Category: Weblog

We’ve played around with making Cookie Inceptions a bit, but I never really wrote it up.
Today, Mira and I made Cupcake Inceptions. And they turned out great.

The idea was to bake an Oreo cookie inside a cupcake. The first thing to ensure is that the Oreo would fit inside the cupcake wrapper/tin. They fit perfect.
We decided to use Oreo Heads or Tails, which have a chocolate side and a vanilla side.

Mira mixed up the cake mix. We went with chocolate cake for the cupcakes. A vanilla mix would have shown off the Oreo better, but we thought the chocolate would taste better.

We poured a little cake mix into the cupcake wrapper to give it a good cake base.

Then the Oreo were Incepted!

Cake mix then covered the Oreos to a little over 2/3 full. We like using a measuring cup to pour our cupcakes into wrappers.

A little over 20 minutes in the oven and out come the Cupcake Inceptions!

The cupcake holds together well and you can’t see the Oreo from the outside.

Inside, you can see the Oreo. The cake mix softens the cookie, but not too much. There’s still a little crunch to the Oreo, but not enough to slow us down from wolfing down the cupcake.
The experiment was a success. Give it a try.

While I disagree with his views on Pluto, Mr. Tyson is pitch perfect on this:

There has been a bit of recent discussion on comments and anonymity on the web. See Anil, Tim, Caterina, and Anil again. Good stuff for the most part, but I have a bit to add from my perspective.
For several years, I ran a site called Anonyblog. I’ve taken it down now, so there’s not much to see now. You could probably Google it or find it on archive.org if you are really interested.
The premise was simple. I made a weblog and posted the username and password to allow anyone an anonymous way to post on a weblog and “get it off their chests”. I was enthusiastic about blogging at the time, fresh from inspiring SxSW conferences and watching traditional media adapt to the influence of bloggers.
My plan was simple, let people post whatever they wanted, stand back and let the good times roll. I was quite naive.
At first, things went as I intended. Posts on all types of issues from work, relationships, politics, police departments, other bloggers, and even requests for advice. Occasionally there were posted that I found distasteful, but in the name of ‘freedom’ I didn’t censor anything.
At one point someone starting posting NSFW photos. Being that I was checking on the blog from home, I didn’t want my children seeing NSFW photos while I requested that people not post NSFW photos. This was the first rule I made.
Things were OK for a bit more, and then a group of posters appeared that appeared to already know each other. They posted inane stories about stuffed animals and racist stuff, and appeared to encourage each other in this. I really didn’t like it and considered deleting it all, but ended up leaving it alone. “It’s just words.” I said to myself.
Fairly quickly a contingent of readers started pushing back and complaining about the stories. The frustration on both sides escalated and soon I was dealing with users deleting and revising the posts of others. Some users were even posting fake posts from their ‘enemies’ to make them look bad.
Suddenly, I was in moderation overdrive trying to maintain some sense of order. It was a pain for me, but I did it because occasionally someone would post something that I felt worthy or that gave someone that was hurting a way to relive their pain.
I worked on ways to auto-approve posts to prevent editing by others and free me from having to individually approve each post. I spent many hours trying to solve the now communities’ problems.
The group of stuffed animal story people soon invited yet another friend to post. This person was obsessed with coprophagy (Google it yourself, I won’t link it). Multiple posts, images, and all sorts of disgusting stuff way over my personal limits for freedom. I pushed back hard, deleting stuff and banning IP addresses.
Soon I was in a war with the shit poster. He would use scripts to auto-post hundreds of posts via proxies. I would script deletions, use anti-spam software to filter words he used frequently, and even started tracking down the person via IP in an attempt to dox him.
I posted to the community about the issues so people knew what was going on. A few cheered, but many harangued me over my censorship. WTF? I’m the guy who built the Anonyblog in the beginning and did a bunch of work to keep it running. How dare they question me?
At this point, I knew the end was near. I started to feel anger and hate toward users. At some point, the blog software broke due to either the external attacks or my defense modifications. No new posts were possible at this point.
I could have fixed it, but I didn’t.
Why? Well, people could still post in the comments, so they did. And it just got worse. Terrible stuff, fighting, and everything bad that occurs in online communities when the brakes are removed.
For a couple years, I agonized over what to do. I talked to a few people I respected as having wisdom in blogging community expectations. More than once I was ready to relaunch the site, but just couldn’t since I knew it would bring ever more drama and frustration into my life. I felt bad, since I knew there were many people out there suffering that could use an outlet for their pain.
In the end, I wiped the site clean. The web is a better place without it.
What did I learn? Two things really.
First, people do need anonymity. There is pain, secrets, desires, worries, successes, failures, and prayers that people have and need to share in a way that they feel safe. Going to an all ‘Real Name’ internet does not help many people.
Second, complete anonymity and anarchy leads to the worst in people. Even a tiny group can poison a community, creating divisiveness and bad feelings all the way round. Without fail, this is what I saw on Anonyblog and in other communities on the web when anonymity reigned.
To make Anonyblog work would require many of the things Anil mentions in his post. I just don’t have the time, energy, of desire to build all that to support what would be needed to prevent a site like Anonyblog from becoming a sewer once again. But the need for it remains.

