Monthly Archives: May 2010
First Capture
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The new Custom Menu is live on WordPress.com, arrived at via Appearance>Widgets>Custom Menu widget.
Don’t yet have a clue how to work with it and will certainly be spending lots of time experimenting over the next day or so on the test blog (so as to avoid accidentally pinging you all again). Hope by the time I wake up there will be a new addition to the Dashboard’s navbar and a little bit more information on how to work with the feature. Meanwhile from this side of the planet, it’s time to say goodnight!
Update: The Menus menu now appears under Appearance in your WP.com dashboard navbar. No official Support Doc yet but a link to the WP.ORG codex, which is also pretty scarce info-wise at the moment. Coffee first before experimenting.
Update June 2: Support Doc now available.
Webfinds for May 21, 2010
The twitter buzz right now is about today’s Google playable doodle celebrating Pac-man’s 30th (30th?!) birthday.
Regardless, today’s real jewel in the crown is for anyone who has ever worked intimately with any version of Adobe’s graphics programs: Maniacal Rage’s “Photoshop CS4 Crash Reports“. (via the great folks at Photojojo)
The Hardest Part
about this cheesecake is waiting for it to cool enough to eat.
Cheese Cake (Israeli version*)
Preheat oven to 160º Celsius. Line the bottom of a spring-form pan with baking parchment and lightly butter.
Crust:
- 2 c. crushed Petit Beurre biscuits (chocolate petit beurre with a dash of cocoa is a nice counterpoint if you’re topping the cake with summer fruits)
- 1/2 c. melted butter
- 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
Combine the above and bake for 10 minutes. Cool.
Filling:
- 2 large pkgs. Cna’an cheese
- 500 gr. 5% white spreadable cheese (like Ski).
- 1/2 to 3/4 c. sugar
- 3-4 eggs (depending on how dry the Cna’an cheese is.)
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1 tsp. salt
Whip the above in a mixer until fluffy. Pour onto cooled crust and bake for 30 minutes.
Topping:
- 2 c. sour cream
- 2 tbsp. sugar
- 1/2 tsp. vanilla
- 1/8 tsp. salt
Beat the above and then pour onto cake. Return to oven for an additional 10 minutes until the topping is set.
After the cake comes out of the oven, let it rest for about 10 minutes and then remove from the spring-form pan to a plate. Cool before putting in frig to chill completely.
*When I first arrived in Israel, I was amazed by the variety of dairy products available in the supermarket (and this from a girl who was raised in the American Midwest no less!). But finding the original ingredients for my transplanted American cheesecake recipe proved difficult or costly, if I was lucky enough to find them at all. Over the years I made substitutions using local products and and this specific recipe was refined again and again as I found new cheeses to try. So far, I like this combination the best.
We won’t talk about the various disasters leading up to this version. Suffice it to say, there are circular, brick-like objects in nearby landfills waiting to be puzzled over by future archaeologists. 
The Whole World Audio Extravaganza
Even though I’ve lived in Israel since 1980, I’m still pretty much an Anglophone. Give me a book in Hebrew and maybe it will be finished sometime this year. Give me a book in English, most likely it will be done by the weekend.
The same thing happens to me when listening to audio. Having grown up in the American Midwest, where speech is slow and deliberate, speaking and listening to Hebrew is something of an uphill struggle in 1st gear. While still at uni back in the 70′s, my Hebrew professor warned us that Hebrew is spoken quickly, but in our classroom environment he never duplicated experiencing a conversation between native Hebrew speakers. Whenever I’m around native Hebrew speakers, I know they’re slowing down their conversation so the non-native speakers can keep up.
But I digress.
Somewhere around 2006 (which is, not coincidentally, when I bought my Rio Carbon 5G) I discovered BBC’s podcasts, which covered a huge breadth of topics, from history to comedy to interviews to documentaries, in addition to the World Service news programs. Granted in 2006 the weekly roundup of available programs for listening was only huge. Jump to 2009-2010 and “huge” has become “gargantuan”. The number of available podcasts, which range between 7 minutes to 50 plus minutes, now number somewhere around 260 and are not only in English, but there are also special programs for speakers of Gaelic, Russian, Persian, Arabic, Chinese and other languages. There are programs covering environmental issues, online life, medicine, the arts, sports, religion, fishing, farming, food, philosophy, women’s issues, Bollywood, music, etc., etc., etc. (Due to licensing restrictions, many music programs are limited to UK listeners only.) With an average of 30 minutes per program, that’s about 5 and a half days’ worth of podcasts one can download and listen to each week! Additionally, most of these podcasts also have their own webpage on the BCC site, so if you want more information about the program you’re listening to, you can look them up on the web. Going even further, some podcasts even have entire Open University courses based on them.
And among all this, bless them, BBC4 worries that they’re not doing enough to promote podcasts. (Though you might want to click and read the caption on that photo.)
The podcast that has captured my imagination, along with about 3 million other people, is “A History of the World in 100 Objects“, or AHOW for short, which is a marvelous marriage of history, archaeology, art, sociology and museum-hopping, some of my favorite subjects. Besides the podcast, which the BBC has said will be available forever, there’s a highly informative website that accompanies and fills out the listening experience. The second series of 30 object starts next week, so if you haven’t listened or experienced this program yet, you can catch up with it this weekend.
Most of BBC’s podcasts are available for listening and download only for a week following their original broadcast. Besides AHOW the other exception to that policy is BBC World Service’s Documentaries, of which there are now over 500 episodes. The range of topics covered is again enormous and, given my love of language and the subject matter, the two below I found especially wonderful.
(Disclaimer: please note that the BBC Documentary website allows embedding of these two podcasts in your website under these terms and conditions, however, the script they use is not compatible with WordPress.com. © All Rights Reserved BBC)
If you have a special podcast that you’d like to recommend, please leave a link in the comments.
