Only slightly bent

Over the past week or so, we’ve noticed lots of men’s jackets left hanging around in odd places when walking around – in trees, on garbage cans, on fences, you name it.

When I encountered the first one, I thought maybe somebody had forgotten it there, even though forgetting your jacket in the middle of the forest is somewhat unlikely.

But then I bumped into another and I got suspicious. Then a third one. And fourth.

They’re all perfectly good mens jackets – some even look brand new.

What the heck is going on here? Am I missing out on some well-known meme that everyone else is aware of?

Or is this some kind of a practical joke?

Or maybe a test to see how long it’ll take for the jackets to be stolen?

Or perhaps it’s a code! Probably not, but of course this is the most interesting option. However, mapping their location on a map has yet to reveal any interesting patterns, but maybe I just need to find some more..

If anyone knows what’s going on, ‘fess up!

As an introductory disclaimer, it’s amazing how simply using the word “gastronomy” to describe ones hobby rubs some people the wrong way. They seem to think it’s some elitist way of saying “cooking”, so in the off chance some of those people have found their way here, I would invite them to read the Wikipedia entry on gastronomy and in the process learn a new word.

Anyhow, I realized the other day that I’ve amassed quite a few books on food and cooking etc. Some of them are wonderful, some are decent and some are downright bad, so I thought I’d highlight my personal favorites. I’ll also point out, where applicable, some Finnish books – some as good books in their own right, some as options to better English-language books. These are marked with the Finnish flag: []

On Food and Cooking: The Science & Lore of the Kitchen

If there is one authoritative guide to the science of food and all that goes with it, it’s this updated classic by Harold McGee. It is difficult to think of a historic or scientific topic on food and cooking that isn’t covered in this book. From microbes present in fish and the composition of fruits and vegetables down to the cellular level to the atomic structure of sugars, On Food and Cooking contains everything you ever wanted to know about foodstuff – and likely much more.

It’s not exactly a book that one would want to read from cover to cover, but it’s an unparalleled reference when you need to look something up. To get an idea of the depth this book goes to, there’s a whole chapter on eggs – 50 pages. The information ranges from the purely theoretical like the etymology of the word egg, to the highly practical like what are the exact conditions and methods crucial to making a perfect omelet or scrambled eggs.

If there’s one thing that’s lacking from McGee’s wonderful work, it’s pictures. There are very few and they’re all black-and-white, so I’d like to see many more illustrations and preferably in color, but considering the wealth of information that’s stuffed in the 800+ pages of this book I’m fine with this omission.

[] The Finnish book Utelias Kokki: Elintarviketietoa ruoanvalmistajalle (by Kirsti Pakkanen and Kaija Rautavirta) is an attempt at something similar, but while nice enough and also informative, it’s a vastly inferior and a much narrower text. Still, if you want to learn about foodstuff, the basic chemistry and all that and must do so in Finnish, I can recommend it.

The Cook’s Bible

Le Cordon Bleu’s “The Cook’s Bible” is, first and foremost, a book about techniques and the basics. Slicing, dicing, roasting, baking, grilling, pan-frying, peeling etc are all covered with great color photos of all the important steps. It also includes some recipes dotted around the instructions, but shouldn’t be bought for those.

As a technique-book, the Cook’s Bible can easily be used as a helper along many cookbooks that are less than stellar in describing how each step is accomplished correctly. As such, it’s not only an excellent learning resource but a perfect “side guide” to books that lack color photos or clear step-by-step instructions.

One of the difficulties when grocery shopping is picking the ingredients right; i.e. what kind of melons are the best? What qualities to look for when selecting meat or fish? How should a perfect apricot look like? The Cook’s Bible also answers these kinds of questions, helping to choose the best ingredients at hand. Though for selecting fruit only, Kate Whiteman’s “The New Guide to Fruit” is a more comprehensive option, even if it doesn’t include the more exotic varieties either.

