music, language, and games

gonna close some more tabs.

why? because i have a backlog of things i need to open up and play with so i can either show you or not.

music! weird music! weird AWESOME music!

first, i'd like to introduce you (have you met?) to the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, or PLOrk, as it is affectionately called. their webpage is kinda dry, but there's a nice little piece about them in the NPR archive, and one of their photo sets works like a gallery and is interesting. they don't look like they're really set up for hotlinking, but if you're looking at those pictures, please notice the exit sign in the auditorium. ooooh. talk nerdy to me.

and then there's the vegetable orchestra. not only is this a concept that i am in love with, but their website is rich with images and words and sound samples, so you should go. then, if you're like me, you will buy their album "onionoise"and you will look for the nearest venue and wait until you can go there and see them live. mmmm, soup.

(and speaking of soup, here is a really good soup i made yesterday. i played fast and loose with the recipe, both changing the quantity of things in it and adding potatoes to the roast, but it is  whoa-nellie-i-can't-talk-to-you-now-i'm-eating-soup! good.)

soup? how did we get there? is it non-sequitur hour? were you READING the website, or did you just skim through, hmmm?

ok, NOW we're just going to jump topics, but it's ok; it still involves sound files. if you've known me for more than ten minutes, you know i'm a big language fan. so naturally i was interested to hear the story of the three little pigs as told in new guinea pidgin, which is a creole.

for a neat look at the evolution of alphabets, look here.

a lot of the world speaks english, though. me, i'm learning OLD english (more accurately west saxon literary dialect), but one of the things that interests me in the world of english speakers is accent. so it's super cool that there's a game you can play to try to guess where a person is from based on his or her accent when reading a passage in english. it's harder than i thought it would be at the outset, because while me ear can distinguish the accent of a native german speaker, i'm not good enough to know if it's swiss german. and what if the speaker is, say a native french speaker, but was taught english by australians? oh, man. it gets complex... 

anyway, you can play can you guess where my accent is from?

and then as long as you're playing games, you might as well play this clever little old-school favicon-sized game: tinyhack.

or maybe you just want to play with movement and sound: balldroppings. it's s chrome experiment, but it seems to work just fine in firefox.

and if you like your games more cerebral, there's a whole playground here.

and just for good measure, last night i heard about this race: run for your lives! ha. that's funny.

girl talk

i'm cleaning off my desk so i can close my tabs and now that i can use that handy tool i told you about yesterday to have any tab from any of my machines open, it's a lot easier for me to have a look at the stuff i want to tell you about and then also have it handy for the machine i write from.

it's especially important since the keyboard on my laptop needs replacing and i no longer have use of the spacebar, or the b, n, ? and up arrow.

a while ago the band girl talk came out with an album called all day, which you can download in its entirety for free. the interesting thing is that there's a real-time list (with video) of all the samples used in the album. and even if it's not your style (it's not mine) it is a fascinating project and what the heck; it's free.

so i watched that in its entirety yesterday and although it's not going on my favorites playlist, it sure was interesting to see how the samples were used and also how the list was compiled. i am a sucker for a beautiful graphical representation.


i also want to tell you about a privacy tool i discovered and downloaded this week. it is also free and so far i am happy with how it works. the idea is that companies that have those like buttons are tracking you whether or not you are logged into their services. all you have to do is be on a page that has those buttons and you are being tracked, even if you have cookies disabled.

and you can get add-ons that disable the buttons entirely, but what if you want to use them sometimes and not be tracked everywhere else? so this thing (and so far i'm pretty happy with my test of it on both of my machines) simply blocks the tracking unless you choose to interact with the button on the site. you can manage your permissions and grant and ungrant as you please, which makes me happy.

you can find that here: share me not.

and appropos of nothing, i want to tell you about this because i think it's screamingly funny:

The Birthday Clown Consortium Price Guide.

