Want to make authentic Indonesian food in your home? Do as the Indonesians do and use spice packets:

Bamboe available flavors include gule, kare, opor, rawon, nasi goreng, semoer, rendang, soto madura, soto ayam, ayam goreng, bumbu bali, bumbu rujak, sup, sayur lodeh.

[ Instant Sauces ]

Well, some Indonesians still make their own, the old fashion way, but many use these convenient "bumbu" packets. With these, a rice cooker, and a little time you can have an authentic Indonesian feast in your home.

Update: Indofoods also has a selection of bumbu.

Rhapsody doesn't have this yet, but I liked it:

"The first time we heard Grandmaster Flash rapping on a hip-hop track, everybody was like, 'OK, we know this because this is tasso [the rhythmic oral history in Senegal]," he says.

[ NPR : Daara J: Senegalese Hip-Hop ]

Why should you care? Maybe you shouldn't, but I don't want to forget their name.

Too bad it's a bit confusing. Pobox.com has a handy wizard to help you piece a proper SPF record together:

Most domains send outbound mail through a relatively small number of servers. Domains should describe that set of servers in an SPF record in their DNS. Internet email receivers can then reject forged messages which don't come from an envelope sender domain's approved servers.

[ The SPF Setup Wizard ]

I've tried to determine where all of my mail might be coming from, and added my first SPF TXT records to the davidkearns.com and geekprime.com domains. I'm also taking the step on a few of my less used domains (dak4.com, k34rnz.com, yatyanddavid.com, etc.) of adding a very restrictive "v=spf1 a mx ~all" SPF record. My hope is that this will cut down on a large part of the undeliverable email messages that I get each day. If not, perhaps I'm just being a better netizen.

Anyone else jumping on the SPF bandwagon?

Candy tastes sweet! People like money! Skunks smell bad! And:

The US could improve its image among Muslims if it listened more, adopted a humbler tone and emphasised its aid programmes, a report says.

[ BBC NEWS | World | Americas | US 'could win over Muslim world' ]

Though it wouldn't surprise me if the US government did pay for studies on those first three. But did we really need that study to tell us what should be obvious? More importantly, shouldn't we just do that anyway? I think we could improve our image among everyone by listening more, being more humble and emphasizing aid programs. Though when we did that we would spell emphasize and program correctly... (And now the UK will hate us...)

Which is why this puzzles me:

"We would like to strongly support Nintendo's next-generation networking plans," said Yoichi Wada, president of Square Enix. "The Revolution may embody a new platform beyond a portable or console, which makes possible a new structure in the network gaming system, changing the ways communities are built and supported. This is the kind of direction we've envisioned, and we will challenge ourselves to provide immersive interactive content in response to what Nintendo offers."

[ Wire: Square Enix Announces Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles ]

Both XBox 360 and PS3 support networking and will have an XBox Live like system to dial into. What about the Revolution is so different that Square Enix is jumping on the Revolution bandwagon so early? What is so special about their WiFi? Certainly Nintendo is putting a lot of time and thought into their next platform, and they've been hyping it big time, but what do they really have up their sleeve?

We have a facility where we name servers after rivers. Apparently I keep finding rivers that no one has ever heard of. This time I was sure I picked one that everyone knew:

The Blue Nile is one of the two main courses of the river Nile. The Saharan part of the river is formed by the union at the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, of the White Nile coming from the lacustrine region in Eastern Africa, and the Blue Nile coming from the Ethiopian Highlands. Though with a shorter length, the Blue Nile course amounts to more than 60 % of total Nile water flow.

[ Blue Nile, IGAD Sudan Peace talks ]

Someone must have heard of the Blue Nile before reading it here, please!

Update: James Bruce had heard of the Blue Nile.

Yet you continue to read my page...

Here's what you'll be missing if you don't pick one up:

[ Zelda Universe ]

I'm so excited.

Welcome to E3Insider for 2005. This site is for you, the gamer that wants to know everything about E3. Our production staff is here getting ready for the exhausting week ahead. While we're ramping up, let's talk about all of the exciting plans we have for the week ahead. First, the new site - we've kept many of your favorite features and added a bunch of new ones.

[ E3 Insider | Blog ]

Other sites to follow the fun include:

• Playstation
• XBox
• Nintendo
• 4 Color Rebellion
• GameSpot
• IGN
• Yahoo
• Engadget
• Jeux France (in French)
• G4

I am rather excited about all of the new consoles. Can't wait to hear more about the new Zelda game. Eager to see what Ubisoft has to announce. I'd like to know more about upcoming NDS titles too. What are you waiting to hear?

Microsoft has always been good at marketing.