I posted a tweet on a whim and got a few good replies. My full response if longer than 140 characters, so I’m going old-school with a blog post.


Cruftbox: Eating lunch at Jack in the Box helps remind me that most people don't care about Google Plus, IPOs, retweets, or Klout.
tara @Cruftbox don't you think the nextgen will though?
Cruftbox: @tara No. Most people aren't innovators or early adopters. My teens aren't. People need to be aware if they are in an echo chamber.
tara: @Cruftbox I disagree. 72% of American households play video games. Points, rewards, etc. are a known quantity. It's an easy transition.
derekdemoro: @Cruftbox They care about their phones.


It’s no doubt that I’m a geek. I’ve been one since I was a child rewiring telephones and playing with chemistry sets.
In my career as a technologist, I’ve been lucky enough to meet many of the brightest people in big companies such as Apple, Cisco, HP, IBM, etc. and true innovators that helped build the web and invent many of the social technologies that seem commonplace now.
As a result, some of my social circles are the alpha geeks that invent what the world will be seeing as commonplace in the next 10 years.
My tweet was a poke at the intense focus and emotion these circles can have about topics and new concepts that have no relevance or significance to the rest of the world.
The valuation of startups is interesting to a tiny population. Most people don’t know what the startups do, let alone if the valuation is wrong. And to be honest, why should they care?
Google Plus is nice, but the whinging over invites is a bit over the top when you take the long view. The demand for immediate satisfaction and full understanding is a sense of entitlement I dislike in others and myself. People demanding things over Twitter/Facebook and creating boycotts based on a single link of information is the norm these days, and I believe it’s not helpful.
In other words, calm the fuck down, relax, and take a deep breath. Don’t complain so much.
As far as the future, the next generation will be more technically adept than previous ones, but they won’t fundamentally change into a generation of early adopters.
Tara and Derek are right that today’s youth play videogames and love mobile phones. Both of those technologies are 30+ years old. The penetration levels of video games and mobile phones 30 years ago was tiny compared to today. In those days, both were the domain of the alpha geeks of the time.
For people today to get so seriously wound up about new ideas and make grandiose predictions is silly, IMHO. Pundits, especially social media pundits, are so profoundly wrong about everything it is amazing that anyone still listens. If they were right, they’d be rich. Ever seen a rich pundit?
I’ve been to many conferences where the future was explained to me. Let’s see, at first, individual blogs would kill media companies. Around then auctions were announced as the way all companies would buy supplies. Then Creative Commons would kill copyright. Next, Open Source would kill Apple & Microsoft. One year the future of music was Myspace. Next year, Facebook apps were the future of the internet. The next year, apps on the mobile phone were the future. Recently, location based apps were declared the future of commerce. Oh wait, now social buying is the future of commerce.
The only thing that has proven correct is that speed of change is increasing and not much withstands change.
Hate the new version of software that just came out, don’t worry, the next next patch will make it better or their competitor will come out with a better one. Sternly worded tweets don’t do anything.
Google Plus hasn’t even been out a week and already the alpha geek echo chamber is whining, ranting, pontificating, and snarking about every aspect. All I’m saying, it STFU for a bit. Use what’s new, talk with friends about their ideas on it, pause to think a bit, and run that cycle a few times before making up your mind.
I’m not saying shut up and don’t ever complain. I’m saying think, consider other points of view outside your echo chamber, offer suggestions and compromises, and try to be helpful rather than hurtful.
As far as the next generation, I don’t know what they will be using and thinking is cool, if I did, I’d be rich.
But I can tell you what they won’t think is cool.
They will think of Facebook and Twitter the way many today think of AOL and Compuserve, relics of a previous age that only stubborn old people use.
They will think of email the way many think of faxing, an antique method used by rule and tradition bound industries like medicine and law.
They will think of debates about digital music and video and copyright the way many think about the arguments about CDs and DVDs killing the music and film industries, silly debate over an obviously better way.
But 20 years from now, there will still be a small group of alpha geeks, inventing super cool stuff, that most people won’t understand or worse think stupid. And I have no doubt there will be people complaining about stuff because it doesn’t fit their exact desires.

