George Sudarkoff

Jazz

Salted Salmon, Russian style

You're sick and tired of drinking your Bud and want to turn it up a notch to start enjoying your life again? First of all, don't drink cheap beer! And to top it off, here's one of my favorite family recipes.

Fine Russian-style salted salmon

You'll need:

• 1 package of fresh salmon from Costco (~$11) sans 5 'tail' inches
• 1 jar of kosher flake salt from Trader Joe's (about 75 grams)
• 2 tbsp assorted whole pepper (black, white, whatever)
• bay leaf ad libitum

Cut the remaining piece of fish in half, wash it and dry it with paper towels. Rub pieces of fish with salt. Sprinkle a little bit of salt and peppers onto the bottom of the pot, and lay one of the pieces flat on the bottom of pot. Take some peppers and press them into the fish, then sprinkle some salt onto it. Lay the other piece of fish right on top oh the first one. Repeat the procedure with pepper and salt. You should use up all salt and pepper by this moment. Place a saucer or a small plate on top of the fish stack, and put some weight on it (half-gallon of water in some container will do just fine). Let the pot stand uncovered on the kitchen counter for half a day (room temperature) and then move it (still uncovered) to the fridge. In another 36 hours the fish is ready to be served and enjoyed with your favorite brand of Czech beer!

Now life is delish, isn't it?

Gadgets for sale

I finally came around to selling the unused portions of my gadgetry. First of all to get rid of the stuff that I, well, don't use but that could happily satisfy someone else's needs. And then to make some money towards my next toy - WiFi-enabled Pocket PC phone. Here's the first auction. Also, coming down the pipe are CLIÉ UX50 PDA, VAIO FXA63 laptop and more. Stay tuned.

Ctrl-W in Firefox

I just discovered that Ctrl-W closes the tab in Firefox for Windows - what a great news for a Mac addict in me - one less key combination to worry about when switching between Mac and PC!

Mac addict

You might be a Mac addict if when you step on the white oval rug outside your shower cabin you expect the whole thing to collapse into a wall.

LiveJournal

I've started crossposting to my LiveJournal weblog.

6 mph. Running or Jogging?

Yesterday at 2:30 AM as I was setting the alarm-clock before going to bed I thought to myself - they say a grown man should sleep eight hours a day, but shouldn't you also count the time that passes between the moment you go to bed and the moment you actually fall asleep? And is there a distinct moment when one crosses the line between being awake and being asleep?

Anyway, this is not why I am writing this post. Somebody came to my weblog via Google inquiring "is 6 mph running or jogging"? Why do you care, curious stranger? The difference is only in the word (and a few snobbish runners believing that there is a difference). Some might say that a jogger is the one who doesn't care about the speed. In this sense, since you're asking, 6 mph is definitely running. Have many pleasant miles and stay injury-free – the only thing you should care about!

Paul Antonio Ortiz

Thanks to the Speechless podcast I have been enjoying lately, I came across a young British lad - Paul Antonio Ortiz - who is doing some amazing stuff in music. He is a very crafty musician, composer and arranger all-in-one. I have been listening to his music for the last few hours non-stop. And mark my words - he is going to be huge in a couple of years or so. Check him out!

Password manager

What's the best password manager out there? Passwords Plus from DataViz, that's what!

I spent a lot of time and effort trying to find a suitable cross-platform password manager and I believe my search is finally over. Passwords Plus is a nice and simple (very simple!) application that runs either on Mac OS or Windows and can be sync'ed with Palm OS or Pocket PC (as of right now Pocket PC syncs with Windows only). You can have up to ten custom-named fields in each record, and when you create a new item you are presented with a list of customizable templates, so that you don't have to type the same field names over and over again. There's the master password you have to enter when you launch the application, and the program locks itself after a user-defined period of inactivity.

Of course, Passwords Plus allows you to import your passwords from a dozen of other password managers, but the program I was using before did not have any export feature, so I had to type in by hand a couple of hundreds passwords and PINs, credit card numbers, bank accounts, serial numbers, you name it. Thankfully, for the last time, because Passwords Plus will not tie you down - just export your stuff to a .csv file and do what you please with it!

I noticed only one tiny problem - I deleted a category from the middle of the list and it messed up all category assignments - silly bug, I am sure they will fix it in the next build. So be warned, but do not let it stop you from downloading this awesome application.

Running outdoors

Yesterday I was running outdoors for the first time since high school (I did run once along the beach about a month ago, but that hardly qualifies as a run as I walked most of the distance). I made a few discoveries:

• My mouth generates torrents of spit – something that never bothered me while I was running solely on a treadmill.
• Despite the common understanding that a treadmill is easier on your joints, running on the concrete pavement caused me far less pain in joints, I guess the reason being the multiformity. The monotonous repetitive nature of a treadmill had been wearing out my joints more than a slightly more hazardous but diverse terrain.
• My legs ached however in ways I had never experienced before. But that was a good ache, it means some abandoned muscles are now getting their workout as well.
• I can't tell whether I am running slow enough to last even the shortest distance. I need some way of figuring out my pace and controlling it.

All in all, I had a great time running outdoors and am planning to do it more often now (if not always).