If you treat lamb like beef, you've already lost the game

 

🐑 HINT for one of my sheep-related challenges! Pay close attention to the protocol below - it might give you a significant leg up.

Most people avoid grilling lamb (or mutton) for two reasons:
1. They think it's tough.
2. They fear the "gamey" flavor.

The reality? You aren't dealing with bad meat. You're using the wrong strategy.

Beef relies on intramuscular fat for tenderness. Sheep relies on enzymatic breakdown.

If you want to be the hero of the grill this weekend, stop using standard BBQ sauce. Switch to the "Yogurt Method".

Here is the protocol for the most tender skewers you will ever eat:

A. The "ROI" Marinade:

- The Base: 1 cup Greek Yogurt (The lactic acid breaks down tough fibers without ruining the texture).

- The Aromatics: 1 tbsp fresh Ginger paste + 1 tbsp Garlic paste.

- The Spice: 1 tbsp Cumin + 1 tbsp Coriander + 1 tsp Turmeric + Chili powder to taste.

- The Acid: A squeeze of Lemon.

B. The Execution:

- Marinate Long: Give it at least 6 hours. Overnight is better. Patience pays dividends here.

- High Heat: Grill on skewers over medium-high heat. You want a char on the yogurt coating before the inside dries out.

-The Golden Rule: Pull it at 135°F (57°C). Lamb must be pink. If it's gray, it's over.

- Rest: Let it sit for 5 minutes.

The result is smoky, char-grilled perfection that melts in your mouth - no knife required.

Mastering the grill is a lot like business: It's not about working harder with the heat; it's about preparation and timing.

What's on your grill this weekend?

Maybe this will be useful: https://quangntenemy.substack.com/p/if-you-treat-lamb-like-beef-youve

Website update :)

Hey guys, have a look at my homepage! It has been updated once again :)

You might want to claim that it's not as colorful as the old version, but believe me it's better :P I have put a lot of thoughts into that. The site looks very elegant now and has better support for accessibility. It's also optimized for every browser and small screen devices. And it's gradually adopting CSS3, which will be the open standard soon.

In the next few days (or weeks, or even months :P), you'll see more updates. Elimination of broken links, new updates for the CryptoBox, Steganabara, the bbq project, and hopefully a cool applet tutorial :)

Stay tuned!

bbq project - fourth release

Hey guys, it's been a long time.
I have been quite busy (mostly reading HP7 :P) so there hasn't been much update to the bbq project.
Anyway, a new version has just been released. Features including new items, new monsters and a new mechanism for monster spawning (mostly to control farming :P)
Oh and sniperkid now provides the new host so bbq can be up most of the time ;)
Also, I have started playing at a new challenge site: The new pyramid. Quite interesting. However with my skills and experience I have climbed to the 2nd place within only 9 days :)
Come challenge me there!

bbq project third release!

Finally! The nasty bugs with the listeners have been fixed! Wrong use of finalize method surely lead to disasters.
Anyway, enjoy the new stable release! There have been too many features added since the second release so you should refer to the version history for more details.

Something before the end of the month :P

Well here I am again, trying to post something before June comes.
If you're looking for something new, this really is the right place.

The bbq rpg is still going fine as ever. We now have level 5 spells and a whole load of new monsters and items. Most noticeable is the new combination of items and the addition of healing items. A supermarket will be there soon enough. And the trading feature is almost complete.
The bad news is that there are bugs in the bj and hangman modules that I haven't been able to fix. So the next official release will be delayed a bit.
Oh, before I forget to mention, I managed to find a cvs host for it at CVSDude, and now bbq can be online longer being co-hosted by theAnswer and Gizmore.

In the meantime, I am now a JBB moderator leading a few exams. Hopefully we'll have new Swing exams soon :)

The last thing I want to mention in this post is that I have come back to hackquest and solved all the Linux challenges there! gdb rocks!
Maybe I'll solve all the Linux challs @ tbs soon.

Long time again - am I too lazy?

Nope, just because I have been working on the bbq project everyday :P

We have some big updates and a new release will surely come out this month.

Notably are the addition of items, mvp monster bosses, spells up to level 4, autoheal and autospell.
The cool smiley :D has been used wisely for dueling too :D.

Don't forget to check the website for the cool new features. I'll update a version history soon enough so you can know what's actually going on (and maybe make some contribution :P)

Any comments/suggestions are welcome!

bbq RPG goes official

Hey guys,

Finally the first official release of the bbq RPG. Now you can actually fight monsters with your friends :) At the moment only basic level 1 spells are available, but more will be added later.

