Micro projects & things

I'm terrible at finishing things. The bigger the task, the less likely it is to get done. So lets focus on some of the tiny things I've managed to do recently : Having purchased a sweet Paderno World Cuisine Stainless-Steel Egg Topper , I now have a small collection of very usable shells for my planter projects. Tried my hand at soldering again-- am way out of practice. Also, I apparently have forgotten what is and is-not solderable in my collection of junk. Wasted a lot of time with the wrong type of wire.

Sadly both of these are a pinch too large to sit on the actual window frame edge- which was the initial intention. They're on the hallway sill for now... the tan shell holds sprouted basil seedlings at this point, but the white one's mint hasn't shown sign of life yet... Neither egg is fixed to its frame... am going to make some needle-legged hanging ones next.

Speaking of which... I haven't killed the Easter one yet... though frequently it wilts due to lack of water. Am using my flavor injector to water them all. Surprisingly useful device, that syringe.

Baking has decreased due to increase in tasty resturant visits. I did however make something for the 4th. America Bread! Click image for details about bread.

Managed to make it to both Dr. Sketchy's this month here in SF. First time in a long time. Also managed to place in the contest both times this month- first for the pregnant lady session [Theme : Fertility Goddess], and second for the Roller Derby Girl session [Theme : True Blood vs The Walking Dead]. Not sure if that says more about me or those attending... but it makes me happy! I think about sketching a lot. A lot. But I sketch oh-so very little these days... aside from Sketchy's I've only doodled a picture or two relating to my new table-top character... Young Rebecca would be ashamed of me if she could see me now... Sorry for the terrible photos- I've still not yet set up the scanner situation...

Life goes on. I've been having extreme difficulty sleeping lately due to new upstairs neighbors. My usual 8-9 has been reduced to fitful 6-8 every night and I've not been able to sleep in on a weekend for a month. That, combined with some stressful stuff at work, has made my moods erratic and it definitely has affected my ability to craft/make stuff. The bedroom and craftroom are going to get switched in attempt to address the sleeping situation... hopefully it helps. (we're also looking for a new really awesome place... if you know of a top-floor, 2 bedroom, pets ok, parking included apartment in the Mission, let me know!) It also means I get to re-decorate a new craft-room... so more on that soon.

In closing, am working on a new random monster... it's restful to just put hook to yarn and be like "whatevs". No idea how I'll finish him, but I'll get there eventually.

Kindle & Code

Have I mentioned how much I love my Kindle? Because I love it a lot, if I haven't mentioned it yet.

Reading is one of the good things in life. Always loved reading, always loved sketching. Two of the most constant facts of my life. Reading however had always been a very passive activity for me pre-Kindle... I would read a book, love it or hate it, think about it, talk to folks later about it.

The Kindle added a new layer, a new relationship I could have with my books. It has that lovely little keyboard that lets me... I don't know what... "talk" back to the book? Talk to myself? I don't know what exactly I'm doing with it when I use it, but I love it now too. Never before could I bring myself to mark/deface a page in the book but boy howdy do I love to leave a snarky mark in the Kindle "margins".

These snarkisms were mostly just for the pleasure of commenting at the time. I'd mark it and poof- off into the Kindle either it would go. I've opened that dreaded clippings.txt file a couple times but the site of it revolted me. Quotes, highlights, comments... scattered about, hard to read, not related to one another.

Project this week has been several-fold and is still very much in progress.

• Get a Google App Engine server up and running. I'm not in love with app engine, but it's free... so... that's why I'm using it (long long ago I thought to set up a python one but I gave up on that ridiculous idea.. phh... python! Ha!)
• Start poking at some open/public APIs-- notably the GoodReads one, maybe find something Google related I can use... just.. you know, practice
• MAKE A USEFUL TOOL (I'm sure there are already other Kindle clipping processors out there, I don't care)

I felt like sharing a fragment of the fruits of my labor, so happy have I been with the work... not that it's complicated, or that it looks good yet (heavens no! I'm talking to a designer friend this weekend to hopefully come up with a good UI flow) but that I have liberated my comments! Yay! (merging of comments & quotes is still a bit buggy)

I've included below the clippings from The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson... a book that had lots of great ideas but toooooootally rubbed me the wrong way. It's book 2 in a 3 book series and book 1 & 3 I read in hardcover... so much criticism was never written down...

