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Monday, December 21st, 2009
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rowena_zane
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I'm trying my hand at truffles, for the first time, but can't get them to behave. I followed the recipe:
7 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips chopped fine (I used the processor).
1 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 tsp bourbon
Boil the cream and immediately add it to the chocolate. Stir until smooth, add the bourbon and chill for 2 hours. Should be stiff but workable.
Here's the thing, even after 3 hours, that stuff's still not stiff. Anybody know what I could've done wrong?
I tried dropping dollops of the stuff onto a cookie sheet and letting it "chill" more as the directions say. But I don't think they're gonna take any shape other than mud.
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vilakins
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Thank you to all of those who sent me cards by email or post: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) imhilien, san_valentine, jhall1, spacefall, zoefruitcake, vjezkova, and also to zoefruitcake for the Terry's chocolate orange bars, and vjezkova for the berry beads and gingerbread decoration (see photo below). I do apologise if I've missed anyone.
Here are photos of our tree (with bonus Ashley), what Greg gave me this year, and me with shiny hair just after a salon visit this week, since kalypso_v asked to see one last time. I am slack at dealing with photos, but I finally got round to it today. There will be another post of cat photos to follow.
( Tree, Ashley, and me )
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, December 20th, 2009
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lovelyangel
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My list of tasks (as well as blog entries I had wanted to write) was long this weekend, and I didn’t get much done. I did enjoy a 2 1/2 hour lunch with one of my ex-bosses... and I also had a long appointment with Bonnie, my hairdresser... I went to church... and I made a pizza from scratch... wrapped some gifts and did some shopping and housecleaning... so the weekend wasn’t completely non-productive.
What was non-productive is that on and off from Friday night until Sunday afternoon I watched the last, say, 16 episodes of R.O.D. The TV. I practically never blast my way through a series, preferring to savor the craftsmanship a little at a time. R.O.D. The TV is a rare exception.
I had seen some of Read or Die OAV episodes at an Anime Expo, so I knew the anime was good. I bought the OAV DVD a long time ago... and then bought the seven R.O.D. The TV DVDs 2 1/2 years ago in one of the Right Stuf’s crazy sales – Geneon DVDs were $5 each. R.O.D. has been sitting untouched in my library for a long time.
It was important to start with the OAV episodes – there are only three, contained on a single DVD. Then I moved on to the TV series, viewing one or two episodes a night. The series starts a bit slowly, so there was no impetus to move quickly through the first DVD. Things started picking up a bit in the second DVD.
R.O.D. is quite good. The artwork and animation are superb for a TV show. I had no idea where the story would lead, and all the characters were interesting and not annoying. There were people to root for; there were people to boo and hiss at. On my five star scale, I give R.O.D. four stars. I’d watch the series again.
It's been a bit of a rough month. I think I just wanted to get away for a while. R.O.D. was a fun escape.
There’s still a bunch of stuff in my library that I’ve never watched. I skipped over a number of series and have tentatively selected Vandread for my next project.
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Monday, December 21st, 2009
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Sunday, December 20th, 2009
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matociquala
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#51.) Kelly Gay, The Better Part of Darkness
[redacted pending review elsewhere]
#52.) Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
Brilliant. Go read it now.
Lovely evening today stacking wood and eating food with friends and family. Mmm, food.
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Monday, December 21st, 2009
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Sunday, December 20th, 2009
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fengi
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Deadend Margo and I are in Orlando Florida for the holiday. Tommorow we're going to The Holy Land Experience and right after, we'll cross the Interstate to stop in the gigantic Target in Millenia Plaza (shown here under constrution).
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herpdaddy
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A photoshoot for a friend's nieces and nephew. Very cute and the girls eyes were amazing. This was not a Xmas themed one but more of a "brother / sister" shots that the parents might enjoy having it around.
It was pretty hard to get them to all look at me and smile...but I caught this one!
