Pork belly in cider with roasted leek, cheesy butter beans, and greens

Jun 03, 2017 15:38

Here's a little technological gem: an excerpt from Micro Live, January 1985, wherein they first take a look at the current state of the art in novelty and feature phones, including one capable of storing hundreds of names and numbers, for easy dialling, before introducing a fascinating new radiotelephony technology based on the concept of small ( Read more... )

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schnee June 3 2017, 16:43:49 UTC
before introducing a fascinating new radiotelephony technology based on the concept of small area "cells".

Technically speaking it wasn't actually new - cell phones have existed since the 1950s, at least (the exact date depends on when you want to start calling them that, of course; the transition from earlier technologies is fluid, with a large gray area).

That's not to say that these phones were "mobile" in the modern sense either - a cell phone in 1957 was perhaps not quite as small and portable as a smart phone in 2017. :) (But they were "mobile" in the sense of movable, e.g. by virtue of being built into cars.)

Still, a fascinating bit of history!

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porsupah June 3 2017, 21:03:58 UTC
There were car radiotelephones, absolutely, but based on the concept of highly localised (few miles) cells? That's the basis of what transformed cellular radio from its predecessors, where each zone might cover half a country or state. (In the UK, I believe radiotelephones operated on either the 50MHz or 70MHz bands, with "Northern" and "Southern" regions. It was up to the caller to know which to attempt to call. No idea what the call costs were, but presumably on the order of "if you have to know, you can't afford it" =:)

Heh. I remember one of Mum's cars back in the late 90s (it was maybe from the late 80s) still had the handset for a car cellphone. =:D I rather wish the rest of the unit had still been there, but I believe it'd been removed before we got it.

An old friend wound up foisting an old Nokia on me (I wasn't one for phones then or now) - it functioned well enough, but I was still a bit disappointed it couldn't actually do anything more - I think it might have been able to do something along WAP lines, but that was ( ... )

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schnee June 3 2017, 21:51:56 UTC
I'm not sure how localized they were. The German B-Netz (which started operating in the early 70s) apparently had cells with a radius of 27 km, though. Of course, without automatic handover of calls when you crossed cell borders, it maybe didn't matter that much. :)

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nou June 3 2017, 16:48:15 UTC
The title of this post seems to belong to another post?

Re YouTube, youtube-dl seems to still work fine.

Are you on Dreamwidth? I can’t post to LiveJournal any more because I haven’t accepted the new user agreement, so I’ve had to stop cross-posting here.

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porsupah June 3 2017, 17:31:02 UTC
They don't usually have much to do with the posting, so much as whatever food's on my mind. =:) In this case, dinner, due once said pork has finished off in the oven, hopefully gaining a lovely top of crackling, alongside a couple roast parsnips, a couple long sections of leek, and a little chicory. That'll be going alongside some boiled greens, and butter beans that had been sitting underneath the pork whilst in the slow cooker, taking up the flavor of the home made cider and a couple long peppers along the way, and now coated in a soft French cheese whose name I forget, plus a gravy made of said cider, reduced, with a little gravy powder added to thicken and season ( ... )

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nou June 4 2017, 10:59:10 UTC
Ah, sorry! I somehow managed to miss the subject-line theme before now - possibly because I tend to be immediately drawn to the food content of your posts, and so it never seemed incongruous before.

I hope your crackling worked out! It's so disappointing when it doesn't. I like the idea of beans with soft cheese.

I think I’ve managed to give you access to my Dreamwidth journal via your LiveJournal OpenID (I’m nou over there as well). (It’s kind of annoying that I can’t even post to tell people I’m no longer able to post, and also slightly weird that it’ll let me comment but not post.)

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thewayne June 3 2017, 16:50:28 UTC
Wil Wheaton of Star Trek fame has done a lot of home brewing, and I think his wife has joined him in brewing mead, IIRC. He's posted some of his formulations and trials and tribulations on his blog, though it's been a while since he's written about it so you'd have to do some tag searching to find it.

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porsupah June 3 2017, 20:46:44 UTC
Oo, I ought to have a peek at that - the roomie's been quite interested in making some mead. It's not cheap, of course, with all the honey, and takes a good bit of time to mature well, but seems so well worth it. Wonder if I could exchange a bit of my Belgian and/or cider for a bit of his mead? ^_^

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thewayne June 3 2017, 20:57:23 UTC
I don't know if he's posted any mead recipes, but I'm sure you could find plenty online.

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porsupah June 3 2017, 22:30:06 UTC
Oh, indeed - there are many around. He's very tempted to try, but he's enjoying all his fruit wine creations a bit too much. =:) Quite understandable - it's really quite easy, and so cheap! And using different juices and blends, you can wind up with some remarkably superior creations costing a fraction of even the cheapest commercial wines, even TJ's Two Buck Chuck. =:) (I never could quite tell the difference between their CabSauv and Merlot, but they made for perfectly enjoyable drinking, let alone braising lamb shanks away for hours =:)

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ungulata June 3 2017, 23:54:10 UTC
Steven Universe has suddenly become very interesting in the last four episodes. I think Lion is Pink Diamond.

Coffee which is lauded to taste like dirt? If the dirt is that good, why don't they just grind and sell that?

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c_eagle June 4 2017, 10:17:05 UTC
Fun buncha goodies as ever!

- I had heard that about dilemna too! (i think we had it that way in grammar school)
- Sorry to hear about the lens failure.... some internal flaw in the manufacturing?
- That cel phone vid was quite a hoot! ...ahhh, the simpler days :>
- Got a kick watching the Zoot remix also!... mostly glad it sounded nice as well ^v^
- and yep, YT seems to act funny now and then, depending on the browser I use... :/

Good luck catching up!

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