Someone kicked my Malibu light and broke it where it stakes into the ground. You can tell where they kicked it at the top since there is mud left on the light. Sigh. Well, at least I got more than a year's worth of life out of it after they first beat the light up. That's something positive...
I came across a How to make Totoro cream-puffs article and got inspired to make eclairs again.
I used Alton Brown's Lemon Curd recipe as a start. However, as a South Floridian who grew up on Key Lime pie, I used Key Limes instead of Lemons.
Put 5 Egg yolks, with Chalaza removed, into a bowl.
Add 1 Cup sugar and
Whisk until smooth.
Pour in 1/3 Cup Key Lime juice
and 1 Tablespoon Key Lime zest, finely chopped.
Whisk until smooth.
Whisk over a double broiler for 8 minutes.
Remove from heat, whisk in 1 stick of butter, 1 Tablespoon at a time until melted.
Cover with Saran Wrap and refrigerate.
The puff pastries came out a little bit deflated. I wonder if it was because I cooked them on silicone mats? Or perhaps the batter was a little too runny?
The final product sure tasted good though!
I went to OSPW for some disc golf today. The field which had been torn up during the dam construction is green again. But the grass is much different than the usual Buffalo grass around here. I wonder how it will hold up to Austin's summers.
Hole 3 was an easy birdie. I placed the disc right under the basket. I kinda guessed where the old tee would have been. And I wonder if the Round Rock group has changed this hole around because of the construction...
For lunch, I drove down to Flip Happy Crepes for lunch. Mmmm, most excellent.
Later, when I was going back through my pictures, I noticed that I accidentally took a photo of someone's feet. And they were wearing Vibram's Five Finger shoes! What a coincidence!
After lunch, I drove down to the charity gaming event, Give To Game. Unfortunately, not many people were there and gaming opportunities were not good there. So I left.
Apparently, in this down economy, 19 condominiums at Eighth and Brazos in downtown Austin are going up for auction. Prices range from 120K to 600K. Man the cheaper places are tiny! The floors are finished concrete and all of the air ducts are exposed.
I've been wanting to play Outpost for a while now. But we settled on The Scepter of Zavandor. Even though I wasn't the Druid, I still decided to pursue the Ruby path. I did pretty good at the start. I was the first to get four Sapphires. I then slowly worked my way up the Ruby track and started buying Rubies. My only problem in this game was the artifacts which destroy gems. I bought one Magic Mirror and survived the two others. So far, so good. I knew Shadow Cloaks were coming soon, but I wasn't able to increase my gem storage in time. I messed up by not buying a Magic Wand and sacrificial Opals. So the three Cloaks ate into my Sapphires. I was able to buy two sentinels: the Salamander and the Raven. And that got me third place. First and Second places were only points ahead of me. And if I were to have bought that wand and Opals, I think I could have won the game easily. Sigh. Still a fun game though...
I walked to Taco Deli for lunch today. And on the way back I noticed this stenciled graffiti on the stop sign next to work.
I took my car in for repairs. My loaner looks almost exactly like my new car. Except it is underpowered and missing a lot of features that I now rely on (like not having to take the key out of my pocket, Sirius radio, and my Texas toll tag).
What is really annoying is that I had to wait a week to get my car back. They replaced the steering column switch cluster and SZL (whatever that was). Part of the process of the repair is to encode all modules. Which erases the Dinan software on the chip. They had to send the DME back to Dinan to re-install the software. Sigh. What poorly designed software. And when is BMW of Austin going to get a dedicated computer to do it themselves?
I bought some shrimp at Central Market and cooked it up. I put butter in the pan with a some olive oil to increase the smoking point. I cooked the shrimp and added some garlic. I improvised a sauce by adding leftover pizza sauce and caramelized onions. Mmmm...
The regulator on the gas grill finally died on me. It was leaking around the thin metal plate at the top of the assembly. So, I tried an experiment. I put a lot of glue on the top and let it dry. However, when I turned on the gas, a pressure release valve blew out. Oh well. It was worth a try.
This thing was a real pain to replace. The brass nut would not unscrew no matter how hard I tried. Finally I gave up and got my neighbor to help me. It was pretty embarrassing just how easy it unscrewed when we tried it again. I went to Home Depot to replace it. Unfortunately, they were out of new, single hose regulators. Luckily, an employee took one off of a model on the floor and rang it up for me.
Unfortunately, bad luck seemed to come in threes fixing up the grill. The module which displays how much gas is left in the canister was not working. When I opened it up to replace the batteries, I noticed that they were badly corroded. Putting in new batteries didn't fix it. So I took it apart. The circuit board was damaged from the corrosion. You can see where the chemical reaction was slowly consuming the circuit path. Ordering a new part was easy. And I replaced it.
The next problem was getting the grill to spark to ignite the gas. I kept messing around with the single battery with no luck. Finally I reversed the battery and tried it again. This time everything worked!
Jon and I went for some disc golf at Old Settler's park. It was beautiful out there and, apparently, everyone had the same idea to go to the park. It was crowded out there.
I bought some new shoes to try out: Vibram's Five Finger KSO. Which is essentially a sock with a thin rubber sole. It feels like you are walking bare foot. How different!
It seems that there is a tournament going on in May here.
Hole 2 is hard. First you have to avoid the creek on the left and a big tree on the right when you throw at the tee. And the basket is right next to the water. Which Jon found.
Hole 7 is a hard hole if you follow the tight mandos on either side. So I was happy to get a birdie out of it.
Interesting. This is the first time that I have had a straight flush before. Woot!
I finally got around to scratching an itch and tried to photograph water drops. My setup was as follows:
The extension tube both magnifies the picture and allows the lens to get much closer to the object in question. But the trade off for that is a razor thin depth of field. With an f-stop of 16, only millimeters were in focus.
Also, the timing of the shot is difficult. And I am limited to 320ms due to the high speed sync. Which makes one shot pictures like "coffee with a drop of milk" all the more impressive to view.
Spring weather means turbulent, chaotic, energy. I really need a panoramic head. These pictures stitched together in a flat "V" shape. And they had subtle lighting differences between snaps.
Update: Ahh! I was using the TS-E 45mm and, when I was putting the lens away, I noticed that the was some tilt being applied to the lens. Perhaps that was it. I must strive to return all of the settings on a lens back to default when I put it away. Live and learn...
Chapel flaked on me. Normally, I don't mind people not coming to game nights. But when they RSVP and then cancel, that means more than just I suffer. And I could not do a fallback of going to yoga since I didn't bring my workout clothes and mat with me. Sigh. I guess that from now on I will have to treat a one day ahead reservation as unreliable.
Fortunately, Jon was willing to play a two player game of Race for the Galaxy. We went to Chuy's and played one game. And then we went back home and played four more. There are a lot of cards in this game. And the possible combinations are intriguing. The best way to scratch that itch is back-to-back games of it.
Reverse engineering the 12 days of Chrismas link via
The most beautiful waves ever link via
Develop film using coffee and vitamin C link via
SexyBack vs. Legend of Zelda Theme on Two Tesla Coils link via
Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa has created a series of creative fruit juice packages that have the look and feel of the fruit they contain link via
Tilt Shift Mardi Gras link
Repurposed thrift store painting link via
43 Photography hacks, mods and DIY projects link via
Smartest Dogs: Moscow Stray Dogs link via
Ars cracks TV Fringe code link via
Bulbdial clock link1 link2 via
Photoshops of that angry baby link via
Are people willing to help a robot get to its destination? link via
I ate Dim Sum at a new restaurant: Chinatown. Well, not really new to me as this is where Musashinos (Japanese Sushi) is located at on the ground floor. Their claim to fame was that they have "higher end" dim sum. And I do agree that it was pretty to look at. But I do miss the old classics. It was also way more expensive than other dim sum (2.5 times more).
I wonder if they only serve dim sum on one weekend or is it all year long?
Today we drove down to Pease park for some disc golf. It was a nice day (although it was overcast). Perhaps that is why the course was emptier than usual. Not that I was complaining or anything.
Hole three is a hard hole. It curves off to the right and runs along a river on the left. Since the usual backhand throw will curve off to the left, you have to anhyzer it to the right. Unfortunately, the plan failed and the disc went to the left. But I was lucky that we are in a drought and the river was low. Otherwise my disc would have been wet.