I then told them to make a funny face but only the youngest obliged :)
Big blue eyes!! While she was chomping on a big solid chocolate santa :)
She was more willing to pose for me once she got her cookie :)
I managed to catch him when he WASN'T making a funny face :)
One of the last shots of the session. Awwww.
I know most parents will take their kids to the studio for shots like this. And I'm sure these kids will end up in one too. But I think these sessions where I go to their house or someplace they are comfortable enough to run around and jump around on the couch gets them to relax more and I can catch more of who they are. They may not look professional. But I hope that for all the ones I've done so far, I managed to catch a glimpse of the kids in their natural state and caught it with the quality and eye of at least an amateur photographer :)
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Monday, December 21st, 2009
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Sunday, December 20th, 2009
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tithonium
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Well, crap. Algol's coreservicesd is crashing repeatedly, and it's refusing to boot off the snowleopard disc. So, my mac mini is fucked, for the time being. Totally what I needed today.
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tithonium
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My plan for the day:
1) Finally upgrade the iphones to 3.1.2
2) Spend at least 10 hours on SideGig
My actual day so far:
1) Fight with a mac mini that won't bring up the UI properly after rebooting
2) Foil a breakin on the house, but not before they'd kicked thru a basement window.
3) Talk to the cops, ID detainees, write out a statement
4) Go to home depot to buy supplies for mounting a 2x6 across the window until the window company can get us a replacement.
5) Resume fighting with mac mini.
We are not amused.
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avdi
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The longer I'm alive the more I realize that all the wisdom I've acquired can be summed up with the phrase "chill the fuck out".
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fallenpegasus
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Way back in 2008-05-30, in this post, I said the following:
But then I realized that the better way would be to do it as a continuous dutch auction. I would specify the most per instance-hour I was willing to pay, and EC2 works out the lowest price across the entire universe of currently outstanding bids that will completely fill the capacity available for these things. As more people come into the system and bid for capacity, my instance-hour price I am paying can rise or fall based on everyone else's bids, and I could have my instances shut down if the current market clearing price rises higher than my set max bid.
There is competition to EC2 coming online soon. Eventually, someone is going to try this charging model.
If I was to build an EC2-like system, it's the charging model I would use. It would most perfectly capture and monetize my value to my users, giving me the largest possible income for the value I am providing, which I can use to build more capacity. It would also give me a much better and smoother signal to how much my users like my system, other than "there is more capacity than is being used, I overbuilt" or "I'm oversubscribed, and at 100% utilization, I need to build out more".
As long as *anyone* bids into the auction, for more than the equipment capital and power cost of running their jobs, and yet doesn't get any cycles, because someone richer has outbid them, that signals to me, the grid operator, that it will be worth investing in more grid.
And now Amazon AWS EC2 has done exactly this very thing, calling it "Spot Instances", in parallel with their existing "per instance hour" pricing model, which basically puts a maximum cap on the auction price.
Am I the only person to publicly predict this?
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troubleinchina
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One of the (many many many) things that people say about History that annoys me is that history doesn't matter. It's all in the past. It has no relevance anything now.
Bite me, history-hater. You fail at life.
I quoted this over at FWD a few days ago: Why We Do Disability History
...the United States Supreme Court has accepted appeals from several states which claim that Congress exceeded its constitutional authority in imposing the ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] on the states. Congress lacked evidence to prove that state governments had engaged in a historical pattern of discrimination against persons with disabilities...
I argue that all history is political. Yes, I am explicitly political in what I write: I'm doing disability history, at least in part, because there is a disability-related history. By writing about it, blogging about it, nattering at everyone I meet about it, I'm reminding folks that there is a past - sometimes a very radical past - that encompasses this idea of "disability". That the definition of disability has changed, and that these changes are political in nature. That the whole of history of people with disabilities is not the Eugenics Movement, or the Conquest of Deafness, or even the War of the Dots. That it's not just Helen Keller and FDR, but schools and hospital and concentration camps and marriages and Deaflandia and wheelchairs and Laura Bridgman and radical protests and poster children.
