OBL and his Porn

When I heard the news about Osama Bin Laden's porn stash, something occurred to me. As the media like to portray it as Osama being contradictory to the pious religious messaging he's preaching. I on the other hand think they are encoded messages to terrorist cells across the nation. Here's a link to an old CS project I did in image stenography (hiding messages in images). One can change the lower order bits to encode a secret message without changing the appearance of the image. And the only way to decode the message is to have a copy of the original picture (other wise it would be very difficult).

Why would Osama use porn to hide secret messsages? I think one of the benefits is free porn is so actively sought by many people around the world. So one can easily use bittorrent or any other distributed file sharing networks to distribute the material anonymously. And because bittorrent you don't download from one source, but bits and pieces from different people, who then in turn share their copies so other people can download bits and pieces, it will be very difficult to trace the download back to the original distributor.

As with any encryption system, you need a system of secretly passing the key. In normal internet encryption, one would use a 3rd party like Verisign. However, for terrorist messaging, you cannot have your encryption keys out in the open. So what you can do with a porn scheme is identify the porn star that's in the videos, find the original video/picture from a pay site. Then download the original video/picture from that site and use it to decrypt the message.

Bachelor Cooking : Grilled Chiken on Spinach

This dish is easy to cook. Only takes about 5-7 minutes to cook. The taste is nothing spectacular, but easy to plate, and looks decently well for showing that special someone you care.



Ingredients:

• 1 chicken thigh
• 2 handfuls of baby spinach
• 2 spoonful of Trader Joes Papaya Salsa
  
• 1/4 cup of frozen mixed veggies (carrot, peas, string bean, corn)
• 1 boil-in-a-bag rice
• salt (or a seasoning salt for chicken)
  

Directions:

1. Rice: Boil a pot of water and follow the directions on the boil-in-a-bag rice. This will take longest to cook, but you don't need to watch over it, and can start working on the rest of the items once you get this started. Just toss the bag into boiling water and set a timer as directed on the instructions.
2. Chicken: Warm up the George Forman(tm) grill (3-4 min. if your grill doesn't have a warm-up timer). Place chicken thigh in the grill for 4 minutes.
3. Spinach: Place 2 handfuls of baby spinach into a bowl, cover and microwave on High for 1 minute. Then stir the spinach so they cook evenly, and microwave for another 30 seconds. Give it a minute to cool, then use a paper towel and press firmly to suck the excess moisture out.
4. Veggies: Take you frozen veggies, and defrost it for 4 minutes in the microwave. Then microwave on high for 2 minutes.
   
5. Plating: On the bottom 1/2 of the plate, spread the spinach out into a shape that's larger than the chicken. It's OK if there's a hole in the middle, it'll be covered up by the chicken anyways. Sprinkle about 2 pinches of salt over the spinach. This will give both the spinach and the chicken flavoring. Place the grilled chicken over the bed of spinach, then top it with 2 spoonfuls of tropical papaya salsa for decoration. Plate the veggies and the rice in the remaining portion of the plate.
   

Enjoy.

Bachelor Cooking : Seared Salmon /w Tropical Papaya Salsa

I wanted to make something that looks good enough to impress people, but easy enough to make in 5 minutes. Here's a recipe I came up with. It's a seared salmon topped with a Tropical Papaya Salsa. I've added some grilled vegetables to it to give it some color, and rice to balance out the meal. Enjoy...

Ingredients:
Salmon
Papaya Salsa (Trader Joes)
Brown Sugar
Veggie Kabob Kit
Boil-in-a-bag Rice.



Directions:

1. Cook the Boil-in-a-bag rice as per directions. Nothing special here, it's just the side, but it takes the longest to cook.

2. Take apart the veggie Kabob, and slice up any large pieces so everything is no more than 1/4 inch think. This is so everything will fit evenly in the George Forman grill. Wet the veggies so they don't burn on the grill. Place the veggies in the George Forman Grill and set it for 3 minutes. Lightly season with salt when done.


