Laminated Cardamom Rolls

A.k.a rolled croissant dough with Cardamom cream. Nice video.

Mistakes:

  • I should have used my croissant recipe for the dough and the rest from this video.

Ingredients for 8 rolls/snails aprox.
  – 250g wheatflour (12,5g protein)
  – 125g whole milk
  – 1/4 medium whole eggs
  – 16g sourdough levain (at peak)
  – 3.7g fresh yeast / 2g dried yeast
  – 27.5g sugar
  – 6.25g salt
  *Try to keep all ingredients as cold as possible
  —
  25g butterblock
  —

For the remonce creme
    45g sugar
    45g butter (room temperature!!!)
    2.5g cardamon seeds
    5g flour (important for not leaking)

For the syrup
– 30g water
– 30g sugar
– 1 cardamon pods
– 1 star anise

Mix everything and boil for 5 minutes.

Process:

Mix all wet ingredients + yest + flour + salt + sugar + mix all

Knead until you have a elastic/strongh dough and no very sticky. The video uses a machine and my dough after a long time never got to that consistency but I thought it was good enough and put it into the plastic container and then rest in the fridge. For 1 or 2 days. Mine was 1 day.

With a rolling pin, flat your butterblock, keep it cold

With a rolling pin, flat your dough, use a bit of flour as non-stick.

Put the butterblock in the middle and fold it with the dough.

Cut the sides to release the tension of the dough (I forgot it each time…) each time you make a fold

Do two folds like the croissants. Put the dough in the fridge for 30-45 minutes

Make another fold and spread the dough as a thin layer: 3mm aprox?

Make the Cardamom cream: Mix butter, sugar, flour and cardamom.

Spread the cream over the whole surface of the dough.

Roll the dough like a giant cigar. You can put the dough back in the fridge to continue next day (I did that)

Cut each roll: 4cm thick / 110g aprox

Put then in a tray with baking paper / or spread some flour over the tray.

Let is proof for 3-4 hours

Pre-heat oven at 190C. Bake for 18m or until brown/golden

Apply syrup immediately after taking the rolls out of the oven

Before oven:

After baking! (and applied syrup immediately for the shiny touch!)

Although It was quite far from the video… it was actually tasty! As mentioned earlier, I need to try with my croissant dough recipe, I think it would be much better.

Mindset Doctor – Inner Strength – Stretching – LLM in your laptor

Mindset Doctor: I struggle watching long videos in youtube (lack of time, many things to do, excuse(x)). I liked he used the concepts of chimp/human/computer brains (that reminded me again to this book) And how clear he was saying you need to befriend your chimp, anxiety is natural!, you need your chimp to vent, etc etc.

Inner Strength: This is a different world of endurance and mental strength. I need to read the second book of David Goggins.

Gut health: Interesting, we need more fiber.

And I need to improve my stretching (another), mainly because running.

You can run a LLM in your laptop. I need to try to play with this things.

Malai Kofta

A friend of mine prepared this dish once and it was super tasty. So I wanted to try myself at some point. This is the video I followed.

For making onion tomato puree
Ingredients:

  • Ghee 1 tbsp (I used a piece of butter)
  • Onions 3-4 medium size (sliced)
  • Garlic cloves 8-10
  • Ginger 1 cm
  • Green chillies 1-2
  • Tomatoes 2 medium size (roughly chopped)
  • Cashew nuts: 1/4 cup (I used a mix of nuts… mistake?)
  • Water 200 ml
    Methods
  • Set a deep pan or a wok on medium flame, add ghee and onions, cook the onions until its golden brown.
  • Add garlic cloves, ginger and green chillies, and sauté for a minute.
  • Add tomatoes, cashew nuts and cook for 2-3 minutes.
  • Add water, cover and cook for 4-5 minutes, switch off the flame and cool down to room temperature, transfer it to a grinding jar and grind to fine puree, strain and keep aside for later use.

For making kofta balls
Ingredients:

  • Boiled potatoes 4-5 medium size
  • Paneer ½ cup (grated) (I used mozarella maybe a mistake?)
  • Corn starch 2 tbsp
  • Salt to taste
  • Red chilli powder 1 tsp (I didnt have all the spices so I improvised a bit…)
  • Coriander powder 1 tsp
  • Anardana powder 1 tbsp
  • Garam masala ½ tsp
  • Flour for coating
  • Oil for frying
    Methods:
  • Grate the boiled potatoes and add them in the mixing bowl, further add paneer, corn starch, salt and powdered spices, mix and combine well.
  • Take a spoonful of mixture and shape into small roundels, coat it with dry refined flour and dust ff excess flour.
  • Set a pan filled with oil on medium heat, deep fry these balls until golden brown in colour, remove it on ab absorbent paper and keep aside for later use.

