![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eubAt night, snails promenade along the sill of my moss-and-parsley box. Some night or other I tried to take pictures by available light. I kept getting motion-blurred snails, if you can believe that.
Folks went to Math And Stuff. One of the motion-planning-problem puzzles there was a many-spined ball in a cage, through whose bars it can, the puzzle's implied warranty of merchantability would suggest, be worked free. Wim got it out, and got it back in too. I still couldn't see how. The thing is not regular, since two spines form poles and the rest are in linked diamonds around the equator -- lots of orientations against the bars. I almost bought a refrigerator-magnet marble raceway based on dual guide tracks like those steel-ball roller coasters, but an employee who had played with it warned me that the tracks were too stiff for the magnets to hold with any curve, and the one based on plastic troughs works better in the end, so I bought that instead. Haven't tried it yet!
At some point I planted some seeds in pots, most for starting indoors: Mesembryanthemum crystallinum, Papaver somniferum, Abelmoschus moscheutos or moschatus, Solanum burbankii. These seeds are about ten years old, so we'll see how they germinate.
I ran across what Scott Draves is up to: he's got a DVD released of his video synthesis work. Take a look at "death & rain" or "best of 2002" -- switch over to 320-by-240 first if you can handle 20 megs. I installed electric sheep.
On Friday I interviewed with a Microsoft group. Remembered the pestilentially redundant paperwork ("please copy sections of your resume out in longhand so we can grade your penmanship") the midnight before, gah. I was amused to say "ah, shuffling algorithms... I should mention that I happened to be talking with people about those yesterday." Seemed it went pretty well, and it's an interesting group.
Dee, you have to bump MS up your list. The cafeteria has Ivar's clam chowder!
We finished in the middle of rush-hour traffic, so I worked my way to a Half Price Books in Redmond, using the special phonebook for your car which Qwest gives you and which I had in my car. Addresses, maps -- it's almost like having a billionth of the Internet trapped in gross material form. Very handy. They were having a sale this weekend, so I feel entirely justified in getting The Social Physiology of Honey Bee Colonies. I've given up on ever finding the Ash in hc, so I got the first mmpb.
I begged dinner from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hattifattener and jinian's since they were just making it. Also I brought the gingerbread I had made the day before or so, whose recipe called for half a cup of chopped fresh ginger, but not the half-tablespoon of powdered I threw in for luck. It was very good spread with pureed candied ginger, and warmed. (Ob hot ginger-on-gingerbread action.) Ginger-sated conversation ran to antimony (the laxative that keeps on giving), aperiodic tilings (jinian's Penrose-tile quilt square leading to computational complexity and Wang tiles). Watched a bit of Ebichu. Um.
Folks went to Math And Stuff. One of the motion-planning-problem puzzles there was a many-spined ball in a cage, through whose bars it can, the puzzle's implied warranty of merchantability would suggest, be worked free. Wim got it out, and got it back in too. I still couldn't see how. The thing is not regular, since two spines form poles and the rest are in linked diamonds around the equator -- lots of orientations against the bars. I almost bought a refrigerator-magnet marble raceway based on dual guide tracks like those steel-ball roller coasters, but an employee who had played with it warned me that the tracks were too stiff for the magnets to hold with any curve, and the one based on plastic troughs works better in the end, so I bought that instead. Haven't tried it yet!
At some point I planted some seeds in pots, most for starting indoors: Mesembryanthemum crystallinum, Papaver somniferum, Abelmoschus moscheutos or moschatus, Solanum burbankii. These seeds are about ten years old, so we'll see how they germinate.
I ran across what Scott Draves is up to: he's got a DVD released of his video synthesis work. Take a look at "death & rain" or "best of 2002" -- switch over to 320-by-240 first if you can handle 20 megs. I installed electric sheep.
On Friday I interviewed with a Microsoft group. Remembered the pestilentially redundant paperwork ("please copy sections of your resume out in longhand so we can grade your penmanship") the midnight before, gah. I was amused to say "ah, shuffling algorithms... I should mention that I happened to be talking with people about those yesterday." Seemed it went pretty well, and it's an interesting group.
Dee, you have to bump MS up your list. The cafeteria has Ivar's clam chowder!
We finished in the middle of rush-hour traffic, so I worked my way to a Half Price Books in Redmond, using the special phonebook for your car which Qwest gives you and which I had in my car. Addresses, maps -- it's almost like having a billionth of the Internet trapped in gross material form. Very handy. They were having a sale this weekend, so I feel entirely justified in getting The Social Physiology of Honey Bee Colonies. I've given up on ever finding the Ash in hc, so I got the first mmpb.
I begged dinner from
hattifattener and jinian's since they were just making it. Also I brought the gingerbread I had made the day before or so, whose recipe called for half a cup of chopped fresh ginger, but not the half-tablespoon of powdered I threw in for luck. It was very good spread with pureed candied ginger, and warmed. (Ob hot ginger-on-gingerbread action.) Ginger-sated conversation ran to antimony (the laxative that keeps on giving), aperiodic tilings (jinian's Penrose-tile quilt square leading to computational complexity and Wang tiles). Watched a bit of Ebichu. Um.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
snails and ginger
Date: 2004-03-29 08:00 am (UTC)feel like sharing the gingerbread recipe?
Re: snails and ginger
Date: 2004-03-29 04:32 pm (UTC)Melt in a saucepan
8 T. unsalted butter
1/2 c. water
Whisk together
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
1/4 c. light molasses
1/4 c. golden syrup, more molasses, cheap honey I suspect of adulteration with corn syrup, or the like.
1 egg
1/2 c. minced ginger rhizome
the saucepan's contents.
Combine
3/2 c. flour
1 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
and mix into the wet ingredients.
Bake in a 9" square pan, 25+ minutes at 350 °F.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 11:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 04:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-29 11:27 pm (UTC)