Last week, I was at lunch with Greg Knauss. While enjoying our delicious In-N-Out burgers, the conversation wandered to email maintenance as can happen with serious geeks. We discussed the subtlety of hosting email and the amount of geek cred each method represented. Talk turned to the choices others make in what email they use and our perception of what that means about them. FYI, an email domain name is the name after the @ symbol. For example, if an email address was john@foobar.com, the email domain name is foobar.com.
We joked about putting up a survey to see what others think. In my copious free time, that’s exactly what I did. The survey’s still up here. I was able to cajole about 98 people into responding and my brief analysis is based on those responses. I was interested in how people feel about an individual’s choice of email domain. Not about the technology or functionality, but what the email domain says about the person using it.
A few caveats:

1. It’s not scientific, I never took stats in college, just engineering stuff
2. Yes, my scoring method is probably wrong
3. Yes, I know you don’t like my 12 choices of email domains
4. Yes, the survey was confusing and not sexy HTMLness
5. Go do your own survey if you don’t like mine

I asked people to rate email domain names with 1 being best and 12 being worst. Here is the raw data.

The Excel spreadsheet of data is here if you want to do your own analysis.
If you look at purely the votes for number 1, then Vanity domain with self-hosted email is best regarded, followed by Vanity domain with Google hosted email, and Gmail next. By this method, Aol.com email is seen as the worst by far, with Portal domains next.
I tried doing a weighted analysis (OK, I have no idea what a ‘weighted’ analysis is, but my method seemed good. You can berate me in the comments…). I multipled the number of votes by the ranking position and summed up the totals. In doing this, the lowest sum should reflect the overall ranking including votes that are good and bad.
With this ‘weighting’ Gmail rises to the top over vanity domains. Aol.com and Portal domains remain at the bottom. The ‘weighted’ order is:
Gmail.com
Vanity domain with self-hosted email
Vanity domain with Google hosted email
Work domain
Alumni .edu
Facebook.com
Yahoo.com
ISP email (cable or DSL company)
Shared family email account
Hotmail.com
Portal domain (go.com, lycos.com, ask.com, etc.)
Aol.com
Personally, I don’t give email domains a lot of thought, except in two cases. First is the use of the email address given by an ISP provider that someone might get with their cable modem or DSL service. IMHO, this email address should NEVER be used. Locking yourself into an ISP to simply keep your email address or suffering through issues if your ISP is bought/merged is senseless. Second is using an Aol.com address, especially for business purposes. This simply shows a lack of professionality and knowledge of current internet practices and capabilities.
I asked people for any comments about email domains and I got a number of responses. I redacted any identifying or non-pertinent info.