For making the final gravy
Ingredients:

  • Ghee 1 tbsp (I used butter)
  • Turmeric powder 1/4th tsp (again, didnt have all spices)
  • Coriander powder 1 tbsp
  • Red chilli powder 1 tbsp
  • Strained tomato onion puree
  • Fresh cream ½ cup
  • Kasuri methi 1 tsp
  • Garam masala ½ tsp
  • Kofta balls
  • Fresh coriander leaves 1 tbsp (chopped)
    Methods:
  • Set a pan on medium heat, add ghee, turmeric powder, red chilli powder and coriander powder, add the strained tomato onion pure, add salt, stir and cook well for 4-5 minutes.
  • Add fresh cream, kasuri methi and garam masala, stir and cook for another 2-3 minutes, add the fried kofta balls and stir gently without damaging the delicate kofta balls.
  • Continue to cook further for 2-3 minutes and add freshly chopped coriander leaves.

Mistakes:

  • My sauce was quite far from the video
  • I didnt want to deep fry the balls so I just fried with a bit of oil and they kind of melt. Then when adding to the gravy, they mixed up.

My result was quite far from the video, but it was tasty anyway!

This is part of the process just as a reminder for next time.

Meetings Breaks – Google Lens – Milgran Questions

Just take a break between meetings: link

Google Lens: I bought a plant last weekend and I dont know the type… so no idea how to look after it. GL can help you to identify photos. I was quite surprised (as google search is underperforming for some time…) This is my new plant, spineless yucca. Let’s see how long it survives me.

Milgran Questions: via 3MM. And anecdote about Churchill, interesting.

When punishment for what people say becomes widespread, people stop saying what they really think and instead say whatever is needed to thrive in the social environment.

Thus, limits on speech become limits on sincerity.

Discord – 68 Bits – HC2023 Google – Huge – Terrapin

Discord Scale: I think I read something about Elixir (and BEAM). So It was nice to side a successful product built with it. And how Discord has managed to keep pushing the scale of their platform. Everything is high level but gives you an idea.

68 Bits of advice: From Kevin Kelly

HotChips 2023: I received an email with all presentations and videos. Some picked my curiosity (although ALL of them are out of my understanding

  • Exciting Directions for ML Models and the Implications for Computing Hardware: video and pdf. A lot of focus in power consumption and reduce CO2. The optical I am still struggling. But it is interesting that they say they go for liquid cooling and beyond Ethernet for the supercomputer.
  • Inside the Cerebras Wafer-Scale Cluster: video and pdf. I have read about Cerebras before so it was nice to read/see something directly from them.

They made Google Huge: based on link. From the google presentation above, and the end there are a lot of references about the authors. I think I read about it in the past but It was nice to re-read it again.

Terrapin: SSH vulnerability. I need to patch 🙁

Prisioners of Geography

I finished this ebook a couple of days ago. It was really interesting and easy to digest. It gives you a different point of the current world based on geography and how a game of chess are the international relationships…

Russia: It is the biggest country. Its main weakness is Ukraine as it is plain and the only entry to the Mediterranean. Keep in mind that this book was written on 2016 so it doesnt surprise that Rusia has invaded Ukraine. As well, most of neighbors in the west are in NATO and Rusia/Putin doesnt want missile in his border. But playing with nukes is a zero-sum game? Russians are not europeans neither asians, they are Russians. So interesting that view from a country of that size.

China: I like the intro that China is not a country but a civilization. Its main goal is to build a fleet to match the USA navy. Not much issues inside the continent due to its massive population and borders with other countries. Himalayas with India is the most important. As well, for that reason invaded Tibet to remove the only option from India to attack and take the high grown. China plays India dealing with Pakistan to get access to the Indico. Taiwan is a horn as it is supported by USA. And I wonder, you invade Taiwan and chips production worldwide goes to shit.

USA: Luckiest guy. It has no really enemies in the borders. They bought Louisiana from France with Napoleon was in its worse as it was critical to maintain the Missisipi as it was key for commerce . Texas, New Mexico, California annexed from Mexico. And Alaska bought from Russia. So from east to west is free. North has Canada, an alley and not a threat. And Mexico has a desert between then and it is not match in any sense.

Western Europe: France is the one in best position. Access to North Atlantic and Mediterranean. Good internal routes. Germany main weakness is the east. It has only Poland between Russian and them. As well, the Danube is great as it connect many cities and is suitable for commerce. So Poland gets crashed very often. Spain is not very lucky, it has the Piryness in the north and then the internal communication as not great.

Africa: A mess created by Europe with the artificial borders that means nothing to the people.

Middle East: Another mess created by Europe with artificial borders and the conflicts of different views of Islam: Iran vs Irak/Arabia, etc. Israel in the middle of everything.

India and Pakistan: Mess from England, again due to artificial borders. India is superior in everything. The only issue is Pakistan has nukes too. It is interesting the game between Pakistan-Afghanistan-USA.

Korea and Japan: Neighbors that dont have a good past due to the invasion from Japan (and brutality) but China is a bigger problem. And North Korea.

Latin America: USA playground. Very unlucky region due to geography. Amazon is not good for commerce. Most population is in the coast. Communications with the interior as really bad so moving goods is expensive.

The Arctic: The new eldorado. USA, Russia, China, Denmark, etc claiming things. A lot of resources there but it is a dangerous area (climate) so expensive.

The Space: The new frontier and a lot of politics to agree how to “manage” it that obviously not all agree. I didnt know about Wernher von Braun (from the Nazi Germany to the Apollo XI in the moon). Russia had the lead with Yuri Gagarin, Sputnik, etc. Most space theory came from Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. He calculated the needed space to be able before the technology was available. I didnt know that Laika (Barking) died in her trip to space. Thanks to her, it was proved that humans could travel to space. At the end, USA landed Armstrong in the moon and the game is over. The very expensive business in space was over. Until now with SpaceX and similar wanting to go to Space/Moon/Mars, etc. The book suggest that cooperation is the only way for getting anywhere.

I didnt take notes but there is a lot of info in the book that you wouldnt think of so it gives you a new/different point of view of the current world.

Bluetooth on Linux

I have never used bluetooth in Linux before. I have a bluetooth headphone from work that works fine with my phone and macos but I wanted to try it in Linux.

So I give it a quick go last night. This was my initial link. I had already installed the driver:

# dpkg -l | grep bluez
ii bluez 5.70-1.1 amd64 Bluetooth tools and daemons
ii bluez-obexd 5.70-1.1 amd64 bluez obex daemon
#

I had to install “blueman” that is the frontend to manage your bluetooth devices later:

# dpkg -l | grep blueman
ii blueman 2.3.5-3 amd64 Graphical bluetooth manager
#

The service was already enabled:

root@athens:/boot# systemctl status bluetooth.service
● bluetooth.service - Bluetooth service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Sat 2024-01-06 11:58:33 GMT; 54min ago
       Docs: man:bluetoothd(8)
   Main PID: 1137 (bluetoothd)
     Status: "Running"
      Tasks: 1 (limit: 9334)
     Memory: 3.1M ()
     CGroup: /system.slice/bluetooth.service
             └─1137 /usr/libexec/bluetooth/bluetoothd

Jan 06 11:58:42 athens bluetoothd[1137]: Endpoint registered: sender=:1.43 path=/MediaEndpoint/A2DPSource/opus_05_duplex
Jan 06 11:58:42 athens bluetoothd[1137]: Failed to add UUID: Failed (0x03)
Jan 06 11:58:42 athens bluetoothd[1137]: Failed to add UUID: Failed (0x03)
Jan 06 11:58:44 athens bluetoothd[1137]: Failed to add UUID: Failed (0x03)
Jan 06 11:58:44 athens bluetoothd[1137]: Failed to add UUID: Failed (0x03)
Jan 06 11:58:44 athens bluetoothd[1137]: Failed to add UUID: Failed (0x03)
Jan 06 11:58:44 athens bluetoothd[1137]: Failed to add UUID: Failed (0x03)
Jan 06 11:58:44 athens bluetoothd[1137]: Failed to add UUID: Failed (0x03)
Jan 06 11:58:44 athens bluetoothd[1137]: Failed to add UUID: Failed (0x03)
Jan 06 11:58:44 athens bluetoothd[1137]: Failed to add UUID: Failed (0x03)
root@athens:/boot#

Then I had to enable bluetooth:

# rfkill list
0: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
#
# rfkill unblock bluetooth
#
# rfkill list
0: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
#

Then I can test it:

$ blueman-manager &

But once I paired the device…. I had an error:

br-connection-profile-unavailable

I found several links and this is the only things that worked for me: link1 and link2. So I had to install “libspa-0.2-bluetooth” and reboot:

# dpkg -l | grep libspa-0.2-bluetooth
ii libspa-0.2-bluetooth:amd64 1.0.0-1 amd64 libraries for the PipeWire multimedia server - bluetooth plugins
#

So I managed to paired the headseats without error but then a new issue… I lost internet connection…. And after checking several things, it was just enabling bluetooth that caused the lost of internet access. There was nothing in the logs saying anything about my wifi disconnecting or anything similar….

If I disabled bluetooth, my connection was back…. so more work to do. So it seems there is some interference between the modules or the drivers? Searched things about it. I checked this. But no luck yet.

To be continued.

TCP Port States – AI views – Prompt Engineering – 40s crisis – Unstoppable Motivation – 8 steps – Prisoners Dilema – Postgresql upgrade downtime

  • Interesting read about linux networking at TCP port level. It shows you how complicated can be but still amazing to understand Linux kernel.

  • Some views about AI:
    • 1) link1: Cory Doctorow about bubbles and AI. Models that run on commodity hardware will survive. He uses a 2×2 grid based on value (how much you will pay) and risk tolerance (how perfect the product needs to be)
    • 2) link2: Bill Gates views for AI. It is the word for 2023. And future for 2024. Still I think in link1, AI has to be democratic and easily available. I doubt most developing countries can afford NVDIA H200 in Azure…. I agree nuclear (fusion) energy is the only way forwards in the Western world until we have viable fision energy.
    • 3) link3: Prompt Engineering

  • Unstoppable motivation: This is an unexpected pearl. Intrinsic motivation is always preferred (more effective and energized) than extrinsic motivation (external elements: money, prizes, people opinion). But not always is so clearly binary. Extrinsic motivations can help too:
    • “Introjected Motivation. “I’m doing this because I’ll feel guilty or bad about myself if I don’t.” People who highly rated this statement have high introjected motivation.”
    • “Identified Motivation. “I’m doing this because I truly value the goal it’s helping me work towards.” People who highly rated this statement have high identified motivation.“
  • Because having intrinsic and extrinsic will give you more tools to move forwards when one of them weakens.
  • “the only type of extrinsic motivation that corresponded with greater happiness was identified motivation. In other words, it was the hikers who motivated themselves by aligning their actions with what they truly valued and who not only completed the trail—but also felt happiest at the end of it“
  • And the most important part of the article: How to get more intrinsic and identified motivation in your life:
    • Figure out what really matters to you: For me this is the most complex and scary part.
      • Long Term: The eulogy method
        • Medium Term: How will be your life in 5 years time if you follow Current path, alternative path and radical path? money, social obligations, and what people would think, are irrelevant. No excuses
        • Short Term: Wheel of life: measure your health, work and relationship.
    • Definitely I need to do the medium and short term. That would clarify many things…
  • 8 steps: i have read about rules but this keeps some basic into perspective:
    • Take care of yourself: shower, dress, etc
    • Order your room, kitchen, etc: your kingdom = yourself
    • Go outside – socialize
    • Sweat: work out
    • Money: control your economy.
    • Remove dependencies: sugar, diet attention (emails, youtube)
    • Strategy – create your action plan.
    • Execute: dont overthink
  • 40s crisis: I think we “overestimate” our cultural background, we think our lives are going the same phases as our grandparents or later. Quite wrong. This is a new phase and “recent” (half XX century). We are at the peak and we only see ahead the downwards of life. Likely our grandparents were already at 40. We have the social life cycle. That creates age-anxiety if we dont meet that cycle. Divorce increases along the years in XX century to reorient live. Min 31:25 is a pearl: We dont begin to live until we begin to die. And the real American dream (not based on materialism / radical capitalism) and moving to happiness in a hurry (consuming) created that crisis because you couldn’t achieve that American dream.
  • Application of Game Theory: Prisioners Dilema: Simplest win, tit for tat:
    • – nice (vs nasty): you dont defect first
    • – forgiving: you can retaliate but forgives
    • – retaliatory: strike back immediately, dont be a push over.
    • – clear: eye for eye
  • Interesting is that a small cluster of tip for taps can take over a population of nasty strategies. Most life is not zero-sum, try to find win-win.
  • PostgreSQL upgrade without downtime: Slides are ok, but would be nice to get the video for more details.