk/home.html)

Want something slightly exotic for Thanksgiving, but not too exotic? Time is tunning out, but there is an interesting alternative to a simple ham or turkey, and I’m not talking about tofurkey.

It’s turducken– a turkey stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken.

Although it also sounds like a Pokemon name.

ASH: Turducken! I choose you!!
TURDUCKEN: Turducken!!!

Stuffed Camel goes one step further- it’s a whole camel, stuffed with a whole lamb, stuffed with 20 whole chickens, each stuffed with 3 eggs. This from a book called International Cuisine (California Home Economics Teachers, 1983 (ISBN 0-89626-051-8)), but it’s also copied on the web all over the place.

I know the idea is the flavors transfer, but come on people… I am very skeptical that the eggs are going to have a camel flavor.

It actually seems to me that turducken is cheating a little bit- all the recipes I have seen involve cooking the components and then assembling them… which doesn’t really let the flavors mingle together at all.

Example: a mirepoix of chopped celery, onion, and carrot can be made into a bed on which to cook meat, for example pork. In some recipes, the vegetables are thrown away after cooking, because their flavor has already infused into the meat. The budget-conscious chefs I know who do this instead take the vegetables and make a low-cal snack with them- the vegetables are now slightly pork-flavored, but still low in fat.

But the point of that recipe is the flavor transfer. How much turkey flavor is in the chicken in the center of a turducken? I dunno.

This really happened to us in Tokyo:

BRIAN: one hot chocolate please
BARISTA: hot or cold?
BRIAN: What? what are you talking about?
BARISTA: do you want your drink hot or cold?
BRIAN: What the hell are you talking about? How can you have a cold hot chocolate?
AARON: Whoa there.
BRIAN: I mean a cold hot chocolate is just chocolate milk!!!
BARISTA: ??
AARON: He wants it hot.
BARISTA: Hot! Thank you!
AARON: And I would like a lemonade.
BARISTA: Hot or cold?
BRIAN: AAAIIIIGH!!!