Anyway, here's my typical behavior with a book. Highlighted physical descriptions (in case I ever want to sketch characters later) and random comments.... (I've no idea what the un-commented bookmarks are for... I've stopped doing that these days)

Spoiler alert!

The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson 34 entries

Location : 1957 03/01/10 12:43 AM	bookmarked location
Location : 1973-75 03/01/10 12:53 AM	" “I do have to say, however,” Breeze continued, chatting along in his normal way, protected from the ash by a parasol attached to the back of his saddle, “the ash is a tad unimaginative.” " cute discription
Location : 1982-84 03/01/10 12:53 AM	" Black is so monotonous that you can forget about it, but red—you’d always be thinking, ‘Why, look at that. That hill is red. That evil force of doom trying to destroy me certainly has style.’ ” " something Trisha would say for sure. sounds like her writting style
Location : 2028 03/01/10 12:52 AM	bookmarked location
Location : 2045 03/01/10 12:56 AM	hoooooow many times will we cover the same ground again and again :(
Location : 2060-63 03/01/10 12:57 AM	" The bobbing figure resolved into a young woman with golden hair, wearing a bright pink dress—one that made her look younger than her twenty-something years. Allrianne had a fondness for lace and frills, and she tended to wear colors that made her stand out. Sazed might have expected someone like her to be a poor equestrian. Allrianne, however, rode with easy mastery, something one would need in order to remain on the back of a galloping horse while wearing such a frivolous dress. "
Location : 2065 03/01/10 12:58 AM	" spinning the animal in a flurry of ruffled fabric and golden hair. "
Location : 2078-80 03/01/10 12:59 AM	" She didn’t quite “scamper”—instead, she held up her dress in a rather unladylike fashion. It would have been immodest if she hadn’t been wearing what appeared to be several layers of lace petticoats underneath. "
Location : 2103 03/01/10 01:01 AM	this whole Sazed abandoning his multi faith irritates me and makes me focus on the moromness of the author.
Location : 2105-6 03/01/10 01:02 AM	" He dried his face with a clean towel, then took out his razor and mirror so that he could shave his head properly. " sazed description....
Location : 2111-12 03/01/10 01:03 AM	" She wore her standard shirt and trousers, after male fashion, though during the last two years she had grown her raven hair to a feminine shoulder length. " blaaaah.... feminine hair... vin desc
Location : 2205-7 04/01/10 06:51 PM	" Most disturbingly, the First Contract contained a provision which, if invoked, would require the mass suicide of the entire kandra people. 11 " if they all kill themselves then they release enough power to capture the Ruin. They release the power used to create them. The will do this. My theory
Location : 2218 04/01/10 06:53 PM	they are all naked though... why bother saying it?
Location : 2218 04/01/10 06:52 PM	" cold and naked on the platform. "
Location : 2291-93 04/01/10 11:39 PM	" Vin hadn’t been TenSoon’s master—TenSoon had killed her kandra and taken his place, spying on Vin at Zane’s order. Zane. He had been TenSoon’s master. He had held TenSoon’s Contract. " oh my god. shut up already. we know this. why say it again damnit!
Location : 2335-36 04/01/10 11:43 PM	" Without her, we have nothing. We cannot create new Blessings, or new kandra, on our own! The Trust is hers, now! We should go to her. If this truly is the end of all things, then the Resolution will soon come. She will—” "
Location : 2471-72 04/01/10 11:51 PM	" Ham asked. As always, he wore simple trousers and a vest. He was a Thug, and could burn pewter—which made him resistant to heat and cold. He’d cheerfully walk around sleeveless on a day that would send most men running for "
Location : 2848-49 05/01/10 08:06 AM	" Tin helped an Allomancer pierce the mists, and Spook’s increasingly sensitive eyes were even better at this. He brushed through the mists, barely noticing them. " we knooooooooow!!!
