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October 29, 2004
Red Mellow Bush Rooibos Herbal Teasan
Name: Red Mellow Bush Rooibos Herbal Teasan
Kathy's Rating: 6.0/10.0
Company: Numi Tea
Origin of tea: Cederberg Mountains, South Africa
Price: ~$5/20 bags (1.68oz)
Tea form: Ground rooibos shoots in tea bags
What they say: Grown in the high desert regions of the Cederberg Mountains, the shoots of Rooibos have been hand gathered by South Africans for generations. It is prepared like a traditional tea, undergoing meticulous drying (oxidation) and cutting. Organic Red Mellow Bush has an earthy vanilla taste and pleasing orange color with hints of autumn straw. With an anti-oxidant level comparable to green tea, Rooibos has no caffeine, is rich in minerals, very low in tannin, and is relaxing to the nerves. No wonder they call it the "miracle tea". Discover the wonders of Rooibos!
Preparation method: Boil water and pour over tea bag. Steep for 4-6 minutes.
Review: This is an organically grown and caffeine free tea. When steeped, this tea turns the water a pretty red-orange shade. I was pleasantly surprised that this tea is strong in taste, yet has no bitterness - not even a trace - to it. Is it possible to be strong in taste and yet mellow at the same time? It is now. As the package indicated, there is indeed a hint of vanilla to this tea. I would say there's even a hint of sweetness. I highly recommend this tea, especially for those who are caffeine-averse. I rated this teasan a 6.0/10.0 for a couple of reasons. One, rooibos is not tea in the sense that it is not derived from the plant Camellia sinensis. This makes it difficult for me to evaluate rooibos properly against most of my other reviews, which are tea leaves plucked from the Camellia sinensis plant. Two, rooibos cannot be compared solely with herbal teas only because it is different from those as well. How do I compare apples and oranges - I cannot. But, I still feel like it would be beneficial to assign a rating. So, the 6.0/10.0 rating is a semi-awkward attempt to put together all of my total tea tasting experience into deriving a number for rooibos. Overall, an interesting (and good for you) herbal drink, but not what I would consider a serious tea experience.
Posted by Kathy at 09:09 PM | Permalink
October 28, 2004
The Great Pumpkin and a Chaos Machine
Seeing as how it's right before Halloween, I thought I'd post an interesting story someone wrote about The Great Pumpkin.
Completely unrelated to pumpkins, but yet really interesting is the Chaos Machine. If you are not familiar with a Chaos Machine, check out a neat movie of one in action here.
Posted by Kathy at 08:09 PM | Permalink
October 27, 2004
CUTLASS Proposal Accepted for ShmooCon 2005
Syn Ack Labs CUTLASS project is presenting at ShmooCon next February. We are looking forward to ShmooCon, and know that it'll be a great debut for ShmooCon. I strongly encourage you to attend if you're interested in computer security. Even if you're not, I heard there are plans to have Halo contests.
Last month, we (Todd MacDermid, Jack Lloyd and I) presented it at ToorCon 2004 in San Diego. That was definitely a great conference to be at, and we had a blast, especially at the Dachb0den Labs party.
Posted by Kathy at 08:57 PM | Permalink
October 25, 2004
Hello, Movable Type!
I have made the switch to using Movable Type. Finally got tired of editing static HTML manually. Over the next few days at least, I will be busy moving old content over to this new interface. Please look forward to this new, and easier to read (I hope) interface and thanks for your patience and interest!
Posted by Kathy at 08:54 PM | Permalink
October 22, 2004
Upcoming Geeky Projects Magazine
O'Reilly publishers are planning on putting out a magazine called simply, Make. I'm looking forward to this magazine. It is scheduled to starting selling in early 2005. Oh, goody, more stuff for me to do in my copious spare time. Now I have to make sure I get my basement finished so that I have the extra workspace. Check it out. I think you'll think it's neat. Although there's no way to subscribe online yet, there will probably be soon. Consider buying your favorite geek a subscription.
Posted by Kathy at 09:59 PM | Permalink
October 21, 2004
How Interesting are Engineers?
I read an interesting article in the latest IEEE Spectrum magazine about why there are not more women in engineering. Yes, I know that this is a popular discussion topic. Over the years of being an engineer, I have seen this topic get talked about to death. However, this article is the first I've read that justifies the lack of female engineers with the simple reason of "engineering is not a cool career". This statement literally made me laugh, ROTFL-style. The writer proceeds to talk about how there are no cool TV shows about engineering. Medicine has E.R., law has L.A. Law and Ally McBeal. There are no cool shows about engineering. I do disagree with the author's statement about Dilbert being the most famous engineer. I mean, Thomas Edison was an engineer. It's just that, way long ago, people were called different titles, like 'inventor' or 'tinkerer'. If I think about it, I would say that McGuyver was an engineering show. Sort of.
Anyhow, this is not to say that engineers are not interesting people. Check out Brian Fu's website, for instance. Brian is by education an electrical engineer. He also happens to be an expert performer of light and stage shows, an artist, a musician, and is working on his first book. The book is not about engineering, by the way. It is likely going to focus on his experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa. Download and watch Brian's movie which will showcase his talents. I'm betting that you'll be entertained. Forget the cool TV shows. We just need more engineers out there who are well-rounded and enjoy doing what they do. I've always thought Dilbert was kind of a loser anyway. Alice, on the other hand, could conceivably be labelled as 'cool'.
