Georgi’s Blog

School is over, got a job.

Officially, today is my first day at my new job. I started work in UBS A.G. - Investment Bank in the IT Equities department. We spent most of the day, today, listening to various presentations and speeches. I am saying officially, because I started last Monday as I had to go trough a pre-week financial and accounting training. I now live in Stamford, CT and my new place is not bad, it only lacks an AC, but not for long.
Because I work in a bank now, I will have to be careful what I write here and I have to put some disclaimers here and there that all you read here is my personal opinion and does not reflect that of my employer… the general stuff. However that will happen some other day because it is late now and I have to get up at 7am tomorrow.

Frying tomatoes

There is one problem when frying tomatoes. Usually they are cooked in a pan and after the are done, everything around it is covered in tomatoes. And because the idea is for the water to evaporate it is not convenient to cover the pan. That’s why I decided to make myself an enhanced version of my pan which resulted in clean kitchen. All I needed was a piece of thick aluminum foil (the thicker the better so that the tomatoes don’t dissolve it) long enough to go around the pan. Just take the foil and build a high wall around the pan. It should look something like that::


It works wonders.

This is the recipe btw:
2 big cans of petite diced tomatoes (or shredded tomatoes, or tomato juice)
5-6 eggs
3 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp oil

Add the oil in the pan and before it gets too hot just add the tomatoes so that you don’t get an eruption of burning oil and water later. If the tomatoes are in big chunks use the hand blender, but keep some chunks of tomatoes for texture. Cook the tomatoes until all the water is gone and they are well cooked. After that just add the eggs, stir well to incorporate the eggs and cook them. That’s it. Remove from the heat and add the mashed garlic. If the tomatoes are too sour, just add a little bit of sugar (1/2 tsp). At first the garlic will be strong, but the high temperature of the tomatoes will reduce the strength.

We got ourselves inline skates

Both Dary and I love to skate, but the skates we have in Bulgaria are quite old and beaten up, at least mine are, so we decided to get ourselves new ones. Hers are Rollerblade Spiritblade III - 2008 (left on the picture), mine are K2 Moto - 2007 (right on the picture). I gave mine quite a run the other day in the park. Also I did try them here on the street. Dary only tried hers here, but not as much as I did.

Perl script for sending mail trough Gmail

Nothing fancy, just a few prompts and use of Net::SMTP::SSL and Authen::SASL

1. #!/usr/bin/perl -w
2. # Send email from Gmail
3. # Will not work on windows, because of the echo
4. # for the password. Just uncomment the two
5. # system lines and should be fine.
6. # Will wait for EOF (Ctrl+D) for the msg body.
7. # by GT
8.  
9. use Net::SMTP::SSL;
10.  
11. my $smtp;
12. my $username = 'youremail@gmail.com';
13. my $password;
14. my @lines;
15. my $msg = "";
16. my $to;
17. my $subject;
18.  
19. $smtp = Net::SMTP::SSL->new('smtp.gmail.com', Port => 465, Debug=>1) || die "Cannot connect to server" ;
20.  
21. system('stty -echo');
22. print "Enter password:";
23. $password = <STDIN>;
24. chomp $password;
25. system('stty echo');
26.  
27. $smtp->auth($username, $password) || die "Authentication failed";
28.  
29. print "\nTo:";
30. $to = <STDIN>;
31. chomp $to;
32. print "Enter subject:";
33. $subject = <STDIN>;
34. chomp $subject;
35. print "Enter message:\n";
36. @lines = <>;
37. foreach $line (@lines){
38. $msg = $msg.$line;
39. }
40.  
41. $smtp->mail($username."\n");
42. $smtp->to($to."\n");
43. $smtp->data();
44. $smtp->datasend("From: ". $username."\n");
45. $smtp->datasend("To: ".$to."\n");
46. $smtp->datasend("Subject: ".$subject."\n");
47. $smtp->datasend("\n");
48. $smtp->datasend($msg."\n");
49. $smtp->dataend();
50. $smtp->quit;
51.  
52. Свалете този код/download this code: gmailsmtp.pl

Rice

• The easiest way to cook it is in a rice cooker, because it can monitor the temperature when the water is absorbed.
• Water needed for cooling long white rice: 1cup rice in 1.5cup water; 2c. rice in 2.75c. water, 3c. rice in 3.5c. water.
• Brown rice needs a little bit more water for cooking; short rice needs less
• Short rice releases more starch and becomes more sticky
• Long rice almost does not release starch and is more fluffy
• White rice cooks faster than brown rice

P.S. Saffron is the most expensive spice on earth (about $1000 per lb.)