Location : 2876 05/01/10 08:09 AM	I'm theeditor now and I say cut this line.
Location : 2876 05/01/10 08:09 AM	" His sense of smell, like his other senses, was incredibly sensitive. So "
Location : 2988 05/01/10 08:25 AM	way too much jessu for me.... blah....
Location : 4046-48 05/01/10 07:07 PM	" We’re thieves, he’d said. And we’re extraordinarily good ones. We can rob the unrobbable and fool the unfoolable. We know how to take an incredibly large task and break it down to manageable pieces, then deal with each of those pieces. " programmers!
Location : 4258-63 06/01/10 09:49 PM	" Noorden said, looking a bit shaken. “But . . . what if it’s not a coincidence? What does it mean?” “I don’t know,” Elend said. It means consequence, Vin thought. It means that there are laws, even if we don’t understand them. Sixteen. Why sixteen "
Location : 4282-84 10/01/10 02:34 PM	" Each slave who hadn’t been able to find at least one geode a week had been executed. There were likely still hundreds, perhaps thousands, of corpses pinned beneath the ground, lost in deep caverns, dead without anyone knowing or caring. " omg! we know already! whats with the stupid trivial details repeating all the time
Location : 4384-85 10/01/10 02:43 PM	" “Wasing the where of what?” Spook demanded. " this is only here, back in the past so that we can hear this style of speach agan. the author is way too in love with his concepts.
Location : 4603 12/01/10 08:26 AM	it seems like all he knows off warfair re sieges and sneak attacks. this sounds so childish when i read it... but only because ive heard it so many times before from him.
Location : 4603 12/01/10 08:24 AM	" and to endure a longer siege without running out of supplies.” "
Location : 5299-5302 12/01/10 05:54 PM	" Plus, you’ve managed—in our short three years together—to kill not only my god, but my father, my brother, and my fiancée. That’s kind of like a homicidal hat trick. It’s a strange foundation for a relationship, wouldn’t you say?” Vin just rolled her eyes. "
Location : 5547-48 12/01/10 10:28 PM	" The priests who had filled them had mostly been bureaucrats and clerks—but, then, that had been the real power of the Final Empire. Its control of resources and management of people. " i want to stab my eyes out. we know this already!
Location : 5709-13 12/01/10 10:38 PM	" Vin stood in the doorway wearing a stunning black gown with silver trim, cut after a modern fashion. Somehow, it managed to look sleek despite the bell-shaped skirt, which fanned out with petticoats. Her pure black hair, which she often wore pulled back in a tail, was down, and it now reached to her collarbone, neatly trimmed and curling just slightly. The only jewelry she wore was her simple earring, the one she’d gotten from her mother when she was just a child. "
Location : 6751-52 13/01/10 08:21 AM	" The man was a Smoker, a Misting who could create copperclouds, " really? do we really need to say that again 40 % of theway through the book?
Location : 7637-38 20/01/10 07:27 PM	" Ash rained down like shards of a broken sky, floating, making the very air look pocked and sickly. " what the hell? shards ash floating? wtf?
Location : 8985-89 24/01/10 11:58 PM	" Sure enough, as he read about the religion, he saw the holes in its doctrines. True, the Nelazan had known a great deal about astronomy, but their teachings on the afterlife were sketchy—almost whimsical. Their doctrine was purposefully vague, they’d taught, allowing all men to discover truth for themselves. Reading this, however, left Sazed frustrated. What good was a religion without answers? Why believe in something if the response to half of his questions was “Ask Trell, and he will answer”? " dig at unitarians?
Location : 9558-59 26/01/10 08:15 AM	" The power in the Well was of Preservation, and an Inquisitor could only have taken it by first removing his Hemalurgic spikes. That, of course, would have killed him. " nut vin removed it and she has that earing...