Posted by Kathy at 10:12 PM | Permalink
October 19, 2004
Reading Vernor Vinge
I just finished reading Vernor Vinge's The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime. I've read other works by Vinge before, so I'm familiar with his style of writing, but I still feel like I've been missing out all those years before I read Vinge's works. Oh well, I should just make up for that now, I guess. Good thing I already own almost all of Vinge's works.
The Peace War is set around the year 2048. I was told by Todd that the heroine is really Della Lu. Throughout the book I was skeptical of that statement. Since I can't delve into the reasoning behind my skepticism without divulging the story's plot, I won't. But, suffice it to say, Della Lu kicks serious booty. It is so refreshing to read a cyberpunk novel where the smartest and most capable character/hacker is a female.
Marooned in Realtime takes place some fifty million years after the events of The Peace War. Guess what? Everyone from the first novel is gone, except for Della Lu. She's back, and even better than before. Huh? How did she live so long? Well, you'll have to read the book to find out how she did it. This book is also a murder mystery rolled into a cyberpunk theme. Vinge is very good at accumulating events like a snowball that climaxes into an avalanche at the end of the story. Unlike traditional mystery novel/novella writers Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie though, Vinge does not focus on the whodunnit aspect by liberal sprinklings of red herrings. Instead, the mystery wafts around the core of the story, which is about a futuristic, technology-driven cyberpunk society.
If you do decide to read the above books, I recommed also grabbing a copy of the short story, entitled The Ungoverned, and reading it after The Peace War, but before Marooned in Realtime. The short story will give you a better sense of one of the main characters in the second novel.
Posted by Kathy at 10:17 PM | Permalink
October 13, 2004
Kathy's Favorite Video Games
There was an interesting article on women video game designers today. Rather, the article mostly talks about the lack of female game designers and programmers, and puts forth the question of why there are not more of them.
According to the article, women do not like the games available because the games are all graphically violent, with the exception of The Sims. This could not be further from the truth. I have been playing games since the Atari 2600 came out, when I was in elementary school. I was really good at platform games like Jungle Hunt, Keystone Kapers, Kangaroo, and Centipede. A bit later, I got an Apple IIgs and played games like Bard's Tale, Castle Wolfenstein, and Zany Golf. My cousin Lily had a TRS 80 and a Commodore 64, on which we would play games when we were at their house. Video gaming was pretty much a way of life for me.
So far, none of those games are particularly graphic or violent. I didn't play much in high school because of other extracurricular activities, but I started up again in college with SimCity, and Civilization II. In fact, I once spent an entire summer playing Civ II. Then, of course, I had to play all of the other Sid Meier games since then, and now I own a PlayStation 2, GameCube, XBox, and DreamCast. Yeah, I have all the major gaming consoles, as well as a GameBoy, of course. Still, the most violent games I have played so far are WarCraft III and Halo.
The truth is, I'm just not into violent, bloody games like Grand Theft Auto and Postal. But, that doesn't mean there's no games left to play. Au contraire. My all time favorite games tend to be in the strategy and role-playing genre, of which there are plenty to go through. In fact, I do not have enough time to play all the games out there in those genres, to my regret. The Suikoden series are my all-time favorite RPGs, and StarCraft and WarCraft III are my favorite strategy games. I think there are plenty of guys out there who would agree with me that they'd rather play the RPGs and strategy games than the shooters. Last year, I spent six months playing Star Wars Galaxies. My online character was a female Twi'lek. It was sort of amusing when some of my guy friends speculated that I was probably only part of a small percentage of female players. I guess this was true because there were a couple of online players who asked me if I was female in real life. Of course, I didn't tell them. Sometimes, it's fun to be someone else. That's why most people who role-play do so, right?
Posted by Kathy at 10:21 PM | Permalink
October 12, 2004
ToorCon, SpaceshipOne Launch, and the Long Tail Effect of Media Retail
That was a long hiatus from blogging for me. A lot of events have passed since late August. A few of us from Syn Ack Labs presented CUTLASS at
ToorCon 2004 in late September. The talk went well, although CUTLASS is still far from being finished.
After ToorCon, Todd and I headed up to the Mojave Desert area to see the first launch attempt for SpaceshipOne, which took place on September 29, 2004.
The neat thing is, we were part of history in the making, as it turned out, since the SpaceshipOne team won the coveted X-Prize. Todd made a great movie of the event.
As part of that brief trip, we also got the chance to get together with our friends Patty and Gary, who took us to Gyu-Kaku for dinner. We've never
had Yakiniku barbeque before, so I will be writing a review on that shortly. We also went to a Brazilian Churrasco restaurant, which was quite a carnivorous experience. After that, I just needed to take a break from eating meat for a few days. Whew.
So, what's up for October? There's still a lot of work to be done for CUTLASS. I guess CUTLASS is really the reason why I hadn't been working on blogs lately. There's an interesting article from Wired magazine I just finished reading about the Long Tail effect of media retail. Apparently, contrary to popular belief, consumers do not like being confined to read, listen, and watch only the top-selling books, music, and movies. This gives companies like Amazon.com and Apple (iTunes) their successes in selling less popular media. This success is due to the Long Tail effect.
Posted by Kathy at 10:24 PM | Permalink