del.icio.us Tuesday #1
I’ve known about social bookmarking services like del.icio.us for some time, as they keep coming up in some of the Web 2.0-related blogs I read a lot. But for a long time I didn’t really get it; why would I set up a del.icio.us account to do something that my browser’s bookmarks do just as well, and faster, and without having to rely on a web server somewhere else? But then with the help of this really good article, I finally got the point: social bookmarking lets me use other people’s bookmarks to add to my own, and I might discover something cool by searching a tag I share with another person that I’d never find on my own. Plus, it’s nice to have my bookmarks on an off-site web server so that I can use and add to them from home as well as from the 2-3 locations I frequent at work.
When the lightbulb finally came on, I started a del.icio.us account and have become somewhat addicted to adding sites to it. This article is the first installment of a weekly feature where I highlight one of the sites from my ever-expanding list of del.icio.us links. First up:
Cooking for Engineers (http://www.cookingforengineers.com/)
Cooking for Engineers is a cooking site (imagine!) with the detail-oriented geek in mind. All the measurements are in MKS units rather than tablespoons and cups. The recipes — and there are many of those — are formatted as little Gantt charts, which makes so much sense to those with a little operations research exposure, it’s scary. There are experiments — for example, comparing the results of cooking bacon by frying, broiling, or microwaving. Think of it as Alton Brown taken to his logical extreme. (AB is, by the way, my hero; I find that a disturbing amount of my classroom pedagogy is based on how he operates on Good Eats.) If you enjoy cooking but long for a more scientific approach — check it out.
** Update: OK, not all of the measurements are in MKS units, but a lot of them are. I suppose it makes more sense to talk about a “slice” of lemon than 50g of lemon. Also, I forgot to mention that most recipes have nice digital photos posted at every critical stage of the recipe to show you what it’s supposed to look like, which is hugely useful for visual types like myself.
