mtnsloth’s posthaven

I'll be the first to admit that it is hard to win my trust; and, once you've lost my trust, it is unlikely that I will ever trust you again as I once did.  Thus, it should come as no surprise that I don't trust Larry Page or Google when it comes to their promises regarding Google+.  Don't get me wrong.  I am one of the few that still stubbornly uses Google+, but I don't trust that any content posted there is going to stick in the long term.  Why the lack of faith?  I've been betrayed by Google before, and Google Reader is only the latest in a string of disappointments.  It is the most prominent and certainly the most painful of Google betrayals, but I doubt it will be the last.

And still.  I use Google+

Masochistic tendencies?  Perhaps. 

I was undecided about the whole Lightroom versus Aperture thing for something like a year.  I'm just a fairly serious amateur photographer with no professional ambitions whatsoever.  I shoot with the intention of not needing to do serious image manipulation to arrive at a satisfactory image.  That said, the lens correction feature is kind of what pushed me over to trying Lightroom.  And then, a month later, we get the whole Creative Cloud thing.  Too soon to say that I have the luck of Leo Laporte, but . . .

I just chatted with a support bot on Adobe's web site.  Adobe's bot doesn't seem to have a script for customers that only use Lightroom.  It was like the rep couldn't fathom that someone would only use Lightroom.  Looks like Lightroom is headed for "pros only" territory.  I guess I may need to reconsider Apple's Aperture . . . I can't see paying $20 a month for Lightroom.  Hopefully Adobe will offer something more reasonable for Lightroom users, but it isn't looking so good at the moment.

Old news for the tech savvy, but probably not old news to friends and family.  If you have an iPhone or other iOS device that is always with you, Apple has made it pretty easy to upgrade the security of your AppleID. This is more of a concern if you use the Apple Store and/or iTunes store, and have a credit card linked to your AppleID.

Here are the instructions. Go forth, and do something positive to improve your online security.

Time was less than 5 minutes. Credit the off-hour transfer, and maybe the lack of posts!  ;)

With a little practice even I can make Kombu and Katsuo dashi. I use a recipe I found on about.com. Cookig the noodles should need little explanation, and doesn't make for much of a picture, but the soup . . . that is another story. Here is shot of the Kombu (kelp) after it comes out of the pot:

And here is a shot of the shaved bonito (Katsuo) before it goes in the pot:

You remove the bonito from the soup with a strainer when you pour it from the pot to a storage container. I add soy sauce, sugar and mirin to the portion of the soup that I am going to eat right away, and stick the rest of the soup in the frig. Anyway, here is final product with garnish:

I have a saying: "If some grandiose adjective needs to precede something, odds are that the thing is anything other than what is claimed." For example, if you see an ad for a flat at The Royal Apartments, you can't be sure of much; but it is almost certainly true that said apartments have absolutely nothing to do with royalty.

So. With that long-winded preamble, I give you noodles with Premium Ingredients (and yes - that is the exact wording on the packaging):

In all fairness, the noodles were not that bad. However, those Premium Ingredients kind of disappeared when mixed in with the sauce and noodles. The less expensive Cup of Noodles is actually more generous when it comes to the non-noodles part of the meal.

iPhone 4 . . . a shot with challenging lighting; and the unedited image: