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It’s impossible to watch GBBO without wanting something sweet… Cocoa powder brownies fill the void. Baking takes a bit of time (25 min), but the prep is very quick since there’s no fiddly chocolate melting. These lie in the fudge-y end of the brownie spectrum, very dark and dense. In fact, I’ve made this in a cake format before since it’s almost like flourless chocolate cake. Bake in a round tin and spoon fresh whipped cream and berries over the top. Finally, this takes substitutions pretty well. I’ve made these vegan and gluten free before (coconut oil not butter, blitzed and gelled chia seeds not eggs, GF flour). Comes out great, though they’re a bit gooier and have to cook a little longer.

Simple cocoa brownies

Preheat the oven to 160C (320F) and line a 20 cm (8″) square tin. In a pot large enough to hold the rest of the ingredients, melt 150 g (1 1/3 c) butter. In a small bowl, combine 250 g (1 1/4 c) sugar and 90 g (heaping 3/4 c) cocoa powder. Beat this in to the butter. Once the mix is sufficiently cool, beat in 2 eggs and a tiny splash of vanilla extract or orange flower water (optional). The mixture will come together firmly, it will be almost taffy-esque. Gently stir in 64 g (1/2 c) flour just until combined. Pour in to the lined square tin, spread it in to the corners, and bake 25 minutes. The top should be glossy when done, possibly with a few cracks. Let it cool in the tin on a rack until nearly set but still warm.

Edit 23 May 2019
Just came across Prof. Maxwell’s recipe for Churchill Brownies on his faculty page! They’re cocoa powder-based as well, so will need to give his a try. His recipe seems to make the same quantity but with (much) less butter, less cocoa powder, and more sugar. I imagine his are more traditionally brownie-esque as opposed to the nearly cake-like texture of the recipe above, we’ll see!

Edit 04 October 2019
Results are in, Prof. Maxwell’s brownies are fantastic. Metric values below for reference:

  • Oven @ 175C
  • 113 g butter
  • 59 g cocoa
  • 2 eggs
  • 200 g granulated sugar
  • 64 g flour

See his faculty page for the method and imperial values. It was hard to get rid of the lumps when I was bringing the mixture together, so I might try the method from the Simple cocoa brownies recipe above next time. This will probably be my go-to brownie recipe now, and the previous one will be what I use for gooey cakes.

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Agorama #2: exploring Scuttlebutt

A wall in Rebecca’s Flat at Raven Row

This past Thursday 18 October was the second Server Co-op meetup in Rebecca’s Flat at Raven Row. See all Server Co-op notes.

I didn’t take as many notes this time, wasn’t feeling fantastic. Very sketchy notes below.

click public button twice if the Patchwork feed seems stuck after first install

how to have Scuttlebutt on multiple devices?
eh, maybe not worth the hassle, just use one device
“sameAs” is currently being worked on by devs in Scuttlebutt community

identity = private + public + network key combo
lib sodium

back up private key and gossip.json

dark crystal for backing up private key using social network

“shamir’s secrets” algorithm
kind of like horcruxes!

with Scuttlebutt, your friends are your cloud/datacentre

nothing is ever deleted (same as Dat)

could technically have multiple identities, but functionality isn’t implemented currently. Would have to swap .ssb directories

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Agorama #1: outstanding home decor + P2P

The rug in Rebecca’s Flat at Raven Row

Last night I went to the first Server Co-op meetup hosted by Agorama in Rebecca’s Flat. It’s a more-is-more space, and then some. It was a lovely evening. Notes:

Check out infocivics.com by Paul Frazee. “Computing networks are social and political systems. We should attempt to answer how the technical design of a network will influence the internal politics.”

There *is* a mobile Dat browser, but apparently it’s a bit… buggy. See Bunsen for Android (nada for iOS). Still, kudos to them for taking a stab at it. Apparently the project of making a Dat browser sort of hits a brick wall due to node.js, but a bunch of devs have taken it upon themselves to make a Rust implementation of Dat. TBH I don’t understand the ins-and-outs well enough to be able to describe how that lowers the barrier, but it sounds like the future of mobile Dat might be brighter for it.

I haven’t dug in to Scuttlebutt yet, and it sounds like it’s about time. An offline-first protocol, described by KG as a database/social network/community. See also Patchwork. Feel like I heard HL say that it came about after 2011 Christchurch earthquake due to the difficulties at the time with having any sort of connectivity, but that might be wrong?

And crucially, are there ethical conversations around P2P tech that we’re failing to have, or happily skating past? I’m thinking about when Facebook and similar now-giants were in their nascent stages, surely some of the current nastiness could have been avoided if the making was accompanied by a little more thinking, more extrospection? How do you wrap your head around the potential ethical implications of something that doesn’t yet exist? I found KB’s anecdote interesting, when a few fascistic idiots attempted to hijack Scuttlebutt but were almost immediately, organically, blocked from having any meaningful impact. It feels great, but who’s to say they’re not off in their own node somewhere trolling away? Feels awful to think that Scuttlebutt might be harbouring some sort of extreme-right cell, and yet maybe so be it, should it be a decentralised network’s responsibility to police that? How on earth would that work anyway?

