Homemade Hashbrowns

There's nothing more comforting than the crunch of a perfectly cooked hashbrown. Most diners only brown one side of your hash leaving the other half greasy and soggy. Luckily, making your own hashbrowns is a very easy and rewarding task. The secret is wringing out the water in the shredded potatos. This allows the potatos to fry rather that steam when they hit the hot oil.

Ingredients:
2 Medium Russet Potatos
Vegetable Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste

Start by peeling the potatos. Next, use a box grater to shred the potatos. Place the shredded potatos in a collander over the sink and with your hands, grab a handful of potatos and squeeze out the liquid. Repeat until you've put the squeeze on all of the shredded potato. Then, wrap the potatos in a paper towel and give it one more squeeze. This should remove any liquid on the surface of the potatos. Preheat your cast iron skillet over medium heat (you can use a regular fry pan, but cast iron's the best). Add vegetable oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Dump the potatos into the skillet and spread them out to form an even layer and give it a shake to make sure nothing sticks. Add salt and pepper. Then don't mess with it for the next 2 minutes, otherwise the crust wont form. After two minutes, lift the edge to see how your crust if forming. Wait until you get a nice crunch, then start flipping. You don't need to flip the whole thing at once, just do what you can. Now you'll have to add some more oil (almost as much as what you started with) and give it another shake to prevent sticking. I try to keep the oil addition to a minimum. I'll add a little oil to any place that looks dry and likely to burn. Once this side is browned, you can plate and serve.

I personally like to eat mine with ketchup and Cholula hot sauce. To lighten it up, you can add some chopped green onions or chives at the end and serve it with some sauteed tomatoes. To make corned beef hash, just add the corned beef and chopped onions with the potatos and everything should come out fine.

America's Next, Next, Next,.....Next Top Model

We took a couple photos of my daughter today. I'm really pleased with how they turned out. This set makes her look like a posing fashion model. I guess anytime you get some wind blowing into the hair you're gonna get that cliche fashion model shot.

My B-day Present

My beautiful wife got me this awesome chair from EQ3 known as the CHAPMAN Office Chair. Its both stylish and comfortable. Link to it here.

Originally, I was going to get the West Elm swivel leather desk chair, but that turned out to be too stiff and not all that comfortable. Luckily, the EQ3 store was next door and this chair was only marginally more expensive, but much more stylish and pleasant to sit in.

Stock Photos

Since my name sounds Indian, I sometimes get junk mail targeted to Indian families. They even go as far as changing the ad to include photos of Indian families. But I guess there's a shortage stock Indian family photos or this family really likes Bank of the West and Kaiser Permanente.

Super Karate Monkey Death Car

This is probably one of the funniest moments of any sitcom I have ever seen. Its from the show News Radio. Here, the owner of the radio station, Jimmy James, is about to give a reading of his autobiography; however, this is an English translation of the Japanese translation of the book. Apparently, the original didn't do so well here, but when the Japanese translation did well, they decided to translate that version back into English.
Here's the clip. Enjoy!

Shenanigans

Is this behemoth monstrocity really a vehicle for a handicapped person?
It is not so apparent in the photo, but the truck has been raised several inches from its stock ride height making it much harder for ordinary people to get into, let alone a handicapped person.

Engrish - Japanese English

This was in our hotel room in Tokyo, Japan. It reads "This room is non-smoking room for your convenience". I'm not sure how this could be an convience to me. Maybe I don't have to take out the dirty ash trays.

Anime for the Masses, Appleseed: Ex Machina

I've seen my fair share of anime to understand why it hasn't become mainstream in American society. A large part of it has to do with changing people's preconceived notion that anime is a genre, when in fact it is more of a medium. We would never lump Casablanca, and The Three Stooges in a "Silver Screen" genre so it makes little sense to lump all animations together also. Although, there are sub-genres (i.e. fighting robots), which are unique to anime, upon closer inspection, all genres from horror to romance is represented in anime.

Anime as a Style
Anime is a medium, but to the confusion of many, it also represents a style much like how Film noir is tightly coupled to black and white film. The anime-style may include features like characters with large eyes and barbie-doll like body proportions, highly detailed technological objects, and excessive blood and violence. While these features may not be present in all anime, they are in enough of them to present an unhealthy stereotype for the mainstream American viewer.

Japanimation
Being an export of Japan, the stories told in anime often have Japanese cultural influences which do not always translate to American audiences. This is not so much an issue with anime as it is a result of writing stories for the Japanese market. Couple this with a healthy American entertainment industry where the audience never has to understand a foreign concept and you can see what an uphill battle it would be to get anime into the mainstream.

