The original meatball recipe mandates for bread crumbs, but this is a bad idea if your target is a very low calorie diet. Instead, we will be using some veggies to add to the meatball’s quantity and to achieve 200 calories for this dish.

Ingredients (for 1)
* 50 gr fat-free veal ground meat (50 cals)
* 120 gr diced tomatoes in a can (25 cals)
* 30 grams of Ronzoni pasta (100 cals)
* 50 gr mushrooms (10 cals)
* 50 gr zuchini (10 cals)
* 2 sprays of 0 calorie non-stick spray (0 calories)
* 1 onion
* 1 clove of garlic
* a bit of parsley
* salt & pepper

Execution
1. Finally chop the onion, garlic, parsley, zuchini and mushrooms. Their pieces must be very small (alternatively, you can blend them).
2. In a big salad bowl place the veal ground meat and sprinkle salt & pepper on it.
3. Add the ingredients from step 1 and start work it with your hands until the mixture seems to be as one. Create small balls.
4. Cook the pasta according to its package directions.
5. In another pan, spray twice with the non-stick spray and stir-fry your meatballs until slightly brown. Then, add the tomato sauce and a cup of water.
6. Stir a few times, cook until the meatballs are cooked through and the tomato sauce is thickened. Serve hot along side the pasta.

This fresh string-beans dish (in Greek: fasolakia, hear it) only has 100 calories, but if you prefer it with a bit more substance you can add 90 gr of either fat-free chicken breast or beef sirloin (in small pieces) to cook together with the following ingredients. If you add the suggested meat, expect 200 calories out of the dish.

Ingredients (for 1)
* 100 gr fresh long beans (20 calories)
* 55 gr of a peeled potato (50 cals)
* 1 medium-size tomato (25 cals)
* 1 onion (5 cals)
* salt and pepper to taste

Execution
1. With a kitchen knife cut and throw away the two edges of each bean (its “tails”). Wash the beans and potato.
2. Cut the potato in small cubes. Finally-chop the onion and tomato (or use a cheese grater for the tomato).
3. In a pan under medium heat add all ingredients and 2-3 cups of water. Stir a few times.
4. Cover the pan and let it simmer until the veggies have cooked through and the tomato sauce is thickened. Serve hot.

My lunch today.

You feel hungry but you don’t want to go over your calorie target for the day? Here’s a quick snack/meal that it’s really easy and fast to cook, it has enough quantity to stop your hunger and it’s only 70 calories. From the original Spanakoryzo (spinach and rice) Greek recipe the only thing that’s missing is the olive oil.

Ingredients (for 1)
* 15 gr basmati rice (50 cals)
* 80 gr spinach leafs (20 cals)
* 1/4 of a lemon

Execution
1. Medium-heat 1 cup of water in a pan and add the rice in it.
2. Wash the spinach and add it in the pan too. Squeeze the lemon on top.
3. Cook until most of the juice has evaporated and the rice has cooked through. Serve hot or cold.

My snack this afternoon…

OpenSuSE will come out with a new KDE menu, to replace the old (terrible) default KDE menu system. What I don’t understand though is why create this new KDE menu altogether when Novell has already spent money in usability studies and have come up with this instead. I mean, think about it. This is pretty much the same functionality, but in different layout.

So why recreate the same things with different layouts? Are the KDE users so much different than the Gnome ones that expect a different or more complex experience? Or is it simply a case where KDE SuSE engineers don’t communicate with the Gnome (see: Ximian) SuSE engineers and they don’t do their usability studies together or collaborate?

You see, it’s very difficult for me to think that both implentations can be right (or wrong). They can’t both be right for the majority of THEIR users (that’s where a marketing study should take place too). There is always a default implementation that it’s best for most of their users (not for all of course, but you can always get an idea of what your users expect). So why the same company offers two solutions for the exact same problem?

It would have been much cheaper and logical to continue the study of “the best menu system we can come up with”, and then implement the SAME menu system for both KDE and Gnome. No, this is not a case of “having a choice” or that “kde is not gnome”. This is a case of engineering resources going to waste. The current situation is puzzling to me from the financial, usability and communication point of view inside Novell.

“A maths genius who won fame last week for apparently spurning a million-dollar prize is living with his mother in a humble flat in St Petersburg, co-existing on her £30-a-month pension, because he has been unemployed since December.”

This is just sad. I hope a western institute could take care of his financials for a while and employ him.