Microsoft intended to preview its new gaming console, dubbed Xbox 360, to the world on Thursday via an MTV special. The Redmond, Wash.-based company invited 200 people to attend the Los Angeles taping and asked them not to reveal what they saw until the show's broadcast

[ Details on New Xbox 360 Slip Out Via Pics - Yahoo! News ]

But recently, and especially with their XBox and Halo, they've done a great job with viral marketing. I think, however, that the real genius is inviting 200 people to see this thing, and *wink* *wink* asking them to not tell anyone.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, those few were also armed with digital cameras, which they used to snap pictures of the Xbox 360 console. The photo--which first surfaced over the weekend on Engadget.com--of the console confirmed the authenticity of earlier pictures, showing a silver, slightly concave-shaped console that looks almost as though it's designed to sit atop the slightly convex current-generation Xbox. It also confirmed the so-called "ring of light" theory, which had said the device would sport an oversized power button surrounded by a ring of LEDs, as well as that it would sport two slots for 64MB memory cards and one for a 40GB hard drive on the console's side.

[ Xbox 360 pictures leaked, peripherals and customization revealed - News at GameSpot ]

I bet that none had to sign an NDA. I certainly wouldn't put it past them to have staged a time that taking photos would be convenient with no one watching. I wouldn't be surprised if they put a shill in the crowd to initiate the photo taking. And, even more so, I would easily believe that not one of the invitees actually took a photo of anything, but Microsoft released some photos into the "wild" that appeared to be taken at this event.

When all is said and done, how much did this hurt Microsoft? How much did it help? You do the math...

If you are near a Wegmans, you must try them out.

Wegmans currently operates stores in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia

[ Wegmans Store Locator ]

Picture a Whole Foods crossed with an Albertson's and a Harris Teeter with just a touch of Reading Market. I picked up some items that I've been looking for, for a long time:

• Minute Maid Light Mango Tropical
• Minute Maid Light Guava Citrus
• Tom Kha Soup in a Can

Plus they had so much more. Unfortunately I was only near the Wegmans because I had to go to Ashburn where our co-lo facility is. Now that I know it's destination worth visiting, I can plan for big grocery shopping next time.

However their Asian selections did leave a bit to be desired, so I still need a trip to Grand Market on a regular basis...

To cite Missouri Compromise in your work, copy the complete reference below:

---

"Missouri Compromise." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia.
© 1994, 2000-2005, on Infoplease.
© 2000–2005 Pearson Education, publishing as Infoplease.
12 May. 2005 <http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0833427.html>.

---

How to cite an Encyclopedia article:
Article title in quotation marks. Encyclopedia name (in italics).
(Copyright date) on Infoplease.
Website copyright date and company name.
Access date and full URL in angle brackets.

[ Infoplease: Cite this Page ]

Why the Missouri Compromise? Because it starts with the Mason-Dixon line. Why the Mason-Dixon line? To determine if Henri lives in what would be a slave state in 1850. Why 1850? Because Henri is young and therefore wrong. And how does that impact billed work? Not in a good way...

George Ou is outraged by Sony's gumption:

It’s bad enough for a company to neglect patching older products, but it’s absolutely inexcusable that the new 2005 Sony PSP will be unleashed upon the masses with defective Wi-Fi equipment. Since WEP was found to be completely broken five years ago, the Wi-Fi Alliance in 2003 mandated that all Wi-Fi products comply with the new WPA standard and use the new TKIP encryption algorithm yet Sony somehow feels exempt from this responsibility.

[ ZDNet.com ]

Which begs the question, how about the Nintendo DS? Does anyone have experience with the Nintendo DS and have enough info about WPA and TKIP to have an informed opinion on Nintendo's first foray into the wireless world?

Microsoft is going to attempt to trump E3, but my hope is that will somehow only negatively affect Sony, but not Nintendo. Previously there were rumors that Nintendo wouldn't mention anything about their upcoming platform for fear of the competition "stealing" their great ideas, but apparently that rumor isn't true:

Our coverage begins on Tuesday, May 17, when we'll break early news about Nintendo's key products right after the press event concludes. Check back here for the latest announcements on the Legend of Zelda for Nintendo GameCube; news about Nintendo handhelds -- Nintendo DS and Game Boy Advance -- and the first word about Nintendo's upcoming home console: Nintendo Revolution.

[ Nintendo : News ]

As always I'm looking forward to great announcements all around. For all of my favorite platforms of today, and my possible favorite platforms of tomorrow.

Want to keep it legit too? The open-source community has developed an IDE that seems to have large support for all sorts of things:

Eclipse is a kind of universal tool platform - an open extensible IDE for anything and nothing in particular. Find out what eclipse is all about - check out the Eclipse Roadmap, white paper, read some technical articles, visit the newsgroups, take a look at the projects, and pick up the latest downloads.

[ eclipse.org ]

For my purposes I downloaded the "platform" version (since I won't be extending Eclipse, just using it), installed the CF plug-in and the VSS plug-in and then got a bit frustrated before finding out the VSS plug-in required the Java Development Tools  to be installed to function correctly.

Once all of that was in place, it appears I have a program that is vastly superior to ColdFusion Studio 5, and vastly cheaper than DreamWeaver MX 2004. It still isn't CF editing in my beloved VisualStudio, but it will do.

My favorite pizza in the city delivers to my office:

[ Famous Luigi's Menu (202)331-7574 ]