Now that quals are over and done with–yay, again!–it’s time to catch up on some of those things I’ve been putting off in the meantime. Which means that it’s time for a ridiculous gigantic Project 22 update. Definitely not recommended for dial-up viewers.
Continue reading ‘Project 22 – 1 – 16 January 2008′
Tag Archive for 'cooking'
The panini grill/griddle my parents got me after Christmas may have to be added to my list of Appliances Every Kitchen Needs. I just made my first meal on it tonight: a ham and swiss panini with fresh tomato and pesto on a ciabatta roll. It was astoundingly delicious. So much so that I don’t think I can come up with any improvements. It only took a couple of minutes to prepare and cook; it tasted spectacular; and clean-up was a snap. I ate it with a half-a-cup of split-pea soup and a Full Moon on the side. Definitely a winner.
The weather has been autumn-like enough that my chili cravings have set in. Last weekend I made up a batch, along with some cornbread on the side, and I’ve been enjoying it since, usually with a Saranac Pumpkin Ale on the side. Mmm, fall tastes yummy!
Even after sunset, the colors of Cascadilla can stand out… provided your shutter speed is slow enough.
Tuesday actually brought a half-way interesting optics lab, thanks almost entirely to the involvement of fluid mechanics. What the hell are you looking at? This is a shadowgraph of air escaping from the nozzle of a can of compressed air, like what one uses to clean a keyboard. The edge of the nozzle is the dark shadow on the left. The bright streak with dark diamonds over it is the air escaping the nozzle. In this case, the air can’s button is pressed all the way down and the air escaping is a) traveling at the speed of sound and b) at a pressure lower than the ambient air. The diamond pattern is actually a series of shock and expansion waves that bring the air back to ambient pressure. The photo was taken by expanding a laser beam, releasing the air stream into the beam’s path, reflecting the resulting image onto an index card (see the lines?), and snapping a high contrast, black and white photo of the image on the index card. It’s also brought to be extreme geekery.
Stephanie gave me some German magnetic poetry for my birthday, and I’ve started playing with it some on my whiteboard at home. This particular phrase just jumped into my head and refuses to leave. I think it’s the sound of the ö‘s that I like.
Tonight I actually made it out of the office before dark! And, as if the world were rewarding me for my lack of commitment to long, obscene work hours, the colors of the sunset were amazing. So, naturally, I stopped to take twenty pictures or so. This particular one is a subset of a gigantic panorama, and it’s one of my favorites from the set because of its lovely color gradients.
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