What I Learned Today

The Dock in Mac OS X is a quick-launcher for your favorite applications, but it seems to encompass more than that; it also provides the ability to minimize and maximize windows as well as to quickly swap between running apps with a keystroke (apple-tab), which may well be my most frequently executed keystroke, second only to ctrl-K in emacs. But sometimes, the Dock hangs. Suddenly, you’re paralyzed, only able to work within the current app (and possibly only its currently window). Ugh. Rebooting does solve this, but that seems like a big hammer. I’ve looked for a “restart the Dock” option under the Apple menu (nope) or for Dock entry on the list of apps you can “Force Quit” (and hopefully Force Restart).. nope.

The most recent time this happened, I was left with only Firefox working, so I was able to google while in a Dockless state. I came across this tip, which gives the so-obvious-in-retrospect Unix-flavor solution:

1. Find “Dock” in your current list of processes (ps -auxww | grep Dock).
2. Get its process id.
3. Send it a hangup signal to force a restart (kill -HUP <pid>).

Done! (A single-line AppleScript solution is also mentioned. Someday I may venture into the world of AppleScripting. As of now, it is a complete unknown to me.)

I’m having a ball listening to Grammar Girl’s podcast. Much of what she covers is already a part of my internal writer/editor/proofreader, but she has a nice, conversational approach that’s enjoyable regardless. Sometimes the episode I happen to listen to is particularly timely, as happened today with Formatting Vertical Lists. Useful tips I gleaned include

• Don’t use a colon to introduce a list, unless the introduction is a complete sentence. (I think I’ve been violating this one for a while. But see how I reformed my ways in this post!)
• Capitalize and punctuate list items if they are complete sentences.
• Use bullets for unordered items, numbers to indicate sequence (steps), and letters to indicate choices or labels you can refer back to later.
• Use parallel construction.

So, what was timely about this episode? Yesterday I had the pleasure of reading through candidate statements on my sample ballot. One in particular stood out for its egregious abuse of punctuation, overuse of capitalization, and general incoherence. Here is a verbatim excerpt that highlights multiple violations of Grammar Girl’s list formatting recommendations:

Donald Williamson Has The Experience and ECONOMIC RECOVERY PLAN to:
Stop Foreclosures! Help Families Save Their Home! (Recast Loan).
Cut State of California’s Dependency on Foreign Oil.
Wording on Reducing Gas Prices.
Balances California’s Budget: Cuts Fat-Waste, Stops Excessive Spending, No New Taxes!
Establish Health Care – Pharmacy Plan For All Californians.
Economic Recovery Plan: Creates Business, Jobs, Reduces Unemployment.

Oh, where to start? In terms of formatting, Donald has forgotten to use any sort of bullet at all for his list. He included the leading colon (I’m willing to forgive this one). He bolded and underlined each initial word, which only makes the lack of parallelism more grating. He would also have us believe that all of California’s families live in a single home. The vacuous content is even more alarming. I’m still utterly puzzled by #3 (“Wording!”). I’m not sure what “Fat-Waste” actually is, but it sounds pretty gross. Thank goodness Donald’s there for us with his blizzard of buzzword “solutions”, up to and including “No New Taxes!”

I read on, eager to learn how he was going to “recast” loans, do something to gas prices, provide a “health care – pharmacy” plan for all Californians, create “business” and jobs—all without introducing new taxes! Sadly, no details were forthcoming. Nor is any additional content available on his website, which features two bonus non-parallel lists, more families living in that single home, use of “that” instead of “who”, “receive” misspelled, etc.

The saddest part? Donald Williamson cites himself as an “Educator.” America’s future is in his hands, even if he loses his bid to represent the 59th District in the State Assembly. Please, Donald, next time devote just a few dollars to a good proofreading of your campaign materials. If nothing else, it sets a good example.

I had some extra ricotta cheese, left over from making lasagna, and I wondered: what else can you make from ricotta? Some googling turned up several answers, including Ricotta Gnocchi with Browned Butter and Sage, and I decided to try it out.

I’ve never made gnocchi, but I love eating it. I had some vague idea that it was generally made with potatoes. But this recipe creates mostly-ricotta gnocchi (with some parmesan cheese, parsley, and flour). The resulting dough was extremely sticky, even after adding some extra flour. But I rolled it out, cut it into little pillows, and then pressed them into a fork as directed. The next instruction was to drop them in boiling water and then spoon them out when they floated to the top, in 2-3 minutes. They were so squishy when I dunked them that I was skeptical that 2-3 minutes could really turn them into gnocchi, but sure enough, it worked! Very easy!

The browned butter with sage was absolutely divine. I was fascinated to observe that the butter really did turn from clear-ish yellow to a browned hue, simply by heating. Apparently this is caused by the milk solids and salt in the butter turning brown. Except that — ha! What I’d actually used was I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter (I’m sure several of my friends are now cringing in horror). I don’t think it has any milk solids, but apparently, it browns too! And it’s tasty!

(Now I’m itching to look up the Fats chapter in my copy of “What Einstein Told His Cook”—I’m pretty sure this was covered—but I loaned it to a friend a while back.)

If you have any other great suggestions for ricotta cheese recipes, I’d love to hear them.