I don’t like getting personal emails from folks work email address. I won’t share the same way knowing that my reply is “owned” by their employer. I’m not sure how I’m going to know if someone’s vanity domain is a gmail one.
facebook.com unless they work for facebook but then that just goes back to using company email for personal. Just like it is unprofessional to use your personal email for work it is poor form to use your work email for personal. It would be hard for the casual observer to tell the difference between google hosted private domain and self hosted. ISP email is amateur hour. AOL or hotmail email probably means you have been using that since the 90’s, suck it up and change already. Alum email tells me you shop for all your casual wear at your college bookstore unless it is alum related correspondence.
I ranked the “Shared family email account” only a 6 since that type of account is analogous to a home phone number with an answering machine vs a cell number with voicemail — you’re never quite sure who’s going to be able to see your message. In general, though, my rankings are largely based on implications of longevity — that is, how long a given domain is likely to remain as a person’s canonical/primary email address. Naturally, that’s why “vanity domain” is the winner. (And that’s also why Hotmail and Aol are at the botoom — most sensible users soon outgrow those services.
I don’t place a particular judgment on these because most folks don’t have many choices on which domain they use (their area might not have many ISPs or for financial reasons they are limited)
Having an opinion about someone’s email domain feel like making a judgment based on the shoes they wear. Pointless and counterproductive, but I tend to do it anyways.
My worsts are based on the perception that these people aren’t savvy enough to go with a more modern ISP. My bests are based on the assumption that the person has made something of themselves – if this is their work domain. That said, individuals whose business value is derived from their business identity get respect from the use of that identity in the email domain name, so work domain would be a tie with either of the vanity domain options. I put it third only in the case of someone who uses their work email address for personal purposes (guess it feels to me like unwise misuse of company property, or like you’re slacking on the job.) I have to confess a little confusion on the difference between the two vanity-domain options because – unless I’m completely wrong (highly possible) I’d be completely unable to tell who is hosting your domain just by reading the name in an email header.
Extra bonus points for a working genie or compuserve address.
have admined my own email server (on a freebsd jail) for the last 8 years, and i’m female.
I do not understand the difference between the two vanity domains- google vs self. How would I know who was hosting the email? Work domains depend on the company: bob@pixar.com is cool; bob@foxnews.com is not. If you are not a student, any .edu email address tells me you’re either a) stuck in the past or b) trying to show off (bob@princeton.edu)
For some reason I presume hotmail is for flighty people, and gmail is more credible. I do not know why I feel this

What do you think? Are there email domain that make you think one way or another about the user?

Ever since I started doing this, I’ve been surprised how much people like watching these. Here’s three more.

My Hotel Room in New York from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

My Hotel Room in Paso Robles from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

My Hotel Room in Santa Barbara from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

The 2011 SxSW Interactive conference was the ninth time I’ve
made the journey to Austin.  I have mixed feelings about it but haven’t been able to put it into words exactly.  After staring at a blank page for a while I finally drew this diagram that about sums it up.

  

SxSW starts March 11th in Austin. This is my NINTH year and these are my helpful tips for the novice. I’ve tried to revise the info over the years as things change.

ABC – Always Be Charging – If you bring a laptop, you need to be charging it every single chance you get. No battery lasts long enough. Try to sit near an outlet in the session rooms. Share power outlets with others. Phone coverage is hard, meaning it will be in ‘Searching…’ mode often. This drains batteries, so you might consider a specialty phone charger. My friend Brad says “throw a simple 3×1 plug adapter or short multi-outlet extension cord in your laptop bag, you can use this to cadge access from people who are already using outlets.”

Secure connections – Wifi traffic is in the clear and people are sniffing packets all the time. Arrange for secure email, FTP, and if possible, secure browsing while at SXSW. HTTPS: should be in the browser bar of any site you are perusing that utilizes a login. It’s unlikely that a malicious hacker is gunna do bad things, but it’s best to be prepared.

Go play at Kick – Kick is a game of kickball for SxSW attendees on Saturday morning at 10AM. It’s a ton of fun and a great way to meet people. Thanks to Anil Dash, the event is once again sponsored by SB Nation and their will be food & coffee!