Hole 15 is another hard hole. You have to throw over the river and through a rather small gap in the leaves of trees. So it was nice when my shot did exactly that and land on the other side out in the open.
We ate lunch at EZs next to Central Market. As we were finishing, we notice Jeff walk in. I tried getting his attention via Twitter. But he said that his phone was not connected to the network. What a broken blackberry. iPhones don't have that problem...
And after lunch we stopped by Dragon's Lair. I bought a mini for the D&D game.
It has been quite a while since the last D&D session. A last minute cancellation and reschedule will do that to you, I guess.
This time, I set up a light stand with a pocket wizard attached to it. The light was a little harsh as you can see via the long shadows. And, at 16mm, the lens really distorts people. Jon is not that short and fat in real life. Still, it was an interesting experience. Maybe a second light would soften it out? Let's see if Chapel minds even more equipment showing up at his front door...
Another sign of spring time is the Mud Dauber wasps. At least I haven't noticed them around until now. Is it wrong of me to take out their nests on my soffits? They are not particularly aggressive. Especially when I got up close to them with all my photography equipment.
We started with an older Wallace game. After a short rules refresher, we dived into the game. Or, at least tried to. While the rules are simple (they are only a couple of pages long). The initial game play was not. There are a bunch of tiles in this game. And they each have attributes to them. So we were a little perplexed as to what long term strategy to pursue. I started off with a heavy military force. This game is definitely biased towards offense. Eventually, my army had a rating of 13 offense and 7 defense. I also won the Swiss Mercenaries tile which gave me +1 attack, +1 defense and -1 bid on Condottieres. In a three player game, there are four wars. If you win an attack (or win a defense and then win a counter-attack), then you get a victory chit. These chits are summed via triangle points. So, if you win a lot of wars, then, in the end, you will score a lot of victory points. But it is not so one-sided. If the pope is purchased, then one player can side with another. Mike and Jon used this ability once over each of the three eras to stop my aggression. Also, there are treachery tiles that you can purchase which may have abilities to lessen my attack strength or even stop the war.
Victory points are not only gained from wars. Many of the tiles are worth victory points. The city specific tiles are worth victory points based on their prestige (which goes up when wars are won and goes down if they are lost). Most money and most influence will also gain you victory points. So it seems balanced. Although I did win because I had won six wars.
Next up was a lunch-time length game: Pillars of the Earth. In this game I was lucky to grab Prior Philip in the first round. This gave me an extra victory point whenever I placed master builders in the Priory. Which, of course, I did every round. This alone scored me at least nine victory points. With this advantage, I leapt into first and stayed that way for the entire game.
As I was walking out to the parking garage it started raining. What was surprising to me was what the weather looked like at the time. It was mostly sunny and bright. And it reminded me of Florida when a lone raincloud in the sky would rain down and the wind would blow it over to on top of you.
Hrm, it seems that the new car is turning into a lemon on me. I am getting intermittent brake warning light problems. I wonder if the tolerances are loose or something. What is annoying is that, when the light is on, I cannot use the cruise control. And the turn indicator won't go off automatically. Weird. I wonder if I should wait until it stays on longer before I bring it in?
We decided to head out to Benbrook for disc golf today. It has been a while since we have played there. We met at a Starbucks to carpool down there. It seems that they were trimming the Oak trees. I wonder why they cut most of the branches off of them. So sad.
It seems that they installed concrete pipe sections to use as a bridge for river crossings. Not that the water level was high or anything.
The course looked like it had been groomed recently. The grass was cut. Including the "rough" of the course. I thought that it was odd then that someone was out there with a lawn mower.
For the most part, we did well. Ignoring the disc eating small lake. I had one great throw where my sidewinder anhyzered to the right around the trees and close to the basket.
For lunch we stopped at El Coyote. Which used to be some other Tex Mex place. Oddly enough, the inside of the place was oppressively humid. So we sat outside under the porch. The temperature was great but the traffic noises were occasionally loud.
I normally use Google for more that just searching. For example, you can look up domain names, you can look up the correct spelling on words, or you can even do math on it. So it was frustrating when Google refused to spell "breazy" for me. It thought I was a virus.
I wonder when Google will start to implement a Turing Test for people wanting to use its services?
