A note on the smarter http and https access introduced in Git 1.6.6, including the bare bones of configuring Apache to serve it using git-http-backend (requires cgi, env, and alias).

Very useful tutorial on how to set up apache to serve bare git repositories over HTTP and HTTPS, with htpasswd authentication.

One example of managing production, development, feature, release, and hot-fix branches of a large project in git, complete with beautiful track diagrams produced in Keynote. Includes requirements for which branches merge back into each other and sample git commands for the more complicated flows (although there seems to be some controversy, or at least misunderstanding, about the use of --no-ff on the merges). The author's later "git flow" scripts provide an easier way to maintain these conventions and to use these patterns.

Video using Tinker Toys to illustrate some basic concepts of Git, such as committing, branching, merging, and even a little rebasing and remote synchronization.

Slides from Ned Batchelder's talk about Python and Unicode at PyCon 2012, including the links he mentions at the end.

"Klingon is not in Unicode. I can explain why later."

Some key facts of life about Unicode and pro tips for dealing with it in Python 2 and 3.

A key point: Unicode assigns integers (code points) to characters, while encodings (e.g., UTF-8, UTF-16) represent those integers with byte sequences. Consequently, it's important to distinguish sequences of bytes from sequences of code points. Python 2 induces mysterious pain by performing these conversions implicitly, while Python 3 induces pedantic pain by making you do all the conversions explicitly. (Also, str means bytes in v2 but code points in v3.)

Tip #1: Make a Unicode sandwich. Decoding all input to Unicode, work with that internally, and encode it to bytes before output. Libraries may help you out here.

Tip #2: Track what's what, either Unicode or bytes + encoding (which you can't tell from the bytes themselves).

Tip #3: Test your code against Unicode. Use those websites that gussy up your ASCII text as look-alike Unicode characters, for example.

Also, all the graphics on the slides are actually Unicode glyphs.

Ed surveys pizza sauce advice from master pizzaiolos. Most of them make their sauce from nothing but high-quality San Marzano tomatoes and perhaps a pinch of salt, especially if they are for a Neapolitan pie. But whatever makes you happy.

FAQ about MSN services during Qwest's 2011 transition away from the service. MSN Premium email accounts should convert to standard free MSN/Hotmail accounts.

Updated version of making American-cheese-style slices of medium-hard cheeses such as Cheddar or Gruyere: add a small amount of gelatin (which both emulsifies and melts quickly), evaporated milk, and a small amount of water to the cheese. Also, immersion blending the mixture can help break up hard tyrosine crystals in savory cheeses. Of course, this recipe is no longer vegetarian, as the flour-based one was.

Note: Sodium citrate is recommended as an emulsifier by the molecular gastronomy crowd.

Some advice on preparing for a beer competition. One, get involved as a steward or a judge first to feel comfortable and to calibrate your knowledge. Two, once you've decided to brew, do your homework on the style of beer and the competition rules, plan ahead, and read any feedback you get after the competition.

Kenji's reflections on his four-week vegan experience: some notes on his favorite recipes, how to adjust one's diet to fit a vegan lifestyle without simply loading up on simple carbohydrates, and some tips on how to make the transition (keep an open mind, give yourself time, stock your pantry and fridge with quality ingredients, be proud of your choice, prepare in advance if you won't have easy access to vegan food, and stick with it!)

Spectacular vegan feast to cap off Kenji's four-week vegan experience. He succeeded in not getting his dad to notice there was no meat until the fifth course.

Pretty comprehensive intro to single-malt scotch, including basic characteristics and requirements, malting, mashing, and fermentation, distillation, aging, and peat-smoking. Also introduces the main regions and their characteristics.

Some notes on making sour beers, including the basics of fermenting with Brettanomyces yeast and Lactobacillus or Pediococcus bacteria. Aging typically takes longer, too (months to years).

Fascinating talk by Clay Christensen of the Harvard Business School on applying innovation patterns to reform healthcare. Some of his central points:

* As in computing, advances in technology can gradually shift complicated procedures to less and less sophisticated practitioners. For example, more advanced equipment can make it easy to have nurse practitioners and physician's assistants perform colonoscopies.

* The different parties in the health-care system must learn some amount of this business theory, if only to give them a common language in which to discuss solutions. (This process happened with Andy Grove at Intel in the mid-1990s, and was used to prevent AMD's disruption of Intel on the low end.)

* Medicine is gradually moving from intuitive treatment to empirical treatment (probability-based) to precision treatment (causality-based) as science and technology advance. To remain cost-effective, the health-care system must make these advances available to lower-level practitioners, but the expert practitioners often prevent that redistribution of expertise.