My history looks political, but I argue that choosing to completely ignore disability, race, gender, sexual identity, class, religion... Not including those, or acknowledging their influence, is equally political, but it isn't viewed that way. It's viewed as default, as apolitical.
But, I was going on about how history has an influence on the present.
Back in November, the Conservative Government decided to change how Canadian history is presented to new immigrants.
The new document, which will be the citizenship study guide for the 250,000 immigrants who arrive in Canada each year, instantly becomes one of the country's most widely read and potentially influential pieces of writing. It will replace a document created by the Liberals in 1997 that the Conservatives criticized for its anemic presentation of Canadian history and identity.
No longer will new Canadians be told that Canada is strictly a nation of peacekeepers, for example. The new guide places a much greater emphasis on Canada's military history, from the Great War to the present day. It also tackles other issues of historical significance, from Confederation to Quebec's separatist movement, that were barely mentioned by its predecessor,
How different does Canada look if you change the historic focus like that? What if you changed it to focus on Japanese Internment and the Eugenics Laws? What if you changed it so the story was written from the viewpoint of First Nations people, rather than European settlers? What about if we only told the history of immigration? What about if the focus was on religious tensions?
These things matter in the way people perceive Canada. If we present our history - as it is often presented in schools - as Confederation / War / War / Repatriation of the Constitution / Present Day, that gives on an entirely different view of what's important to Canada and Canadians than if you present it as Conquest / Confederation / Immigration / War / Immigration / War / Immigration / Everything Trudeau Ever Did / Peacekeeping Stuff / Present Day.
And that's just Canada.
I just don't get this apathy towards history, this feeling that it's irrelevant. Boring, I can understand. I obviously don't find it so, but I also don't understand people's interest in peanut butter, so whatever. But complete apathy?
What's the saying? "The past isn't dead. It's not even the past." We still wrangle with historical issues every single day. Trying to pretend that's not true doesn't change that - it just leaves you ill equipped for the future.
Originally posted at http://trouble.dreamwidth.org/548703.html. You can comment here or there using OpenID. Comments at Dreamwidth:  .
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cvirtue
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"... blowing snow will continue to cripple travel across Eastern New England today" it read. Fair enough. Anyone who has looked at a map knows which part of New England is the most Eastern part.
Near as I can tell, though, when weather forecasters around hear say that, what they really mean is "eastern New England, but we'll forget that Maine is larger than the rest of New England put together. And is more eastern than most of it."
Here is the map which accompanied that pronouncement. I've split New England into Eastern and Western halves by the pink line in the middle.
If you've been following this storm, it's Rhode Island, Eastern CT, and a bit around Boston/the Cape that has taken most of the snow impact. Not Maine, which is almost all of what comprises "Eastern" New England. The aforesaid regions are in Western New England. Even if you were to divide it up into three parts, those regions would be in Central New Englad. The West part of Central New England.
I'm just fine with fuzzy language on hard-to-pin down things like love, beauty, philosophy, but really, this is geography. It's not difficult to look at a map when there is one right in front of you.
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aberranteyes
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| Time: | 7:18 am. |
| Mood: |  chummy. | | Music: | Garbage, "Why Do You Love Me?". |
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Happy birthday, shoroko!
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cvirtue
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I recommend you turn off the sound, you don't need it:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/921777/diy_1_popcorn_machine/
(Annoying ad before illustrative video.) I note that a candle and the can would mean you could have fresh popcorn while at camping events with very little space used in your car. (On the other hand, of course, if you cook at events, you'll have a kettle and lid that you can use on a real fire.) Marshmallows can be cooked on candles, too.
Snow should continue through early afternoon. We have about an inch already.
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Saturday, December 19th, 2009
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Sunday, December 20th, 2009
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Saturday, December 19th, 2009
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herpdaddy
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Just a cute graffiti on a sign outside the West Side Market building. He looks very familiar though...and not sure why.
