I just realized that I almost never post an MG entry on the weekend. That got me wondering as to why, and I came to conclusion that it's because I'm always with Tracy. Me and her are always doing something together on the weekends and I'm never really bored enough to figure out a time waster to write. Even if I'm in my office and she's half done with a book downstairs, we're always sort of "together". It's hard to explain.

She's gone now, though. She's over at a friend's house celebrating the birthday of another mutual friend. Basically, all the former work chicks are getting together... and having a sleepover. So I'm Macauley Culkin tonight. Playing loud music. Doing that Tom Cruise thing in my underwear.

OK, so maybe not.

In reality, I bought a horribly expensive, 2" thick steak (strip, of course) and fired up my charcoal-based grill. I'm pairing that with sauteed onions and green beans, and I'm opening some good wine. After that I'm going to smoke an obscenely expensive cigar that Tracy gave me for my birthday.

That's dinner. But the geek in me is already toiling away -- and has been for about an hour now. I figured out the URLs that foodtv.com uses for their printable recipes. I'm grabbing all 25,000 of them, and while I'm at it I'm stripping out the JavaScript and web bug nonsense. I'm leaving the copyrights and such in, but just removing the JavaScript alone I save about 20KB per file. Once I've got all the files (or dinner is done, whichever comes first) I'm going to write a parser that adds the relevant recipe stuff to a database. Then we can use the database to search for possible dinner ideas. For instance, if we have chicken and red wine and carrots, we'd be able to get a list of all the recipes that include those ingredients. Or exclude those plus some other ingredient (like artichoke hearts or capers).

I'm toying with the idea of writing a PHP-based "recipe viewer" that the DB search app uses. It would basically spit out the recipe pages, but would also prompt you to put the recipe in a certain category. So when you come across a good squid recipe, you'd be able to add it to the "Italian" and/or "Thai" categories. Or something. I'm not sure yet how to work it. Every once in a while I get the urge to make a certain type of food. And this would help greatly. I want to be able to tell some software what major ingredients I have, and what kind of food I'm in the mood for, and then have if give me a bunch of options -- with shopping lists based on each one. And it'll be able to print the shopping list on my receipt printer upstairs. So when I have crab, ginger and honey, I'll wind up with not only a cuisine-based recipe for those ingredients, but a shopping list of what I may not have. I've been wanting that sort of thing for a long time now.

So the wife is gone all night, and I'm writing software that will make shopping lists and print out recipes. Am I getting old, or just embracing my inner geek? That's sort of disturbing...