Grilling For Geeks 169
A lot of us are going to be standing over a grill today cooking for friends and family. Here's an article that lists some of the best gadgets to help you grill like a geek. Whether you want some high-tech tongs, thermometers you can monitor from your phone, or a complete grilling station with wi-fi, there is bound to be a tool here that will make your day easier and a lot more fun.
Paid advertisement (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot, please have some journalistic integrity and label these advertisements for what they truly are. Don't insult our intelligence by trying to pass them off as true stories.
chepati.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
It's always a great idea to have your smartphone close to the grill when you are cooking.
Right up until you said that, I thought you were serious, and got actually worried there was a large market for the items in the article among slashdot readers :)
Seriously, being a geek isn't about using electronic gadgets. It's about obsessing over a subject and seeking to become very knowledgeable in it, to a fault. If you're a grilling geek, you're going to be very interested in grilling, and wouldn't want to be distracted by smartphones and wi-fi.
And if you're a gadget geek who is forced to grill, the only thing you want is a gadget that will do the grilling for you, without your intervention.
Not so geeky, imo (Score:5, Insightful)
First priciples are the best for grilling (Score:5, Insightful)
Get the heaviest BBQ you can afford (and fits into you space).
Pay attention first hand - don't use an app.
Beer.
Success.
Astroturf write our stories now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really guys? Slow news day would be one thing, but this is ridiculous.
At least show some honesty for what this is.
P.S. in case you don't know what this is, I'll remind you that I check off the disable ads button, and use ad block. Still I read this and get upset. Wtf slash dot?
Re:Astroturf write our stories now? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess a thermometer is a "gadget" (Score:5, Insightful)
The only "gadget" that is really necessary is a decent thermometer appropriate to the task at hand. I say it is a gadget because if you really know what you are doing a thermometer is optional. (I'm not that good so I use thermometers heavily when cooking and have a wide variety of them - the most gadgety one I have is an infrared thermometer for non-contact temp readings) A good grill, a fire extinguisher, some tongs and possibly a spatula are pretty much the only requirements. You really shouldn't be walking away from the grill while cooking for safety reasons so I don't really understand the point of remote monitoring except for really low & slow cooking like BBQ. The best "gadget" you can get is a geeky cookbook like the ones Alton Brown writes.
Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not take a day off from hardware/software and computers, regress to your caveman days and grill some meat, take a digital sabbatical.
Re:First priciples are the best for grilling (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amazing (Score:1, Insightful)
I think you're confusing geek and nerd. Geek's are, for example, most Apple users who love tech but couldn't tell a FET from a BJT. A nerd can tell you the reasons why PowerPC was a better CPU architecture over x86 for the Mac.
Re:Amazing (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, being a geek isn't about using electronic gadgets. It's about obsessing over a subject and seeking to become very knowledgeable in it, to a fault. If you're a grilling geek, you're going to be very interested in grilling, and wouldn't want to be distracted by smartphones and wi-fi.
I disagree whole heartedly. I am in many many ways a geek, in my career and in my home life.
in my home life, I _LOVE_ to grill.
But when I'm doing an 18+ hour beef brisket, I would _love_ to have a (wifi) device that I could work with to get temperatures on my linux box, and send me alerts if the temps go outside of bounds so I can fix the problem. I don't spend 18 hours staring at the temp guage, as I like to enjoy life. I would also love to be able to graph my temps with cacti, particularly my meat temps so I can learn more about the plateaus and get things just right time after time.
does it make me less geeky that I want to use automation to get rid of the tedious parts of grilling, so i can enjoy other things?
How is this any different than me wanting to monitor my DNS server, disk array, web server for abnormal conditions, then react to them?
go be judgemental somewhere else, and stop trying to define 'geek' to fit your view of life.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you are spuriously inserting your own definitions into those terms to meet your own need to feel superior to someone.