Cast Iron skillet

Cast iron skillets are very durable, very heavy and disperses the heat very well. With it you can cook on high heat, in the oven, on the stove top, in the grill or basically anything that emits heat. When you buy a new cast iron cookware it has to be seasoned well. The standard procedure is to clean it very well, dry it very well, coat it with some vegetable oil and bake it in a 300 degree F. oven for about an hour. After that, just wipe the excess oil, if any, and the skillet is ready. The best part is, that you don’t have to clean it. Just put some salt in it, scrub it a little bit, wipe it and store it. After a few uses an excellent nonstick layer will form and you can even cook eggs in it.

Archival of video podcasts

I’ve picked a few video podcasts that I like to watch. But because there is a lot of info there, quite some time ago I decided to start archiving them and make them accessible from everywhere I have internet. That involved a simple web page and converting every episode to flash to avoid codec problems. The best part is, that all of them have some type of rss feeds and make it easy to get the url to the video file, a description and some other useful info. So I sat down and wrote the following script:

1. #!/usr/bin/perl -w
2. # This script gets the latest Systm Podcast feed.
3. # It will check if the episode is downloaded and if not,
4. # it will download it, generate a .flv video, look for the
5. # $flag entry in index.html and will insert html code for
6. # the downloaded episode.
7. #
8. # Requires: ffmpeg, flvtool2, mencode and convert (IM)
9. #
10. #
11. # by Georgi Todorov
12. #
13. #
14. use strict;
15. use XML::RSS;
16. use LWP::Simple;
17. use Date::Format;
18. use Date::Parse;
19.  
20. my $duration;
21. my $image;
22. my $url2parse;
23. my $title;
24. my $url;
25. my $desc;
26. my $ep=0;
27. my $fname;
28. my $class;
29. my $line;
30. my $i=0;
31. my $date;
32. my @asdf;
33. my @splitted;
34. my $extension;
35. my $enc;
36. # Create new instance of XML::RSS
37. my $rss = new XML::RSS;
38. # Get the URL, assign it to url2parse, and then parse the RSS content
39. $url2parse = get("http://revision3.com/systm/feed/quicktime-high-definition");
40. #print $url2parse;
41. $rss->parse($url2parse);
42. # Print the channel items
43. #print $rss->as_string;
44. open OLDINDEX, "<index.html";
45. open NEWINDEX, ">newindex.html";
46. my $flag = "<!--start-->";
47. while ( $line = <OLDINDEX>){
48. chomp($line);
49. if ($line eq $flag){
50. print NEWINDEX $line."\n";
51. $i = 1;
52. }
53. if ($i == 0){
54. print NEWINDEX $line."\n";
55. }else{
56. foreach my $item (@{$rss->{'items'}}) {
57. next unless defined($item->{'title'}) && defined($item->{'enclosure'});
58. $date = time2str("%A, %B %o, %Y", str2time($item->{'pubDate'}));
59. $date =~s/ +/ /gi;
60. $url = $item->{'enclosure'}->{'url'};
61. @asdf = split(/\//, $url);
62. $ep = $asdf[$#asdf-1];
63. $ep =~s/^0*//;
64. $title = "Episode ". $ep;
65. @splitted = split(/\./, $url);
66. $extension = $splitted[$#splitted];
67. if ( $ep%2 == 0 ){
68. $class = "left";
69. }else{
70. $class = "right";
71. }
72. $fname = "Systm Episode ".$ep." (".$date.")";
73. $desc = $item->{'description'};
74.  
75. print "-------- Working on $title --------\n";
76. print "Looking for $fname.$extension ...";
77. if (-e "$fname.m4v")
78. {
79. print "found. Skipping.\n";
80. }elsif (-e "$fname.flv")
81. {
82. print "found. Skipping.\n";
83. }else{
84. print "not found. Downloading:\n";
85. system ("wget $url -O \"$fname.$extension\"");
86. print "Generating a Thumbnail and Encoding:\n";
87. system ("ffmpeg -y -i \"$fname.$extension\" -f image2 -ss 100 -vframes 1 -an out.jpg");
88. system ("convert out.jpg -resize x100 -quality 95 \"images/$fname.jpg\"");
89. system ("rm out.jpg");
90. system ("./encode2 \"$fname.$extension\" \"$fname.flv\"");
91. system ("flvtool2 -UP \"$fname.flv\"");
92. $duration = `/usr/bin/ffmpeg -i \"$fname.flv\" 2>&1|grep Duration|cut -d \":\" -f 3,4|cut -d \",\" -f 1`;
93. print NEWINDEX "<div class=\"$class\">\n";
94. print NEWINDEX "\t<div class=\"imglt\">\n";
95. print NEWINDEX "\t\t<img src=\"images/$fname.jpg\" alt=\"$fname\" /><br />\n";
96. print NEWINDEX "\t\t<a href='javascript:flowPlayerOpenFullScreen(\"$fname.flv\")' class=\"download_button\" >Play</a>\n";
97. print NEWINDEX "\t\t<a href=\"$fname.mov\" class=\"download_button\" >Download</a>\n";
98. print NEWINDEX "\t</div>\n";
99. print NEWINDEX "\t<b>$title ($date)</b<br />\n";
100. print NEWINDEX "\t<b>Length:</b> $duration\n";
101. print NEWINDEX "\t<p>$desc</p>\n";
102. print NEWINDEX "</div>\n";
103. if ($class eq "right"){
104. print NEWINDEX "<div class=\"clear\">\n";
105. print NEWINDEX "\t&nbsp;<br />\n\t&nbsp;\n";
106. print NEWINDEX"</div>\n";
107. }
108. }
109. print "-------- DONE --------\n";
110.  
111. }
112. $i = 0;
113. }
114. }
115. close OLDINDEX;
116. close NEWINDEX;
117. system("mv index.html oldindex.html&&mv newindex.html index.html");
118.  
119. Свалете този код/download this code: updatepodcast.pl