* It is next to impossible that reform will come about in a system where the different parties (nurses, doctors, hospitals, insurers, laboratories) operate independently: the incentives for each individual unit often prevent reorganizations that will improve the system as a whole. Instead, real change is emerging from health-care providers that have more vertical integration, such as Kaiser Permanente.

* Hospitals as we know them combine three incompatible business models (diagnostic solutions, treatment processes, and insurance management) and consequently are not viable without external financial support. These should be reformed into separate entities to allow each type of business to focus on operating as effectively as possible. Furthermore, advertising a broad focus of treatment (we can treat any disease) leads to much higher overhead costs for any given procedure, whereas specialization leads to higher efficiency on a more limited set of procedures.

Watch the whole talk, though, so you can understand all the nuances of Christensen's analysis. The taping isn't perfect, unfortunately: the camera operator tracks Christensen 100% of the time, so not all of the slides are visible.

Some notes on brewing from base malt: discussing 2-row versus 6-row malt, country of origin, how to buy quality malt, how to store malt, and how to crush the malt, either at your brewing supply shop or at home with your own crusher.

Kenji's experiments with creating a risotto that both is creamy with starch and has a toasted nutty flavor. The solution: rinse the rice in the cooking broth, then drain and toast the rice, adding the starchy broth back during cooking.

Some notes on brewing Assam tea, along with some background and historical information.

Serious Eats's list of basic cheeses, with notes about aging, tasting, region of origin, and common uses.

Kenji demonstrated the right way to reheat corn tortillas: dip in cold water, place on a nonstick skillet over high heat (e.g., seasoned cast iron), let cook about 30 seconds, until spotty brown, then flip, cook another 5-10 seconds, and transfer to a stack on a towel. When finished, fold over the towel and let steam for 5 minutes. Then consume!

Kenji swaps out his animal-based, long-shelf-life food enhancers (flavorful fats, anchovies, fish sauce) for vegan ones. Key basic ingredients: soy sauce, marmite, Maggi seasoning, miso paste, Asian sauces such as hot chile oil and fermented chili bean paste, Frank's RedHot, various vinegars, such as Chinkiang black vinegar, and citrus. Sauces requiring slightly more preparation: vinaigrettes, roasted chile oil, vegan mayo, Japanese tare sauce, and cilantro chutney. Spices such as Korean gochujang, za'atar, and five-spice powder are also useful.

YouTube channel with videos of performances and exercises by the Stanford Juggling Research Institute, including many featuring David Ayala.

YouTube channel with short videos on basic ballroom dancing instructions.

Large-scale study shows positive, significant correlation between teachers raising their students' standardized test scores and income gains for those students over their lifetime. Even though such value-added statistics can be volatile from year to year, the study still found them to be statistically significant. This analysis may influence how we evaluate teachers, although we must be careful not to let it dominate those evaluations lest teachers focus on gaming test scores to promote themselves.

Advice on doing regular maintenance on homebrewing equipment: cleaning or replacing tubing, carboys, spoons, funnels, and racking canes, especially if they are scratched, and calibrating thermometers and hydrometers.

Discussion of how to extract pulp from tamarind. The ideal ratio is one ounce of pulp to one ounce of water, so that the pulp is not too diluted. Soak the block of pulp in warm water for 15 to 20 minutes, then squish the block by hand: take a handful of tamarind, squish out the pulp through your fingers, and discard the seeds and husks left in your hand.

Part five of epic Pad Thai instructions: putting it all together. Do your mise en place, use enough oil, use a big enough skillet, and stay on your toes.

Part four of epic Pad Thai instructions: the sauce. Make it concentrated, with tamarind pulp (see preparation post), fish sauce, palm sugar, and brown sugar.

Part three of epic Pad Thai instructions: exotic ingredients. Some of these are not typically used in pad thai outside of Thailand. Important ones: extra-firm unseasoned tofu, preferably tinted yellow; tamarind pulp (see earlier post for preparation); Chinese garlic chives. Optional: dried pickled (daikon) radish, often called pickled turnips; shrimp paste in oil (the red stuff); small dried shrimp, with shells on. Garnish: banana blossom.

Part two of epic Pad Thai instructions: noodle shape and preparation. Get small to medium (2-3 mm wide) flat rice noodles and soak in room temperature water until pliable yet firm, abut 20 to 30 minutes. They should be edible, but not pleasantly so, and you should be able to wrap them around your fingers. Do not blanch them, as the noodles will get gummy and starchy.

