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Respect Your Ingredients

Episode 8 of Top Chef was somewhat of a shocker. Lessons learned down on the farm, respect your ingredients (and proteins) and past performance means nothing.

top-chef-arianeFor these two reasons, Ariane was ousted after mangling her team’s lamb dish. Tom Colicchio presented his philosophy of cooking, stressing the respect chefs show their ingredients. Ariane, he felt, dishonored her lamb with her butchering. Even though Ariane has done well with lamb in past competitions, each elimination brings a clean slate, so Ariane was dismissed.

Reading about Ginx

Saw this article about Ginx.

More about Ginx.

HONOLULU, Hawaii, January 14, 2009 – Peer News Inc. released the following statement today regarding Ginx:

Ginx is a Twitter client that aims to provide Twitter users with a rich experience for sharing and discussing links. Ginx was created to enable people to become more actively engaged in the news and topics they care about.

Ginx recently went live to a small group of early alpha users who are providing feedback to the team on features and functionality. Peer News expects to make Ginx available to more users later this year. For updates on the service follow @ginx on Twitter.

Ginx is the first service from Peer News, a new startup co-founded by Pierre Omidyar and Randy Ching.

When the Booze is Gone, It’s Time to Move on, Gene

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Those were Gene Villiatora’s parting words on Top Chef as the Hawaii-raised chef didn’t make it past Week 7. Throughout the competition, Gene was a lucky survivor, advancing through each challenge doing it his way. And in Week 7, Gene, for better or for worse, stuck to his roots and made a questionable fish dish that didn’t completely win over the judges.

Gene almost made it through this week’s double elimination with the backing of new judge Toby Young who admired Gene’s wild creativity. Unfortunately, Gene’s visual whole fish dish with daikon, tomato, and basil didn’t have the flavorful punch the judges were looking for.

Here’s how it went down.

Gene, thanks for a showcasing Hawaii’s culinary talent and wish you much future success!

Bella’s Lullaby on Sheet Music

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Bella's LullabyAt a family dinner, I heard one of my nieces practicing on the piano. The music sounded familiar even after only a few notes. It was none other than Bella’s Lullaby from Twilight! I couldn’t believe it until I saw the sheet music with my own eyes.

Besides the soundtrack and forthcoming DVD, I didn’t see sheet music as another popular Twilight memorabilia item. Dang, Twilight is simply a beast, not just a box office beast. If you’re digging Bella’s Lullaby, you can buy the sheet music from Twilight at Musicnotes.

And I underestimated Amazon where I also found the Twilight Score (with complaints about Bella’s Lullaby being inaccurate).

Just what is Bella’s Lullaby? It’s the song Edward wrote inspired by Bella, and it goes something like this…

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qUM9k1A1nU&hl=en&fs=1]

Team Jacob Getting Pumped

taylor-lautner-bicepsTo retain his role as shape shifting Jacob Black of Twilight, Taylor Lautner needed to bulk up his teenage bod. Looks like he’s doing a good job.

I think he’s been in contact with the Tabasco Man asking about his special Tabasco juice.

Update: Taylor must be staying away from the delectable bacon desserts.  Check out his Wayne’s World-like abs from this Access Hollywood interview.

http://widgets.accesshollywood.com/o/482a0d55893fbe3f/496b0ae8a0330293/496a636cb7688725/67f52e47/-cpid/151720dfa50cb89

A freeze frame for the female fans.

taylor-lautner-abs

I Need Me Some Hotness from HP!

At the Macworld Expo 2009, an HP product surprisingly generated a lot of interest. The HP MediaSmart Server ex485/ex487 is hot! With this home server, you can save backups to it, even with Mac OS X’s Time Machine. You can store all your iTunes libraries on the MediaSmart and serve them out to all machines running iTunes. You can even backup the MediaSmart Server to Amazon’s S3 cloud.

There are a few downsides for Mac users though. The MediaSmart runs Windows Home Server, and you initially need a Windows box to configure the server. And because it runs Windows, you have to take the typical Windows security precautions.

Here’s a very detailed review of the MediaSmart Server ex487.

You can pre-order your MediaSmart ex485 for $600 from Amazon. Looking better than a Drobo.

Ow, This Is Hurting

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So far, moving Pulpconnection from Blogger to WordPress has been painful with regards to site visits. Here’s stats from Sitemeter showing the change from December 10, 2008 to January 9, 2009.

I started making changes on December 23. Starting in 2009, things really went downhill. Hopefully, this WordPress migration starts paying off soon.

Twilight Shortage in Hawaii?

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Read Twilight

From what I’ve heard from the literary grapevine is that Twilight, the first book in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga, is pretty much sold out in Hawaii. I haven’t confirmed this and find it hard to believe after seeing stacks of Twilight previously (okay, the pic shows stacks of Breaking Dawn).

After the success of Twilight the movie, maybe the book sold quickly during the Holidays? Or maybe it’s posters like this urging literacy?

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