Online Potato Chips

TIP OF THE DAY

Online Potato Chips

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/technology/circuits/15shop.html?pagewanted=all&position=

How Do They Fry Thee? Count the Ways

By MICHELLE SLATALLA

Published: January 15, 2004

IF you're susceptible to snack food, do not take the online tour of the Original Goods Potato Chips factory in Pennsylvania.

I started salivating at www.goodschips.com one day last week before I even got to the part where the thin slices of potatoes hit the conveyer belt. And then the description of the fryer proved too much for me: "When the potatoes first hit the hot oil, steam rises."

Before I knew it, I found my index finger twitching above the "Buy" button. A credit card number was all that stood between me and a case - in other words, nine bags of greasy, crispy, crunchy bliss.

I took a deep breath.

"Back away from the computer," I instructed my index finger.

In January, I don't want to buy much of anything. This is the daylight-starved month of ominous credit card bills. It's the month when I try to avoid confronting how much I spent in December and instead skulk under a blanket on the couch, lulled into a nap by football on the television. It's the month of evasion.

For this, I need potato chips. Preferably solace would come from some apocryphal chips from my youth, able to evoke lost childhood in a single, salty bite. Preferably such chips would emerge from an idiosyncratic family-owned factory with a recipe jealously guarded for four generations. Lard would be involved.

But sadly, I was handicapped by not growing up in the cradle of chip civilization, otherwise known as Pennsylvania. So for many years, I knew nothing of the world beyond nationally distributed brands. Then, by pure luck, I married a man from Reading and discovered, upon crossing the state line, the Pennsylvania Dutch Chip Belt. It's a marvelous snack food universe that is also a stronghold of the Cheez Waffie (with its haunting chemical aroma) and rightfully lauded for its rare understanding of the pretzel.

So last week, I went online to try to recapture the magic of those roadside gas stations and convenience stores where I first tasted Herr's hand-cuts, Grandma Utz's hand-cookeds and Original Goods originals.

The news I bring back is good. Although the potato chip is a fragile and delicate flower that tastes best when it is fresh and whose distribution area often is limited to a day's driving distance from where it is made, many of the more than 100 manufacturers nationwide have started to sell online. Shipping should not compromise the chip, so long as precautions are taken.

"You mainly need to be careful that a bag doesn't get punctured, because then the chips could go stale," said Jeremy Selwyn, who operates a snack-food review site, Taquitos.net. "Most chip companies are pretty conscious of the dangers."

So at sites like www.herrs.com, utzsnacks.com and www.martinschips.com (which sells a particularly good Bar-B-Q Waffle chip), I could satisfy my Pennsylvania snack food cravings for well under $20.

The proud emissaries of other regions are also online. At www.kitchncookd.com, I found Curry's Kitch'n Cook'd thick skins (cooked in peanut oil in the Shenandoah Valley). At mike-sells.com, I could find a variety of flavors from original to green onion from Ohio's venerable Mike-sell's Potato Chip Company (You need to phone Mike-sells to place an order through the Chipper Shipper program.)

British chips - excuse me, crisps - can even be procured online. Walkers Max Deep Ridge paprika flavor (described glowingly at Mr. Selwyn's site as "by far the best paprika chips I've tried," are sold at britishcornershop.co.uk. (The site would be worth a visit just for its wide selection of flavors of Pringles, which it describes as "crisps in a tube.")

Every chip has its own twist. Some are cooked in lard, others in peanut oil, still others in soybean oil. Proportions of salt, thickness of slice, temperature of oil. Each variation plays a role in determining flavor.

But of all chips, which is the perfect chip? This is a question that many have tried to answer since 1853, when the potato chip was invented by a Saratoga chef named George Crum in response to a diner's complaint that his potatoes weren't crispy enough.

"To get even, Crum sliced potatoes thin, deep-fried them, put salt on them and said, 'Here, take these,' " said Ann Wilkes, spokeswoman for the Snack Food Association. "I don't think he had a specific recipe, just boiling hot oil and salt."

