DON’T CALL THEM CHIPS

DON’T CALL THEM CHIPS

Don’t call them chips because they don’t contain potatoes, and that’s not even news: the term potato chips has become part of our language to imply slice of potato, usually fried: a package of potato chips as stated in Garzanti

The Georgofili Academy attributes its invention to George Speck, also known as George Crum based on the legend that wealthy financier Cornelius Vanderbilt one day sent back a plate of fries three times dissatisfied with the cooking. So Crum cuts the potatoes into wafer-thin slices and fries them until they are so crisp that they cannot be eaten with a fork, and seasons them with lots of salt.

Later George Crum opened his own restaurant and began marketing the fries, which, in 1920 would be packaged in pouches.

As children we knew them in the classic Pai bags and then in slang we continued to call chips other kinds of bagged snacks although they were composed of corn, cheese or other ingredients.

Similarly, when we were children, saying flour corresponded to referring to the product of grinding wheat

Instead, we now talk more about pseudo-grains and have come to the “new” protein flours, if we can call them that.

Various sites can be found that as an alternative to high-protein flours such as legume flour, for example, market flours made from dried grubs.

These are not urban legends, or even generalizations, it should be specified, but ingredients that are specifically stated in the labeling.

With one of these flours, “chips” have been produced, but perhaps they should be called something else, don’t call them chips.

What would be an appropriate name in your opinion?

Do you think you will eat any kind of food with these flours?

Is the feeling of annoyance that I personally feel only a psychological question?

According to a survey by Coldiretti dated May 2021 following approval by of Europe to the marketing of insect-based foods, 54% of Italians consider insects foreign to their food culture.

Are you in favor?
Is this just a protein like any other to you?

BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD

BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD

Before the coffee gets cold is the first of Toshikazu Kawaguchi川口俊和 trilogy best sellers, we had already talked about it here

While reading it, I also found a nice description about the now famous siphon coffee

The author describes a depression coffee pot, however I don’t really like the word “depression” combined with the coffee pot, which instead represents a small happy moment.

In any case, the ritual is told like this:

Nagare poured hot water into a lower cruet, then brought it to a boil to allow it to rise through the siphon into the upper cruet, where he poured ground coffee, which was then filtered back into the lower cruet.

Coffee plays a very important role in the stories told in Before the coffee gets cold, stories touching deep inside.

If you had the chance to say something that you should have told or would have wanted to say, in a moment that has already fled away, however, what would it be?

I know, it’s getting very personal here, because these thoughts are generally dedicated to the affections.

Feel free to share whatever you want.

In the meantime, I would also propose a fantasy variant, somewhat keep calm style …

Such as pointing out to Michael Stipe that R.E.M.’s decision “to stop being a band” caused a loss for the music.

Or, still about Japan, asking Sofia Coppola if she foresaw how much Lost in Translation fans would not let the whispering “come between” them and the curiosity of discovering Bill Murray’s words in Scarlett Johansson‘s ear.

Or just thank Meryl Streep now and always for showing the world that true Beauty has no canons, and that producing King Kong should have presupposed knowledge of the important underlying message about who the real monsters are.

All this only ever before the coffee gets cold

I must acknowledge the undoubtedly brilliant idea of the author, who among other things made an unusual choice for the context: in the book itself he tells us that

coffee arrived in Japan in the Edo period, towards the end of the 17th century. At first it did not satisfy Japanese taste buds, and it was certainly not considered a pleasant drink, but then again it was not surprising since it tasted like black, bitter water

Fortunately, things have since changed 🙂

What about you, did you love coffee right away or did you experience an evolution?

QR code

QR code

Let me introduce the KCDC QR code aka the Keep Calm & Drink Coffe QR code!

In the hope that it will be useful in some way, I hope to be able to spread it in a sensible way, of course as always advice is welcome 🙂

QR code is short for Quick Response and is basically a bar code on steroids. While the bar code stores information horizontally, the QR code does so both horizontally and vertically.

How?

In the case of barcodes, information can only be encoded in the transverse direction i.e., in one dimension, while in the case of 2D codes, information can be encoded in both transverse and longitudinal directions i.e., in two dimensions.

But it is more difficult for scanners to recognize the position of a 2D code than that of a bar code.

Based on this idea, a position detection pattern was created, located at the three corners of each code.

To avoid false recognition, the position detection pattern must have a unique shape.

Members of the development team began an exhaustive investigation of the relationship between black and white areas in images and characters printed on flyers, magazines, corrugated cardboard and other documents after reducing them to patterns with black and white areas.

Thus identifying the ratio that appeared least on the printed:1:1:3:1:1.

In this way, the widths of the black and white areas in the location detection pattern were determined, and the scanners became able to detect the code regardless of the scanning angle by finding this unique ratio.

But who composed this development team?

To find out, we need to take a step back: in the 1980s the barcode system was used in a wide range of industries, including manufacturing, distribution, and retail.

In the 1990s due to the shift from mass production of one type of product to more flexible production, more detailed production control was needed at production sites, and in association with this, the development of a bar code with a higher capacity was needed.

In 1992, Masahiro Hara 原正浩, who was engaged in the development of barcode readers and OCR optical character recognition devices at Denso, was asked to develop bar code readers that could read bar codes faster.

In addition, products were being increasingly resized, so it was necessary to create a code that could be printed in a smaller area.

After a year and a half from the start of the development project, following much trial and error, the QR Code system was successfully developed, capable of storing about 7,000 digits with the additional capability of encoding Kanji characters.

This code can store a large amount of information and at the same time can be read at over 10 times the speed of other codes.

Mine, however, keeps coffee time, try it to believe 🙂

SMART CITY

SMART CITY

Smart City is a definition that recurs more and more often now.

Smart City is one of the main themes of civics hours in school.

But specifically how do you experience what smart offers in your city?

In your experience, can you tell of an actual improvement in the quality of your life, or is it all still ephemeral in your neck of the woods for now?

In the image I wanted to finally “offer” you a coffee in Piazza Ducale.

But the city of Vigevano offers many other experiences, including virtual ones.

On the City’s website you can check out a Vigevano Smart City dashboard with some options among which I would like to point out the live webcam

And when you decide to come and visit our ducal living room, you will have at your disposal these directions that offer the possibility of more information via QR code.

In the same vein, a “digital” bench was inaugurated.

Red, as red is the symbolic color against violence against women

The problem is that hand in hand should also be converted the education of citizens, who too often prove to be the exact opposite of smart.

A marker mark was enough to make the QR code illegible.

This tiny stroke actually emblematically represents a great trait that sets us apart, and likewise reveals the weakness on which what should be the future rests ….

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