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Daily Random Recipe

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 1/2 oz / 100 g noodles
• 1 small leek
• 1 1/2 T margarine
• 2 cups mushrooms
• 1 1/2 T flour
• 1/3 cup soymilk
• 1/2 t Dijon mustard
• 1/2 t marjoram
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
  

METHOD:
Cook the noodles until tender in boiling salted water.

Clean and chop the leek finely. Melt 1 T margarine in a saucepan and saute the chopped leek for 3-4 minutes.

Slice the mushrooms and add them to the pan; cook for a further 3-4 minutes. Stir the flour into the pan, then slowly add the milk, stirring constantly until thickened. Lower heat and simmer while adding mustard, marjoram and seasoning.

When the noodles are cooked, drain them and toss them with the remaining 1/2 T margarine. Pour the sauce over them.

Every time I see the Burj Dubai tower over the surrounding skyline, I think of Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Totally different buildings, but similar skyline standouts.

The yet-to-be-confirmed HP Mini 210 has popped up at a couple online retail spots already, but now it seems to have landed in the Real World courtesy of a Costco in Hillsboro, Oregon. We’ve seen the netbook listed at $280, $320 and now $350 pricetags, so we really don’t know who to trust anymore (certainly not our parent’s generation), but the sexy design, chiclet keyboard and unibutton trackpad certainly smack of progress.

[Thanks, Dustin W. who sent this in via our new webOS app!]

HP Mini 210 spotted at retail with $350 pricetag originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 23:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thanks to Modern Warfare 2, legendary game creator Hideo Kojima has been inspired to go back to developing for the PlayStation 3. Now isn’t that a most-welcomed comeback.
 
 
 
 

Laptops heat up. And mine is no different. Every night, I perch on the same place on my couch almost every night to sit and do work (and by work I mean go on Facebook) with my notebook computer on my lap. After a few hours, I find myself sweating, and realize that my computer is close to overheating. I have to take a break from work, which often results in channel flipping and a phone call or two. By the time I get back to my work, I have completely lost my train of thought, or if I decide to cool off by putting on some shorts, I run the risk scorching my thighs from the heat of my laptop. A constant problem, I was excited to give the ThermaPAK HeatShift laptop cooling pad a try.

The ThermaPAK is a half inch thick quilted rectangle that sits on your lap and provides protection from your blazing hot laptop. It comes in 13, 15 and 17 inch rectangles in black, pink, and a special white/silver version designed to match your Mac that costs around $27.99. The pad feels kind of like one of those lead aprons the dentist makes you put on before he takes your X-Ray, but a lot less bulky. So I put the pad on my lap and got to typing. About an hour later, at the point when my laptop is normally burning off the top layer of my skin, I was as perfectly cool calm and collected as when I started working. No channel surfing break was needed! Unlike a blanket or towel to act as a buffer between you and your laptop, the ThermaPAK actually deflects and redistributes heat from your laptop, which means that neither you, your computer, or the ThermaPAK get hot. It’s not a piece of material between you and your laptop. Instead, it’s a pad made of high tech material that helps redistribute the heat from your laptop to keep both you and the laptop cool. This has obvious benefits for your lap, but there are some added benefits for your laptop as well. Laptop overheating can seriously damage your machine. There are a few options you can take to prevent this type of damage from occurring. You can buy a USB fan, which is basically a costly fan that plugs into your USB port and protects your computer from overheating.

The downside of a USB fan is that it takes up a plug in your USB port, it uses about 20% of your battery, and sometimes they make a heck of a lot of noise. Not to mention that they are bulky and an added weight to put in your laptop case. The ThermaPAK on the other hand, offers a different option. It doesn’t require refrigeration, it doesn’t require battery, and it doesn’t need to be plugged and it doesn’t take up too much room. It’s just a pad that goes between you and your laptop.

It works like this: When a laptop cooler featuring HeatShift Technology is place under any notebook computer, the crystals inside are in a solid state. As the underside of the laptop begins to warm up, this heat is transferred to the HeatShift technology device. This transferal of heat gradually changes the PCM crystals into a liquid. ThermaPAK’s pad grooves channel air under the laptop, and use the second law of thermodynamics to draw heat from the laptop.  After the laptop begins to cool, the HeatShift Technology devices changes back to a solid crystal – ready for the next use. The ThermaPAK worked exactly as promised. If your laptop is prone to overheating,

Conclusion

I would recommend this product to protect you and your laptop from the heat. That being said, I can’t imagine lugging the ThermaPAK around in my laptop case for the simple reason that it’s a little heavy. This product is great for keeping next to your favorite nook where you like to sit with your laptop to grab as a buffer from the heat.

The Good: Inexpensive TSA approved for travel. Distributes heat as promised to protect your legs and your laptop. Doesn’t require batteries or any kind of power whatsoever

The Bad : I can’t really see myself carrying this thing around unless I had a serious overheating problem with my laptop.

Are you one of those people who thinks that phone hacking looks like a lot of fun but is just too risky to try on your own device? Maybe you hack phones all day and just want to add another one to the colleciton. Whatever the case, check out this contest over at DroidDog. It has got to be the quickest and easiest way to get yourself into a rooted G1. All you have to do is log into Twitter and send the following tweet:

RT @PhoneDog_John Win a rooted G1: http://bit.ly/4JoxS5 || RT and follow @PhoneDog_John to enter! #DDG1

Do that, and you’re entered. Enter as often as you like between now and 01/31/10. Read the full rules here. Good luck!

Homemade ice pops made with reusable molds are a very green choice of treat for your tot. Homemade ice pops mean zero packaging waste and healthy organic ingredients chosen by you. Plus homemade ice pops are a  smart way to use up leftovers. Now, ice pops may seem like a weird January treat, but my son eats these all year long so I figured a wintery yogurt pop recipe was in order.

Note – the first thing you’ll need are some non-toxic ice pop molds – I’ve tried a bunch and my favorite are the Tovolo molds (shown above). Oh, and if you have some and your tot has accidentally lost the lid (with the handle attached) then make your ice pops as you would normally but instead of using disposable wooden sticks try using a thick pretzel stick – you know those big fat ones.

For your wintery looking pops you’ll need a basic set of ice pop molds (usually come with six), 2 cups of organic vanilla or other white colored yogurt, frozen organic blueberries that are thawed in a bowl slightly to release the blue juice, and some blue or pink colored sugar (like the kind you’d sprinkle on sugar cookies).

Mix the yogurt and blueberries gently to make your mixture blue and swirly looking. Sprinkle a little layer of colored sugar into the bottom of each mold. Fill one half of each ice pop mold with the mix. Sprinkle on a layer of colored sugar and fill the rest of the mold leaving a little space at the top. Add another dash of colored sugar, add the ice pop mold top and freeze. I don’t always add sugar to my son’s yogurt or ice pops because that would be excessive, but once in a while I will because he loves the glittery look. The glittery sugar with white and blue swirls looks especially wintery and kids love them.

PS if you find yourself plum out of colored sugar you can make some of your own.

Also see 32 Unique Homemade Popsicle Recipes & Ideas.

[image via Tovolo]

Post from: Blisstree

Easy Winter Blue Yogurt Pops!

Filed under: Odds and ends, TUAW Business

All our prognostications, anticipations, best-of lists and year-end reflections — in one handy place.

	Our favorite iPhone games of 2009 The first full year of the App Store is coming to a close, and so let’s take a look back at our favorite games of 2009. Note that these aren’t best-selling, most important, or even the best games…		TUAW bloggers post their Apple predictions for 2010 It’s the end of another calendar year, which can mean only two things. First, every blog is going to be posting lists of 2009 retrospectives, and second, there are going to be a lot of posts…
	January 1 reflections on my favorite things January 1 is always a little strange. A quiet time after a night out, a time to take the tree down and deal with all the green light cords that started out so neatly applied and wind up a tangled…	Other news of import Our Favorite Apps: Stuff that stayed on our phones in 2009 Apple nabs four of Engadget’s 10 gadgets of the decade How early iPhone predictions fared in the face of reality Two broken promises from AT&T and Apple as 2009 comes to a close

TUAWYear-end reflections and predictions roundup originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As the national economy struggles, one industry is booming in New Jersey: renewable energy. Buoyed by some of the nation’s most generous financial incentives and relatively little regulation, New Jersey’s renewable energy industry …