Don’t hog bandwidth – There is good wifi, but a limited amount of bandwidth at SxSW and everyone there is highly connected. That means don’t be a bandwidth hog. Don’t run bittorrent, for anything, at any time. Don’t download large operating system patches at the conference. Don’t try to live broadcast anything. Don’t upload all your photos from your 10MB DSLR camera during sessions. Don’t update your podcast downloads. Don’t download fresh builds of linux distros. Do not backup your laptop to Amazon S3 at the conference. Am I getting through here? Your actions can affect the experience for others. Nothing you are doing is that important that it is worth preventing others from having net access. Beat the hell out the hotel broadband in the evening, but do everyone a favor and show some restraint so everyone can do simple web surfing, IM, and email at the convention center.

Introduce Yourself – People are at SXSW because they want to meet people and see new things. Strangely, many of the blogger types that go are introverted types that are a bit shy. Do yourself a favor and say “Hello, I’m So-and-so” to that person you are sitting next to. (Don’t say So-and-so, use your name…) I guarantee that they will be happy to talk to you.

Personal cards – Make up business cards with your name, email, and website info on them to hand out. Bring your regular business cards if you want, but what people really want is a card that ties you to your online persona so they can find you after SxSW.

When asking a question in a session, don’t make a sales pitch – From time to time, people use the question time during sessions to pitch their own projects. No one cares. You look stupid if you do. Ask questions that the rest of the audience might care about. If you make a sales pitch during question time and I’m in the room, I will throw a brick at your head.

Session Info – When you arrive on Friday go to the Convention Center and pick up your badge. They will give you a large canvas bag of swag. You don’t want to haul this around, so you need to figure a way to drop this off at your hotel before a long night of partying. In the bag are two crucial items. First is the program which has detailed session descriptions. Second is a small pocket card with the session schedule on it. You want these to be in your daily walk around bag, not in your hotel room.

Don’t sleep in – Many of you are not parents (meaning not used to getting up at the crack of dawn), but sleeping in past Noon means you are missing plenty of good stuff you paid a lot to see. Get up so you can grab breakfast and be at the 10AM sessions. If it’s more important to you to stay up till dawn and sleep in until 2PM, you probably shouldn’t be coming to Austin. You can do that at home.

Shiner Bock – Shiner Bock is a local Texas beer that you find everywhere. Often referred to as simply ‘Shiner’.

Badge Surf – Badge surfing is a perfectly acceptable behavior at SxSW, but don’t use it to fake knowing someone. If you want to talk to someone, say “I see from your badge…”. Don’t make them think that they should know you or that you’ve met previously.

Fray Cafe – Go to the Fray Cafe on Sunday night. Fray is people telling truthful stories about their life. It’s one of the best things about SxSW. Kevin Smokler is the host and is longtime SxSW veteran. Get there early for a good seat, otherwise you will be standing for the whole thing.

Stay Warm – It can get cold and rain in Austin this time of year. Bring a good jacket or coat just in case.

Sharpeners – There are no pencil sharpeners at SXSW. People think writing on a pad of paper with a wooden pencil is a bit strange.

Street Signs – For some reason, downtown Austin has few street signs. Get a map and study it before venturing out.

Food – Eat food. Austin has a great bar scene. You will be drinking. Don’t drink on an empty stomach. It also would be a good idea to keep a couple energy bars in your bag during sessions.

Drink – Drink smart. If you start drinking early in the day, be sure to employ the “full glass of water between drinks method” to avoid overindulgence and a hangover. Or consider not drinking at all.

Texas BBQ – IMHO, Texas BBQ pales in comparison to BBQ in other areas like Kansas City and Carolina. That chopped beef sandwich stuff just doesn’t cut it, but people will want to eat it for lunch. That said, Stubbs makes a great brisket.

Say Hello to Me – I would love to meet Loyal Cruft Readers. On Twitter I’m @cruftbox or email me or IM at pusateri AT gmail.com and I promise to respond.

Any questions?

