04.11.08
I love my cat
Bunki is just plain entertainment. Heather captured this video:
03.24.08
Update on the life of Ed
Prompted by 6 months of lack of updates on MySpace, I put together a quick “What’s happened in the last 6 months” post. I noticed later that I had already done a few of those months on this site. Oh well, consider this partially a rerun. 🙂
Here are the last 6 months of my life in list format:
October 2007
– Arse Elektronika – How many times in your life can you say you got to see a tongue chainsaw in use?
– LTJ Bukem at Temple (omg) – Incredibly good show that had me dancing even after the rest of the crew left, leaving me alone and smiling.
– Heather’s radioactive treatment for the remainders of the thyroid cancer. She did not gain any new super powers, but everything went well.
– Modeselektor (omg) – tiny little show that was unbelievably good. Dancing until we were dripping with sweat and couldn’t dance any more.
– UNKLE (meh) – finally saw UNKLE live and was unfortunately disappointed.
– Launched www.sklxthemes.com – After months of rewriting the code base I used for sk3themes.com, I launched my first site (www.sklxthemes.com) using the templatized code. Currently the site hovers between 8-9,000 visitors a day. My code stands strong so far! My bandwidth bills ended up shooting through the roof though, but luckily ad revenue still covers it.
November 2007
– Kai’s birthday in Monterey – Went down to Monterey with a group of friends to run around the Monterey aquarium in honor of Kai’s birthday
– Launched www.skslidethemes.com – Second site using my new code! Not as popular since the Slide had a lower adoption rate, but still not bad.
– Said goodbye to Gabby.
– Double date with Mella/Nicole that sparked a Top Gun obsession
– Thanksgiving with Heather’s family
– Mike Doughty – I finally got to see Mike Doughty, the man behind Soul Coughing who’s music I love.
December 2007
– Saw Bladerunner on the big screen – The final cut was released into theaters and we somehow managed to organize 20+? people to get to the theater and see it all together.
– San Jose art trip – Running around San Jose checking out art.
– Early Christmas in NC with my family – Heather and I flew out to NC to stay with my mom and celebrate Christmas early with them. I got to show her around my old high school stomping grounds and she got to meet everyone.
– Heather and I celebrated our anniversary at the top of the Mandarin Oriental – An expensive night, but a gorgeous view with a gorgeous woman that made it worth every bit!
January 2008
– New Years celebration in Joshua Tree – Spent the New Years weekend in Joshua Tree, camping in the backcountry. Millions of Joshua Trees, climbing mountains, freezing, fitting everyone into one tent, and lots of fun.
– Went and ‘heard’ Audium
– Rewatched The Wizard with friends. I love the power glove, it’s so bad.
– Trampolines and Sushi for my birthday (Wow, I actually made it past 27! Now what?)
– Work on 2pir started back up
– Heather and I moved in together into an awesome 2 bedroom right down the street from my old place and across the street from Rubin!
February 2008
– Day trip to LA for work – I love working in the Video Games industry.
– Nicole’s crazy Lego party – So many legos. I didn’t know anyone ever owned that many legos. We managed to put together a couple of sets, but spent most of the time organizing. Rubin made a cool time-lapse video of the afternoon.
– Annual Valentine’s Day Pillow fight in SF – Fun as always
– Snowboarding trip to Yosemite – Spent the weekend with one of Heather’s friends in her cabin in Yosemite. Finally got a chance to go snowboarding after so many years and found out that I still could do it. Next year, more snowboarding trips!
March 2008
– Danger Weekend – shooting semi-automatic weapons and skydiving. I got a chance to shoot an original issue AR-15 and loved it. It’s weird, I never thought I’d be interested in guns.. No interest in shooting anything other than targets though. We also went skydiving the next day. My second jump and it was a lot of fun.
– Bunki got sick (hepatic lipidosis) and had a feeding tube put in! 🙁 We’re not sure why she stopped eating, but she lost 40% of her body weight and her liver wasn’t functioning right. She seems to be on the mend and is eating by herself now. She hates the e-collar though.
– The new and improved Interpretive Arson webpage got built and launched!
– Pi Day (3/14) party at Peter’s – Last minute celebration of Pi day
– Sara’s Arcade Birthday party – A bunch of 20-30 year olds running around an arcade. What’s not to love? Tons of skee ball and crane games.
– (Pre)Easter dinner with Heather’s parents
Whew… Lots of stuff, I’m sure I forgot something or other, but that should be good for now.