Part one of epic Pad Thai instructions: discussing pans. A good option is a giant 17-inch Lodge cast-iron skillet, as it provides a lot of room for fast evaporation even with 3-4 servings in the pan.

Some advice for cloning beers:
* Practice tasting beers, especially ones made with a single malt and a single hop variety.
* Scour the brewer's descriptions of the beer (or website) for information about malt, hops, and yeast. Or just ask them.
* Try it out!

A philosophical note from Kenji about the differences between those few people who can improve a stellar recipe spontaneously and the people who instead take existing recipes and evolve, tweak, and re-engineer them gradually.

Screencast from an AP Biology teacher in Bozeman explaining how he uses game theory to structure his classes so students are learning actively. Students accumulate points by working through material at their own pace (although there are some methods employed to keep students from falling too far behind) and can often repeat quizzes. The students compete with each other individually on a leaderboard, and different sections compete through total points. The class is administered using Moodle (a modular, open-source e-learning system) and Google Docs, and the students frequently use iPads in class.

Summer school on algebraic K-theory and relations to other areas of homotopy theory and manifold theory. Dates: 16-21 Jul 2012. Probably attending this one. Register by Apr 15.

Some tips on brewing a Belgian-style saison beer: medium-high alcohol, but relatively light and fruity.

Kenji's experiments to get a creamy risotto with a toasted, nutty flavor from the rice. He rinses the rice in the broth beforehand, toasts the rice, then adds the starch back in cooking.

How to convert pale malt into a range of different crystal malts, including ones you can't get easily commercially.

Kenji explores how to make vegan mayonnaise: the main issue is replacing the emulsifier (lecithin) in egg yolks. The most stable and neutral solution is to use silken tofu (and a dash of soy lecithin), but the tastiest was with roasted eggplant.

Kenji explains how to make authentic, Roman-style pizza bianca at home (with a floury bottom crust, not a fried one) using a no-knead, high-hydration (80%) dough.

Schematic map of locations of Stony Brook Medical Center clinics off of Belle Mead Rd.

Math conference on algebraic topology and field theories in Bochum, Germany. Dates: 13-17 Aug 2012.

Home page for the 2012 Young Topologists Meeting, July 2-6 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Anssi is one of the organizers.

Home page for Homotopical Algebra and Its Applications, a 60th birthday conference for Yves Félix, at LUMINY (near Marseilles). Dates: 25-29 Jun 2012.

Home page for the Winter 2012 Midwest Topology Seminar, 10 Mar 2012, at Northwestern University. Speakers: Mike Hopkins, Mark Behrens, John Francis, Emily Riehl.

Fourth Arolla Conference in Arolla, Switzerland, 20-26 Aug 2012. Seems like a lot of focus on algebraic K-theory this time?

Hope page for massive birthday conference (60th for Ralph Cohen, 60th for Gunnar Carlsson, 70th for Ib Madsen). Definitely attending this one!

Some tips on using 5-gallon soda kegs to keg homebrew beer, including how to track the CO2 pressure and what cleaning agents to use in the keg.

Some advice on improving your homebrewing, including practice and sanitation, getting critiques and coaching from your local brew club or beer-judging contest, and even attending BJCP classes to improve your vocabulary and diagnostics.

Adam Kuban's account of the pizza party he ran as a prize from the Slice Out Hunger raffle. Highlights include accommodating the buffalo-chicken topping request (and passing with flying colors) and serving a Tex-Mex banana pepper pie. Sounds delicious.

Some notes on adjusting the mineral and chemical content and the pH of brewing water. Don't over-tinker, though.

Incredibly cute video of a bunch of bulldog puppies chasing their mom around.

A Google Docs spreadsheet containing everything in Kenji's pantry and fridge.

Some troubleshooting tips for kegging homebrews, including sealing tubes and keeping equipment clean.

Kenji's advice on planning and organizing a large Thanksgiving dinner, including dish selection and diversity and knowing what can and should be done in advance.

Nice introduction to some of the concepts and basic workflow patterns of Git:
* Builds up some basic concepts of graph theory: nodes, directed edges, labels on nodes and edges
* Git is a directed acyclic graph of content changes, with various labels for nodes and edges (SHA-1 hashes for all nodes, human-readable names for references, such as local/remote branches and tags).
* Overview of types of references and which commands affect which types
* Gradually less hesitant options for merging: testing the merge on a new branch, creating a 'save point' branch, or just doing it and getting the parent node manually if necessary
* A short remark on rebasing a chain of commits.
A good companion to other introductory material on Git, especially if it also relies on the graph-theoretic underpinnings of Git (such as the Git for Ages 4 and Up video).

