Design vs. Develop

I ran into this error. Enjoy!

Joomla! Day is finally hitting the East Coast! I’ll be up in NYC on October 13th for the unconference. Register here: www.joomladayusa.org. Thanks to Google for the space!

This article from the Economist describes the struggle that citywide wifi networks are facing. When people started proposing these networks, I knew they wouldn’t last long. Wifi is designed to cover your house and possibly your neighbor’s. It just doesn’t have the range necessary to make buying all of the routers cost effective.

As far as I can remember, two rationales were given for promoting these networks:

• Attracting well-heeled, “high-tech” workers to the city.
• Providing affordable Internet access for the poor.

It is yet to be seen if ubiquitous public wifi access would really be a deal maker/breaker for IT professionals. Most of the ones I know who feel the need for that much connectivity have already shelled out for a data plan with an existing wireless provider.

This leaves us with cheap access for poor people. If this is a goal to be pursued, shouldn’t these cities already be providing vouchers instead? I think a lot of these places got caught up in some false drama of Internet access becoming “as free as air” and went ahead building these networks.

…but at least it’s not a post about blogging. Tonight I prepared tilapia, rice, and a salad I’m very proud of. The salad was made out of problem ingredients. My brother and I have been making lettuce wraps very frequently, so I buy full heads of lettuce with broad leaves. Unfortunately, I accidentally bought a head of prepackaged lettuce with narrow leaves yesterday. I also bought some fresh basil (because I can’t resist it) but some of the leaves on the plant were beginning to wither, so I took those branches off right away. We have a leftover bottle of this Thai lemongrass marinade that got drowned in the beef when we tried to use it last, so that became the dressing base. Finally, I wanted to use some celery before it went bad, so a couple of stalks got chopped up.

I was going to make some analogy about reusing abandoned PHP projects to make components and modules, but that just seemed too geeky and corny. The moral of the story is that if you have a bunch of useless ingredients in your kitchen, lay them out on the table and you’ll end up with something tasty to eat.

(recipe below the fold)

Impromptu leftovers salad that goes well with fish

1/2 cup chopped celery (crosswise)
1/4 cup raisins (ooooh… surprise ingredient!)
1 teaspoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil (always thought virginity was a binary sort of thing; chefs evidently feel otherwise)
2 tablespoons of Thai lemongrass marinade from Harris Teeter that doesn’t work very well as a marinade
1/4 cup shredded fresh basil
Sprinkling of dill weed
Big pinch of kosher salt
Several lettuce leaves (to taste)

Wash the lettuce and basil because there’s no telling who touched it before you did, even if the package says “prewashed.” Put them in a bowl; preferably a hand-crafted salad bowl, but a metallic measuring bowl will also do. Get out a much smaller bowl and swish around all of the remaining ingredients. Actually, if you don’t want to dirty up a perfectly good and clean bowl, you can probably just use the first bowl for this step and dump the greens on top. Toss irregularly. Consume promptly. Serves two, unless somebody eats a smaller portion.