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04.23.07
The Super Sky Cycle: A Flying Motorcycle
I wonder how long it will be before my dad buys one of these. In fact, that almost looks like him in the photo…
More info on their site
04.11.07
Hip-Hop Pop-Up
I’ve had a love/hate relationship with pop culture and advertising for quite some time. While I find quite a bit of it insulting and manipulative, I also find it incredibly intriguing at the same time. Hip-Hop Pop-Up is one of those sites that extracts and exposes the subtle advertising in mainstream hip-hop today. With a culture built around brand names, what’s hot now, and flashy possessions, it’s not too surprising to see how often inadvertant commercials are dropped in the lyrics. However most of us are so used to it that it doesn’t stand out. Hip-Hop Pop-Up will play a mainstream hip-hop song and launch pop-ups for each of the products/brand names that are mentioned in the lyrics. The current song on there is Kanye West’s “All Falls Down” which clocks in with 11 product placements and 10 companies, generating 12 pop-ups. You’ll want to turn off your pop-up blocker to get the full effect. Yes, kind of annoying, but so is the fact that we’re advertised to almost every second of our lives.
via ni9e blog
04.10.07
Pearls Before Breakfast
Monday, April 9, 2007 1 p.m. ET
Post Magazine: Too Busy to Stop and Hear the Music
Can one of the nation’s greatest musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Gene Weingarten set out to discover if violinist Josh Bell — and his Stradivarius — could stop busy commuters in their tracks.
HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L’ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.
It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L’Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.
Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment?
On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?
03.06.07
Waffle House Secrets..
This will probably mean nothing to all the CA readers, but for those of us with roots back east, and especially in the south, this is like the holy grail. For years I’ve marveled at the ability for Waffle House servers and cooks to communicate and cook so quickly and efficiently. Here are their secrets, recovered by a brave soul who risked flying scattered smothered and covered hash browns to retrieve a snapshot of the secret code used by the Waffle House staff. (Thanks Nick!) Quite an ingenious method actually. I can’t wait for the next road trip that lets me go to a Waffle House again and watch it in action with my new found knowledge.
02.13.07
The way to my heart
Guinness cupcakes:
1 bottle (12 ounces) Guinness stout
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs
3/4 cup sour cream
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, plus more for garnish
2 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
and the frosting…
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup heavy cream
1 pound confectioner’s sugar
preheat oven to 350°F. in a large mixing bowl, combine the guinness, milk, vegetable oil, and vanilla. beat in the eggs one at a time. mix in the sour cream. in another bowl, whisk together the cocoa, sugar, flour, and baking soda. gradually mix the dry ingredients into the wet guinness mixture. butter (a lot! my cupcakes for stuck once) 24 muffin tins and fill w/ mixture. bake 25 minutes until risen and set in the middle but still soft and tender. oool before turning out of the tins.
to make the frosting:
beat the cream cheese in a bowl until light and fluffy. gradually beat in the heavy cream. slowly mix in the confectioner’s sugar. dust cupcakes with cocoa after frosting.
Chocoloate Rum Cupcakes
This one comes from a blog called Coconut Lime, found here: http://coconutlime.blogspot.com/2007/01/cuba-libre-cupcakes.html (note: the original source says this is modified and won’t work)
Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup coca cola / Champagne Cola
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup evaporated milk
3 tablespoons dutch processed cocoa
3 tablespoons Bacardi Coconut Rum
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1. Preheat oven to 350. Line or grease and flour 1 12 cupcake cupcake pan
2. Heat butter, coca cola and rum to boiling. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
3. Mix together lime juice and milk in a small bowl or measuring cup and set aside (this curdles the milk, don’t worry about it)
4. Whisk together cocoa, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
5. Add the cooled* butter/coke mixture and beat until well combined.
6. Add egg, beat then pour in the milk. Mix until combined.
The batter will be rather thin. Fill each well 2/3 of the way full. Bake 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove cupcakes to cool. Frost with Chocolate Rum Cream Cheese frosting when cool. Garnish with a wedge of lime.
Chocolate Rum Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
4 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
1 1/2 tablespoons dutch process cocoa
1 tablespoon good rum
Directions:
In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients until smooth. Use to frost cool cupcakes or cake.
08.10.06
Final Fantasy Thriller
I know this is probably ancient in terms of Internet-time, but I got a kick out of it
08.01.06
Wikiality! – We’re no fans of reality…
There’s a new site on the web, prompted from Stephen Colbert’s new addition to the common vernacular: wikiality
