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August 2010

August 28, 2010

Recipes Are Like Children

Your recipes are not your recipes.
They are the sons and daughters of Food's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

                                           With apologies to Kahlil Gibran

Watching the International Food Blogger Conference online is bittersweet this year. I sold my ticket 24 hours before the conference started when it became obvious it just wasn't going to work out for me this year. Fortunately for those of us who wanted to go but couldn't, there are livestreams of conferences and blog posts are already starting to pop up. Better, there is the twitterstream (The hashtag is #ifbc if you want to follow along.)

One of the sentiments that was being tossed around on twitter today can be summed up as: "Adjusting a recipe doesn't make it yours"

Without going deeply into the legalities of recipe copyright, which are rather straightforward compared to the conversation around them, here's how it works. Ingredients lists are not protected but "substantial literary expression" in the descriptive text and steps is, as are collections of recipes such as cookbooks. This means that if you rewrite the steps, you can republish the recipe without giving credit to anyone. Technically.

Ethically, this gets really muddy. Someone once said "if you change three ingredients it is a new recipe." Somebody was making this up as she went along, and a whole lot of people heard and believed her. There is at least one prominent food blog claiming all recipes are originals that operates under this credo and last I looked, never credits inspiration or source. sigh

In my view, recipes are like children. I 'own' mine while they live at home in my cookbook or website, but once they mature and move out on their own...not so much.

If they get a chive mohawk or pierce their noses, well, that's their thing. I'd appreciate it if there was a shoutout to me - sort of like keeping the family name after marriage - but own them? Nah.

Take my recipes. Please. Use them. Tweak them to make them yours. Just give me a backlink, okay?

How about you: Do you write or adapt recipes? Where do your draw your lines?

August 13, 2010

Twitter, twitter, twitter...I do not care who else follows them...

Another day, another Div to block. This is starting to feel like Whack-a-mole.

Here's the filter for you AdBlocking kids:

twitter.com##DIV.followed-by

If you are using a stylesheet, open it up add this to it:

.followed-by {

     display:none

}

#followed-by {

     display:none

}

If you need the long version of the instructions, go here: Twitter Hovercards Die.die.die 

Okay, twitter. What's next?

August 12, 2010

Talk to me about Facebook...

Now that I have thrashed twitter into shape just a bit, Facebook is next on my radar. I am not, however, a huge Facebook user and we've already determined I don't know what everyone hates so I am turning to you...

What bits of content do you hate?

What would you hate to lose?

Look at the right sidebar - what is you had the labels like "Events" and an All button but no content? Then you could expand the headings but it would be a tight list otherwise.

Or do you just want the right sidebar gone entirely and have a wider content column in the center?

What else?

Twitter Hovercards: Die.die.die

Figuring out how to disable Twitter's recommended users to follow feature was so much fun, I thought I'd do it again. From my quick poll, hovercards seem to top the list of next most hated twitter feature. IN case you don't now, hovercards are those little popups that come up when you mouse over an avatar on a twitter page. I wouldn't have thought they were next on the list, but what the hell do I know?

There are a few more tweaks in the wings -- Facebook and I have been tussling -- so I decided that rather than go through all the add-ons and such, I am going to do most of this with stylesheets. This will make the inevitable updates a bit easier to manage for all of us.

Except for AdBlock Plus  which I use and will probably continue to add instructions for - just because if I am going to do it for me, I can share. (and Chrome/AdBlock for this one time because it was there and simple...)

If I might be allowed a moment of self-indulgence, I'd also like to thank everyone for the response to the post on Removing twitter's recommended users to follow feature. I am totally blown away by all the love and sweet things you are saying. Seriously. (I'd also like to thank dunny for being the first to suggest and test the hypercards tweak; he also sat on the fix for 24 hours waiting patiently for me to post it. Thanks, dunny!)

Here goes, Ad Blockers first, stylesheets after... All of it after the jump.

Continue reading "Twitter Hovercards: Die.die.die" »

August 05, 2010

Removing Twitter's Recommended User to Follow "Feature"

waves at all the shiny new people

Hi, Internet! I must admit, I am sort of stunned at the response to this post. I thought if the lists annoyed me, there must be a few others out there who agreed. A few. That's my understatement for the decade. Thanks to all of you for the tweets, retweets, kind words - being called 'awesome sauce' isn't bad for the ego - and general sharing of this tweak. I'm doubly pleased because I love whipping stupid applications into line, it's sort of a hobby of mine.

For those of you who are new, here are a few highlights: simple, flaky biscuit recipe (#1 on Google!), a no-cook ice cream recipe (yes, with eggs)), and one of my favorites, Dear PETA, women are animals too... I also have a brand new site, Not Like Normal People, that you might want to check out. Oh yeah, see that ad on the top of the sidebars? Apparently I wrote a cookbook, too. (Much as I love sharing the tweaks, this self-promotional stuff is killing me but a friend sent mail and threatened to hack my site and do this if I didn't do it myself.)

Thanks again for coming by to snag the browser tweaks, I'm really, really happy to share!

Do you hate those recommendations from twitter as much as I do? Rhetorical question, I know. It seems to be the new thing to hate - and with good reason this time. It just recommended I follow someone who blocked me when I wrote Cook's Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knife Roll. Last straw, much?

I decided there must be a way to kill the suckers. You know what? There is a reason they call me Application Goddess. Done in 12 minutes. Take that, twitter.

Want to know how? Here you go, in all my technical author, bullet listed, click-on-sh*t glory. Scroll down for Internet Explorer, Chromium, Chrome, Safari (yes on Macs, too) and Opera! Oddly, the div ma,es didn't always work exactly the same in the different browsers, so if you find something that isn't quite right, please let me know.

Edited to add these links:

Twitter Hovercards: Die.die.die - How to get rid of the popups on twitter avatars.

Twitter, twitter, twitter...I do not care who else follows them... - Remove this list.

Twitter, twitter, twitter...I also do not care who we both follow...... - this is down temporarily because they are changing it around...back shortly...

Talk to me about Facebook... - What bits do you love, hate, use, not? Let's chat...

Lots of steps for lots of browsers after the jump...

Continue reading "Removing Twitter's Recommended User to Follow "Feature"" »

August 04, 2010

Wordless Wednesday: Aprons That Make Me Smile

Apron
 

This apron remind me of my grandmother, Mimi, who favored aprons with a bit of panache, her own mix of cheek and frills. As a child, this meant fun dressup worthy aprons when I went to her house to cook, which I did quite often, She would also have loved this black hostess number. Because, seriously, black hostess aprons . How Mad Men is that?

Check out all of tarazara's Vintage Inspired Aprons on etsy.

Dear FTC: re: blogger disclosure  ~  Tara is a friend of mine, but nothing of value has changed hands in relationship to this post. She has, however, given me many things of value over the years: advice, well-placed humor, support, an occasional virtual smack upside the head, and mostly friendship...but since it has pretty much all taken place online, I assume the NSA already knows all about that.

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