there. i'm done for now. it's off to the kitchen with me. i don't know yet what i'm going to make, but there will be a few things and i bet they'll be good.

organizing at the end of the world

the end of the world came yesterday.

did you notice? no, you probably did not, unless you play glitch. the thing about the beta testing is that they roll out a version of the game and the testers play it until the test ends and then they start over in the new test version.

since i only started playing wednesday, i was not aware that at the end of the test, there's a giant End Of The World Party. but for a game that i only started playing wednesday, it sure has a hold of me. i am marking the days until the new version launches, and i know from the start that we'll only play for a week and then THAT world will end.

later on, and soon we hope, they will launch the game for real and we can just play. my initial assessment of it is that it's AWESOME.

it is smart and funny and graphically interesting and has a decent soundtrack. the environments and the storyline are imaginative and quirky. and here's the thing i REALLY like: it is cooperative in nature, rather than competitive. in order to advance in the game, you have to work and play well with others.

and you have to be able to make a good sammich.

while i'm casting about blankly for the startup of the new version on or around august 11, i have the usual projects, which includes SOMEHOW organizing and consolidating the bookmarks from both of my machines and all of my browsers, a thing which i was beginning to think impossible until this morning i found an add-on that works across platforms and across browsers and now my machines have all the same bookmarks and open tabs, or they CAN have the same open tabs or not, because it's configurable.

boo-yah!

you can find that here.

useless

yesterday and today i played a game.

apparently it's addictive; i played it through several mealtimes and one bedtime, only leaving the house to race bicycles and play disc golf with cr.

it's still in beta, so not everyone can get in, but go ahead, if you dare: glitch

sleeping: an equipment guide

you probably don't know how to pack for going to bed.

what's that you say? you just crawl in there and sleep? you're not PREPARED?

you need my advice.

i am changing my sheets today. i say it in the present tense because right now i only have one set of sheets that i really like and that fit my mattress well, so in order to clean them it's a commitment to see the process through all the way.

i confess that i have not changed them since those two days it was really hot because it kind of seemed pointless to put fresh sheets on the bed if it was only going to be another hot night, but i have to draw the line somewhere.

it's not ENTIRLEY as slovenly as it sounds, because i habitually sleep in long-sleeved shirts and athletic tights and i ALWAYS wear socks, so there's not a lot of actual skin contact with the sheets, but still. there are limits.

uh, anyway, when you take the sheets off the bed, you find out what's really under that comforter.

i used to need a completely empty bed, with nothing in it and the sheets all needed to line up square and i wish i could tell you i have never gotten out of bed in the night to remake the bed because the sheets were crooked.

so while my life now may not represent progress in the strict sense, it does represent movement.

sleeping is dangerous business. last thursday on my way out of bed i managed to hit my head so forcefully on a nearby shelf that i managed to punch a half-inch triangular cut in my scalp but didn't notice the matted blood until i took my hat off at lunchtime.

apparently there's a whole suite of things you need in order to sleep. here's my list:

in the bed:

• four pillows. it's important that if you roll over, you are fully supported.
• two phones. you can't be bothered to roll far enough to pick one up if it rings. one functions as an alarm clock, too.
• camera. you usually need to take pictures during the night. (see above, phone as alarm clock)
• t shirt. you can't drool on the pillows, can you?
• sweater that does not belong to you. this is a sufficiently grown-up looking susbstitute for that stuffed dog you stopped sleeping with when you were nine because it was falling apart but you still have it in your closet.
• large chunk of rose quartz. handy in an emergency. you know.
• hat. either your head is cold, or the room is not dark enough.
• ipod and headphones. duh. don't use the good headphones; they only get tangled.
• pretzels and pretzel fragments. ok, this isn't strictly intentional, but if you eat in your sleep, you're bound to lose some of it in the bed, ambien walrus.

not actually in the bed, but within reach without rolling over:

• large bag of pretzels.
• assorted other snacks.  you sleep better if you don't have to go so far to get snacks. if you have ever woken up in the driveway on your way to get something to eat, you know this is important.
• two bottles of water.
• spare ipod. emergency podcasts in case of failure.

furthermore, before you go to sleep you should plan your next day's activities and make sure you are wearing socks appropriate to that activity.  this means if it is saturday night, you should be wearing your bright red or florescent yellow socks, or at the very least your black and pink flamingo socks because that's what you should wear to church,  ESPECIALLY if you are in front of the congregation for any part of the service. it also means that if tomorrow is canada day, you are wearing your maple leaf socks.

details are important. if you forget to put on the right socks at bedtime, you will only have to get up and change them as soon as your error is discovered.

save yourself time and energy. be prepared.

i know i have helped you.

this is what it's like

yesterday i got up on a sunny day feeling GREAT and after church my chicken guy's wife gave me not one but TWO dozen boxes of eggs which means i have enough eggs to do some of the other things i was maybe going to go with them, but was kind of saving them out for things i HAVE to use them on...

but anyway, i was going to go to the grocery store to do my shopping after church and now i don't quite know what to do because it's warm out and now if i leave the eggs in the car i have to leave them in the cooler, but i always put my cold things in the cooler when i shop and i hadn't brought an extra because i wasn't counting on the eggs and now i don't know what to do so i start to go home and then i turn around and go back because i'll just figure it out, whatever, but then i'm crying.

really, really crying. and so i pull off into the nearest parking lot which is the town office (closed because it's sunday) and it's the kind of crying that short circuits something in my brain and i just start barking out words or parts of words and i know they're the beginnings to sentences i'm trying to say but after a while they're meaningless tics and i can't go forward with other thoughts and i can't make them stop and at this point since i am so close to the police station i'm afraid an officer will come and talk to me and i won't be able to do anything but bark and yip and twitch and up until this point it's just paranoia

-and i'll interrupt here to tell you that while i am always willing to consider that it's just paranoia, i HAVE been hunted by the police and if you have that reality to toss into your paranoid delusion, that is just not a good mix.


so anyway, i'm afraid the police will come and i'll be unintelligible and the next thing i know i'll be cuffed and transported when all i need really is to calm down and rest a little, maybe, or at any rate we all know that's how it goes since if there's a drug out there that works, i'm allergic to it.

yeah. so. i'm sitting there in my car crying and i'm thinking that i'm maybe not in a safe position when this police cruiser goes by me a little and then turns around with his lights on. he goes by me, but i go into panic overdrive. what follows is the whole of the williston fire department and rescue squad resopnding to a call somewhere down the road, but all the siren and lights are not making me feel any better.

so i think: i have to get out of here.

and i head out, back toward the church, on foot, because i think maybe i shouldn't drive. i think i will be safe at the church.

but it's locked up and although i know how to use the key box it's at least cool on the lawn and what i really want is just to stop crying and go home and have a nap or something and i try to cal my mom who can figure that i'm in bad shape, but can't figure out the barks and yips and i try to call cr who can sometimes calm them and in the end finally i get home somehow and watch some youtube videos until i feel better, and then since i'm in a bad mood, the only thing i can think of to cheer me up is to make some exquisite little dishes.

so i made a lovely tomato-basil sorbet and a balsamic reduction and a roasted garlic pasta salad that is so good you'd sell your grandmother for a second taste.

and now because i have a splitting headache, i'm going to go make popovers.

i've never made popovers.

it should be fun.

return to my usual programming

wow, that was some week.

somehow i managed to get signed on as the head instructor for the essex rec department's week-long geocaching day camp. i am still a little fuzzy as to how that happened, but it did.

if you are interested in seeing my online materials for that, you may find them here.

without crashco i think i would have been dead in the water, but with him i think it went all right. i have all my experience in education and all that to draw from, but when it comes to putting all the containers and clues and such out in the field, it becomes a mighty big job for one person.

with many of the other camps you can just take all the kids outside to play a game and one adult is sufficient oversight, but geocaching done properly means a lot of wandering around in the woods and if you need to keep track of twelve middle school kids, three adults is just about right.

anyway, today was my first day back to "normal", and i have celebrated by catching up in the reading of the blogs i read, doing some light housework including laundry and cleaning the upstairs bathroom and washing the windows (inside and out) in the front room as well as organizing and clocking the january 2011 photos from the thirteen project, and editing them into video.



normally doing a month of thirteen photos takes me three days if i don't dawdle, but i guess i'm just on fire today, nevermind that last night i celebrated the end of the week by making split pea soup, zucchini bread, a batch of ginger ale, and a new experimental lavender-rosemary cooler that i hope will be light and refreshing.

now if you'll excuse me, i have to go make a different zucchini bread and maybe some more soup or maybe some cookies or something.

and i have to call my chicken guy because i'm out of eggs.

art and artificial intelligence

art. where to start? art. art. art.

so i was doing what i always do, which is a lot of random stuff, and i saw this website that takes images and "textifies" them. simple enough. it's fun to play with, and you can configure it a little and save the image.

here's a photo i took, modified with textify it.

kind of nice, yes?

and then i saw to really astounding interactive art projects:

the first is an interactive film that uses google earth imagery and music video. you should run it in chrome, but it is so cool that it's worth firing up a second browser and shutting down everything else you're doing just to see it.

the wilderness downtown

the other is the johnny cash project, which i might could describe, but you really should go see it for yourself. i am not kidding about this.

but yesterday i was listening to a radiolab podcast about talking to machines and heard about cleverbot. it's fairly astounding, and you can talk to it from here.

cleverbot is pretty far along in its learning, but if you want you can talk to a newer avatar called evie. she isn't trained as well, but every conversation you have helps her learn.

you may not wish to assist in developing artificial intelligence. it's interesting, though.

i had a very weird experience with her tonight in which she asked me my name. i told her i was called flask, which i am. and she said "hello, (my given name)". given what little i know about how her training works, that's a really bizarre coincidence, even if she did follow it up with asking me why people call me harper, which to my knowledge nobody has ever done.

that's it for me.

you can call me harper if you like. evie says she only did it because she's nice.

it isn't just chimps and us anymore.

there's been a lot of hoo-hah about lots of species using tools, which is one of the things we used to think made us special.

as far as i know, though, we are still the only species to construct tools for use and distribution on the internet, although there are lots of videos these days of various critters from octopus to lion recording themselves and lots of discussions about who holds the copyright for images that a gorilla makes.

uh, anyway.

my point? it was really to talk about some little tools i have open on my desktop but was waiting to tell you about.

of course there's a cute little map tool that tells you how far two points are from each other, which is super handy.

and if you're worried about security, you might think about your passwords.

and librarians? librarians are awesome. they care about your privacy, even when the government doesn't.

and maybe this isn't so useful, but it's kind of cool. the colour clock. and as long as i'm talking about clocks (wasn't i just?), i just heard about this today. i am sad that it is not playing near my house.

simple solutions

aside from stopping the stupid stinking expensive war that is the death of the republic and the downfall of the empire (didn't ANYBODY learn anything from rome?)

-uh, aside from THAT, we could actually be helping people. here are some projects that take small practical approaches to big problems, and while they don't solve the cause of world poverty, they increase the standard of living for people who really need it.

these people make and ship low-cost wheelchairs to people in developing countries. it's not state-of-the-art-insurance-is-paying-for-it perfect fitted medical supplies, but a lawn chair fitted with bike wheels is perfectly serviceable and a cheap alternative.

and even during daylight hours it's DARK inside a lot of people's homes, where electricity is either expensive or unavailable. these people have come up with a cheap solution that helps.

and while we're at it, the problem of clean drinking water is a major one in much of the world. you don't hear much about this solution to the problem, but i think one of the reasons you don't hear a lot about it is that nobody is going to make a lot of money from it.

and in the developed world, people with diseases like ALS or MS typically can't get access to those spiffy computer-assisted communication devices that would make their remaining days better. those machines are expensive and your insurance won't cover them, so unless you're rich, you're out of luck.

so these guys developed a cheap DIY version you can make yourself or have made for under $100.

hard travelin'

here's today's work:



this is the posted video of december from my thirteen project. it is difficult to wade through those images and see the hours crawl by knowing what it was like to be living in that room with barred windows, to be separated from my loved ones, and the general grimness of the atmosphere in the halfway house over christmas and new year's.

since they took my camera away while i was inside, i snuck some illegal external shots later and modified those to represent the hours i was still marking inside.

there are "normal" pictures taken in parking lots, but i know where they are and when they are: they are the hours between session and curfew when i had to go out to get groceries, medications, supplies, and just to get out.

checking my email meant sitting in a parking place curbside at an open network, usually at the library.

you see pictures of sunshine and ice fisherman, but they're taken from inside a session room. it's done quickly, under the notice of the staff. the patients don't care; they're not in the picture.

it's hard to see those images.

temperature

i don't care how hot it is during the day.

really,  i don't. over a hundred degrees? awesome day for a road bike ride.

but it's nighttime and i want to sleep, you know?


i wouldn't bother to mention it, except  that there's an interesting little temperature thing going on here:

if i walk out my front door it's just about as beastly hot outside as it is inside, but here at my desk only one floor up and on the same side of the building what's coming through the window feels like a cool breeze. there is some difference between the upstairs temperature and the downstairs temperature, but not enough i don't think to account for the difference.

in the basement, however, it's about twenty degrees cooler, so i'll be sleeping down there.

overnight the temperatures are supposed to fall into the low 60s so it will give the rest of the house a little chance to cool before i shut it all up in the morning starting on the sunny side of the house and then all the way around when the outside temperature draws near the inside temperature and of course as the evening cools i go through the reverse process, testing every window and door and opening everything where it's cooler outside.

yes, i have considered a/c.

...for about ten minutes.

what? i should get a/c for the three days a year it's above 50 degrees here at night?

i don't think so.

i don't even bother most days to wear short sleeves, let alone shorts. today called for short sleeves, but still long pants.  as far as i'm concerned, if it's july and i can wear turtlenecks, i'm happy. if there's a light frost on the grass in early august i am ecstatic.

wednesday night my friends and i were laughing about our definition of what constitutes "the south": bennington and brattleboro counties.

and beyond that, you might as well be at the equator.

we're having a heat wave!

tonight at my race i was talking with my friends and while we're not really happy about the temperatures, we thought it would be really funny for all of us here in northern new england to get on the interwebs and complain about the heat.

and the weather.

today it must have been eighty-five degrees here at my house! and it's sunny every day except for the afternoons when it rains, so the grass is lush and green and at this time of year golden topped in the sunset hours.

blast the heat. eighty-five degrees is about fifteen degrees warmer than i like it.

it's july, which means i watch a lot of TV. the whole reason i pay for he cable package i do is because i have to watch the tour every july.

every day.

today i have to catch the primetime coverage because i had to miss the live coverage because yesterday i got a flat tire on my way to my race and today i had to get it fixed AND i had to take my bike into the shop for repairs.

in my spare time, i'm editing the song i wrote and i'm organizing and clocking photos for the thirteen project. if you're just joining us, i take a picture every thirteen hours. i have been doing this for eighteen months now. i'm behind in the organizing, mostly because i got bottled up behind the Very Bad Thing; in order to clock the photos from november and december i have to come face to face with it and the subsequent prolonged stay in the crazy house where they took away my camera, so i've had to come up with a way to represent the weeks behind bars in a way that preserves the spirit of the project.

yesterday i posted november to youtube; tomorrow i'll get a good start on clocking december.

old news

since i took five weeks off, i have kind of a backlog of things on my desk. none of this is particularly fresh, but i think it's worth mentioning.

first, i heard a really interesting podcast on studio 360 about three-dimensional sound. it's worth going to their page to have a listen.

and i don't care if you are allergic to cute and fluffy kitties and fuzzy puppies give you hives. you should go play sissy's magical ponycorn adventure, which is a game designed by a five year old girl. if you're interested in the story of how it came to be created, her father wrote about it here.

recently i burned up a lot of time looking at some maps. uh, really, if you know me, you know that i habitually burn a lot of time looking at maps. in this particular instance, though, i had been to campobello island, NB and eastport ME among other places and i had taken a picture of a navigational marker out in the channel by the old sow and i thought i'd look it up and the next thing i knew i had two things on my screen: a complete description of the coast of maine and new brunswick from quoddy narrow to calais, and the accompanying chart 13396. taken together, you can have hours of charty fun.

if you like your maps on a smaller scale, you maybe would like the atlas of the habitual.

time off

ok, so i took five weeks off.

if you really wanted to follow what i was writing, you could have been reading my geocaching logs, which are now all caught up. it's kind of like blogging, except that each entry is attached to a place i went and tells part of the story of a day. most of my logs also include pictures, many of which i post to panoramio, and many of those get onto google earth.

speaking of google earth, i also did a little map project with that about our two days playing geocache battleship.


View battleship! in a larger map

i also made a little tour in google earth, which you can download as .kmz here and play for yourself.

tuesdays and wednesdays i still go out and run a 5k trail run and mountain bike race, respectively, and i still go out and play disc golf a couple of times a week.



in other news, i made a  new ice cream flavor that's kind of complicated but very good. i call it "hot chocolate".  basically it's a very chocolate ice cream with arbol peppers and cinnamon. it's complicated because in order for the custard to hold as much chocolate as it does, you have to melt the chocolate in the milk and temper it. in order to get the pepper taste in there properly, you have to slow simmer the peppers and cinnamon and other spices in scalded milk. and in order to carry all that chocolate, you have to use egg yolks, which have to be tempered as well. then the whole thing has to be combined cooled and after it cools you have to run the combined custard through the blender because some of the chocolate will have precipitated.

THEN you can add the cream and toss it in the ice cream maker.

it's time consuming, but very, very good.

 the thing about it, though, is that it is so smooth going down you don't even hardly notice the peppers until you have already swallowed it, so if you don't enjoy a stealth kick, you ought to be careful. and for heaven's sake don't get any in your eyes when you're busy licking the bowl.


oh, and i wrote a new song.

outside of all that, though, things haven't been going so well for me and i just didn't want to write to you about that. it's bad enough that i have to know about it without depressing you, too.

les paul and google

i was (maybe) going to post about some other things, like geocachng, or some chartalicious things i found, or the power outage map that isn't very informative if your OWN power is out, but then i was looking at today's google doodle. do you ever look at the archive? and i was wondering: what does that commemorate?

oh. les paul's birthday. cool. (beware auto-play)

but here's the REALLY cool thing: it's not just a pretty doodle. you can PLAY it! and it records! here's mine, from a few minutes before i discovered you can take lessons.

way cool.

most awesom spam bless honestly veracious.

with only a few edits (in parentheses), here is the most awesome spam comment i've gotten to date:
--

We Purchase Houses With No Objectivity,We Buy Any Houses,We peculate Over Payments.Please pack make on
(link removed) and get suggest in 48 hours
or right us (phone number removed),divert refer to friends who need help.Bless heyday!



Distinction Landlords and Rehabbers:
If you are a dour investor buying at least inseparable house per neighbourhood for rental or rehab,
then you are in the healthy go on veracious now.
(link removed).


Proprietor Financing May Be The Occult Explanation Learn How To Own A Domestic Without Dealing With A Bank!
Chance The Hideous Really In all directions Renting & Why It May Be Setting You Pursuing Financially??¦ Gain
Insider Secrets on How Possessor Financing Honestly Works
(link removed).


Requirement Unconventional Start? We can help.Painting ensemble can coat your domicile within desired time framing,
in colors of your preference with master discounts for paints,with adequate by client quality.
Above-board prices,references,allow,

fetters,insuranse.For pictures of your works suit by
(link removed).

--

honestly, even if you WERE looking for those services, would you use those links?

rollin', rollin', rollin'

tonight i went to run my usual 5k trail run (doesn't that sound hardcore?) and went down hard right out of the start. i have no idea how i managed that; the terrain was flat and grassy and there wasn't so much as a dip to lose my footing on.

but i went down, rather dramatically.

it probably looked a lot bigger than it was, because i am a very good roller. at least that's what the guy in the oncoming lane said when i got run over by the dodge durango on route 2 a number of years ago and my choices were basically roll or die.

it is my opinion that once a fall is already in progress, there's no point worrying about it. you may as well roll. if you roll well, you can keep the tender bits from hitting and you can keep the long bones from breaking, and you can keep the connective tissue from snapping. a few bruises and cuts will heal right away, and with a kiss and some bandaids you can race again tomorrow.

tomorrow we'll race the same course on moutain bikes. that will not suck.

tonight was our first look at this year's blue course, and it's my favorite of the three, even though i have not yet seen the third course. i've been around long enough to know that the third one, next week, will be, uh, climb-ier. that course, no matter what trails they put it on goes up and up and up and then just when you think you can't take any more it goes up some more and then there's a short hard downhill and then you go up again and again and then it's just a long flat mile and a half run from there.

but tonight's course is in the woods, on the lowland. sure, it goes up and down, but it's the flattest of the three and while it has its twisty moments, it flows and swoops and in general is very fast and fun.

tonight, though, it's painkillers and muscle relaxants. and  benadryl, too, for my allergies, so no matter how i cut it, tonight i'm going to SLEEP! woo-hoo!

mishmosh

right.

so i'm still writing geocaching logs, like that's any big surprise. the big surprise is that i am now only about a month behind in logging, so i may actually catch up. i have also posted the videos that go along with those logs.


in other news, here are two really cool optical illusions.

yesterday i made some baked cheese things that go around olives (pretty good) and i am still experimenting with some other things, but tonight i am happy with the dulce-de-leche-with-butter-brickle flavor ice cream i made, and i adapted this recipe for a shaved asparagus pizza.

the ice cream is very, very, good.

the pizza is to die for.  it is so good i ate the whole thing myself. oh, my goodness gracious me.

ok, that's enough dawdling. i have to go write more cache logs.







assorted other videos can be found here.

debridal suite

tonight's mountain bike race did not go well for me. i wasn't even a mile into it when i just didn't have the speed to go over a little shelf that i've gone over without problems for YEARS and i went over at slow speed onto my left elbow leaving a deep cut that isn't very long, didn't bleed much, but that i had to debride with a toothbrush when i got home.

and now i can't rest my arm anywhere because even though it's dressed, it's weeping and tomorrow there's gonna be a very festive bruise.

of course i took pictures and at some point if you're very nice to me i'll show you.

meanwhile, back at my desk, i wrote a lot of geocaching logs today, which doesn't just mean writing geocache logs. it means updating my website and posting to panoramio and ordering the november photos from the thirteen project because now i'm just getting to all the pictures from the days surrounding the Very Bad Thing and while i was at it, i posted the video journal that i started and never finished because i got to the day of the Very Bad Thing and then just stopped filming.

you can see it in my eyes, though.



this is the before of the before and after shots. these are what my eyes look like before something in them goes dead.

these are the pictures i have been avoiding looking at for seven months and there's no way to go forward besides through.