Wednesday, March 16, 2005

In what part of the world is this homestyle?


Holy crap. I never thought I'd get aroused and hungry at the same time. Or, something.

mms://od-msn.msn.com/22/mbr/a_050220_bk_promo.wmv

(from anisotropy)

aK
gamesgrid

10:29:57 PM  
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3way with Morimoto and Alton? I think a slash foodtv story is brewing (Alton's making the brine, Morimoto's bringing the wine...)


Rotato... I am the proud owner of a handy dandy potato peeler. Well, not yet but thanks to my friends at fatwallet and hsn, I got a great deal on an apple peeler and frenchy fry cutter! For $15! yay! :)

If you get to read this blog and I keep on keepin on (which, I hope I do, since this is a nice outlet for the onetrack stream of consciousness inside my head)-- you'll get to know I'm also a bargain shopper. I could have bought a hand crank apple peeler and corer (which is what I was going to buy), before I saw this electronic eunuch. Given the fact I am at heart relatively lazy, with a compulsion to overbuy fruits and veggies only to have them rot away in the bin in the fridge...

Actually, I went looking for an apple peeler since last week I was suckered into buying eight pounds of apples at the farmers market for like, $3 since they were bruised and I was making applesauce anyway. (Nevertheless, I had to drag eight pounds of apples home)... and peel them! My poor wrists hurt more than a marathon session after a big purchase at gv's ;) I think I lost a lot of good fruit as well, since my hand peeler didn't swivel.

But homemade applesauce is soooo good and easy, with some cinnamon and vanilla ice cream when its still warm... mm. (wow, isn't the poppin fresh girl pretty? Neat zine about new york, too.) I'm also a big believer in the power of the potato as well, but usually keep them skin on for lazy-sake (I tell myself its the fiber), except when I *have* to take them off for Thai curry chicken.

I'm not a good cook, but I cook when I can. Another thing I've learned from the internet-- mom never "taught" us to cook and did rarely (she was a good mom, just a single working woman who had us spending more time with an afterschool sitter then ourselves for dinner than not). So being the good internet junkie, I'm also hooked on foodtv.com. I would actually have never sought it out if I hadn't had it on cable (I don't have cable now, don't be alarmed! I'm okay, really) ... but I am a HUGE IRON CHEF FAN... an unquenchable crush on Morimoto keeps me awake at nite. And Ms Ray floats my boat like you wouldn't believe, ... and sometimes I wish I'd wake up to Alton puttering around in pj's and that magic measuring cup. I don't think any other cable station has me aching for so many heads up possibilities. :) Well, if there were I'd have to buckle down and hook up, so tg there isn't another magical station like foodtv.

So I buy random ingredients that look nice or the butcher asks me if I want (the butchers at Andronicos are super nice, btw), and plug them into foodtv.com :) Other times I just try to cook the things I find myself ordering time & time again in restaurants. I like Thai and Indian cooking a lot-- so curry was something that was easy to make and simple enough for non-cookery people like me.

aK's simple red curry:
Big boneless, skinless chicken breast-- cubed
Peeled potato or 2 (same volume as chicken)-- cubed
Peeled carrot or 2-- sliced or shredded
Brown sugar
Half onion, sliced or chopped (your pref)
Small (6 oz?) can of bamboo shoots
Red curry paste (not the powder)
Can of coconut milk (14 oz?)
Olive oil

Heat oil til shimmery and not smoking. Use about 3 tbsp curry paste, heat til fragrant and oil has incorporated into paste. (May clump, don't worry). Add chicken, stir to coat and cooked thru on all sides. Add onion and wilt. Add brown sugar to melt, mix. Add potatoes, bamboo shoots and carrots, shake can of coco milk and add. Mix, bring to simmer and cover (low simmer) for 30 min to an hour. Serve with white rice... Mm. Easy to double but the above recipe is enough for two or leftovers, depending on your appetite. Impress your date! Who needs a girlfriend or a restaurant (she says to herself over and over, crying herself to sleep) :)

Did I just write a post on cooking? Argh, sorry.

aK
gamesgrid

9:08:36 PM  
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Poker and blogs, vers 2.0
(or, how I learned to love poker affiliates)


Hm, bloggers may have started a sh!tstorm in a can, and everyone wants a piece... A forum dedicated to affiliates has caught on to the googlebomb concept and now is aiming its sights to googlebomb right back (with their affiliate links, of course!)

