Posted on by mwhybark

oops

In Where’s the Beef?, Mena Trott mentions that on Tuesday, SixApart invited the first fifty public beta testers on board for MT 3.0.

I gotta pay better attention, ‘cuz I was one of those fifty. I just filed the email, thinking I’d get around to it later (I have several semi-completed technical projects underway and SIFF press screenings start on Monday). I guess I will make time to set up the app.

One of my concerns was my desire to segregate my current implementation of MT from the beta, in case of unexpected nastiness, especially at the database level. I will spend some time on that topic, probably for publication here, next week, amid the other projects.

Posted on by mwhybark

Room-temperature eggs

Mrs. C.’s Fact Sheets failed to answer my nearly-posted AskMe query. She does answer a host of other food-safety queries besides.

I was wondering, “How long can hard-bioled eggs be left at room temperature and remain edible?”

The Safer Easter Egg, however, tells me that the FDA says:

When eggs are cooled in water after being cooked, the eggs pull cool water through the pores of the shell. If the water contains bacteria, the bacteria are pulled into the shell, and grow quickly on this nutritious food source. The cooling water can be contaminated by bacteria on peoples hands, particularly staph bacteria. Suggestions to eliminate this problem are:

Add eight ounces of vinegar to every two quarts of boiling water in which the eggs are cooked.

  • The acid in the vinegar makes it more difficult for the bacteria to survive.
  • DO NOT cool the eggs in water. Remove the eggs immediately after cooking and cool on racks in the refrigerator.

The hard cooked eggs should not be at room temperature for more than two hour if they are to be eaten.

Verdict: Toss ’em. Shucks.

Posted on by mwhybark

The Black Ships

I saw an ad on the tube yesterday, which prominently featured the black ships, beached on the shore before Troy, and all the hair on my neck stood on end.

I didn’t realize that I’m really excited for this film, but: I am. I think Viv is too.

The Fagles translation is hard to find even excerpts from, but there are some interesting online interpretations available.

I’m somewhat baffled by the overwhelming dominance of the Samuel Butler Iliad translation online. There are actually quite a few translations, most predating our current copyright imbroglio.

Hm… This post has promise.

Screenwriter David Benioff, interviewed by the Beeb, had this to say about his script:

Troy is an adaptation of the Trojan War myth in its entirety, not The Iliad alone. The Iliad begins with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon over the slave girl Briseis, nine years into the war. The equivalent scene occurs halfway through my script. Meanwhile, The Iliad ends after Priam returns from Achilles’ shelter with his grim cargo – long before the construction of the Trojan Horse, and a good 20 pages before my script ends.

This is a massive story that we’re trying to tell in two-and-a-half hours. The narrative is crammed with some of literature’s most intriguing characters: Achilles, Hector, Helen, Paris, Priam, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Patroclus, etc. All these characters have to emerge on screen as fully realized human beings. The battle scenes have to mirror the epic confrontations Homer described. The journey of the thousand ships from Greece to Troy has to be depicted. Everything takes times, and we’re not making a 12-hour miniseries. We’re not making a trilogy of three-hour movies.

Let’s hope Athena guided his hand, and the hand of Wolfang Petersen.