The modern geek is more than just a reined version of the stereotypical movie geek from the ’80s. True, there’s a contemporary equivalent, who have swapped Star Wars posters, pocket protectors, and large glasses held together by tape for really, really smart phones, hipster glasses, and social websites running on virtual machines. The Internet has given the computer geek a new challenge. For most of us techies, the largest obstacle in building something great has changed from a technical to a social one. The question is no longer can you build it, but will people want it? We’re becoming a diferent kind of community, one that has to relate to a half a billion Facebook users, Twitterers, and lolcats. (I can has cheez-burger? See page 169.)
But what it means to be a geek today can also be broader. Overly intellectual. Obsessed with details. Going beyond the point where a mainstream user would stop, often to the bemusement of those who don’t “get it.” Physics geeks. Cofee geeks. Almost anything geeks. A geek is anyone who dwells with some amount of obsession on why something works and how to make that something better. And it’s become a badge of honor to be a geek.
At our core, though, all of us geeks still share that same inner curiosity about the hows and whys with the pocket-protector crowd of yesteryear. This is where so many cookbooks fail us. Traditional cookbooks are all about the what, giving steps and quantities but offering little in the way of engineering-style guidance or ways of helping us think.
Unfortunately, there’s no way (yet) to download a program for kitchen techniques and experience straight into your brain. Don’t expect to walk away after inishing this book (or any other) knowing how to make a perfect four-course meal. That’d be like saying, “Hey, I want to learn how to program, so maybe I should start by writing my own operating system!”
In this irst chapter, we’ll cover how to approach the kitchen. What does it mean for a geek to hack in the kitchen? What things should a beginner keep in mind? What does success in the kitchen mean? How do you pick a recipe, and then how do you interpret it correctly?引自 Chapter 1: Hello, kitchen!
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