Good to the last chop.

I tried eating at Grass Root on Tuesday (and Wednesday, which is where that picture is from). The organic, vegan friendly fare is excellent, as is the atmosphere.

When I took this picture, it shows how much I had that day:
I had the Cucumber Chop (green bowl), which was marvelous — crisp and sweet, with a bit of a tang to it to add in that returning bite, it made me stop at the beginning, so I could enjoy the rest of it at the end. I could almost swear that I tasted celery in this, too… I’ll have to ask.
Along with the Chop, I had the Classic American Burger (yellow-ish plate), which, given this restaurant, has absolutely no meat in it, was unbelievable. I’ve had okay burgers, I’ve had good burgers, but this one was actually several kinds of awesome.

Accompanying the sandwich and salad were two glasses — one for a drink called ‘Mango-Ra’, and the other for a glass of Iced Ginger Green Tea.
The Mango-Ra is interesting, to be sure, given its ingredients: Mango, vanilla extract, strawberries, pineapple juice, lime and agave nectar.
Notice that I didn’t say Sugar? High Fructose Corn Syrup? Turbinado?
The Agave nectar is the sweetener of choice here, and makes the drink quite deliciously sweet. Combined with its thickness, it would serve well as a meal substitute of its own! I had trouble finishing it because I was feeling full.
The tea, however, isn’t to be ignored, with its subtle ginger hints, and a crisp sweetness that is missing from most teas. This too, was excellent.

I’m not a practicing vegetarian, vegan, or raw foodist, but the food here is seriously delicious, and just might make an impact on your health.

Bon Appétit!

I once tried to take basic Spanish and French classes in the same year — I was in third grade. That act alone showed me an appreciation for people who have command of more than one language, because that year showed me how hard it is to learn a language solely by hearing it OR seeing it.

While checking my email accounts (goodness, I have many of them), I stumbled across a link where one can, for Free: Learn English with audio.
Given that English is my native language, I was inclined to toy around with the site, to see just how well it was done.

The home page is essentially bare, save for one Google AdWords box, and the flash object containing the flash cards (no pun intended), which I find to be a very good idea. Nothing says “Learn English” better than a gigantic flash ad for Verizon High Speed FiOS, right?

The Flash box on the page has five labels. Four languages are supported on a path to learn English: Spanish, French, Russian, and Hebrew. There is a standalone label that gives only the English, with no transliterations or translations of words to English, as well as the aforementioned language labels, whose contents come complete with a transliteration of the way the word sounds, as well as the audible enunciation of the words.

For example, I chose French.
For appliances, I see what we call a Stereo in English:
Stereo, sti’(r)io, chaîne stéréo
The first is the English spelling. The second is a transliteration of how we say it in English, and the last is the (familiar) French way of saying the same object. If I clicked on it, I’d hear the “sti’(r)io” as the enunciation.

It’s a pretty healthy way to teach the basics of words, though I admit, I don’t miss conjugating verbs with these cards (simply because I hated conjugating être in my French classes).

I can see how having a free resource to begin learning English as a Second Language from would be so useful.

[tags]ESL, English as a Second Language, Polyglot, Linguistics, Learn English, Contributors[/tags]

I was checking my news reader this evening, since I decided to not go back to the shelter immediately after work. I came across one header in my reader that caught my eye, and caused me to frown for a good few minutes, simply because I’m not sure how to react. The gist of this header is, Microsoft now has their hands on TellMe.

For those of you unfamiliar with TellMe, they started years back as a voice-driven system that allowed users to navigate menus on a phone, to perform various actions, and to gather information. Here’s an example call flow I use when calling TellMe (1-800-555-8355 / 1 (800) 555-TELL):

TellMe: Hello, and welcome to TellMe! Main Menu. Here are all the features that you can choose from…
Xial: Weather.
TM: Weather? Got it. To return here at any time, just say “Main Menu”. / Weather. Say a City and State, or Enter a Zip Code. For example, you can say “Dallas, Texas”.
X: Three Three Six Seven Two.
TM: Tampa, FL. To stop this forecast, just say “Stop”. At 6:12 PM, it’s 76 degrees, with a gentle breeze. Tonight –
X: Stop. Main Menu.

It’s very much like holding a meaningful conversation with a computer, like the start of the technology we’d think of seeing in Star Trek.

TellMe’s been working on their VoiceXML Platform for years now, and even had a section long ago called Extensions, where people could actuallly publish their own VoiceXML applications to those calling the TellMe service on their phone. One could experiment with much of the apps published, and easily spend a half hour talking to the phone just playing a game (I was guilty of this — someone had done a VoiceXML version of Dope Wars / Drug Wars I would spend hours a day just playing game after game of this, because I was addicted years ago), or trying out ideas that ended up making it into the mainstream TellMe application in some way, shape, or form.

Finding out that Microsoft now has a hand on TellMe has me slightly wary, since it is Microsoft, after all, but, given the details that are published at GigaOm, this just might be a good thing.

[tags]TellMe, Microsoft, VoiceXML, GigaOM[/tags]

The entry featured a video of a man’s robotic beer launching refrigerator, which I think would be best if I let the video do its own explaining.
Although the video is on YouTube, the author earns a little money for his video being shown via MetaCafe, thusly, I’m going to embed their video instead.

Watch, Laugh, and Want one.

Robotic Beer Launching Refrigerator - More bloopers are a click away

[tags]Beer Launching Fridge, Technorati Plugin, Douglas Karr[/tags]

The best tip I can give you to watch these… is read FAST. Longer expressions will usually stay on the screen long enough for you to read them. When I was reading Samsung Means To Come out loud (to myself), I almost felt like I was an auctioneer, trying to keep up with the presentation.

Enjoy.

[1] yhchang.com: SAMSUNG MEANS TO COME

When I was a kid, I grew up on PBS. I remember Sesame Street (though Big Bird traumatised me as a child More, for another story.), Arthur, The Reppies, Nova, Nature, 3-2-1 CONTACT!, and numerous other shows that showed up on the two PBS channels we have here in Tampa (Channel 3, WEDU; Channel 16, WUSF). In fact, I admit that those were the two channels I enjoyed the most, because they were the way I thought television should be: unfettered by constant reminders to drink Cloaca-Cola, requests to join the Dyspepsian Generation (You got the right one baby, uh-huh), and lacking in reinforcement that sex is a requirement to be popular on television!

I’d like to help save this resource while it still exists.
If I ever were to decide to have children, I would love to have PBS around for them.

I never really got to listen to NPR as a child — I probably thought that it was too boring then, but the issue is, both NPR and PBS are public resources that many of us rely on for news, education, and entertainment. If we let the United States Government take a knife to their already limited budgets, this could easily spell the end of quality television and radio shows in our country.

Therefore, I ask you to help me out. Put your name to this, and show our Government that you want them to show respect to public broadcasting. Put the knife away, and don’t cut their budgets!

Thank you for your time,

— Justin H.

Hi,

President Bush just proposed drastic cuts to NPR and PBS. We’ve stopped similar cuts in the past, but enough is enough: With the new Congress, we can make sure this never happens again.

We need Congress to save NPR and PBS once and for all.

Can you help out by signing this petition to Congress? It’s really easy—just click the link below:

Civic.MoveOn.ORG, Public Broadcasting, Referral link

Thanks!

[tags]Save Public Broadcasting, NPR, PBS, United States, Government, Politics, MoveOn.org, Children’s Programming, Commercial-free News, Commercial-free Television, Petition[/tags]

It’s a rather useful tool. Just put in the two addresses or intersections nearest your destinations, choose a departure or arrival time, and Get Directions.

The service is laid atop [tag]Google Maps[/tag], and uses authoritative data from the Testing regions (there are a total of nine cities testing out Google Transit at this time) to show routes and scheduled times. They may or may not cover routes on detours, so be advised that this is only to be considered as a general guide on riding public transportation.

One of the nicest things about it is, although you are looking up bus routes in general, you can also switch it over to driving mode, should you choose to change your mind and drive or get a ride from point A to point B.

[tag]Google Transit[/tag] is the name of this new tool.
Hopefully, we’ll see more cities adopt it — I’d love to see PSTA jump on board, too.

It might be because the rules binding television there aren’t as stupid as they are here in the United States.
For example, here in the states, I extremely doubt that they would ever air some of the comedy shows or game shows they air in Japan. I present one of my favorite examples, Hard Gay.

Here in America, it seems that they are slowly getting over their fear of the word “Gay”, with such (boring) shows as “Queer Eye”, but there’s no real humor in American makeover shows.

Hard Gay is definitely not a makeover show. The content is (mostly) safe enough to be viewed, though there is one questionable shot taken in Hard Gay - Ramen that you can tell was not really meant to be anything.

[video]http://youtube.com/watch?v=igC4bPDp6cU[/video]

There’s also Gaki no Tsukai, which seems to be mostly based on a punishment game. If you laugh at the defined subject (be it a butchered English video, or at Karaoke), you are punished.

I suggest watching.

[video]http://youtube.com/watch?v=jGKj_eYbBkQ[/video]

[tags]Hard Gay, Gaki no Tsukai, YouTube, Humor, Japan, Comedy Shows[/tags]

I’d like to share a few of the videos that I found humorous.

The first video is a parody of the old “Captain Planet” cartoons that used to air back in the… early 90’s, I believe it was. I grew up on the show, and used to (this is embarassing) sing along with the opening music.
The game of choice for this video was Sega’s Phantasy Star Universe.
Enjoy.

[video]http://youtube.com/watch?v=lBoZhPrPmv0[/video]

This second video goes back just a little farther, to one Michael Jackson. In NCSoft’s Guild Wars, this dance should take you back to the 80’s.
Enjoy.

[video]http://youtube.com/watch?v=Pem783iENnU[/video]

And finally, an old classic that I’m sure many will enjoy, and someone will be offended by:
The Internet is for Porn. The game of choice for this was World of Warcraft, which everyone is so obsessed with, it seems.
Please, wait until after the short film to unzip your flies.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWEjvCRPrCo[/video]

I started watching the videos this morning, to get myself going, and found myself laughing for the majority of the video. Being a gamer, and mostly an RPG gamer at that, I can appreciate the numerous references to various older RPGs, as well as a few newer ones. There’re also a couple of veiled anime references there, as well, which only made it funnier.

I recommend watching the videos for a good laugh.

You may start that by visiting CollegeSaga.com from this link.

You may also find the video in a single, continuous format on YouTube by clicking anywhere on this sentence.

If you’re into skipping the rest of the cruft (commentary, ads, whathaveye), then click this sentence for an alternative YouTube link.

[tags]CollegeSaga, Mark Leung, Humor, Video, YouTube[/tags]