[] There’s also a Finnish book detailing some of the basic techniques – “Ravintolakokin käsikirja” by Jari Hämäläinen and Tatu Lehtovaara. There’s a good introduction to techniques for the first 80 pages or so, but the rest of the book is devoted to basic food recipes. In general it’s a good book with nice recipes, but I hate it when books don’t have an index and this one doesn’t. Very annoying and makes finding stuff difficult.

At Blanchard’s Table

If I had to pick the single best “cookbook” that focuses on delicious recipes, this would be it. One cannot really praise Blanchard’s wonderful book enough – without exception, all the recipes here have been incredibly delicious. It’s quite impossible to say what “style” of food the book contains; it’s not Caribbean, it’s not American, it’s not Italian or anything like that with a clear definition. That’s 100% a good thing as the end result is a mix of many influences and while the food defies a categorization, delicious is the one category it absolutely belongs to.

To top it off, most recipes come with mouthwatering photos and the book’s interspersed with fun anecdotes from the Blanchard’s restaurant and their lives.

What’s Cooking-series

Many cookbooks nowadays come in a series format; one of the best is in my opinion the What’s Cooking series. All recipes are accompanied by good photographs of the food and sometimes also the most important steps of the preparation process. In some versions, the measurements are also listed in all three major measurement systems which is sometimes convenient. Of course, the most important part is also in good order – the food tastes great. The books may not be filled with stellar recipes but the vast majority are still very good and reasonably easy and fast to make, which in everyday cooking is often a good thing.

Unfortunately as the world moves on fast with cookbooks, too, and most parts of this series being from the late 90′s, many parts have since become quite difficult to find.

The Ultimate Party Drink Book

Over the years, I’ve also gathered some books on one of my semi-related hobbies, bartending. While the Ultimate Party Drink Book is not really a bartending book per se, in usefulness it easily trumps the classic but rarely used The American Bar. It also beats the comprehensive but somewhat boring The New New York Bartender’s Guide hands down, though the latter has an impressive collection of recipes.

The illustrations are not the strong point of this book – there are none. While I generally dislike books without photos of the real end product, the recipes in The Ultimate Party Drink Book are so good I can overlook the missing photos easily.

The Cook’s Practical Encyclopedia of Spirits and Liqueurs

What do you get when you combine cooking and drinks? As it happens, alcoholic liquids can be used remarkably flexibly in cooking and baking, though the alcohol is often consumed in the process. This is an area that I haven’t explored that much, but this one book by Walton & Miller I use as an informative all-around guide to alcoholic liquid stuff in cooking. Divided into two parts, the first is devoted to explaining the background, contents and usage of all the most important alcoholic liqueurs and spirits in the world. The second part provides some tasty recipes where the ingredients detailed in the first section are used generously.. Unfortunately this great book is also a little difficult to find currently.

[] There’s also one great Finnish book on combining alcohol and food in a delicious way; Juusto & Viini, published by the usual suspects in Finland (i.e. Alko and Valio) skillfully combines cheese and selected wines in an array of wonderful dishes. After an introduction to wine and cheeses, recipes are grouped over the four seasons, so it’s easy to find the right recipe with the season’s best ingredients – along with excellent wine recommendations.

A conclusion

Learning about food and all the other things that goes with the term gastronomy may seem a little strange. However, the truth is that books that are simply collections of recipes will not take you very far, especially if your goal is to become a better chef, as they don’t really cover the essentials of cooking or even the techniques. Basic techniques like how to cut an onion right make life in the kitchen surprisingly much easier. Of course it isn’t strictly necessary to know things like why hot milk is added to eggs when making custards and not vice versa, but it helps. Not to mention the fact that it’s interesting to know these things, or at least I think it is. YMMV of course.

One more book is worth a mention; like the Ultimate Party Drink Book suffers from the lack of illustrations, on the cookbook-side, the classic Joy of Cooking has a similar “problem”. It’s filled with hundreds of delicious, traditional American recipes but the lack of photos sometimes deters me from choosing a recipe from it. More recently the Joy of Cooking has been re-packaged in more attractive, full-color books that each cover a tiny portion of the original massive work. I don’t have experience with many of these, but if you’re not put off by the lack of photos, do have a look at The Joy of Cooking also.

