a photo, sketching poems

7:52pm: Hello My Freaky Darlings.
Suffering from a random burst of guilt, I managed to sort and upload all of my photos to date. http://flowerysong.smugmug.com/ has now been updated with even more things you don't really care about, including a few extremely belated wedding photos. (No, not my wedding; something like that would have warranted at least a brief post.)

11:30pm: Not Trader Joe's "Lemon" Curry Chicken Soup
It's not an exact replica, but pretty decent for a first attempt.

Serves: 4-6

In a saucepan over medium heat, melt:
30 g butter

Add:
20 g ginger, diced
10 g garlic, diced
20 g lemongrass, diced
50 g shallots, diced
zest of one lime

Sauté for about eight minutes, then remove from heat. Process in a food processor or blender until smooth.

Return mixture to pan, heat over medium heat, and add:
50 g long grain white rice

Cook for another three minutes, then stir in:
1 l chicken stock
400 ml coconut milk
10 g curry powder
1 dash sesame oil
juice of one lime
sriracha chili sauce to taste (optional)

Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and cook for ten minutes.

Add:
50 g mushrooms, sliced
50 g scallions, sliced
50 g red bell peppers, peeled and diced
50 g green bell peppers, peeled and diced
200 g chicken, cooked and coarsely chopped

Cook until peppers are tender, roughly fifteen minutes.

12:56pm: Hmm. The ticket price has gone up $1.50 since the last time I visited this cinema
If you're even remotely interested in superhero/comic book movies, you need to see Iron Man. Yesterday, if possible.

It's got engaging characters, a fun story, and a plot that almost makes sense.

Also, if you're one of those weird people that gets up and leaves during the credits, I would recommend against that. Even if you're not a comic book fan and therefore don't care about the final scene, witnessing the reactions of the people that do is fun.

4:29pm: This is actually a post.
I'm a bad person.

Also, I should be more social.

4:02pm: This isn't really a post.
What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. Add an asterisk (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again.

Ganked from samaritan1975

( Behind the link lies nothing of interest. )

Interesting mix of classics and highly-hyped modern books, though I think the presence of Tolkien, Susanna Clarke, and MZB tells us a bit more about the type of person likely to use LibraryThing than it does about the population at large. Even more interesting would be to know how this list was derived; is it scaled based on the number of people owning the book, or merely based on the absolute number of copies marked as unread?

12:00pm: H 536 etc.
Well, after some few years of procrastination I finally took the road skills test. I now have a shiny plastic card stating that the State of Michigan believes I should be allowed to operate motor vehicles on public roads.

12:00pm: Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.

Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

A penny loaf to feed the Pope
A farthing o' cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we'll say ol' Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah hoorah!

9:45pm: It burns!
So, I now have one of those new-fangled cellular phone thingies. A Razr V3m to be precise. It's grey and irritating looking. The number is in a friends-locked post at the top of my journal; if you're not a friend yet are for some strange reason reading this, I suggest attempting to pluck the number from the ether using your extraordinary mental capabilities.

2:12pm: I can has photographs naow?
Well, I finally got around to sorting and posting various photos from last year to my SmugMug account.

http://flowerysong.smugmug.com/

Galleries of possible interest to people on my friends list:

Greenfield Village
Amanda and Nate's Shower
Photo Scavenger Hunt

I still have a couple more galleries to put up, so if you think I took pictures somewhere yet don't see them on the site, that's why.

12:43pm: Memeishness from seawasp
Name your top six TV shows right now, before reading the questions.

1) Firefly
2) Babylon 5
3) Smallville
4) Buffy The Vampire Slayer
5) Blackadder
6) Yes, Minister



( Read more... )

12:10pm: Movie Review #001
Narc


The Good: Excellent cinematography and acting.

The Bad: About halfway through, I stopped caring what happened to the characters and just wanted the plot to resolve itself.

The Ugly: Unrelentingly dreary; pervasive foul language and drug use.

Stars: 4
Sporks: 1

11:17pm: Musings and mussings
I sonnet-ified a sonnet. Go, read it. Laugh.

Well, last Saturday I embarked upon an epic adventure: watching all three extended edition installments in The Lord Of The Rings. I did not sleep during any of it, but I have my suspicions about some of the other people. It was fun, but I worry that I may have inadvertently subtracted from others' enjoyment of the film by talking too much. Y'see, if all I wanted to do was sit and watch the films, I could do that at home, and sometimes I forget that not everyone can do so. When rewatching a film for the umpteenth time, it tends to be more fun to comment on the film than to pay attention to everything that's happening on the screen. Ach, weel, ye cannae please everyone.

Creative writing met for the second time tonight; I turned in my first course work, the sonnet linked above. Unfortunately, we have too many people to be able to discuss everyone's in class, and mine was one of the eight that we didn't get to.

9:00pm: Apropos of nothing...
Bash pick-a-chures. http://flowerysong.smugmug.com/gallery/2252964

2:38am: NaNoWriMo Excerpt
The beginning...

( Click... )

3:43am: On DNS and divers names
Hmm.

shasta.marwnad.com -> shasta ~ # uname -a
Linux shasta 2.6.17-gentoo-r8 #6 SMP Mon Oct 9 22:21:41 EDT 2006 x86_64 AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3300+ GNU/Linux

aravis.marwnad.com -> aravis ~ # uname -a
Linux aravis 2.6.15-gentoo-r5 #1 SMP Mon Feb 13 20:23:47 UTC 2006 i686 AMD Duron(tm) processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

eustace.marwnad.com -> Windows 98

Interesting naming convention, wot?

shasta is my desktop, eustace is Kathryn's laptop, and aravis is the fileserver that I just finished rebuilding the RAID array on.

1:20am: Replacement HD
aravis ~ # cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid5]
md0 : active raid5 sdb[4] sda[0] sdd[3] sdc[2]
937713408 blocks level 5, 32k chunk, algorithm 0 [4/3] [U_UU]
[===========>.........] recovery = 59.7% (186862720/312571136) finish=119.6min speed=17510K/sec

unused devices:


It's ironic that the first time I've had a hard drive with data that mattered on it fail was a week after I set up a disk array which would be able to recover from a drive failing.

2:44pm: A teenager at heart.
Christians shouldn't blog

Whatever this guy was smoking, I want some.

Now consider the quizzes generated by different sites that people can post so others learn more about them. Some surveys detail every vile preference under the sun. Here is a sample question: “If you had one day to live how would you live it?” Among the options given, one was, “I’d kill myself and get it over with.”

What!!? Other questions ask about lying; which teachers are hated the most; how many boyfriends or girlfriends one has had; and so much more. Let me stop and say this: The young people of God CANNOT get involved in such things! Not even a little!

Oh noes! Teh intarwebs can be used to be stupid! Think of the children! I can go to the bookstore and buy a book filled with humorous limericks[*]; does this mean that Christians shouldn't write books? Scalpels can be used to murder; does this mean that Christians shouldn't become doctors? Blogging is a tool; as with other tools, it is not in itself virtuous or immoral. Prayer can be used to exalt the person praying; preaching can be used to extort money. This does not mean that we should never pray, or that we should never preach.

Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Teenagers' blogs are filled with stupidity due to the simple fact that teenagers are stupid. Even if they weren't using this particular medium to express their unique brand of inanity, that would not change the fact that they are stupid teenagers.

I know people that use blogs to discuss matters of theology, an endeavor which, the last time I checked, the Bible encouraged. They could have the exact same discussion in person, if it weren't for the fact that they live on opposite sides of the world; this author would tell us that the fact that this discussion takes place via a specific medium it is somehow evil, and something that no good Christian would do?

I'm speechless.


[*] The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean -
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

2:01pm: Guess what I'm doing on 2006-11-07?
The Royal Shakespeare Company @ the Power Center for the Performing Arts

The Tempest: Directed by Rupert Goold. Starring Patrick Stewart as Prospero.

Shakespeare’s magical last play, his poignant farewell to the stage, has love, tragedy, and comedy combined in equal measure as the usurped Prospero draws his enemies to his enchanted island to exact his revenge, yet ultimately finds peace and the ability to forgive.