I am now dating a 30 year old man

Adam turned 30. Woah.

He cooked a traditional dinner recipe for a small group of friends. It was very tasty. He did it all by himself. Note the lovely collection of checkered napkins everyone has- a family friend made them and sent them to him just in time. Not only did he cook dinner (spaghetti carbonara), he also made quite a collection of desserts for larger party that followed. (chocolate cake, chocolate covered banana bread, rhubarb crisp, a tiny vegan rhubarb crisp, and he decorated with chocolate and raspberries two store-bought cheesecakes) My contribution to the party was to make a "Pin the Beard on Adam" game. I think it went over well.


Good times here, in the SF Flat. Good times.

The Aliens Dinner Experience

Usually I'm all talk. Usually.

My epic Aliens themed dinner was finally actualized several weekends ago. It must be said up front that extreme thanks goes to my friends Adam K & Nate F who both played the role of sous chef for the evening and who wound up doing a majority of the work day of. I am also very grateful for the GWS house for letting me hijack their most excellent kitchen and for all my friends who kindly consumed the food, said nice things about it, and were chill enough to sit back and let me freak out in the kitchen (mostly) by myself. Also, thanks to Jon for snapping the crazy awesome photos I include in this post. I have much love for his mad macro photo skills.

Course 1 : The Egg

All good Aliens films start with an egg. It holds the promise of impending doom.
Steamed bun, stuffed with diced vegetables and a single whole cherry tomato.

Course 2 : The Face Hugger

Such an iconic silhouet- the face hugger always immediately follows from an egg. Wicked is their grasp, and wicked is their acid blod.
Followers of the blog will recognize the cracker shape from when I initially made it. It is paired with an asparagus puree.

Course 3 : The Chest Burster

Dramatic, bloody, gory, and violent, the chestburster will eventually "arrive" and make a scene.
Beet leaf salad, roasted beets, vegetables, and egg that has been extruded through a syring into boiling water.

Course 4 : The Adult Alien

Black & chitinous. Slimy & evil. It's the point of it all, and what we love most.
Squid ink pasta and muscles. Diced parsley and a single cherry tomato. Side of freshly made squid ink bread.

Course 5 : Androids

We can't talk about the Aliens francise without acknowledging the androids in that universe. Quirky, diverse, and always filled with a milky goo that will eventually get splattered everywhere before the film is over. Tapioca pudding with a hint of mint, served in a cleaned out eggshell.
Served after the viewing of Aliens


So, that all said, let me back up a bit...

It was some time around the New Years, I think. Maybe. A good while ago, at least. I was probably contemplating Aliens, as I am occasionally want to do, when a vision of an inky black meal just sort of blossomed in my mind's eye. This is after The Silence of the Lambs and lamb burgers dinner & movie pairing, so I on the lookout for another good match....

While the initial idea that struck me was that of the aliens' darkness, the driving concept behind the meal was the multiple stages of a xenomorph's life cycle. At this point I've typed up and deleted five different paragraphs. I have a lot to say about the meal, just ask me about it some time if you want to hear about it.

If you're interested in technical details or having the party yourself (recommended!) you can marvel at all the nerdy prep effort that went into it by checking out my cooking timeline, ingredient list, and recipe collection all bundled together in one helpful Google spreadsheet!

And final notes/comments/thoughts:

• For the love of god, do NOT get 6 pounds of muscles!! We needed HALF of that, perhaps less.
• Crumple tin foil under the face hugger crackers to get the "pounce" look
• Forgot to dye the egg red before boiling it!! Lost some of it's "guts" look... but was still pleasantly gross enough
• The beet leaves were used because the chest burster comes from the human? See? There's symbolism there! Don't you get it?!? ... in other news, apparently everyone but me hates the taste of beet leaves
• Only needed 1.5 packages of pastas (had bought 3)
• Used brown sugar for egg stage buns rather then the called for white. An improvement on the original recipe, some claim (not I)
• There were 6 sit-down-only guests, 2 helpers who ate afterwards, and myself who could barely eat anything. It was a good number, 2 smaller then I originally planned... I think I could have handled the planned 2 more, but that definitely would have been max
• I learned a lot about how much work goes into making a large meal for many people. Educational, fun, but a very stressful experience. Did I mention how grateful I was for my helpers?
• Nerdy prep work is fun! I shopped at the grocery store with my laptop open in the shopping cart. It made me feel good.
• YES, we did watch Aliens after the dinner. We watched the extended directors cut addition thing. Recommended for true/existing fans, but *not* recommended for casual or first-time viewings (there were actually several folks who had not seen this one before!) Bill Paxton is more awesome in it then you probably remember. Also- Ripley is the best role model ever in action films!
• Formal cooking for friends is fun! I definitely hope to try it again some time (NOT any time soon!)

Little things

Aliens dinner party was last night. Am still recovering... more on that later when I get my hands on some photos....

Finished up a minor project started before the east coast trip-- laptop sleeve harness thing! I now have a 15" laptop from work...turns out those 2 inches between 15 and 13 are a big deal, especially when lugging that thing to and from work once a week.

Didn't want to get a huge bag for the damn thing, but I couldn't lug it in my normal bag. Grabbed a laptop sleeve from Apple : sorta like, but not exactly like this Incase Nylon Protective Sleeve 15-Inch - Black (CL57480).

Ever since high school, I've always carried too many things in my arms. Used to lug 3+ text books around every day in my arms or resting on my hip. Turns out carrying really expensive and heavy equipment around like that isn't as fun...

The harness is one big loop that makes up both handles and then a secondary loop crossing that, which holds the laptop in place. I was going to have a second secondary loop, but turned out to be unnecessary. The secondary loop is green on one side and red on the other, providing a delightful watermelon look and a versatile color pallet :)

It's easy to slip on and off and the primary loop is made up of 2 parallel cords (yay, more piping!) so it seems pretty damn secure/sturdy.
Yes, went a little photo happy... sorry.

