15992054
submission
jsuda writes:
You've got to have a lot of confidence and nerve to write and try to sell a nearly 400 page book on cooking to the take-out pizza and cola set. No cookbook is likely to turn many geeks into chefs or take them away from their computer screens. However, even though "Cooking for Geeks" contains a large number of recipes, it is not a conventional cookbook but a scientific explanation of the how and why of cooking which will certainly appeal to that group, as well as to cooking professionals and intellectually curious others.
The author is a geek himself and brings “geek-like” approaches to the subject matter – deep intellectual curiosity, affinity for details, appreciation of problem solving and hacking, scientific method, and a love of technology. What is even better is his filtering of cooking concepts by a computer coder’s framework, analogizing recipes to executable code, viewing of ingredients as inputs and as variables, running processes over and over in a logical manner to test and improve outcomes. This is not a mere literary shoe-horning of cooking concepts into a coder’s framework but an ingenuous approach to the topics that should loudly resonate with geeks.
The subject matter includes selecting and using kitchen and cooking hardware; prepping inventory; calibrating equipment (especially your oven, using sugar); understanding tastes and smells; the fundamental difference between cooking and baking (and the personality types which gravitate to one form or the other); the importance of gluten and the three major types of leavening (biological, chemical, and mechanical); the types of cooking; using time and temperatures; how to use air as a tool; the chemistry of food combinations; and very thorough and detailed discussions of food handling and safety. The book is organized into seven chapters and includes an appendix dealing with cooking for people with allergies. The recipes are indexed in the front of the book.
The major conventional flavor types of salt, sugar, acids, and alcohol have been supplemented by modern industrial elements – E- Numbered (a Dewey decimal system-like index) additives, colloids, gels, foams, and other yummy things! All are itemized, charted, and explained in the chapter entitled “Playing with Chemistry.” A whole chapter (and an interview with mathematician, Douglas Baldwin) is devoted to the latest and greatest food preparation technique –sous vide– cooking food in a temperature-controlled water bath.
Threaded through the sections are short sidebar interviews of mostly computer and techie types who are serious cooks or involved in the food industry. Some of these contributors are Adam Savage (of Myth Busters fame) on scientific technique, Tim O’Reilly (CEO of the book’s publisher) on scones and jam, Nathan Myhrvold, on Moderist cuisine, and others. Other interviews deal with taste sensitivities, food mysteries, industrial hardware, pastry chef insights, and many more. There is an insightful section just on knives and how to use and care for them.
Anyone who is interested in cooking will learn from this book. I now pay attention to things I’ve never heard of before: browning methods like caramelization and the Maillard processes, savory as a major taste, transglutaminase (a.k.a. meat glue), for example. There is stuff I didn’t really want to know – “if you’ve eaten fish you’ve eaten worms.”
Although one of the strengths of the book is the systematic organization, there are useful tips spread throughout. For example, keeping a pizza stone permanently in your oven will help even out heat distribution; storing vegetables correctly requires knowing whether they admit ethylene gas or not (a chart is included); you can test your smell sensitivity profile by using a professional scratch and sniff test kit obtainable from the University of Pennsylvania. Whatever specialized information not contained in the book is referenced to external sources, especially on the Internet.
If all of this is not stimulus enough for the geek crowd, how about learning how you can spectacularly kill yourself cooking with dry ice, liquid nitrogen, blowtorches, and especially an electrocuted hotdog. Cool! This is mad scientist stuff. Engineering-minded types can learn how to make their own ice cream machine from Legos. You’ll also learn how NOT to kill your guests with bacteria and other toxins.
The production is nicely done with easily readable text, plentiful drawings and charts, color captions, and many other quality production features. Weights are based in both grams and US volume-based measurements.
(FTC disclosure (16 CFR Part 255): The reviewer has accepted a reviewer's copy of this book which is his to keep. He intends to provide an honest, independent, and fair evaluation of the book in all circumstances.)
528562
submission
jsuda writes:
Wikipedia, the free access online encyclopedia to which anyone can contribute,
is a remarkable achievement. Started only in 2001, it now comprises over 9 million
articles is written in over 250 languages, and is the first choice for reference
material for millions of Internet users. Despite criticisms by some for the variable
quality of its material, the value of the contributions of tens of thousands of
unpaid volunteers is enormous, not only in notable and verified content accessible
to the vast majority of the worlds population in their native languages,
but in the opportunity for everyone to contribute to this repository of knowledge
in his or her own way (subject to the review and editing of others just like themselves.)
More importantly, in my view, is the model it represents in human collaboration
efforts, this one in creating a repository of knowledge, but applicable more broadly
to other efforts. Besides merely creating enormously useful things, the collaborative
efforts result in a community of people and groups which has its own intrinsic
values. Imagine thousands of volunteers committing their personal time and effort
into a nonhierarchical, consensus-based collaboration having as its selfless main
purpose the improvement of human society. Socialism at its best! It seems to me
that the model may be useful in areas of politics, management and administration,
education, and other social endeavors.. The Open-Source software movement, predating
Wikipedia, operates in much the same way. Perhaps the earliest example of this
collaborative model was the developmental years of the Internet.
As a casual user of Wikipedia, I had no idea of the nature of the Wikipedia project
(and its sister projects Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource,
Wikispecies, Wikinews, and Wikiversity and no doubt others yet to come)
until I read Wikipedia: the Missing Manual, by John Broughton. He
is an experienced Wikipedia editor with over 15,000 edits to his credit and is
the creator of the Editors Index to Wikipedia which lists
every reference page on Wikipedia as well as other off site pages with information
useful for serious Wikipedia editors. Wikipedia: the Missing Manual
is an extremely thorough guide to creating and editing Wikipedia articles. The
book is intended to help train new writers and editors and to improve the skills
and knowledge of existing participants.
Broughton encourages people to join the Wikipedia community of researchers, fact
checkers, and proofreaders. This community seems to be made up of committed, skilled,
and serious people who take great pride in the project. There is little organizational
hierarchy involved and a minimum of formal participatory rules, but a large set
of informal mores and practices which help maintain production, efficiency, civility,
and quality. There is always a need for more articles, although of the thousands
created every day, nearly one half of them are deleted within 24 hours by attentive
editors for a number of reasons explained in the book.
The book starts with an introduction to the basic principles of the Wikipedia
project involving notability, credibility, balance, consensus, and good faith
and moves quickly into the process of registering with Wikipedia, setting up a
user account, and starting out practicing writing, previewing, and saving edits.
In six parts and 21 chapters, the book covers how to document sources, set up
an editors account, and personal workspaces, create new articles, use page
histories, monitor changes, and dealing with vandalism and spam. It explains the
value of collaborating with other editors and participants in creating and editing
articles and in special Wiki Projects and other group efforts. There are several
chapters describing how to deal with the inevitable conflict between editors and
explains the Wikipedia editing mores of civility, ethics, legality (mostly copyright
issues), and efficiency. He explains why editors disagree, in what ways, and how
they resolve disputes. He also provides guidance on how disputes can be avoided
in the first place.
Separate chapters of the book detail how to work with article pages and sections,
tables, lists, markups and links, images and media, and categories. There are
descriptions of what makes a good article and what doesnt and there are
step-by-step tutorials on creating better articles and being systematic about
good editing practices. A most interesting feature of Wikipedia is its large collection
of free-to-use images, videos, sound clips, and other media in the Wikipedia Media
Commons area which is available for article use and for non-Wikipedia use by anyone
for any purpose.
Advanced topics include customizing your user account via preferences and skins
and using JavaScript and templates to facilitate efficiency. There is a short
20 page appendix for those people content with being mere users of Wikipedia and
learning how to get the most out of it. More involved users will benefit from
Appendix C which itemizes the huge amount of Wikipedia help, reference, coaching,
and other educational sources especially valuable for those determined to become
better editors or higher-level participants like administrators of Wikipedia.
The presentation is thorough and articulate. It covers basic and advanced editing
skills. Broughton frequently notes keyword search items and tips to be more productive
and efficient. The community norms demand attentive and educated participants.
Experience with coding is appreciated. The book has plenty of screenshots illustrating
the discussions of Wikipedia features. Most of the sections contain Notes and
Tips which provide more detailed explanations of features and an experienced editors
perspective to the prospective new editor as to how and why to do things. Broughton
is (perhaps unintentionally) inspiring about participating in the Wikipedia editor
community.
Although the book deserves great credit for its content and its tone a few problems
with the layout and design detract a bit. The layout is dense with graphics a
bit too tightly packed in with the text. Captions at the bottom of grayscale illustrations
occasionally refer to nonexistent color clues resulting in some confusion. The
density seems to reflect the nature of Wikipedia editing itself, which can be
very involved. But, rewarding.
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