They're also doing Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, but I'm not planning on attending performances of either one.

1:23pm: Gebeorscipe
When: Friday, September 8; 6:00 PM

Where: Near Depot Town in Ypsilanti. If you need more specific directions, ask.

What: Party. Specific activities have not been finalized. May contain one or more of the following: board games, television, aestheticization of violence, card games, literary criticism, theological debate, wasabi, the dead rising, charades, and knitting.

Who: Well, if you're reading this post, chances are I wouldn't mind you showing up. Space in the apartment is somewhat limited, but that just means if too many people show up we're going to be shoving the less wanted guests (such as me) into a closet or somesuch. If you're interested/planning on coming, leave a comment so I know approximately how much pizza crust to make.

What to bring: Pizza and various beverages will be provided, but if there's a specific pizza topping or (non-alcoholic) libation that you have your heart set on, you're welcome to bring it. The same thing applies to activities; I have several movies and a few games, but more choice is always good.

6:30pm:




I'm going to hit you until photos come out.

I have been threatened with physical harm if I don't post these photographs. Note that they suck, which is one reason I hadn't gotten around to doing so. Plus I was just trying to get a few snapshots, not do a photojournalistic or traditional wedding photography thing. So, here they are.

12:41am: Ilfochrome
Just a quick note (once again, for Devon): Ilford still manufactures Ilfochrome (formerly Cibachrome) color positive direct print photo paper. Adorama offers it starting at $32.95 for 25 8"x10" sheets.

4:12pm: First, a link for Devon: 10 megapixel camera phone It's really more like a camera with a cell phone built in. Crazy, nu?

Amanda and Nate got married on Saturday. Since I was there for the wedding and not as a photographer, I took relatively few pictures[0]. I'll probably post a few later, once I've gotten a chance to review them. It was a very charming wedding overall, with some idiosyncratic flourishes[1] from the participants.

Flower girls v. cute, if somewhat temperamental at times.

Everyone tells me that it was a beautiful dress. I suppose it looked nice, but I wasn't really paying that much attention to the clothes people were wearing. [2] The cake was beautiful, but I didn't have any so I can't comment on its merits as a foodstuff.

The whole day seemed to fly by (that may be due to the fact that I only had five hours of sleep the night before). I regret the fact that I didn't talk to very many people, and those with whom I did speak[3] I did not do well with the words and the forming into sentences thing. Plus, I'm very reserved[4], so I generally wait for other people to initiate conversations. When there are scores upon scores of other people with whom they could strike up conversations, this is not a winning tactic.

Tempus fugit. That was then, this is now; the moment is never the same twice.

I'm going to end this post now.

[0] About 50, I think.
[1] There are those who say that the groom shouldn't be carrying a knife during the ceremony. To them I say, bah!
[2] This has been the obligatory insensitive male moment of the week. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
[3] Yes, this means you.
[4] Some would say, shy to the point of being unable to function in social situations.

3:19am:

Well, this is the only one (of approximately eight) pictures that I took at Ben's open house which turned out okay. I kind of wish I had taken more, but socialising was more of a priority.

The grayscale image above is based on the green and blue channels from the original image, because the red channel was extremely noisy due to the fact that the image was underexposed and then pushed to a more normal brightness when converted. This is because I am an idiot who forgot to check what ISO setting he was using.

This was one of the times when I really missed Photoshop; The GIMP is sufficient for most things, but its facilities for playing around with color channels is disappointingly primitive.

Anyway, the composition sucks; the effect of the glow-rods is interesting, but would have been better in a correctly exposed colour version; and did I mention that I set the exposure wrong?



Quickly cleaned up colour version; blurred the red channel and bumped up the green and blue to decrease the visible noise, to the detriment of sharpness and (oh lordy) skin tones.



My new student ID card. I find it amusing that it's also a debit MasterCard, but that's probably just me.

1:33pm: Well, I uploaded some more photographs, for those who like that sort of thing.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v222/knotty_pine/350D/

2:43am: