Silence of the Lamps

This is the first "web comic" I ever went crazy for, back in 1997.

Weekday Banana Walnut Oatmeal

I saw a post on Summer Tomato for Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal labeled a "weekend breakfast", since cooking regular rolled oats takes a little while. Like Darya, I prefer real oatmeal to instant or quick, and I also am not really a bright sunshiney person in the morning. If it's more complicated than turning on the coffeemaker, I will probably not do it on a weekday morning.

This oatmeal recipe is that easy. And cheap! And tasty! I use Trader Joe's unsweetened soymilk, so the honey makes it tastier. It can certainly be remixed with any combo of toppings based on your whims and what's in the fridge.


Banana-Walnut Oatmeal

1/2 c. rolled oats
3/4 to 1 c. milk or soymilk
sliced banana
walnuts
1 tbsp. honey

The night before you want to eat this, put the oats and soymilk into a bowl and put it in the refrigerator.

In the morning, take it out and stir, then pop it in the microwave for 2 minutes. Remove, stir, and microwave another 1-2 minutes. Top with banana, walnuts, and honey. Yum!

Wayback Machine

While trying to update a broken link on Wikipedia, I came upon some adorably outdated articles I wrote for The Dartmouth my freshman year in college. The first is a meditation on how overpowered iMacs are as public BlitzMail machines. Check out those system specs! (These same iMacs would later spawn the great pink eye epidemic of 2001-2002.)

The second was an article about some of my favorite websites at the time. Oddly, some of those sites are still around, and are hilarious!

• Poorly Drawn Lamp Page
• The T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project
• The Infamous Exploding Whale (Ha! This is what things were like before YouTube, kids!)

The remaining sites have vanished into the tubes, never to be seen again.

And finally, I don't want to forget my 1998 interview with Archimedies Plutonium. The article is nothing special, but you really should read about the man himself, or you may live out the rest of your life without understanding that the whole universe is actually one giant plutonium atom. He is also apparently a usenet celebrity, and has quite the Wikipedia user page. For anyone out there still wondering, he actually did scrub pots at Dartmouth, until he was replaced by an automatic dishwasher, attempted to sue the school, and subsequently left Hanover because the people there were too backward to handle his science.

Must Listens on the Web

I started my summer internship at the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation on Tuesday. One of the perks is I get to listen to music. One of the drawbacks is that music has to mostly come from the web. There is of course Pandora and Last.fm, but sometimes you want a whole album, or a specific artist, or a playlist that exactly matches the way researching the ROI on high quality preschool programs makes you feel. And for those things, my friends, I have compiled a list for you.

• Exclusive First Listen on NPR Music – I am listening to John Vanderslice’s new album on here right now, which is fantastic.
  
• Wilco (The Album) – this is a one off rather than a constant resource, but Wilco’s new album is streamed in its entirety.
  
• Songza.com – basically an aggregator of streaming content from YouTube and iMeem, among others, you can make playlists on here. My own stream has whatever playlist I’m into right now, and the blog has featured playlists each day.
• YouTube – sometimes it’s easier to just use the YouTube interface to save more than one playlist. Two of mine are songs I loved at 13 and one of Irish folk singer Lisa Hannigan.
  
• Twitter music Monday – this one takes a bit of work. On Mondays, people on Twitter post songs they like. Those songs may rock, or they may suck. It’s part of what makes it awesome.
• Hype Machine Radio – this is one of the cooler music aggregator ideas going on out there. Basically they aggregate music blogs, see what is trending, and make those songs available. The last three songs were T.I., Jordin Sparks, and Sunny Day Real Estate. Our collective consciousness has spotty but intriguing taste in music.
• Music for Busy People – by invite only. If you know me, you should ask me for an invite. Makes me feel cool in a totally lazy way.
• South By Southwest Music Player - songs from this years SXSW artists (it's a link in the right hand column)