Some would say that boiling hot oil and salt was enough. But for other snack food lovers, the potato chip's relatively recent foray into new and unusual flavors has been heralded as a renaissance.

These days, you can buy chip flavors that range from salt-and-pepper (at poorebrothers.com) to dill pickle (at www.olddutchfoods.com) to ketchup (from www.misterbee.com).

"Although it's a very saturated market, chip sales started to go even higher than normal a couple of years ago when you started seeing a lot of new flavors," Ms. Wilkes said.

The perfect chip? It remains a highly personal quest. For my husband, it's an Original Goods Original, which he swears "tastes like butter." For many who grew up in New Jersey's golden age, when trucks delivered tins of crisp chips to their homes, Charles Chips remain the ideal (they're still available, in 16-ounce tins, from www.vermontcountrystore.com for $16.95, and two refill bags cost $7.80). For Mr. Selwyn, Tim's Cascade Style hot jalape��hips remain a haunting memory (they're available at www.birdseyefoods.com).

As for me, I am unable to resist Cape Cod Chips' sea salt and vinegar chips. Although they're widely available in stores nationwide, it's a comfort to know they're also available online at capecodchips.com.

Mr. Selwyn recommended that I expand my chip repertory by purchasing regional brands when traveling.

"On a trip, I go crazy and hit every convenience store and supermarket I see,'' he said. "After a week, I'll come back with 40 or 50 bags."

"I've learned a few things about transporting them on airplanes, Mr. Selwyn said. "When air pressure goes down, the bags balloon and there's a chance they'll burst. So I've learned to put them in a cardboard box and to fill the box no more than three quarters full. Then they have room to grow."

Alas, these are necessary steps for the truly chip-committed, because many chip brands are still not available online. Someday they may be, because as Mr. Selwyn said, "If all the chip companies sold online, that would lead to a better world."

Or at least a vastly improved January.

Moving Around in a Word Document

TIP OF THE DAY

Moving Around in a Word Document

For those of you Word users who hate the mouse (or just prefer using the keyboard), here are the different ways you can jump around your Word document by using the keyboard.

• Press the Down Arrow key to move down one line in your document.
• Press the Up Arrow key to move up one line in your document.
• Hold down the Ctrl key and press the Up or Down Arrow to jump up or down a paragraph at a time.
• Press the PgDn key (or Page Down on some keyboards) to jump down the document one window at a time.
• Press the PgUp key (or Page Up on some keyboards) to jump up the document one window at a time.
• Press Ctrl+Home to jump to the beginning of a document.
• Press Ctrl+End to jump to the end of your document.

Source: Dummies.com

How Much RAM?

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HOW MUCH RAM?

When it comes to the term 'memory' in computers, it is important to understand the differences between storage memory (the hard drive) and working memory (RAM).

The storage portion of the equation determines how much stuff you can store in the computer, such as pictures, programs, or music files. Think of the hard drive as a refrigerator in your computer kitchen. The "how much" question has a simple "do the math" answer. Check to see how much free space your hard drive has by opening My Computer then right-clicking on your hard drive(s) and selecting Properties. This will generate a pie chart representation of your hard drive with the blue section representing used space and the free space is in purple.

If you can't maintain at least 10% free drive space, it may be time for a larger or second hard drive.

The working memory portion of the equation is referred to as Random Access Memory (RAM) and is volatile (anything stored in it is lost when the machine is shut down). Think of RAM as the mixing bowl in the computer kitchen.

Items are loaded in the mixing bowl from the refrigerator, so the larger the mixing bowl, the better. The entire process is certainly more complicated than this, but the basic concept is you can process more 'food' with more working space.

This translates to speed in computing, which is why RAM is generally referred to as the best 'bang-for-the-buck' upgrade for improving performance.

But how much is too much? That depends upon many variables including the type and version of your operating system, the manufacturer of and the specific components used on the motherboard, and most important, what programs you are running. 

In general terms for today's computers, don't settle for less than 64MB if using Windows 98 or earlier, 128MB of RAM if using Windows 2000 and 256MB if using Windows XP, and make sure the system has the ability to be upgraded with more, because you'll want more sooner than later. Trust me.

There is, however, a point of diminishing returns when it comes to RAM. If you want a more specific method of calculating your needs, there are a number of great resources available online from Crucial.com.

If you know what kind of motherboard you have and want to see how it performs with a specific processor and operating system and various amounts of RAM, check out their Memory Calculator. It will create a graphical chart that will show you actual performance specs with different levels of RAM for your specific configuration.

The information generated by the calculator is actual test data according to its creator Mike Sanor, who is also Tech Support Manager at Crucial.com.

"If you have a name brand computer and have no idea what kind of motherboard you have, you can download the free Belarc Advisor, which will give you the specific information necessary to use the Memory Calculator," according to Sanor.

If you just want a general overview of memory requirements based on what you use your computer for, you can refer to their chart.

And, if all of those options are too confusing, you can actually talk to an expert online and they will walk you through the process of determining the answer to the "How much?" question.
Source: Ken Colburn of Data Doctors

Factcheck.org

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Factcheck.org

From Inter-alia.com: "With the presidential primary season fast approaching, some of you may be having trouble deciding what's what, and who's telling the truth. Enter FactCheck, a non-partisan organization that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. You can even sign up to receive an e-mail every time a new FactCheck is released."

Factcheck's Mission

We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit, "consumer advocate" for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. We monitor the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Our goal is to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship, and to increase public knowledge and understanding.

The Annenberg Political Fact Check is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg in 1994 to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennyslvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state, and federal levels.

The APPC accepts NO funding from business corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. It is funded primarily by an endowment from the Annenberg Foundation.

Pixels, Pixels, Pixels

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Pixels, Pixels, Pixels

A loyal reader writes (and I respond in between the lines):

Hi Miguel,

Thanks for the digi camera stuff. I thinks its great. Here's a question I have and could never answer.
My camera lets me take pictures in the following sizes;
320 x 200
640 x 480
800 x 600
1024 x 768
1200 x 1800
etc.

According to my limited knowledge on this subject. This is the size of the picture, the bigger the picture or pixels the better the detail.

Yes in the sense that you can print a picture with more resolution at a larger size and not lose the details.  That is, if you try to print a 640x480 digital picture on 8x10 paper, each pixel (dot )has to be bigger to fill up the page (easily shown by dividing the number of pixels per line by the inches per line, thus an 8x10 print of a 480x640 file will produce 60 pixels per inch on the short side and 64 pixels per inch on the long side).  But if you print the same picture in 1200 x 1800 resolution, each pixel is tiny (a 1200 x 1600 file produces 150 pixels per inch on the short side and 160 pixels per inch on the wide side) and thus shows details much, much better.  Likewise, when you print the same picture at a smaller size like 4x6, the inch per pixel count goes much higher.  If you think about it, 13 inch TVs have sharper details than 19inch TVs and both have sharper details than 27 inch TVs because of this same principle.  All TV analog signals have 480 lines of resolution.  That doesn't change according to the size of the TV screen (until you start discussing HDTV).  So, a smaller screen fits more lines of resolution per inch...but you might have to squint to see the sharper detail.  Note that the resolution we're discussing, 1200X1800 is a a 2 megapixel camera.  The pixels per inch are much higher for cameras with 3+ megapixels.


The problem is when I take too big a picture it takes a very long time to load and then I have to crop bit back to an acceptable size like a 4x6 in photo when I take them to Walreens who's price is $0.29 per 4x6 Eckerds is $0.32 and best price so far I've found was Walmart at $0.22.

Next week I'll discuss your options for printing out pictures (as you cna imagine, my advice will be to use online printing services).

So should we take large photos and crop or smaller ones? maybe you can answer in an upcoming TOTD.

The answer should now be obvious...but as H.L. Mencken said, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.....Keep putting up with the slow load time.  If you take smaller pictures, you will lose the details.