I honestly don’t understand the ancient Romans (was watching some documentaries this evening). How is it possible to advance so much in technology, art and education and prosper even more and yet, to become a heartless, sell-endulging blood-seeking barbarian… It doesn’t make any sense to me.

“Calling their lives blessed, more than a dozen young women and girls from polygamist families in Utah spoke at a rally Saturday, calling for a change in state laws and the right to live their life and religion.”

Personally I do not agree with polygamy. While humans are by nature polygamists, from the moment you decide to actually get married, you should do it with one person only. You can’t create something beautiful and unique if you have to share yourself within 2 and 3 or 4 partners.

I could never, ever, share my JBQ with someone else. I would walk away (without a fight) if another woman was brought to our lives. I like exclusivity. And I much dislike most women anyway.

I was watching a documentary about alien abductions in the Discovery Channel this evening and they explained the phenomena by citing “sleep paralysis“. This kind of abnormal state is known to many cultures under different names. In the middle ages they would say that a demon or a witch was sitting on the stomach of people while sleeping and wouldn’t let them move. In the part of Greece I am from the old ladies are calling it “mora” (in greek: µώρα). Supposedly, it’s a black heavy thing that’s sitting on top of you, you can’t shake it away and you can’t breath. My mother had the experience once, years ago (around 1986 if I remember correctly).

While I am not a (strong) supporter of the alien abduction theory, I must say that the sleep paralysis explanation is not always the best one. On all cultures that identify sleep paralysis one way or another, they always describe the same experience: a thing or creature sitting on top or next to you for a few seconds before you regain control of your movement and breath. But in the alien abduction cases things are much more complicated than this: the subject is moving through walls and in the air, transported in a spaceship and gets undergone all sorts of medical painful exams for hours. The subject can’t move, but he can breath without a problem. And in some cases they can see other humans there too. Obviously, this is not the same thing…

However, the two problems I have with the alien abduction theory are:
1. It’s not proven that hypnosis can recover true memories. This would be so easy to prove (you just need one subject and two hypnotists, one creating the forgotten memory and the other one retrieving it), and yet no one did such an experiement. This is why I even emailed… the Mythbusters last year about it, but no luck with them either. Carrying out such an easy experiement could put lots of doubts to rest…
2. Why is it mostly Americans who think they’re abducted? What’s so special about them? It’s kinda funny actually…

Our friend Michael Oryl of MobileBurn just published his Sanyo Katana phone review and posted a picture of how its Netfront 3.1 renders OSNews. Thanks Michael!

One major pain in the rear for web developers –especially mobile ones– is finding the capabilities of a device. For cellphones there is WURFL, however this solution has its own problems and it’s slow. For other types of devices, like desktop browsers, embedded systems ones or gaming devices, there is no way to detect what they can do and what they can’t. Here is how user agents should have been required to be:

A cellphone example (sorry for the bad formatting):
Nokia:Cellphone; java:MIDP-2.0; platform:Series40-3.01; model:7260; browser:UP.Browser-7.2.6; res:176×220; abilities:CSS-2,XHTML-MP-1,WML-1.3.1,HTML-4.01,ssl.js-1.1; media:svg,jpg,png,gif,mobile-flash-1.0; language:en; other:[up to 64 characters where the device can clarify more if required];

A desktop example:
Apple:PC; java:jre-5.0.4; browser:Firefox-2.01; model:Macintosh; platform:MacOSX-10.4.9; res:1024×768; abilities:CSS-2,XHTML-1,HTML-4.01,ssl,js-1.3; media:svg,jpg,png,gif,bmp,mid,wav; language:el; other:flash-9,quicktime-7;

An embedded example:
Nokia:Embedded; java:none; browser:Opera-9.0.2; model:770; platform:Linux-2.6.18.3,Maemo-2.2; res:800×480; abilities:CSS-3,XHTML-1,HTML-4.01,ssl,js-1.2; media:jpg,png,gif,mid,wav; language:fr; other:none;

There is no reason to actually require listing of external plugins (e.g. quicktime or flash), only what the browser itself can do by default. The above information is enough to get your content optimized for each reader, and it’s super important information for mobile web developers. Sure, you don’t get info if a specific attribute or CSS property is supported, but you get a good idea about how to layout or direct your content to.

On a related note, today we celebrate the first time in history where a Nintendo Wii Opera browser hit the mobile version OSNews. (update: oops, I meant the DS)