Welcome to this week's edition of our Friday Quality Linkage column. Please enjoy this week’s collection of interesting and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee, find a comfortable place, and relax.
Steaks Fried in Ale — A Recipe from The Art of Cookery »
In this video, Jon Townsend of the always-delightful Townsends YouTube channel recreates what sounds like a tasty recipe from The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, an 18th-century cookbook that was basically the Joy of Cooking of its time (and is still used today as a reference for food research and historical reconstruction).
Definitely going to try making this dish.
Letter of Recommendation: Rodney Dangerfield »
Alex Halberstadt wrote a superb love letter about the career of legendary comedian Rodney Dangerfield for The New York Times Magazine:
Imagine having no talent. Imagine being no good at all at something and doing it anyway. Then, after nine years, failing at it and giving it up in disgust and moving to Englewood, N.J., and selling aluminum siding. And then, years later, trying the thing again, though it wrecks your marriage, and failing again. And eventually making a meticulous study of the thing and figuring out that, by eliminating every extraneous element, you could isolate what makes it work and just do that. And then, after becoming better at it than anyone who had ever done it, realizing that maybe you didn’t need the talent. That maybe its absence was a gift.
Here's the (mildly NSFW) clip mentioned at the end of the article, featuring Dangerfield making Johnny Carson laugh hysterically on The Tonight Show in 1979:
The Humanity Star »
The Rocket Lab's most recent launch included a secret payload: the Humanity Star, a highly reflective geodesic sphere satellite that "blinks" brightly enough to be visible to the naked eye in the night sky. In their words, it's “designed to encourage everyone to look up and consider our place in the universe.”
For the next nine months — the approximate lifetime of its orbit — everyone on Earth will have a handful of chances to see it from wherever they are. You can track the satellite's appearances for your location, per their FAQ:
You can track the Humanity Star’s location at www.TheHumanityStar.com to find out when it will be overhead and visible in your region. Depending on where the Humanity Star’s is in its orbital path, it may be months before it is clearly visible in your part of the world.
As the Humanity Star experiences drag from the atmosphere at the lowest point in its orbit, the satellite will slow down creating a slight alteration in the orbital path. For this reason, any predicted pass times more than three days away will only be a general anticipated time, rather than exact viewing times. The farther the anticipated pass time, the less accurate it will be, so check the tracker as the time gets closer for a more accurate calculation. Once a pass is within 24 hours, the accuracy of the Humanity Star’s position will be refined to minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DymEcvMptUU
Breakfast in Groundhog Day is Both Heaven and Hell »
Groundhog Day 2018 is here, and Abbey Bender of Extra Crispy — which, again, is an excellent website name — gives a bit of perspective on the use of breakfast as a kind of philisophical barometer in one of the greatest films:
The meal is a consistent part of Phil’s philosophical journey, and mirrors his emotional peaks and valleys—breakfast here can be utilitarian, even despairing, but we also see it become unabashedly decadent. […] The predicament at the heart of Groundhog Day allows Phil to try every breakfast he could possibly want, and ultimately leaves him more appreciative of the meal’s meditative potential.
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue »
Mildly NSFW for language.
The Public Domain Review is a donation-funded online journal dedicated to the exploration and curation of strange and surprising curiosities found within the vast archive of public domain works. For example, they shone a light on Francis Grose's 1785 book, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, a compendium of slang and...shall we say, colorful epithets.
Some of the slang is actually still around today, and I could see other examples that have fallen out of favor making a comeback, such as:
Kittle pitchering — to disrupt the flow of a “troublesome teller of long stories” by constantly questioning and contradicting unimportant details, especially at the start (best done in tandem with others)
...and:
Eternity box — a coffin
See also: A Dictionary of Victorian Slang
How to Wake Up Early »
In this 2013 video, writer and leadership speaker Robin Sharma recommends waking up at 5am every morning to boost your productivity, as well as some tips and tricks on starting your early-rise habit. My own natural tendency is more night owl than early bird, but I do agree with this 2011 post by our own editor-in-chief Shawn Blanc:
There is something magical about the early morning. It’s a time when the world belongs to only those few who are awake. And we walk around like kings while others remain unseen in their beds.
Photos: Sebastiaan de With
The Power of RAW on iPhone, Part 2: Editing RAW »
Sebastiaan de With wrote an excellent followup to his first article about handling RAW photography on iPhone. He covers how to get the most out of RAW files you shoot on iPhone, including his own editing tools of choice and a bunch of tips on making great edits of your own.:
You can get a lot more out of your iPhone camera by shooting RAW and learning a bit about editing.
Don’t go overboard: Make sure you have somewhat of a vision of where you want to go with your edits, then dive into apps on your iPhone or Mac / PC to adjust your shots.There’s a wealth of tools that are available to you: experiment a little, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly you get familiar with editing photos and getting great results.
- Further reading: Check out our Sweet Setup reviews of the best photo editing apps for iPhone and for Mac, respectively.
Neat Stuff We Published This Week
- Guide: "Nonessential (But Still Cool) Kitchen Gear"
- Ceramic spice grinders from a classic kitchenware company: Le Creuset MG610 Salt and Pepper Mill Set
- Write in a phenomenally deep shade of purple: Uni-ball Signo DX Gel Pen in Lavender Black
- Covertly keep hair from clogging your bathtub drain: TubShroom Bathtub Hair Catcher
- Playfully geometric trivet: TOMA Objects “Inside Out” Wood Trivet
- A drone that flies like a bird: XTIM BB1 Bionic Bird Deluxe Drone
Got any suggestions for articles, videos, stories, photographs, and any other links you think we should be posting in our weekly Quality Linkage? Please do let us know on Twitter.