Finally, I suppose it would be unfair to write this long a post about food without including a single recipe, so here’s a simple one based on the cover recipe from What’s Cooking: Pasta:

Tagliatelle with Chicken Sauce

Base ingredients:
• 250g fresh green tagliatelle
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• salt
• fresh basil leaves to garnish

Tomato sauce ingredients:
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1-2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 400g chopped tomatos (fresh or canned)
• 2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 tbsp tomato purée
• 1 tsp sugar
• salt and pepper

Chicken sauce ingredients:
• 60g unsalted butter
• 400g boneless chicken breasts, skinned and cut into thin strips
• 90g blanched almonds
• 300ml heavy cream
• salt and pepper

1. To make the tomato sauce, heat the oil in a pan over a medium heat. Add the onion and fry until translucent. Add the garlic and fry further for 1 minute. Stir in the garlic, tomatoes, parsley, oregano, bay leaves, tomato purée, sugar and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to boil and simmer uncovered for 15-20 minutes, until reduced by half. Remove the pan from the heat and discard the bay leaves.
2. To make the chicken sauce, melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the chicken and almonds and stir-fry for 5-6 minutes, until the chicken is cook through.
3. Meanwhile, bring the cream to boil in a small pan over a low heat and boil for about 10 minutes, until reduced by almost half. Pour the cream over the chicken and almonds, stir and season to taste with salt and pepper. Set aside and keep warm.
4. Also meanwhile, bring a large pan of lightly salted water to boil. Add the tagliatelle and olive oil and cook until al dente. Drain and transfer to a warm serving dish. Spoon over the tomato sauce and arrange the chicken sauce down from the center. Garnish with the basil leaves and serve immediately.

(Apologies in advance for the long post – I just needed to lay out some thoughts on the topics mentioned)

In the world of networks, there is constant ebb and flow as to where the intelligence is located at – are the terminals (devices) at the very edge of the network supposed to be smart or dumb? Where is the intelligence and, perhaps more important, where is the control?

The Internet: from network-centric to device-centric .. and to network-centric again?

On the (fixed) Internet, the prevailing setup been that the network is dumb and most intelligence is in the devices, usually PCs. It hasn’t always been like that though, as even I remember the times of the VT and X terminals when the devices we used were really, really dumb without any storage or anything – just acting as a window to the server.

But then came the PCs and almost all the activity shifted to the devices themselves. As they gained storage and processing power, they began to take on many functions to themselves and even with connected applications like e-mail, the servers became just the messengers. With the proliferation of PCs at homes and intermittent or non-existent connectivity with the outside world, this made perfect sense. Now, however, with near-ubiquitous and always-on broadband becoming the norm in the developed countries, the trend is again towards the servers or the “network”. With Google leading the way, the browser is becoming our interface to the intelligent applications that all really reside on the server-side.

Whether this trend reverses itself again in another 15-20 years when the PCs of that time have equal storage capacity to the Google server-farm today, remains to be seen. In any case, Sun’s and Scott McNealy’s long-time vision of “the network is the computer” is again a big step closer to being reality than it was just 5 years ago.

On the business side, the Internet was so new by the time the balance started to shift towards the PCs that most ISPs started with the business model of being mainly a connectivity provider – essentially a dumb pipe. Though there has been continuing debate for years now as to how sustainable this model is, they seem to be doing just fine.

However, all is not well. The network is still relatively “dumb” in the sense that it enforces little or no control on the data sent and received by the devices. Though some operators are (in vain, I might add) trying to block and filter P2P traffic etc, relatively little real-time layer 7 filtering goes on in the networks – and none in the backbone. This combined with the advanced state of the PCs and their poor security thanks to unmentioned operating systems creates some serious security issues, of which botnets are one of the most visible ones. With no or primitive “rebel control” on the network side and only presumed control on the device side, large hordes of compromised PCs can for the most parts wreak havoc and spew spam at will.

Mobile: from network-centric to device-centric? But how far?

On the mobile networks side, the entire business of the mobile operators has been based on smart (or at least tightly controlled) networks. The devices have been quite dumb and pretty much all the services have required extensive support from the network to work. Now things are changing.

The mere prospect of mobile operators potentially becoming just dumb pipes owes itself to the vastly improved capabilities of the mobile phones. The devices are getting more and more capable and intelligent by the day, to the point where calling mobile phones “multimedia computers” no longer sounds quite as stupid as it did a couple of years ago when the term was coined. With the latest terminals one can even make phone calls without any special support from the network itself; all you need is IP connectivity.

Hence the mobile operators’ relatively recent fear of being delegated to merely the providers of basic connectivity – bit pipes. If they become providers of nothing more than IP connectivity, they are facing a massive overhaul of their traditional business models. This, even though it may turn out to be inevitable, is of course something not all operators are exactly looking forward to. This reluctance is curious in another context; the true core competence of most mobile operators is precisely in running the connectivity network.

Converging networks, diverging policies?

As the inevitable convergence of the networks (fixed and mobile) continues its march, it’s worth considering which policies will be adopted for the combined network, the makings of the future Internet. Is it the generally laissez-faire model of the Internet as it is now? Or the somewhat stricter network control model that’s being attempted by some? Or the strict mobile-operator-style model?

The starting point of the policies are worlds apart, but as we’ve seen, both sides are moving towards each other. I would argue that this is necessary, because a converged network with diverged policies is just not possible. While the fixed side may not really want – or arguably need – more control, this is the direction it’s being pushed to. However, the relatively huge processing power and capabilities of the terminals on the fixed side as well as the bandwidth available may successfully fight the control that’s being imposed on them through encrypted traffic, overlay networks and the likes.

A PR problem at the mobile operators – or worse

At the core of this discussion lies the separation of services and access, a setup that has been working nicely on the Internet for a long time now. And consumers still need the services and the mobile operators could provide them.So why would the mobile operators want to fight the split? Because when consumers go look for the best services for their devices, they are very unlikely to look at the ones offered by their mobile operator, that’s why. With practically infinite choice available, providing sufficient recommendation and search tools are available, the chances of the operator offering the best services are vanishingly small. Of course, being at the bottom of all customer satisfaction surveys doesn’t help the mobile operators. Having innovation roll-out times measured more in decades than months doesn’t do much good either.

The option of getting similar services from elsewhere exposes the operator services for what they really are; often mediocre at best and overpriced dysfunctional rip-offs at worst. In essence it’s a grave that mobile operators have been digging for themselves for a long time and something that they are now being pushed into.

Before proclaiming that mobile networks should work in identical fashion to the fixed Internet, there are a couple of small problems to consider. One of them is whether we want to repeat the botnet problems of the fixed Internet on the mobile side? The answer to that is that we do not, because the mobile side wouldn’t survive it. While botnets are, on the large scale of things, a nuisance in the Internet, the backbone pipes are thick enough to survive the occasional attack from even hundreds of thousands of machines. Mobile networks don’t have this luxury – a single device sending or receiving data at capacity has a very detrimental effect on the efficiency of the network in its proximity. Take a thousand compromised devices and you’re quickly looking at a network meltdown, so network control of the devices is to some degree a justified position.

But to what degree? And should we adopt similar measures on the fixed side?

Who do you trust?

In my opinion we’re looking at an inevitable split between access and service providers. I realize that to most people familiar with the industry, this is a “Well, *duh*” statement. For the consumers, however, it raises tantalizing options – as well as one very important question: who do you trust? This is something the advanced users have to deal with now and the masses have the option of dealing with in the near future. The question needs to be answered because to offer personal services (which mobile services often are), you need to trust the service provider.

Do you trust the network provider, even if it doesn’t trust you? Do you trust a multinational corporation based in some foreign country? Besides service experience and quality issue, this is a PR and an image question and a very personal one at that. And that makes the choice irrational at times. Why so? For example, I am fine with Google holding and managing selected portions of my e-mail but I’ll make damn sure Sonera doesn’t get any of that. This is so even though the former is potentially a much more likely candidate to hand out my information to government-affiliated organizations and is generally a greater threat to my privacy, however you want to define that. Sonera? Well, I just don’t like them. (Though I’m not as naïve as to believe that organizations like CIA or the NSA wouldn’t already have everything they need, including my e-mails if that’s their whim of the day)

In an attempt to draw some kind of conclusions from this tirade, I’ll give my personal predictions:

• In countries that fulfill the two key premises (advanced mobile networks and advanced mobile devices), the power balance will inevitably shift away from the mobile operators. This is because other parties can offer more tempting services than the operators and something operators need to deal with.
• The relegation of mobile operators to pure bit-pipes will take many years (if it ever even materializes), but losing even smallish customer segments is enough to drive further introspection in the operator community. In the medium term, the majority of subscribers will still want only cheap voice and SMS and, which is what operators can often deliver if they want.
• Data ARPU will continue to increase – the increase is supplemental at first but will start eating into voice ARPU in the longer run. In the longer run, the data ARPU is going to come down also.
• At some point, some operator will figure out that “embracing the Internet” doesn’t mean adding fancy boxes to their networks or even making deals with selected partners. It means fully opening their networks to and from the outside world.
• Of the key mobile operator assets, existing customer billing relationship is coming under fire from the (free) Internet service. Location is still theirs to lose, but the soon-to-be-ubiquitous GPS receivers in handsets don’t bode well for that either. In essence, most foundations of the operator business are under fire and will continue to be so.

Then again, I might be totally wrong. That’s been known to happen. And YMMV in any case.

Reading The Long Tail has been one of the most embarrassing reading experiences of my life. Chris graciously sent me a review copy a long, long, long time ago and it was only now that I managed to finish the book. This incredible slowness has nothing to do with the book itself, though knowing the concept from the original article did deter speedy reading somewhat.

Now, most everyone knows something about the Long Tail, so I won’t get into the details here. If you don’t, Chris Anderson’s blog and the Wikipedia entry for Long Tail are good places to get acquainted with the concept itself.

As some of the key concepts of the long tail is abundance and infinite choice, one of the most interesting points that I came across in the book was the debunking of the legendary consumer behavior study which seemed to say too much choice was confusing and, as such, a bad thing. Of course, while vast amount of choices may force us to actually stop and think what we really want (which, while cognitively more stressful, may not be such a bad thing), an obvious thing comes to our rescue here – recommendation systems. Amazon is already very good at this. In short, more choice is generally much better than less choice but more choice has to be balanced with appropriate support systems for us to take advantage of it.

There’s also this insightful quote from David Foster Wallace which is easily expandable to other domains:

TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.

And this is the crux of scarcity – if a medium is scarce, it is naturally filled with content appealing to peoples generic interests, as broad a mass as possible. Yet these generic interests are not the only interests people have. All of us are also interested in a number of niche topics, some of them very obscure from most others’ perspective and thus not profitable enough to provide content over the mass media channels. Now that technology has enabled us to create global communities around such niche topics and provide us with “tailored” services to our specific tastes, is it any wonder that we tend to diss the mass media and it’s now very small partial “fit” with our desires? If something is a 90% hit instead of a 40% hit, which am I more likely to choose?

One wrongly interpreted message of The Long Tail is that the “hits” (i.e. the head) would somehow be doomed – they’re not. People will still want to watch blockbusters, read popular books etc – they’re still enjoyed and mass media is still needed to get some common cultural and social discussion topics. The fact that I might occasionally like to feed my niche interests doesn’t mean I suddenly completely stop feeding the generic interests. It’s “just” a shift of balance, but it’s a shift of vast significance.

Now, how about the book itself? It’s a good book of a very important and often at least partially misunderstood concept. That alone earns it a highly recommended mark. As such, if you don’t really fully understand the Long Tail concept and all its implications, read this book to get the insight from the “source”. Whether it really would take 200+ pages to explain all of this is questionable, so while short, the Long Tail the book is a bit too long and at times repetitive.

Making the decision to have a child – it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.

Elizabeth Stone

As some of you already know, our family gained one very small member earlier this week. As far as miracles go – and new life certainly is a miracle if there ever was one – we’ve been blessed with an unusually sweet one:

Excuse the slow posting while my brain attempts to recover from this cuteness-overload.

I would claim that by and large, professionals are no longer valued. This development is by no means limited to any one walk of life, but is highly visible to everyone in places like retail sales and customer service. Primarily the experts are not valued by the employers (i.e. they’re not willing to pay for expertise as witnessed by the recent Circuit City incident), but the real fault is with the customers who apparently don’t demand good service.

I’m most likely hopelessly old-fashioned because in addition to shopping on the ‘net, I love visiting actual, good-quality, physical stores and shopping there. What’s more, I assume a person should know the product(s) they are selling. But visiting a store isn’t always a pleasant experience, and that’s the part that makes me sad – and drives me to do more of my shopping online. Some of biggest problems are poor attitude and aptitude:

• Lack of knowledge is probably the single biggest issue; like I said, in my books, a salesperson or a customer service rep should know the product they’re selling or representing. Yet, 90% of them don’t seem to know $hit – if you ask even the simplest question, their first source of information is to look at the product tag or the box or whatever. Ask something more complicated and you’ll either get a BS answer or no answer at all. Any idiot could tell you the same stuff – or more – after spending three minutes with the product box.

• Customer discrimination. Try going to a jeweler dressed in shorts and a t-shirt in the US; you’re usually treated just like everyone else, professionally and with dignity. This is because any weirdo in a ragged t-shirt is a potential billionaire. Try the same in Finland and you get sized up immediately and categorized as a persona non grata in the store – and it shows from the service, or the lack of it. In many places even good appearance doesn’t help – you still get treated in a demeaning manner. Apparently many stores here make so much money that they don’t really need customers. I find that a bit strange. Maybe we need more eccentric millionaires here.

• Ignoring the customer. It can be hard to completely ignore somebody when you’re dealing with them face-to-face, but salespeople in Finland often pull that off pretty well.
   

  Online, however, ignorance is remarkably easy. You just delete the incoming e-mail or whatever and forget about it. Maybe that’s why in many places it’s the norm to never reply anybody to anything. Be it an offer, request for information, job application, complaint or praise, it’s considered “normal” to completely ignore the contacting party. This, of course, is far from polite, normal behavior. Or so I like to think, which is why many companies and organizations have ended up on my mental black list. Of course there are positive exceptions, too – for example, Helsingin Sanomat usually responds quickly and lately the City of Helsinki Rescue Department also impressed me by their thorough and quick replies to some inquiries.

• Making customers wait is another way of saying they’re not really appreciated; in this sector, mobile operators and banks seem to be the worst culprits.

• You get what you pay for and people don’t want to pay for quality. This obviously has more to do with customers than merchants, but it goes under the same category anyway – that professional, well-made products just aren’t appreciated.

So why does this happen? Why is such lame service so prevalent? I can only come to the conclusion that most people don’t care about customer service or quality in any of its forms. People want stuff cheaply and they’ll not only tolerate substandard goods because of that, but also like to be treated like idiots and waste hours of hours of their own time dealing with the problems ensuing from poor quality.

I find all of this really, really baffling. To top it off, we have these morons who find the rare knowledgeable store, go ask them a zillion questions, play with their products at the store, choose the one they want – and then buy it from the cheapest place online! What a cute way of stealing their expertise just because they’re too lazy to do the research themselves. And I don’t even run a store, so I can only imagine how annoyed the merchants themselves are who get ripped off like this.

And NO, I don’t mean buying online is bad. Heck, I buy most of my books and stuff online and online shopping is great provided you have time and energy to study whatever it is you’re buying long enough to make an informed decision. But I don’t go to the stores asking questions about expensive products if I don’t intend to buy them from there provided the experience is good.

So thanks to the lazy, ungrateful cheapskates the selection of good-quality brick-and-mortar merchants is decreasing for those who would appreciate them.