Did I say how much I love the internet?

aK
gamesgrid
www.gamesgrid.com

1:05:59 PM  
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Poker and blogs, og version. Wiki flinging inside, peligro!
(or, how I learned to f**k with google to get my topic on top)


Online poker? Too many spammers? Perish the thought. Apparently it's a problem, one that affects the easily riled bloggy community... The hypothesis: spammers use blog comments to link to their poker rooms, thereby driving up their room's ranking on google. Googlebomb, natch. See ma, I learned a new word today.

Actually, I think it has less to do with the poker rooms themselves and more to do with the affiliates exploiting the large finders fee bonuses-- catching one player from a spamfest means 20-35% of that player's rake *forever* (fee paid to a poker room for the pleasure of dealing you cards, even if you can't see the beautiful Maltese beaches from where you're relaxing in your computer chair). Poker rooms may be guilty of passively encouraging such spamming (by not enforcing their terms & conds that say "spam is bad"), but I honestly don't think that its the rooms driving the comment explots directly. Maybe I'm naive (tell me so!).

The "world's largest online poker room" isn't even listed on google's 1st page, apparently knocked out of place by spammers. But, somewhat related to them and affiliates is the "hot" news that they have commissioned an audit on one of their newer skins, and the skin has placed a hold on all large affiliate payments as a result. The hypothesis? That the skin was *too* passive in allowing affiliates to exploit the affiliate signup bonuses (namely, rakeback-- where an affiliate shares the payment from the poker room with the players it has "referred"... Always a violation of T&Cs for online poker rooms.) Plenty of "get your rake back dot com" websites promised 10-27.5% of the skin's rake paid by a player to be paid back to the player (out of the affiliate's cut). The player makes back part the fee paid to the room, the affiliate keeps some (not all) and also attracts the bigger, more experienced players who are itnerested in the rake they pay. Rakeback affiliates make up for keeping a lower percentage from the rooms in exchange for higher value players' value; a few high value players will make a larger profit than many small players, espcially when an affilaite chooses a percentage based fee as opposed to a headhunters one-time fee payment. Such affiliates also have less of a need to blanket spam, as they are mainly interested in players already playing and familiar with rake-- so they can direct-market online where these players hang out and refine their games, instead of investing in a list of emails that will quickly be routed to "junk/spam" folders.

Which is a royal PITA for the "wlopr," in that its skins are attracting away the larger players from the main site... The players still get to play in the fishbowl as the players are shared across the various skins while getting "rake back", and the wlopr loses by its affiliate bonuses not working like they thought they should (instead of attracting new blood, they're just recycling it)...

The wlopr got to be that way (the wl) by allowing/passively encouraging its affiliates to blanket spam its room all over the internet and attracting the largest number of players online to play. Now that it has them, as well as new blood that keeps the sharks in the water, it can afford to crack down on affiliates who break T&Cs that cause the wlopr to lose high value players as well as pay out a big chunk of change in affiliate bonuses as well. The fact that a float is on the horizon can't not be a consideration as well.

Well, to get back on topic and *fight spam!* like a good blogger in training:

My obligatory post to stop online poker spammers. A how to gleaned from people smarter than me...

1) Link to wiki's definition of "online poker" on your blog. Here's the link: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_poker" title="online poker"**>Online Poker**> (remove stars, and call it what you will.)
2) That's it. :) The theory is, the more wiki is linked, the more it will outdistance the spam comments made on blogs.

2a) aK's response to the outdistancing theory: Well, sure. I think it's great that wiki kicks the wlopr off of the front page of google, as well as other poker rooms in the process. (Not mine I hope!) But, as I said I really don't think the rooms are the ones making the blog posts, but instead are the affiliates drawn to spamming as much as possible in order to gain very lucrative signups. A link below mentions the money generated from online poker a month, US 34 million. (Just an estimate, though many of the online rooms may be considering a float, many are still privately held and numbers are pretty top secret). Imagine that 25% of that could be being earned by affiliates, and you can see why people are driven to become spamwhores. I also applaud the fact that googling "online poker" may drive someone to look at wikipedia (one of my fav sites anyways), but wiki's own definition is a little spammy... check it out and tell me what you think.

Interesting links on the "online poker googlebomb":
Google Blogoscoped article on the 'bomb...
An original call to arms from a month ago...

aK
gamesgrid
www.gamesgrid.com

9:27:00 AM  
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