Crossing the cultural divide
Appleseed: Ex Machina is a wonderful film that is able to blend a style of anime into something not just palatable, but beautiful to Americans. The use of 3D computer graphics is akin to the many video game cutscenes we are used to seeing, but the use of cell shading for the characters' faces brings home this film's anime roots. The characters' eyes have been shrunken, while a prodigious use of motion capture really increases our sense of realism. Best of all, a talented team of American voice actors were given free reign to modify the script to suit American audiences. Never before have I wanted to listen to the "dubbed" version of an anime movie. However, I can't really call this dubbing as it is more of a transformation through dialog. Many of the lines of the movie has been completely changed to conform to American sensibilities.

It's all in the Woo
The biggest draw for Americans, may be John Woo's contribution to this film. Although Woo is known for his action, it is his combination of symbolism, character nuances, and cinematography
that makes him irreplaceable. When watching this movie, you really get a sense that this is much more than an action flick. You see the emotion connection between the characters without having it thrown in your face. All in all Woo is the final key in making this not just a good Japanese or American movie, but a great movie in general.

Here's the trailer:

Another good song: Feist - "I Feel It All"

I saw the Colbert Report today where he interviewed the girl on the iPod commercial. I didn't particularly like the song on the commercial, but the song she sung on the show was great. Anyhow, here it is:

Frets on Fire

In the world of Geekdom, there's one phenomenon that's sweeping the nation like the opening of another George Lucas film. The phenomenon is Guitar Hero. A game where even the nerdiest of nerds can play out their rockstar fantasies. The game even includes a controller in the form of a guitar with buttons for frets and a rocking switch that you strum to play the notes. Similar to games like Dance Dance Revolution, you have to hit the right notes as colored markers run down the screen indicating what fret buttons to hold down.

So what's the big deal?
I think everyone is born with an innate desire to be a rocker. Haven't we all seen that rockstar on stage whaling on his guitar with fingers as fast as lightning and then say to yourself, "Damn, I wish I could do that!". The game is allows anyone to experience the joy of hitting that climactic riff without the years of practice needed to learn a real guitar. And unlike a real guitar, you get instant gratification with just a modicum of practice.

Then I realized I had a wife.
Obviously, buying another gadget the size of a guitar that was going to live in the living room isn't an easy sell. I pretty much gave up on my rockstar dreams until one day I saw some YouTube videos of guys playing this Guitar Hero clone called Frets on Fire. The people who made this ingeniously figured out that if you held your keyboard upside-down like a guitar, the F1-F5 keys would be in the perfect position to be used as fret buttons. Plus, the program is open-source (ie free) and you can download a bunch of songs for it and even import the songs from the Guitar Hero game. So now I don't need to keep around a plastic guitar and I can try out hundreds more songs than ever could with the Guitar Hero version. And again,... its free so why not give it a shot.

I finished the Habenaro burger...Again!

and I got to show for it was this lousy bumper sticker.



Man, that was crazy hot.


As part of my company's ritual for welcoming new hires we all go out to a local British pub that serves these ridiculously hot burgers. They gave us a choice between the 'X' and the triple 'X' burger. Being a relative veteran there, I had to go for the XXX.

The burgers came looking innocently enough. Just an open face burger with a little red sauce on the patty and a side of fries. Looks couldn't be more deceiving.

The general suggestion for downing one of these pieces of lava on a bun is to get it down as quickly as possible. However, as soon as I swallow the first bite, my stomach starts flipping out and now I'm fighting an upchuck reflex whilst trying to cram more magma down my throat. 10 seconds in, I've only now started to get into the real saucy parts of the burger. I'm sweating like mad, my throat's starting to constrict, but I'm still trying to swallow big bites. 30 seconds in, I manage to get down half the burger until my pace really slows down. I have to chew each bite a lot more before I can swallow and now the burn is really kicking in. Drinking beer gives only momentary relief otherwise its making me feel a bit fuller with every gulp making it that much harder to force the next bite down. 2 minutes in, i've only managed to get another quarter down. I'm feeling a bit delirious now as the pain is somewhere between unbearable and numb. Its like my tongue has started to give up on telling me this is HOT! The rest of my mouth is still burning and my guts are at a constant state of upset. 5 minutes in and two more bites left. Seeing the end in sight, I shove the remaining bites down as I whip my head left and right to help it go down... Ahhhh, the burn, still intense, but at least I can concentrate on drinking beer from now on.

All in all, it was an entertaining experience. The next day wasn't so bad for me, but one of our newbies had to come in late due to having something diabolical in his gut.