Separate: I got my hair cut by Dean last week and am very pleased. When it’s styled it’s a bit Josie Packard (fabulous) and when not styled, it’s very Shawn Hunter (not totally a bad thing).

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Hum-worthy tunes

There are a few tunes that you turn up and hum along to when they come on. “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” by Jimmy Ruffin ticks the box for me. It’s one of those weird ones though, a song that has a kind of uplifting melodic line but some pretty sad lyrics.

Quick edit: Oh man, and “Crying” by Roy Orbison, and “Heaven Help Us All” by Stevie Wonder, and “Bye Bye Love” by the Everly Brothers. (Solid playlist on right now, clearly.) That last one will always have the softest spot in my heart.

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Resolving Craft 3 Setup Wizard error

I keep encountering issues when running Craft’s setup command locally. Note that I use MAMP Pro for this sort of thing. I entered all the database creds correctly, and then got a SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] No such file or directory error. This StackExchange answer sorted it for me. Add 'unixSocket' => getenv('DB_SOCKET') to /config/db.php and DB_SOCKET="/Applications/MAMP/tmp/mysql/mysql.sock" to .env.

Still encountering database connection issues on staging for one site currently under development. All of the credentials are set correctly in .env, but getenv() in /config/db.php retrieves the wrong DB_USER value. Ended up explicitly adding the problematic value to the /config/db.php file as a quick workaround, but it’s not ideal.

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LilyPond project boilerplate for music engraving

I was digging around the web for old folk songs this morning and came across Chumbawumba’s English Rebel Songs 1381–1984, was particularly taken by “The World Upside Down”. I wanted to try arranging it but didn’t want to just duplicate and Frankenstein the last score I was working on, so I finally sat down and made a boilerplate.

LilyPond project boilerplate

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weekend todos

  • Get John Carreyrou’s Bad Blood EDIT 17.07.19 – I finally read this! It’s nuts
  • Find a copy of An Anthology of English Medieval and Renaissance Vocal Music ed. Noah Greenberg
  • Write down last week’s Dockside Chicken recipe for further refining
  • dat dat dat dat dat & pie w/ GC and HB
  • Try making Semmelknödel ◯ Start with this recipe but consider steaming, refrigerating beforehand, adding nutmeg. Aim for Knödelwirtshaft perfection. Think we had dandylion, goats cheese + red pepper, cheese, and bacon? Thx FB!

And go all in w/ iced tea. Hot tip for cold tea: cold-brew tea + squirt of lemon juice + splash of peach and elderflower squash = top-notch summer beverage. I am a little over caffeinated right now.

Read notes post-semmelknödel

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If a tree falls in a forest

❤️👍😍⭐️🙌

The quick-kudos tools that have evolved online definitely have their usefulness, but most of the time it feels like sugar. Satisfying and fostering a hunger. It cultivates a bottomless pit of competition, arbitrary measurements of self worth, and requires a level of intrapersonal gymnastics that I’m not personally capable of sustaining.

Is the problem just the public-ness of it all? What about deliberately quiet kudos?

I want to give those sorts of kudos almost every day. It’s hard to describe the use cases, though there are many… Maybe someone famous does work you admire. That’s the I-want-to-tell-you-that-this-is-fantastic-but-I’m-genuinely-not-latching-on-for-likes use case. Or a rather private friend finishes a project they should be damn proud of. That’s the you-need-to-know-this-is-great-but-we-both-know-you’d-prefer-if-I-didn’t-turn-this-in-to-a-conversation use case.

And I sure as hell would be happy to receive that sort of thing. Little pick-me-ups are critical, especially when you are mostly/fully your own employer.

It’s the digital equivalent of a great compliment from a stranger. The sort of compliment that leaves you feeling a tiny bit lighter. The sort of compliment that isn’t motivated by a mob of people giving you the same compliment. And it usually has little to do with the identity of the complimenter. (In fact, when a complete stranger follows up an IRL compliment by introducing themselves, that’s often when the moment sours a bit, or gets a smidge creepy.)

So how to give quiet kudos? It should be as simple and familiar feeling as similar features – as in, just select an emoji – but definitely not public. It shouldn’t associate an identity with the kudos either, IMO. Hopefully that would avoid spamminess. It’d probably also need a daily/weekly/monthly summary setting but good lord, it definitely shouldn’t ever send a “you received 0 kudos this week!” sort of email. And it should include other reactions, the bad with the good.

I would be surprised if this doesn’t exist already in some form or another… need to dig a little harder. I suppose one preexisting version of this is the e-newsletter since it’s an opt-in system. Particularly TinyLetter. But that just feels a little too business-y for what the sort of thing I’m imagining. Might look in to making the tool I’m imagining. Add it to the someday list.

In summary:
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I say yes.