3. Place the Salmon on a dish and cover it with a paper towel. Microwave on High for 2 1/2 minutes. Microwaving is a good way to evenly cook fish very quickly. Sprinkle a light coat of brown sugar on top of the salmon. Using some sort of metal object as a guide, use a blow torch to singe in some fake grill marks. This will give it a nice crust and the nice seared look without ruining the evenly cooked Salmon. When you're done, transfer the salmon to your presentation plate. Plate with the pretentious parsley and lemon wedge garnish your salmon came with. Using a spoon, ladle some of the Tropical Papaya Salsa onto the salmon. Then plate with the grilled veggies and rice.

The Ninja Dining Experience

While I was in Tokyo, I stopped by Ninja Akasaka for dinner. Located in the shopping center across the street from the Akasaka-Mitsuke station. Ninja Akasaka is a Ninja themed restaraunt, where getting to your table is an interesting experience in itself. Imagine first approaching the restaurant, you are approached by a nicely dressed host/hostess who then summens a ninja that comes swingout out of the top 1/2 of a 2 part door. That ninja then leads you through a series of passages where you are ducking under low beams, climbing up onto platforms, and saying secret keywords to open passages.



Once at the table, we were given a secret code word for our table. This is in the event you get lost inside the restaurant. This can easily happen given all the passages you had to go through to get to your table and the dark setting. Then we were greeted by our cute ninja waitress, Kohana.



The food there is a bit pricy, but it makes up for it in spades with its presentation. Here's a quick and dirty picture dump of the food. Some of the items I liked were: the Escargo Turben Shell bombs where the waitess lit a fuse and it cooks in a flash of flames in front of your very eyes; the crab and grapefruite appetizer served on a sword with smoke coming out of the grapefruit; and the bosai tree shaped ice cream.



At the end of the dinner, you get a nice magic show with a talented ninja (magician). (Sorry, I didn't get any pictures of this)

Otaru

During my Trip to Japan I was able to make a day-trip to see Otaru.


Otaru is a town just about 30 min. train ride north-west of Sapporo. It's one of the oldest European style towns in Japan. It is known for it's very beautiful canals lined with old European style buildings made of stone bricks.



It is also one of the best places you can enjoy Sushi in Japan. There's one a section called Sushiyadori street that is filled with Sushi restaurants. The cold waters of Otaru makes the fish there extra tasty. The sushi there has a very deep color and a more fatty texture.



Otaru is also known for its glass crafts. If you know Japanese, you can pay to have someone guide you through the glass making process to make a glass vase hands on. Also check out the steam clock while you're there.

Sapporo Yuki Matsuri (Snow Fesitval)

This year I attended the 60th anniversary of the Sapporo Yuki Matsuri (Snow Festival). Each year, generally around the first week of February (for future dates, you'll want to check here http://www.snowfes.com/english/ next winter), Sapporo hosts it's annual Yuki Matsuri.

I was able to see the sites in Oodori Park and Susukino. In Oodori park, a park which streches around 10 city blocks, you'll see a variety of snow sculptures. There are smaller man sized snow sculptures on the other parts of the park, and as you get closer to Oodori station, you'll see large magnificent structures such as the 1/8th scale Osaka Castle and the large Disney Display.




At night the large snow scupltures are lighted and night time concerts are performed on the stages of some of the large snow sculptures.



There also a variety of food stands in the Odori park site offering a wide selection of good eats. I especially loved the fresh grilled sea food.



In Susukino, you'll find a lot of the ice carvings. This site is fairly small, about 2 or 3 city blocks long along the center of the street. But the ice carvings are very detailed and look like crystals under the night time city lights. Susukino being where the night life in Sapporo lives, you can also enjoy some good Ramen at the Ramen Yokocho and have a drink at one of the many bars in this part of town.



There is a 3rd site which I didn't get a chance to see. It's suppose to be mostly composed of more fun activities such as mazes, slides, and various igloos housing different stores and good eats.

Weekend @ the Long Beach Motorcycle Show

Not much new at the Long Beach Motorcycle show to announce. There were a several brands featuring their bikes in riding demos. Unfortunately I got there too late and was only able to test ride the Can-am Spyder.