“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
- Robert Capa
See also: “Group Shots” at Reed Hoffman’s “Blue Pixel Musings” blog.
Jeff Goldblum being the esteemed scientist that he is, I’m sure he’s among the first people that most folks think of when they hear the term “chaos theory”. After all, who could forget his adorable explanation thereof to Laura Dern in Jurassic Park?!
In the real world, chaos theory isn’t that far off from what he described. It refers to systems or behaviors that are highly dependent on initial conditions. In “Dr. Malcom’s” case, the water droplets that he dripped onto the back of Laura’s hand went in different directions because their placement, the moisture level of her skin, the orientation of her hand and the vibrations from their moving vehicle were different from one drop to the next. Very slight – even impreceptible – changes in the initial conditions can result in large swings in the behavior.
So it goes with my brain…
Sadly, this past week has presented precisely zero inspiration for a new instantiation of Saturday Morning Tuneage, and this Saturday morning has presented precisely zero opportunity to actually sit down and write one. Instead, I’ve been waxing-creative in the Kitchen, decorating the cheesecake that I baked last night while watching 2010: Odyssey Two.
Since the recipient of this cake has a PhD in electrical engineering, I was originally hoping to decorate it like a circuit board (after the suggestion from another collague, who is presently waiting to board a plane to Switzerland). I sliced 8 kiwi fruits to top the cake, hoping they would look like the green substrate of a printed circuit board. Unfortunately, before I had a chance to add gumdrops for LEDs, chocolate squares for microchips, or white piping gel for traces, I decided that kiwi fruit topping a vanilla cheesecake has to be one of the least-appetizing-perfectly-edible things I’ve seen, much less created. So off came the kiwi (thankfully a layer of pectin glaze protected the cake) and off I went to Wegmans…
The final result was a glazed topping of red and white raspberries as seen above – nowhere near as geeky, but still fun. And a lot more appetizing than kiwi fruit!
On a visit to Germany in 2006, my colleague and I found ourselves with a few free hours on the Sunday following our arrival. We knew that there were some pretty impressive castles dotting the Rhine valley, so we headed out to shake off the jetlag and snap some photos.
Our search led us to the small town of Eltville am Rhein, about 10 minutes from Wiesbaden. Roughly doubling the population of Honeoye Falls – where we work the rest of the year – Eltville weighs in at just under 17000 people. The town is home to two castles, one of which we actually managed to find. (Yes, it took some help from a non-English-speaking shopowner to get there. We’re not too proud to stop and ask for directions, at least in the case that the director can’t understand a word that the directees are saying…)
After checking out the nicely-restored [maintained?] Eltville castle, and the proper English garden contained therein, we hiked toward the town center in search of food. We didn’t find any right away – but we did find a wine bar:
Our initial impression of hmm, neat place quickly morphed into this has got to be the coolest place ever. We pointed to a Reisling on the menu – a good choice given that we were in the Johannesburg region – handed over 2 Euros per glass, and were promptly passed actual glasses of wine. Good wine.
There wasn’t any fence, there wasn’t any sign that said “no alcohol past this point”, there wasn’t any deposit on the glass, and there weren’t any problems. People took their wine, sat at tables or along the river and drank, chatted and relaxed. We opted to walk along the footpath a ways, before turning back to drop off our glasses. More than once, we wondered aloud: Wouldn’t it be great to have something like this along the canal in Pittsford?
Too bad the New York open container law would make it all-but-impossible to pull off. Sadly, this experience will have to stay rooted in Germany…
The plan was simple … flawless … foolproof. Upon arriving home from the office, I would start cooking a [previously-purchased] corned beef brisket and some potatoes, so that dinner would be ready upon Kelly’s return from work.
That worked great until I cut the package open – and something didn’t smell right. That’s where the whole [previously purchased] aside comes in … The brisket had a sell-by date of 10/23. So much for that idea.
My previously-perfectly-planned afternoon now officially disrupted and derailed, I hunted for a new dinner idea. Epicurious offered no help. Neither did Allrecipes. Even Elise’s foodblog Simply Recipes didn’t quite do the trick – while the dishes looked good, none of them were going to come together in the [roughly] 90 minutes that remained until our dining deadline.
After a quick flip through one of the Betty Crocker cookbooks that was [conveniently] left behind by our home’s previous occupant, I found a pretty tasty-looking recipe for Beef Stroganoff. Off to Wegmans (the Perinton location, for those keeping score at home) for the ingredients.
As I exited the store with an assortment of groceries in-hand, I saw The Reason. He was cruising down the center lane of the parking lot, one foot on a shopping cart and the other kicking off the ground. Landing both feet occasionally to adjust his trajectory, this ever-so-helpful member of the Helping Hands crew was careening toward the cart corral to retrieve the <british>shopping trolleys</british> collected there.
Fortunately, he managed not to crash into any of the shoppers hurrying toward the store – and more importantly, he managed to avoid impacting any of the cars that lined the lane. Even more fortunately, I wasn’t worrying a bit about my car as I watched his carelessly-expedited trip through the lot: my 9-3 was parked, safe and serene, in the lot’s farthest space.
When people ask me why I do some of these mildly-cooky things I do, I mumble something like, “oh, I’m just picky” – while I think about times like this. Sure, it might be snowing or cold or I might have to walk a little farther to return my cart, but at least teenagers riding shopping carts through the parking lot doesn’t enter my mind while I stroll through the store! There’s nearly always a reason…and I collect more and more of them every day…
Apologies for the late post, the lappy didn’t even get set up until this morning on account of Kelly and my urgent need to eat sushi and watch Ratatouille last night!
BMW EXPECTS 1 SERIES TO BE A SUCCESS IN U.S. …. BMW proved skeptics wrong when its 1-series entry-luxury car became a hit in Europe, reported Automotive News Europe. Now the automaker wants to do the same in North America. BMW will launch its first 1-series variant – a coupe – in the United States in the spring. The 1-series coupe launches in Europe next month.
Boon to autocross enthusiasts everywhere, or yet another sign of the impending invasion of the European automotive paradigm… I’ll still hold out hope that our [relatively] “free” market will be the judge.
…which I say as if I make this look easy, which would be to imply that I somehow do make this look easy, which is certainly not the case since that would require me to post quality content in a manner which appears effortless. Which is exactly the opposite of what this supposed-post is all about.
I had exactly two ideas for the content of this post. One of them, I promptly forgot about 10 seconds after hatching it, which isn’t doing me any good right about now. The other is half-done, but needs some more work (well, a lot more work) before it’ll be ready for showtime.
So you get this – the inevitable post-about-how-hard-it-is-to-post. Which only disappoints me in that I’m playing it so early in the game. Don’t worry – next time I get an idea for a post, I’ll jot it down, so with any luck you won’t have to endure too many of these as NaBloPoMo drones slowly on…
(Hat tip: Pauley)
Turns out November is NaBloPoMo – or, expanded for far-easier pronunciation, National Blog Posting Month. Considering I’m not the only one “chasing the wagon” (you’ll note there’s no 11/1/07 post) and I think I just might be able to do it (albeit with a lot of grunting and straining) I’m going to give it a shot.
So stay tuned here, for at least a post-per-day. Who knows…maybe it’ll make some of those 2000+ visitors-per-month I have stick around and read a little longer – at least those 83% that only stay for under 30 seconds. I was actually a little floored the first time I logged in and checked my stats (generated by awstats, which is in itself an explosion of superexcellence) to find that many visits logged. And that’s not including the web robots and spiders.
Which leaves me with the question: why are so few people commenting? Are my posts so inane that they send you away, rubbing your temples out of sheer, exasperating boredom? Just curious is all…
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