:)
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herpdaddy
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Baby Sabrina came to visit the office today. Very very cute. But first! Cupcakes!
Judie's new cupcake. The Reverse Peppermint Schtick. Mmmm. Damn good. Sold out in a day at Mojo's in Westlake :)
Just more cupcake pr0n. There's a cupcake resurgence going on these days. But these are gooooood unlike a few I've had.
Sabrina came to visit the office today (with mom of course and grandma). It's been a while since I last photographed her. She is very cute but had this very concerned look while sleeping for a while.
She decided to let us know how she REALLY feels about her dad. :)
Awwww.
And proud grandma too.
:D
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cvirtue
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Since we didn't venture southward into the expected snowstorm this afternoon, we declared a Family Movie Night. I zoomed off to the library and got Apollo 13, and also a picture book about same.
The book is for reading tomorrow -- I wouldn't let the kids look at it today, because I wanted them to see the movie first. We did warn them that there would be scary parts, but that everyone would get home safely.
They sat thorough the whole 2h20m of it. They liked it a lot. Our screening of it was a bit longer than that, of course, not only for bio breaks but because we'd stop the movie to explain bits of background and so on.
If you haven't seen it, rent it. If you have seen it, see it again. (It's now out in HD DVD.) If your kids are at all interested in science and at least 7, show it to them.
"I look up at the moon and wonder: 'When will we be going back, and who will that be?'"
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kightp
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Today I:
- Freecycled the old electric kettle (still works, but the lid catch broke so johnpalmer, who uses it more than I do, bought us a new one). The very nice gent who picked it up was most gratified not to have to turn on his stove to make tea.
- Turned five pounds of the last chanterelles of the season into a few ounces of concentrated mushroom goodness, thanks to my el-cheapo dehydrator.
- Wasted a couple of hours trying to use Windows' onboard CD burning utility to make photo CDs for the cast of "String of Pearls." It kept hanging at the end and failing beyond that, wasting several CD-Rs.
- Said "screw that", drove to Staples and bought some cheap but serviceable CD and DVD burning software. Picked up essentials (coffee, cat food) while I was out. Came home, installed the software, burned the CDs without a hitch.
- Printed and folded paper CD cases and packaged them all up.
- Earned my Titan Quest character (your basic beat-the-crap-out-of-them basher) a couple of levels
- Remembered that I had laundry in the washer from two days ago. Dried it.
- Avoided reading political blogs.
- Ate a grilled cheese and avocado sammich for lunch, lateish, leaving me without an appetite for dinner. Will eat after the show.
Which I'm off to shortly, dressed up in black velvet, a red turtleneck and red knitted jacket, my spiffy Fluevog boots and one of my favorite elisem necklaces ("Walking With the Lightning Lady").
Hope you're all getting to do more of what you want to than what you have to this weekend, too.
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krasota
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I forgot the buy birdseed. Traffic's been so crazy lately that I didn't feel like driving up 29 during normal business hours. The birds are desperately foraging, but I know they can find food. There are berries and seeds from wild plants in my yard, still exposed.
The bigger issue is that I use birdseed on our front walk for traction. And I let the birds clear the walk for me. Their body heat does a nice job of getting the last bit of snow/ice removed. If the busses are running Monday, I'll go buy 10lbs, which is less than usual, but enough to tide me over. We're not digging the cars out anytime soon and we haven't seen a plow yet. The plow will make the car situation worse, anyhow.
I had to go brush off the Dish because we lost reception. It worked for awhile, but we've lost reception again and I don't think it's from snow build up now. I wonder if there's some particularly dense weather headed this way. It's still snowing heavily. Tom's out shoveling again. He enjoys it because it keeps him warm and lets him accomplish something. As a telecommuter, he doesn't get snow days, so he's glad for the weekend timing.
I keep uploading pics to flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jocelyndale/sets/72157622902515869/
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sick.
amused.
dorky.
artistic.
annoyed.
cold.
amused.
annoyed.
calm.