Oh, I have so got to lay my hands on one of these.

My muffin-manufacturing friends have made the cover of the NY Times Science section. I'm so proud. Photos of Digital Preservationist Extraordinaire Keith Johnson & daughter Karydis taking a ride in their muffin-mobile are available here.

The National Diet Library in Japan has launched a new website on digital preservation, which includes summaries of their own research, as well as links to a variety of other standards, guidelines, research reports, etc.

YYYYYYyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Parisgreen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, the small but tasty menu for Cinco de Mayo here at Strange Manor:

Callos con Calabaza (seared scallops in a butternut squash, serrano chile, shallot and brandy sauce, recipe courtesy of Dona Tomas restaurant in Oakland)
Escarola con Ajo y Limón (braised escarole with garlic and lemon, seasoned with red pepper flakes and bay leaf)

Tasty. Unfortunately, I'm still sort of fighting off the cold/eye infection, so I resisted the urge to have a margarita along with it. Despite the fact that I am itching to try doing a margarita using the Qi white and black tea liqueurs to substitute for my usual Cointreau.

This post brought to you courtesy of our new Aiport Extreme base station, which has finally enabled the wireless access to print and high capacity backup disk I should have had running a while ago. Plugging in the equipment literally took more time than the configuration. Apple gear rocks.

Another quake last night, smaller than the previous one. USGS says a 4.0. Why do these damned things have to keep hitting right when I'm dropping off to sleep?

We had our good friends J__ and M__ over to dinner last night, and J__ noted a bottle of Qi black tea liqueur we had sitting on the bar and had to sample it. We mentioned that while we quite liked it (it's actually a pretty darn good lapsang souchang liqueur, not too sweet), we hadn't quite figured out a way to use it in a cocktail that worked. You can't mix it with Scotch, or indeed any of the standard brown liquors. The smokiness is overpowering. I thought I was on to something when I tried creating a variation on a theme of a drink I used to get in Berkeley. Le Bateau Ivre restaurant did a Navy Grog that was just strong black tea with a vial of Stroh Inlander 160 proof rum on the side to mix in. The butterscotch flavor of the Stroh went very nicely with the tea. So, I tried a mix of the Qi and Stroh -- no good. 160 proof rum does not make a good *base* for a cocktail. I tried cutting the proof of the resulting drink down by watering it with vodka (not often you use vodka to water a drink down), and while getting there, it wasn't perfect.

J__ suggested that the rum idea seemed reasonable, but maybe I should try white rum instead of the Stroh. That sounded like a good base, but we decided it needed something else in there, otherwise we're back to drinking liquid smoke. M__ said "citrus goes with tea," and after everyone looked at me like I was from Mars after suggesting maybe lime juice, the concerted opinion of the table was that Cointreau was the way to go.

After some playing about with proportions, here's what we came up with:

1/2 oz Qi black tea liqueur
1 oz Cointreau
3 oz white rum of choice.

Shake. Strain. Garnish with twist of orange peel.

Now it just needed a name. J__, inspired by the name of the liqueur (Qi, pronounced 'chee'), suggested we name it the Hoo Qi Koo Qi. A little exploration with a pinyin-to-ideograph translator today reveals that actually Hu and Ku are valid pinyin expressions. So, we have our official name for the drink. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the Hu Qi Ku Qi.

Unfortunately, we're now stuck trying to work out the most appropriate translation. I think the "Hu" and "Ku" should be first tone (high), and the Qi should be fourth tone (falling), but while that narrows the range of possible meanings for each syllable, it still leaves a lot of room for interpretation. They could each still map to many different Chinese characters. The subject line for this post is about as close as I've gotten to something sensible for a translation. Here are some possible meanings/ideographs for the three syllables used in the name. Feel free to suggest your own preferred translation in comments (translations courtesy of Mandarin Tools:

Hu:

呼 to call; to cry; to shout; to breath out; to exhale
幠 arrogant; rude; to cover
忽 suddenly
惚 indistinct
欻 suddenly
滹 (surname); name of a river
膴 big piece of meat; dried meat
虍 stripes of tiger
虖 exhale; scream of tiger; to call
謼 to shout; to mourn; to invoke

Qi:

亟 repeatedly; frequently
咠 to whisper; to blame, to slander
器 device; tool; utensil
契 contract
妻 to marry off (a daughter)
憩 to rest
栔 carve; cut
棄 or 弃 abandon; relinquish; to discard; to throw away
气 air; anger; gas
氣 or 气 gas; air; smell; weather; vital breath; to make sb. angry; to get angry; to be enraged
汔 near
汽 steam; vapor
泣 to sob
犵 name of a tribe
盵 (surname)
砌 to build by laying bricks or stones
磧 or 碛 moraine; rocks in shallow water
葺 to repair
蟿 (insect); Tryxalis masuta
訖 or 讫 finished
迄 as yet; until
鏚 battle-axe

Ku:

刳 to cut open; rip up; scoop out
哭 to cry; to weep
堀 cave; hole
枯 dried up
骷 skeleton

Actually, now that I think about it, "arrogant insect" isn't a bad start for the name, but I'm not sure what to do with the 'ku qi' that follows that. "dried up battle axe"?

In other news, I am tired of coughing my lungs out every night from this cold. That is all.

OK, ok, if everyone else is doing this meme, I guess I have to.

Music meme: List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your LJ along with your 7 songs.

The Touch of Your Lips, Ben Webster & Oscar Peterson -- Probably the best jazz duo I know. I never get tired of listening to their stuff.

Ford Econoline, Nanci Griffith -- Definitely a must-have for anybody's road trip playlist.

Outbound Plane, Nanci Griffith -- Yes, I'm listening to a lot of Nanci Griffith.

No Hawaiians, No Aloha, Sean Na'auao -- One of the great Hawaiian guitarists/singers.

Hard Time Killing Floor Blues, Chris Thomas King -- Off of King's The Roots album, which you should be running to buy if you don't have it already.

I'll Never get Out of this World Alive, The Little Willies -- The Hank Williams' classic, done by the C&W band that Norah Jones sings with in New York. Yes, that Norah Jones. Yes, it's good. How often can you get a C&W album with a song about Lou Reed tipping cows on it?

Was I Wazir?, Henry Calvin -- One of my favorite, comic Broadway songs, from the original cast recording of Kismet. I'm waiting for someone to do a YouTube video of clips of Dick Cheney with this song as the background music.

In other news, still sick as a dog.

How do you make a hot tub out here on the prairie? Well, take a stock tank, fill it up with water, take a few big ol' aluminum tubs, fill them with a few hundred pounds of quicklime, float the tubs in the stock tank and add some water to them, and then stand back while the exothermic reaction takes place and the aluminum tubs transfer all that nice heat into the water in your stock tank. See PopSci for details and video of Champaign-Urbana's very own Theodore Gray of Wolfram Research cranking up the ol' hot tub in winter, local style.

And that's how we pass the day away in the merry ol' land of Oz.