Some ideas for improving the quality of assigned homework: returning to course material throughout the term, even to the extent of interleaving different parts of the curriculum; imposing mini-quizzes and tests (even ungraded or on the student's own terms) to reinforce recall; and interleaving different types of questions on the homework.

Glad to see one of my favorite songs make an appearance, especially in the absurd context of Wheel of Fortune.

Warren Buffett pleads for the United States federal government to tax more of his income, along with that of all the super-rich. I, for one, think we should take him up on the offer.

Most homebrewers don't reuse yeast, but there are some circumstances when they might want to:
1. When making consecutive batches of the same beer, or beers that use the same yeast.
2. When making a low-gravity beer and then using the residual yeast to ferment a high-gravity beer.
Of course doing that requires care, and this article specifies the steps required.

Pretty great.

Note on unraveling the special flavor that squid (actually, cuttlefish) ink gives to pasta, sauces, soups, and other dishes. The upshot: it's most likely the combination of briny, seafood flavors and high concentrations of glutamic acid and other amino acids.

Speed testing for broadband services. My results with basic Verizon FiOS: 15 Mbps down, 5 up.

Kenji constructs a decent Greek-style (medium-thick crust, rich tomato sauce, half-fried in skillet) pizza.

Some reasonable guidelines for emailing your professor.

How to build a better Mac OS X Lion installer from a USB stick that doubles as a backup bootable system.

The end of the Jobs II era. Best of luck to Steve and to Apple.

Busting some myths surrounding San Marzano tomatoes. The main facts: San Marzanos come from the US as well as Italy (although not DOP ones), and they're popular because their low moisture content and thick flesh makes them ideal for canning.

Bottom line: flavorful toppings! Fatty, spice meats such as sausage, pepperoni, sopressata; veggies such as arugula, par-cooked kale, caramelized or thin-sliced onions, grilled zucchini, pickled fennel, or shaved asparagus; herbs and spices (capsaicin). Not bland meats such as chicken or watery veggies such as (raw) zucchini or thick onions.

Kenji thoroughly tests American canned, HFCS Coke versus Mexican bottled, sugar Coke. The results: HFCS wins on taste, bottle on feel, sugar on mind.

Some tips on converting (Multi)Markdown to MS Word via the FODT format and OpenOffice. Includes various workflows, including Automator and Terminal.

How to create an Automator workflow in Lion that works like a desktop web-app (or site-specific browser). Particularly useful when using the iPhone user agent to save space. In general, check out more Automator capabilities.

Profile of Tarn Adams, driving force behind Bay 12 Games's epic Dwarf Fortress and Stanford math Ph.D. I never met him, but I moved into his office when I arrived at Stanford.

Note by Richard Felder about dealing with student resistance to student-centered learning (e.g., active, collaborative, or cooperative learning). Includes suggestions of things to try before jettisoning the alternative methods entirely, such as making sure that other aspects of the course are not to blame, explaining why the non-traditional methods are being used, sticking with the active methods long enough, using the methods appropriately (e.g., for active learning, in 2-3 minute sessions, and putting students on the spot some times) and asking for feedback specifically on the active methods and sharing the feedback with the class. Includes references to more introductory materials on implementing these active methods.

Brief overview of Kegan's theory of how the mind and consciousness evolve, based in part on Piaget's stages. For adults, the most important stages are the last three (3, 4, 5): in stage 3, one relies on external relationships for validation and direction; in stage 4, one decides one's own interests and direction with external relationships as but one influence. Stage 5 is more complex and subtle and is rarely reached until middle-age. The article also discusses how a disconnect between stages is common in higher education: students often perform at stage 3, but their instructors expect stage-4 reasoning without giving them a pathway to it.

Some tips on writing good multiple-choice questions, including how to structure the question stem and response choices without giving away the question and without penalizing slow readers. Also points out pitfalls to avoid, such as all/none of the above options and length considerations.

Resource for teaching advice. Includes access to IDEA papers, white papers on various topics, including techniques for collaborative learning.

Presents some hints about introducing lecture classes to collaborative learning. Includes references to papers at the IDEA center (esp. #15 and #38) as well as other sources.

Advice, some of it anecdotal, about applying for academic jobs as a grad student finishing a dissertation. From the viewpoint of the humanities, but still has topics applicable to the humanities, including preparing extensive job materials and hitting the market with full steam, talking to local people about the job search, getting perspectives from people at a variety of institutions, familiarizing yourself with the needs of target departments, and participating in professional organizations and activities.