When Intelligentsia Coffee opened in Pasadena recently, I was intrigued the lasagna cupcakes they served. The cupcakes are made by Heirloom LA, a catering business. About the size of a muffin, a single lasagna cupcake was a delicious meal.
After seeing how much my daughter enjoyed them (she ate my entire cupcake and I had to order a second one), I decided I had to try making them at home.
After a bit of research, here is my method. The girls love them and take them to school as lunch.

The ingredients are fairly simple. Mozzarella, Ricotta, and Parmesan cheese, marinara sauce, meat (if you so desire), and wonton/gyoza wrappers. The key item here is the wrappers. The Asian wrappers are used for making wontons and potstickers most of the time, but here they replace the lasagna noodle. The difference between the wonton and gyzoa wrappers is that the wonton ones are square and the gyoza ones are round. I highly suggest the gyoza wrappers.

Spray or wipe the cupcake tin with olive oil for prevent sticking and add a little flavor. Put the wrapper in the tin and form it into a cup shape. Then a small dollop of pasta sauce. Ricotta cheese is next to add the traditional lasagna taste and texture. I then add a little Parmesan to bring out the flavor. One daughter doesn’t like meat, so her’s are cheese only. The other daughter gets a sprinkling of browned Italian sausage.

Once you filled in the first layer, gently press another wrapper in, forming another cup.

Once you’ve placed the second wrapper, repeat the filling as you see fit. Mine are split between cheese and sausage versions.

A bit of Mozzarella cheese on top of it all. I put a sprinkle of Parmesan on as well, as the saltiness brings out the flavor in the Mozzarella and I love Parmesan cheese.

I baked them for 20 minutes at 375° F and then come out perfectly browned.

If you remembered to use olive oil, they should slide out easily with top crispy and the wrapper moist and tender.
You can do pretty much anything you want as filling from more meats to a vegan version. The key is using the wonton/gyoza wrappers as they make it simple and quick to do the prep.
The small cupcake size works well for us. A larger muffin size would make them almost too big for the kids and not as easy to reheat.
I hope you enjoy them if you give this a try.

Today is the day that many people choose to complain or be dismissive of the Superbowl.
I get it. The rise of microblogging, texting, and social media have given everyone the ability to publish their thoughts for others to read and that is a good thing. The Superbowl is a huge athletic, commercial and social event in America and will be the target of much commentary today.
There are people that go out of their way to make sure we all know how much they dislike the Superbowl and try to be as dismissive of it as possible. Usually their critique breaks down into one of the three main lines:
1) There’s more important things to worry about…
2) People shouldn’t like watching sports…
3) It’s too commercial and corporate…
And they are probably right, but it doesn’t make complaining about the Superbowl a good thing to do.
This post is for those of you that can’t wait for your harsh Superbowl commentary to begin.
When you are dismissive and mocking of something you disapprove of on a cultural basis, such as the Superbowl, you aren’t changing anyone’s mind, you are just being a jerk and raining on someone else’s fun. Don’t be a jerk.
That band you like? Yeah, a lot of people hate it, but they don’t mock you. The pictures of your kids/pets? Most pictures only appeal to a small number of people, but others don’t say they look average or make fun on them do they? What you like for dinner? What TV show or movie you liked? What you think is a good deal to buy? Most people disagree with you, but are kind enough not to mock you publicly.
We get it. You don’t like the Superbowl, for your perfectly justifiable position. Great. Don’t watch it. But don’t be a jerk to those that want to enjoy it.
Go do what you enjoy. Tweet about what you are doing for fun, not about what you are NOT doing.
Personally, I like the Superbowl as a celebration of what people can do in sport and their commitment to working hard as opposed to traditional holidays that celebrate a myth or the achievements of a dead person. Other holidays have their place, but the Superbowl is a celebration of active human endeavor.
Please consider what you say/post not just on Superbowl Sunday, but everyday. Are you being harsh in your comments because it will have some positive effect, or simply to make yourself look better and seem cool? You have every right to be a jerk, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk to many people that are doing nothing wrong but enjoying their life in a way you don’t.
“If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.” – Dalai Lama