It works pretty good for now. encode2 just contains the looooong mencoder command for encoding to flv:

1. mencoder "$1" -o "$2" -of lavf -ovc lavc -oac lavc \
2. -lavfopts i_certify_that_my_video_stream_does_not_use_b_frames \
3. -lavcopts vcodec=flv:vbitrate=800:autoaspect:mbd=2:\
4. mv0:trell:v4mv:cbp:last_pred=3:predia=2:dia=2:precmp=2:\
5. cmp=2:subcmp=2:preme=2:turbo:acodec=mp3:abitrate=56 \
6. -srate 22050 -af lavcresample=22050
7. Свалете този код/download this code: encode_to_flv

• While choosing look for: moisture, bright color, even cut (for even cooking) and NO ODOR!
• The best cut is around the spine of the animal. The further from the legs and the head, the more tender. Ribeye or prime rib cuts are very good
• Store at the bottom of the fridge never above 40 degrees F.
• Best cooked in cast iron skillet.
• Season with plenty of salt, some pepper and rub with canola oil(or other oil with high burning point).
• Cook for 30 secs on each side in the hot skillet on high heat, than put in a 500 degree oven for about 4 minutes for MR
• Do not cut the stake for at least 4 minutes after it is out of the oven

New Category

For quite some time now I’ve been watching various food and cooking shows on the food network and other channels and they do teach quite a lot. However without practice I forget many things, so I decided to start writing them down. And using my blog, they could be useful to someone else too. The new category for that is called “Cooking notes“.

We completed the puzzle

Around January this year, while we were in one of the big stores here, we found ourselves next to the puzzle isle. So we decided to get a puzzle for ourselves. Of course, typical for us, we wanted the most complicated one. For 10 bucks we ended up getting The Chase by John Hyde with size around 27×20 inches with 1000pcs. We started solving it before the semester and we did the majority of it. However the semester started and we couldn’t finish it. Two days ago, we remembered about it and decided to finish it. We put it on the table and about 4 hours later we had it done. We had the most difficult part left - the one with all the black pieces, where only the shape of the piece was our guide for solving as they were all black. Here is how it looks: