Liz Denys

I apparently have a knack for coming up with nerdy party games. Three Fridays ago, my 6.033 TA encouraged us to practice creating diagrams for our design project proposals by trying to identify UNIX commands or filesystem structures from our partner's drawings. He claims that this "6.033 pictionary" was a result of strong nudging of the course's writing staff. Given that I had been encouraged by some of my friends to learn git earlier that day, naturally, I merged the two ideas and decided that gitionary needed to be created. I told Nelson, who is quite fluent in the ways of git, and he generated the game cards so we could actually play with the idea.

The original premise was simple: draw the appropriate directed acyclic graph corresponding to git commands so that your friends could guess it. However, many people who would likely end up playing the game did not yet know git, myself included, so we thought it would be good to allow drawing non-DAGs, too.

Nelson generated a set of printable gitionary cards (8.5"x11", double-sided on the long edge, requires cutting into cards), and we test ran the game with a rotating "artist" and the rest of the room guessing. I've included some (semi-arbitrarily selected) highlights drawn that evening below. Many of the most successful were not drawn as directed acyclic graphs, such as git-revert:

git-stash turned out to be difficult when initially drawn in a way that reflected what the command did, and more surprisingly still took about half a minute after the lower left-hand corner of the sheet was sketched:

A somewhat hilarious failure mode of gitionary is that objects which would ordinarily be drawn as a combination of circles and lines inadvertently look like DAGs. This was a problem Jeff had while he was drawing a magnifying glass to represent git-show:

You can also click through to see the rest of the drawings from the first run of gitionary:

• add by jesstess
• bisect by gdb
• branch by lizdenys
• checkout by nelhage
• cherry-pick by fawkes
• clean by ccpost
• commit by lizdenys
• describe by kasittig
• diff by broder
• fetch by price
• format-patch by ccpost
• gc by jbarnold
• log by adamf
• merge by broder
• mv by adamf
• notes by swarnock
• pull by wdaher
• push by njess
• rebase by fawkes
• rev-list by nelhage
• rm by swarnock
• status by flipdog
• tag by kasittig

I definitely encourage you to get a group of your favorite nerdy friends together to play the game, and maybe, you will do more than one of the plumbing commands.

Now that I've created a party game about gitionary, I think I should probably go spend some time learning git. Word on the street is that I'll think the back-end model is "cute."

I've been told that most people don't like walking through the rain and that others theoretically enjoy the process but don't walk in the rain because they dislike arriving at their destinations wet. However, unless I have something of a very pressing importance at the other end of my journey, I find that I try to catch every raindrop I can on the way.

Even underneath the scaffolding at the intersection of Main St. and Vassar St., many Cambridge residents navigate carefully to avoid the few drops of rain that might sneak through the wooden panels above them. In light of this, it shouldn't be surprising that you make great time by taking the path that maximizes the number of times you are hit by water droplets falling through the planks. Pseudo-random neuron firings (prnf to the zephyr world) worded this moment more poetically:

As I am drifting to catch raindrops who glide off the scaffolding,
I become as unnoticeable to the hustling city folk
as I have made the droplets to the setting concrete.

A couple of hours later that day, I began writing a minimalistic piece for the piano, which I finished it up last Friday. Here are a couple of phrases from the beginning:

About halfway through the piece's composition, I noted that it was eerily reminiscent of my moment deliberately walking in the rain. I was also contented to note that its relationship with a short, poetic phrase meant I didn't have to come up with a more traditional title for the little song.

You can view, or perhaps even play, the complete piano score.

(Fun fact: the title of this post is from Gilbert & Sullivan's The Gondoliers, specifically a line from "Dance a Cachuca." This was the first song I sang with my high school's concert choir.)

Despite growing up in Chicago where winter is defined as "more traffic" and "delayed flights," the first thing that comes to mind in winter is creamy squash soups. In the haze of moving, Mystery Hunt, and working on writing 6.042 problems this IAP, I somehow neglected making soup this January. To quench my craving and finally use up the three cans of puréed pumpkins sitting in my cabinet, I decided to make curried pumpkin soup.

I usually top this with a bit of pecorino romano cheese, but since I didn't have any in the fridge, I opted for parmesan and crushed red pepper flakes. If pumpkins are in season, toasted pumpkin seeds work even better.

Hopefully, I can subdue my craving for soup with this, but I've already decided that French onion soup is next.

Curried pumpkin soup

Ingredients:

• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
• 3 medium chopped yellow onions
• 4 teaspoons minced garlic
• 1/4 cup chopped red peppers (can substitute 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper)
• 2 teaspoons curry powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
• 3 15 oz. cans puréed pumpkin
• 5 cups vegetable (or chicken) broth
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups milk
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

Preparation:

1. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onions, garlic, and red peppers, then cook, stirring often, until softened (about four minutes). Add the curry powder and coriander (and crushed red peppers if opting for this method), and stir for another minute.
2. Mix the puréed pumpkin, broth, and sautéed vegetables in a large stockpot. Blend well. Bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat and let simmer for ten to fifteen minutes.
3. Blend the soup in a food processor or blender until smooth, and put the soup back in the stockpot.
4. With the soup on low heat, add the brown sugar and mix. Next, add the salt. Slowly add the milk and the cream while stirring to incorporate without burning.

Makes eight to ten servings.

Now that I have a weighted-key digital piano in my room, I've been playing a lot more. More like: I've gone from playing the piano only when I'm home in Chicago to playing it a couple hours a day. Over the past few days, I've been alternating between playing pieces from Philip Glass's "Metamorphosis" and more or less messing around with my own creations. The one below is a simple jazz waltz:

Perhaps, I wrote this one down because the beats in it are steady enough to easily transcribe. Additionally, unlike most other music I write, it lent itself fairly naturally to a key. Maybe you'll see some vaguely modal music which is played primarily on the black keys from me sometime soon.

Whether staying up late mandated my love of caffeine or vice versa, I've become hooked on coffee of all forms. My hands-down favorite until a few months ago was the caffè macchiato - not to be confused with the highly commercialized latte macchiato you see in places like Starbucks. But then I got a French press, tasted two new forms of unfiltered coffee, and was in love.

Hot coffee made with a French press is a delightful mélange of drip coffee and espresso: it roughly has the texture and caffeine content of the drip coffee but also develops a crema-like sediment because the mesh filter captures more of the coffee's oils.

To prepare such unfiltered hot coffee, you stir together the same number of tablespoons of coarsely ground coffee beans as cups of hot (never boiling, as you will burn the coffee) filtered or spring water in the French press, wait roughly three to five minutes, plunge the mesh filter the bottom, and enjoy. You can easily produce this form of unfiltered coffee without a fancy-schmancy French press, too: prepare the coffee in a large glass jar or pitcher, then strain through a fine mesh colander.

Unfortunately, hot French press coffee "expires" after about five minutes left with the beans in the press and like most hot coffees, becomes undesirable even if promptly poured into a mug about fifteen minutes later.

But, alas! An even more intriguing coffee variety easily prepared via French press, cold brew coffee, can rescue us in these departments and more. In addition to having the rich thickness of the hot French press coffee, cold brew coffee is surprisingly less bitter and has a great deal less acidity. This forces different facets, notably the softer background notes such as chocolate or molasses, of the beans used into the foreground: despite growing up to love dark roasts like a true Chicagoan, I find that I really enjoy the subtleties of a lighter "breakfast blend" coffee more via the cold-brewing process.

While the uncommon flavor of cold brew coffee is enticing on its own, cold brew coffee possesses another unique quality as far as types of coffee are concerned: cold brew coffee is just as good immediately following preparation as after a week in the fridge. Definitely wins points with me solely on the basis of its providing me a quality coffee option if I have only a minute before I need to be out the door, and yes, this means that even the girl who previously swore that iced coffee was a mortal sin enjoys this drink both hot and cold.

Cold brew coffee

Ingredients:

• 14 tablespoons of ground coffee (a fresh medium to coarse grind is ideal)
• 4 eight-ounce cups filtered or spring water
• Milk (optional)

Preparation:

1. In a jar, stir together the coffee and 4 eight-ounce cups of water. Cover and let rest at room temperature overnight or for twelve hours.
2. Strain through a mesh filter. (If you really don't like the slightly thicker texture, you can strain through something even finer, such as a cheesecloth.)
3. In a large glass, mix roughly equal parts coffee concentrate and water to taste. For a richer taste, add milk instead of water. The coffee can be heated, poured over ice, or drank at roughly room temperature.

Yields 32 ounces of delicious, cold brew coffee.