More details about the game can be found here. Come join us on #tbs-botzone @ irc.idlemonkeys.net now!

At the moment the game is only available when I'm online. Maybe I'll find a (free) IRC bot host? :P

More updates :)

Hey guys,
Some new updates from my projects :)

Firstly, the website has been completely updated to comply with XHTML 1.0 Strict :) And it's now 100% table-less (if you click on the validation icon it'll say it's no 100% - stupid freewebs ads, I'll do something to have it changed)

Secondly, Steganabara 1.0.8.2 has been released. Well, not a public release btw :P Other than me, theAnswer has the only copy :P Just a minor bug fix for the drag & drop feature support for Windows. If you are using another desktop environment other than KDE/Windows, and for some weird reason the feature isn't working, feel free to drop me a mail :)

Thirdly, and our featured update today :) An update from the bbq project. There's no update to the bbq rpg and atm the Lamb-shadowrun is taking advantages. But a new bbq game is now catching the attentions :) Yes, it's the arcade game hangman that has been revived in an irc context :) There has been many attempts from theAnswer to cheat on the game, but on-time updates have been release to stop them all :) Come get hung at #tbs-botzone now!

J2SE = yummy :)

Finally got all available Java SE exams passed at JBB.
What's cool is that I got 100% in the Reflection exams, both beta and real.
Maybe it's because I have made extended use of it in my bbq project :)
Only 2 more points to get brown.
Maybe my next target will be.. JUnit - Basic.

bbq project first release

Hey guys, we have a good news and a bad news today.

The good news is from the bbq project. The first release (25 Mar 2007) is now available at http://www.freewebs.com/quangntenemy/bbq. Download one and start customizing it for the #tbs-botzone contest now :)

The bad news is also from the bbq project. Yesterday my bot lost 14 games in a row (well, there were 2 pushes though) and lost all the money :( (almost $400k) Now I have to start from scratch again. In other words, every candidate has equal chance now :P

Anyway, I'm starting to work on the IRC-PRG project :P Setting up MySQL and designing the tables at the moment. Coding will start soon.

Stay tuned for the next chapter :)

Long time 2 :D

Hey guys, it's been a long time once again :D

I have been quite busy both at work and home :) The .Net project at work was quite easy for a 1337 like me, but it's quite time-consuming :( At home I am still working on the cute bot bbq :D

We're having an official irc channel for botting :D It used to be #tbs-traders but now we have moved to #tbs-botzone because Inferno didn't like that name :P

At the moment the botzone members are working on 3 projects. theAnswer, Gizmore, jmoncayo and matrixman are working on the so-called "Lamb project", which is coded in php with the power of MySQL. They even have a homepage for it, click here if you're interested :) ch0wch0w is working dependently on his ch0wb0t whose ability is still unknown :P And myself, as you already know, am working on the bbq bot which is written in Java using the irc module provided by PircBot.

Our first target is to win $1 million from playing blackjack with Shepp. At the moment my bot seems to be leading with $167142 in the bank after 2837 games. theAnswer and Gizmore's bots are still far away after losing all their money, both have played around 1000 games. Other players' status are unknown. But our result is still so far from the legendary No0ther1 who had played 201801 games, and won more than $1 million but unfortunately lost them all :P

As I only have 1-2 hours spare to work on the bot each day, my bot hasn't progress so far. At the moment it needs a little refactoring due to bad design - something that always happens when you try to solve an AI problem with some quick and dirty code :P Hopefully after this last refactoring my bot will become stable and available for non-commercial purpose soon :)

What's more, after our bots going stable, we're planning to write an irc-based RPG :) Come join us anytime soon on #tbs-botzone at irc.idlemonkeys.net :)

Long time

Hey guys, here's a new post again :D
It's been quite a long time since the last post, what have I been up to? :P
I had a quite busy week with a new .Net project at work and an IRC bot project at home. I've been looking for a PhD opportunity too, since it's now that time of the year again :P
Throw away the boring technical stuff, the bot is the main theme today :D
If you still remember, I have been using the Pyborg IRC bot by Tom Morton for quite a while. Recently the need for it grows stronger and the BADC0DED Python code is quite hard to maintain, so I decided to start a new Java project for it :)
My new bot uses PircBot as the core IRC module. At the moment the core is almost complete with a secure user system and a flexible command system :) What's cool is that commands can be updated on-the-fly (i.e no need to restart the bot everytime a command is added/updated) :D Maybe in the future there'll be needs for observer ability - so that messages sent to the bot will be forwarded to different observers for misc processing :)
At the moment the bot is named bbq but I'm not quite content with it :P Maybe it needs another cool and cute name? :P Any idea?