Pie Palace

I’ve spent the last hour looking into PHP_LexerGenerator and PHP_ParserGenerator. There seem to be docs for the lexer at the author’s PEAR instance (including an example), but I haven’t been able to turn up an example for the parser yet. It’s been ages since I looked at even yacc or bison, so I’m not quite ready to jump directly into trying to code something up. I haven’t been able to find any examples of projects using either package. That may have something to do with the dearth of documentation.

Pat Dubroy was complaining about how difficult it is to install software on a Mac. I thought I’d relate this story: I’m mucking around with XML parsing in PHP. I found a parser that I want to use, and I wrote a quick test class that instantiates it. I ran the class and the interpreter barfed, complaining that the class wasn’t installed.

Since packages have a standard naming format in PHP, I decided to see if I could install the package without having to find any docs on it. I ran:

$ sudo pear install XML_Parser

(PEAR is the PHP package management system)

Was presented with a little gorp on stdout, that contained the magic word “done”. I ran my test class again, and was happy to see that my test class now runs properly.

Installation took exactly 26 keystrokes.

Cape Breton pork pies¹ are date-filled tarts topped with a citrus butter icing. Sandy introduced me to them when I was but a lad. Since then, Christmas/Festivus hasn’t been Christmas/Festivus without a Cape Breton pork pie. This recipe is quick, and enjoyably messy.

The recipe should make roughly 30 mini tarts.

Shell

• 1 cup butter
• 4 tablespoons icing sugar
• 2 cups flour (I use 1 cup bleached all-purpose flour and 1 cup whole wheat all-purpose flour)

Prepare yourself a glass of Bailey’s and milk. Mix the flour and icing sugar. Cut the butter into small cubes and kneed into the flour. Within a few minutes, you’ll get a greasy ball. Press the dough into small muffin tins. When you’re pressing you can make the shell quite thin (3 or 4 millimeters) – it will expand impressively as it cooks. Bake at 425F for 10 minutes.

Filling

• 2 cups tightly packed chopped brown dates
• .75 cup brown sugar
• 1.5 cups water
• Lemon juice (from half a lemon)

Enjoy a glass of rum and eggnog (if you have a little coffee and nutmeg, toss those into your drink for good measure). Simmer the ingredients together until they get a soft, mushy consistency. Allow to cool. Fill shells.

Icing

The icing makes the pie. It should be citrus-y and sweet. Sandy’s recipe didn’t include her mix for the icing, so I’ve had to reverse engineer it. With a little help from teh intarwebs, this is my current knock-off:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1.5 cups icing sugar
• 1 tablespoon of milk
• Juice of 1/2 lemon (you can add more)
• 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract

You’ll need your wits for this bit, so mix a little rum or irish cream into hot chocolate and savour that before beginning. Cube the butter and kneed it into the icing sugar. Mix the milk, lemon juice, and vanilla together with a spoon and beat it like it owes you money. You’ll end up with a thick sugary gooey mass. Add a little more icing sugar to give it some body. This recipe makes about twice as much icing as you’ll need, so find some way to enjoy the remainder.

Top the tartlets with the icing.

Store the tartlets in a the fridge. The icing can turn to goo and pour off if you aren’t careful.

1. When I mention “Cape Breton” and “pork” in the same sentence, people usually assume that I’m making a political statement. And they’re usually right. This time, however, I’m leaving politics out of it matter. (back)

I found a link to the Elive linux distribution. Looking at the distro’s homepage, it isn’t entirely clear what’s being offered. What’s with the half naked models? (Image of homepage archived here for posterity) And why does that guy dressed as Santa look like a hooting baboon?

Having said that, it’s nice to see that Enlightenment is still around.

I’ve cracked and replaced my first attempt at a WordPress theme (vicky01) with Paalam. Sadly, my graphic design skillz aren’t quite as mad as I thought they were.

Today starts like any other, you’re tired, in need of a shower. You stumble into the washroom and pause to look at yourself in the mirror. And then you see it. A sign of your slow decline from spry young buck into drooling senility, peeking out from under your nose. A nostril hair.

If you decide to ignore it and have a shower, turn to page 5.

If you deny your increasing age by grabbing it with a pair of tweezers and yanking it out, turn to page 8.

If you make a mental note to buy an ear and hair trimmer, but otherwise ignore the problem, turn to page 19.

Page 5: Ignore it and have a shower.
Your rogue nose hair gets caught in the drain, trapping your head in the swirling drain water and you die. What was it your mother said about drowning in two inches of water?

Page 8: Pull it out.
You give in to your base instincts and yank out the offending nostril hair. Everything seems fine and dandy, until two days later, you discover an ingrown hair in your nose. It eventually becomes infected with c. difficile and you die writhing in agony, wishing that you had chosen a less painful end to a seemingly unimportant problem.

Page 19: Buy a nostril and hair trimmer.
You live, having to bear the knowledge that you are nothing more than a growth medium for wiry little hairs. Your every waking thought is consumed with the fear that another hair may come poking out of another unexpected pore. Sure, you live. If you call this living.

I chose page 5, and I’m paying for it. Next time ’round, I’ll try page 19.

Buried on page 13 of today’s Citizen is a short story mentioning that city Council approved a 9.3% increase in the police budget. Ouch! That’s $17.3 million.

Since 2001, the Ottawa Police budget has increased by 64%. SIXTY FOUR PERCENT! Has crime fallen by a similar amount? No. Are there 64% more cops walking the streets? No. There are 11% more cops.

Where has the money gone? Why does the city keep shoveling money into this pit?

So Mayor Larry is in a spot of trouble. It turns out that the allegations of wrongdoing have matured directly from immobile newborns to glowering adolescents. They’re hanging around Mayor Larry as if he were Quickie Mart. Not only that, they’re scaring away customers. Our mayor can’t even hold a Council meeting without them crashing the party and shutting it down.

It’s high time that Mayor Larry take a leave of absence. The charges against him are just allegations, but those allegations are overshadowing city business. Even though Council approved two budget items yesterday (more money for the police, and the library budget), that story was all but squeezed out of the morning news cycle. As long as these charges dog the mayor, you can bet that the media won’t bother with boring issues like municipal politics.

I’m not saying that the mayor should resign, only take a leave of absence until the charges have been settled. Our media can’t be trusted to sort the easy story from the important story.