I saw on DealNews that Chipotle is having a special leap-year promotion — if you buy any burrito today, you can get a free burrito by showing your receipt. Though you have to buy the burrito today, the free burrito can be redeemed through next Sunday (March 7th).
Month: February 2004
Tagatose — A New Sugar Substitute
I was reading an issue of Wired’s dead tree edition that a friend had given me and they had a sidebar (not really a full article) on new sugar substitutes. The usual suspects such as aspartame and sucralose were there, but they also had high praise for one called tagatose which they described as “subtle & natural”. So, I checked online for more information and — go figure — found a Wired article on tagatose.
Like Splenda, tagatose is made from sugar, but tagatose is derived from milk sugars within whey. And, though Splenda already tastes very natural, apparently tagatose is virtually imperceptible from sugar. The only downside is that tagatose isn’t calorie-free — it has about 1/3 the calories of sugar. But, it doesn’t affect blood-sugar levels or cause cavities.
Levin whips out a set of keys, unlocks his desk, and rummages through a drawer. He pulls out a bag of tagatose-coated bran flakes and a chocolate bar, both creations of his Danish licensee. The bran is a little stale but sweet enough, and the chocolate tastes just like the real deal. He hands me a baggie of pure tagatose. I hold it up to the light, dab a little on my finger, and try it. A dead ringer for table sugar. […]
Though it’s not a calorie-free food, I’m still excited about another sugar substitute. With any luck, this will soon find its way into reduced-calorie chocolate bars and sodas (Spleda-based chocolate still doesn’t quite taste like the real thing). However, it appears that the tagatose folks don’t have quite the marketing arm of their Splenda counterparts; so, I have a hunch that it may be a while before tagatose becomes widespread.
Distributed Spammer Annoyance App
Adam Keeney wanted to annoy spammers and he figured that he could do so by filling out the forms on their websites with junk data. He soon realized that, if it was just him, the spammers would notice and then just block his ip address. So, he wrote Unsolicited Commando, a distributed Java app to automatcally fill out the forms:
Unsolicited Commando is specifically designed to fight spams that advertise sites that are trying to gather information about you. These often include sites that offer to refinance/eliminate your debt or sign you up with some sort of get rich quick scheme. These UCEs are rather lucrative, generating about $20 per valid lead from loan companies. If the good data is burried under the mounds of believeable BS that Unsolicited Commando provides then the mass-mailer must work harder to validate the data by placing thousands of phone call to false numbers. If the data is sold without verification then the mass-mailer’s reputation is ruined. Either way, Unsolicited Commando generates casualties. […]
This way, the spammers get junk data from a wide range of ip addresses and there’s no easy way to filter it. Of course, the more people participate, the more diverse the ip pool and the the more junk they get. I’m tempted to try this one ;).
Recipe: Double-Chocolate Walnut & Marshmallow Creme Fudge
I brought along some fudge to Ru’s party on Saturday and I thought I’d post it here in case anyone would like the recipe. I had in mind that I could bake a dessert and something with nuts & chocolate sounded good. So, I decided on fudge and headed to AllRecipes for an appropriate recipe.
I searched for “fudge” and found my way to their fudge section. From there, I navigated to the Fudge with Nuts recipes and on to the recipes for Chocolate Fudge [with Nuts]. There were about a dozen recipes there and I concetrated on those recipes which already had many reviews (recipes that are highly rated tend to garner more reviews, which leads to more reviews and so on).
I settled on Aunt Teen’s Creamy Chocolate Fudge. It had 343 reviews and still had an average 5-star rating. What I also liked about it — in addition to its inclusion of two types of chocolate along with marshmallow creme — was that it required no fancy candy thermometers (as some fudge recipes do). Here’s the recipe:
Aunt Teen’s Creamy Chocolate Fudge
Ingredients:
- 1 (7 ounce) jar marshmallow creme
- 1 ½ cups white sugar [see notes below on alterations]
- ⅔ cup evaporated milk [a 5 oz can]
- ¼ cup butter
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips [one full 12 oz bag]
- 1 cup milk chocolate chips [half a 12 oz bag]
- ½ cup chopped nuts [walnuts work very well here, though pecans would probably also be good]
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and spread the nuts in an even layer. Toast them for 4 minutes, rotate pan, and continue to toast until fragrant and color deepens slightly, about 4 minutes longer. Then set them aside to slightly cool until they’re needed.
Line an 8×8 inch pan with aluminum foil. Set aside.
In a large saucepan over medium heat, combine half the jar of marshmallow creme, sugar, evaporated milk, butter and salt. Bring to a full boil, and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.
Remove from heat and pour in semisweet chocolate chips and milk chocolate chips. Stir until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth. Stir in nuts and vanilla; lightly fold in remaining marshmallow creme. Pour into prepared pan. Chill in refrigerator for 2 hours or until firm.
Recipe notes and alterations:
Though the recipe calls for 1 ½ cups of sugar, some of the reviews suggested trying just 1 cup of sugar instead. Since I didn’t want an overly-sweet fudge, I went with that suggestion (which worked out well). On a later batch, I tried using just ⅔ cup of sugar and that seemed to further improved the chocolatiness-to-sweetness ratio.
At one point, I also thought about using Splenda in lieu of sugar altogether. But I decided not to take a chance on that as fudge recipes tend to rely on the crystalline nature of sugar for the proper chemical reactions (unlike many other baked goods which only use sugar for its sweetening properties).
Automated Layout Testing in Mozilla
Robert O’Callahan came up with a handy idea for Mozilla QC — automated layout regression testing. Based on an idea implemented by Ian “Hixie” Hickson for Opera, this would automatically test the daily Mozilla builds for new layout bugs.
At first, I couldn’t figure out how such a task could be automated. After reading over the planned outline, I realized that it was a rather elegant approach. In short, the script (Perl, in this case) would keep a set of known-good screenshots of various layout tests. Then, on each day, the script would the build through the series of tests, taking screenshots along the way. At that point, it would just be a matter of doing file comparisons between the known-good screenshots and those from that day.
The code isn’t yet complete, but it’s moving forward. The trickly parts are in dealing with unruly builds (as you may have guessed). For instance, if that day’s build crashes on one of the tests, then the script would need to detect that, kill the process and then restart Mozilla for the next test sequence. In all, I have a good feeling about this development.