Mick Schroeder

Chinese Curry Sauce with Tofu and Broccoli

Ingredients:

• 4 TBS flour
• 4 TBS vegetable oil
• 4 TSP curry powder
• 1/2 TSP chili powder (to taste)
• 1 TSP paprika
• 1 TBS tomato paste (or ketchup)
• Salt / Pepper (to taste)

Heat up the oil and add the flour to make a roux. Stir fry for about a minute so the flour taste gets cooked away and add the spices. Stir fry the spices but be very careful not to burn them. The key to cooking with spices is to cook them in the oil to imbue the oil with the flavors of the spices. Next add the tomato paste (or ketchup) and stir for a few seconds. Finally add the water in a step-wise manor to the desired saucey-ness. Most premixed curry powders already contain salt so add to taste. 

United States of Pharmacy

This is the first in a series of visualizations and tools i’m creating to empower independent pharmacists with the toolkit to determine the most optimal location to open a store or extend into new areas.

This is a heatmap of every single community pharmacy in the United States. As the colors change from green to yellow to red the concentration of pharmacies is higher. It is clear to see that the number of pharmacies in an area correlates to the population density.

How it was Made

As far as i know there is no freely accessible directory of pharmacies in the United States. Using different resources available on the internet I wrote a few datascrapping and screenscrapping scripts in python to scour the internet. After letting the scripts run for a few days, i found about 59,000 locations across the country which correlated well with the NACDS estimate.

Now, with a database of every pharmacy and address i used the Google Geocoding API and the Yahoo! Maps Geocoding API to convert the addresses to latitude and longitude points. Next, using the Google Maps API i loaded all the datapoints to create this image. The wonderful thing about this map is the fact that you can zoom all the way down to the precise location of any pharmacy in the United States. 

Whats Next?

I hope that by the time i am done with tools they will help independent pharmacists make better decisions on where to open stores or to reach out to patients in areas where pharmacists are not accessible.

Coastline S6 Slim CW Spruce QI Review

My new guitar is a Seagull Coastline S6 Slim CW Spruce QI from my local guitar shop the New Jersey Guitar and Bass Center and besides having ridiculously long names both the shop and the guitar itself are ridiculously awesome.

Look/ construction

This guitar follows the utilitarian philosophy— its beauty comes through in its materials, its simplicity and its sound. The solid spruce top and wild cherry sides/back are topped with a satin matte lacquer that allows the sound vibrations to ring freely and the natural beauty of the wood to show. The rosette and inlays are simple and complementary to the look of the guitar. The neck is made from silver leaf maple and is very fast and smooth. When you’re buying a guitar especially at this price range pay careful attention to the materials and where the guitar is made. If you see “made in china” or a laminated top please just put the guitar down and walk away. Seagull guitars are made in North America with solid wood tops. I had a lot of trouble finding guitars that fit that criteria in my price range. I got the “slim” neck but just to clarify “slim” in the seagull vernacular means “not wide” or in other words the neck is closer in width to other acoustics on the market. I have relatively small hands and had no trouble playing either size neck— its more a matter of preference rather than the size of your hands. In my opinion the “slim” seagull necks give a great balance of both worlds: wide enough for finger style and arpeggio but not to wide for easy chord formation and soloing. Again, play both sizes and see what fits your personal style/ preference better.

Sound/ Feel

Of course the main reason for buying a guitar is the sound and feel. I played no less than 30 guitars ranging from $1000 martins down to $200 no-namers and this guitar had the best sound and feel out of any of them. I’m able to slide up and down the neck easier than ever before— its super fast and smooth. The action is perfect; i played a bunch of cutaways where the action was so high below the 12th fret that it was almost impossible to even play down there. Alot of time the action depends on the setup of the guitar though— if you fall in love with one but the action is too high there are easy ways to ameliorate that. The spruce vs cedar top debate has been going on for ages. Every guitar player has their personal favorite. In my opinion cedar guitars always sound better in the stores but there are disadvantages to it over the long run. I’ve played 10 year old cedar guitars that just start to sound flat and dull after aging. Also, cedar is a much softer wood so it’ll dent and get marked up a lot easier over time. Spruce, on the other hand, may sound too bright at first in the showroom but will mellow out and sound better and better every year you play it.

Conclusion / Final Words

I really couldn’t be happier with this guitar. I overheard some wise advice recently.. he said “buy your second guitar first.” If you’re a beginner and just starting out at guitar the wisest thing you can do is invest in a nice instrument. Nothing is more difficult and frustrating than to learn on a crappy guitar. I promise if you invest in your first guitar it will make the process infinitely easier and more enjoyable and you won’t waste money when you want to buy your second guitar. With that said there are no guitars on the market that are a better value than seagulls (or others under the Godin brand) for beginners and experienced players alike.

A guide to add a 4th column to your iGoogle homepage:

1. Choose the dropdown arrow on the tab you want to add the 4th column to and hit “edit this tab” to access the settings

2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you see “Export / Import” 3. Click on the button where it says “Export.” A window will come up— press okay to save the file on your computer

4. Right click on the file and hit “open with” and choose your favorite text editor (notepad in windows or textedit on mac works fine)

5. find where it says this:

<Layout iGoogle:spec="THREE_COL_LAYOUT_1" />

6. Change where is says THREE to FOUR and save the file:

<Layout iGoogle:spec="FOUR_COL_LAYOUT_1" />

7. Now its just a matter of uploading the edited file so go back to the settings page hit “Browse…” find the file on your computer and hit “Upload” and finally hit “Save” to apply the new settings.

If everything worked you should see a new radio button under “Layout” that says “4 columns” like this and an extra column will appear to add your widgets to.

FastDial Theme for Firefox

FastDial is a firefox extension that will replace “about:blank” page with a page of thumbnails for your favorite websites. Right-click on any webpage and choose “Add to Fast Dial” from the context menu to add it to the FastDial page. All the default themes seemed flat and boring, and the included editor is not very powerful. I opened up the .CSS file for the themes and used some of the Mozilla CSS Extensions to add some nice effects such as gradients, borders, and shadows to spruce it up a bit. Unfortunatly, by modifying the .CSS file directly it breaks the ability to edit the colors in the preferences pane, but by editing the css file directly you can customize it to whatever color scheme you want.

To install: Right click on the FastDial page then go to “preferences > appearance > import”

To Download: Click Here (mick.zip)