I met up with Alicia this afternoon as she delivered a cake to a wedding just west of town. It was great opportunity to take some pictures for her in-development website, and it was nice exercise for me. I really could have used a couple of lights, but I’m still pleased with the results. She has another cake due in two weeks, so assuming I’m available, I’ll be going along to take pictures of that one as well.
Here’s the original of the square picture above.
Way to go, ABC. You took the Japanese gonzo game show concept and completely sucked out every last drop of awesome. I mean, seriously… THERE IS NO AWESOME LEFT AT ALL.
On a scale of one to ten, you get a minus-forty-two awesome.
Your lack of awesome is awesome in and of itself.
In it’s place, you’ve left an awesome vacuum.
Surgeon General’s Warning: ABC is devoid of awesome and may cause lung cancer.
If you focused your skill of removing awesome in Chuck Norris’ direction, you might actually be able to kill him.
For the record, I’m talking about Wipeout and I Survived a Japanese Game Show.
This is very cool.
I wonder how aggressive this could get… is the weak spot hardware or software? Whatever the case, this is very, very cool.
I, for one, welcome our new air-hockey-playing overlords.
After recently discovering the wonders of edamame, I quickly seized on the possibility of using it as a substitute for chickpeas in hummus.
Yes, I realize that hummus IS chickpeas, but I’d rather spend my carbs elsewhere. For instance, 1 cup of chickpeas contains 29g of net carbs, versus 6g for edamame. That’s a veritable coup for low carber’s who enjoy beans but have avoided them because of their typcially high carb makeup.
The recipe I used is basically this one from the Food Network site. I substituted peanut butter for the tahini since comparatively, peanut butter is lower in net carbs. It works, but I think next time around I’ll use even less peanut butter as the peanut aroma is juts slightly off putting. The real key to this recipe seems to be the coriander and cumin. This particular combination seems mimics the earthiness of chickpeas.
As for serving… I spread the mock hummus on sturdy leaf lettuce, topped it with chopped tomatoes, and rolled it into a nice wrap. Over all, it was a great way to mix things up for a delicious and light dinner.
A few months ago I read about a technique in which a steak is coated in salt and allowed to “cure” before being wiped off and grilled. I tried it a couple of times, but hadn’t really nailed the method. Yesterday I saw an instructable on the same subject, so I figured I’d give it another try for dinner this evening.
I’m not sure what you’d call the method. It’s not a marinade since it’s dry, and I don’t think it’s a rub since you don’t leave it on during the cooking cycle. It’s possible you’d call it a cure, but that implies that a process that goes on much longer than this method actually requires. Whatever it should be called, I think I’ve gotten the technique figured out.
If you use charcoal, you’ll need to modify these instructions. These instructions assume a gas grill and its relatively short time to ready.
The outside of the steak will develop wonderfully crusty grill marks. The texture is amazing.
You’d expect the salt taste to be overwhelming, but it’s not. This method runs neck and neck with the teriyaki marinade I normally use.
I’d bet this will do wonders for lesser steak cuts like chuck as well.
My dear friend and former roommate, Dawn, has been quietly building up a nice little photography business. Yesterday she tipped me off to the blog she started called Glimpses to show off some of the work she’s been doing.
I’ve known for a while that she’s very skilled, but having not seen any of her work for a year or two, I was struck almost dumb by how far she’s come. She’s incredibly talented and I can’t wait to spend some time shooting with her so I can steal some of her tricks.
Oh… and she’s the friend who’ll be helping out with the shoot for my brother’s wedding in October. Any concerns about the quality of the shots Nic and Brandy will get have gone right out the window.
If you’re in the Tidewater area of Virginia and need a photographer, Dawn’s your girl. Check out her business website for more information.
I mentioned a little while back that I planned some mods to the set of Wireless Flash Triggers I bought on Ebay (also known as Ghetto Wizards). Mostly, I’m done, with one more receiver yet to finish. I thought I’d share my results for anyone interested. Most of what I’ve done to my receivers is based on Jeremy Kuster’s work. My source for the internal antenna mod on the transmitter is this post by Strobe Monkey.
Regarding the receivers, Jeremy offset his battery holders more so than I did to allow for the addition of a sync cable port. I thought long and hard before finally doing what I did. I didn’t care for the unbalanced look of his layout. If I add the sync port mod down the road, there’s still some room on the other side from the batteries as well as going in from the bottom or the through the hole currently being used by the cold shoe mount (assuming you’re willing to give up that mounting option). I think the lanyards are a suitable solution so I’ll probably go through the mounting hole. In the meantime, I’ll probably get a couple of these from gadgetinfinity.com.
Another thing I didn’t like about Jerremy’s setup is that it eliminated the possibility of using the original battery. By putting the battery holder wires in where I did, and routing them correctly, the option still exists to use the original power source.
When it came time to attach the battery cases to the receivers, I originally just slathered on some quick epoxy. That lasted all of about two days. Once I figured out that method wouldn’t hold up I pulled out my Dremel and roughed up both mating surfaces before using some slow curing epoxy. I expect this will hold fine now.
The covers on the battery holders I picked up at Radio Shack required a screwdriver to open them and I didn’t like that, so I added the two-sided Velcro so I could nix the screws completely. There’s still a screw necessary to access the battery in the transmitter, but there’s not real option to avoid that one.
I originally planned to do the external mod like Jeremy, but the internal method seemed to be just as reasonable. I took a couple of tries with the wire length to get reliable triggering. I haven’t done any long distance testing, but a cursory test through three walls from the bathroom to the kitchen resulted in a 100% success rate over twenty attempts.
This has been a fun little project. I had no idea what I was doing for the most part, even down to this being my first time soldering electronics. Thanks to Jeremy and Strobe Monkey for being so generous with their experiences.
Just got word from the vet’s office that the biopsy came back clear of any malignancy.
All is well.
Whew.
Dear Mary McCormack,
I like your new show, but please stop pumping that shit into your lips.
You really don’t need it. We like you just the way you were.
Thanks.