Also made some strawberry bread and home-made butter for the first time. Crazy how it hits that magical point and goes THUD and near instantly separates out... crazy... The bread was tasty, fun to make, and educational. Big chunks of fruit = good. Fruit puree = waste of time. There was a LOT of strawberry in there, but only the chunks were taste-able. Maybe next time with a puree I'll add extra sugar... ?

Shhh! In-progress work

Efforts to sew were thwarted by a missing presser foot holder and then by my model for the next apron I'm sewing being off at a baseball game.

Spent a very dazed evening coding... several quick points:

• My 13" Macbook Pro is so cute and tiny and doesn't BURN when I sit with it on my lap (see: work 15" Macbook Pro)
• Coding at work and then coming home and coding some more = unhappy eyes and brain pan. I feel kinda dizzy and not-awesome. I also forgot to eat more then just an egg for dinner. Feels like college all over again.
• Visual Design is hard. Haaaard. It's so easy to wave the data together but I don't know how to wave the user's brain into the system.
• I tried to use Twitter Bootstrap, I really did... but those tables, they just solve all my problems...

Found out that I can host content from my DropBox! Oh joy! No idea what the bandwidth limits are like.... Will get the Stereogram project up soon.

Anyway! Ratio Recipe Manager

The page may look terrible, but I've been using a much simpler/stupid version of it for my last 4 loaves of bread (at least). I aspire to improve the saved-info functionality, and make adding ingredients easier. It would also be a nice challenge for myself to make it not look like ... like it does now.

MMMmMMmmmm.... Knockout.....

East Coast Travels

Hard to be crafty when not at home, as stated in previous post. Hard to be coding when you leave your god damn laptop at airport security on your way out of town! Doh! On the upside I had a severely Net-free vacation! (and the laptop was waiting for me when I got back in town)

Am still fighting myself on sleep though... had an aggressive first week back that was not aided by flying in at approx 2am and several late night movie showings: Snow White & the Huntsman, Moonrise Kingdom, and MIDNIGHT SHOWING of Prometheus!!! Ehm. That's for another blog post. This one is just gratuitous vacation photos and mutterings!

Our East Coast Vacation!!11!1! !

Before heading out, we celebrated a friend's birthday. Part of this celebration involved jumping in the Pacific Ocean. Adam suited up quite awesomely while I opted to hop about in the waves in just my swim suit. Hooray for body fat being useful!

Red eye to Key Largo, Florida. Stayed at the Hilton there. Turns out red eyes work great when all you plan to do on that first day is lay on a beach. Adam and I had fun- one day we kayaked out to those little keys you can see. The food there was surprisingly good- had gator bites! And lots of fish! Did you know that Key Lime Pie comes from those keys? News to me...

Our last day in Florida was spent exploring the Everglades. The swamp land is so bleak and... kinda' evil, it makes me meditative on the nature of national parks and our relationship to nature. I definitely recommend visiting it, if you can. It lacks the majesty of some parks- notably ones with mountain ranges in them- but it still is fascinating. We didn't have time (nor Adam the tolerance) to stop at the much advertised Alligator Park, but we did spot one in the wild which made us quite proud.
...
After a brief, yet terrible flight north, we found ourselves in DC. I'm not sure how much I've conveyed it here, but I'm a huge science/nature museum fan. Big fan. Love 'em. I've been looking forward to the chance to visit the Smithsonian for ages and I was not let down. The Natural History Museum is fantastic- one of the best I've seen so far. Great exhibits, great taxidermy, great text. The only draw back was how flippen crowded it was... but who can actually resent school children going to a museum to learn? A free museum! Went back to the NHM a second day... We also visited the Air & Space museum which Adam was much more into. His dad used to work for Boeing and he was able to name several planes on sight. ... ... .. Oh, right... there was other stuff in DC as well... some buildings and stuff... not really my thing. We also visited Adams brother & his family! Very nice people. It's fun to watch children age... I remember seeing them when they were much smaller and much different. It's also crazy to observe family traits between generations...

And then we went to Maryland where a pair of very good friends became legally bound. The end! We were too caught up with the socializing to take any photos, alas. To see more photos of what was covered here, check out the Flickr Set Regular content relating to crafts and code to resume any day now... any day now...