Monday, December 29, 2008
Washington Mutual
Never much liked them. They took a deposit from my girlfriend, and never opened the account! Plus they charged me for some random crap. Turns out they're a bunch of shady mother fuckers! lol
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Pate a Choux
in other words: cream puffs. I used a combination of these two recipes at Food Network and Epicurious. I've only made this recipe maybe twice before (once successfully?). The first time I made it I was replaying the Good Eats Pate a Choux episode scene by scene haha.
After baking I lay them out on a cooling rack (cookie tray/baking tray is hot! so they'll continue to cook on the bottom after you take them out...hence my overbaked cookies so many years ago lol)
I like to finish the cream puffs off dipped half in milk chocolate, and then drizzled with white chocolate for a beautiful finish.
Instead of filling it with pastry cream, I get vanilla pudding and use less milk to make it dense. I added some pure vanilla extract to give it more of a fresh vanilla flavor. Works well and a great time saver. Plus this Knox? unflavored gelatin I bought is freaking expensive... like $9 for a small container. I'm saving that more for savory applications like giving stocks more body.
Pics coming soon, just wanted to save this spot to come back to!
After baking I lay them out on a cooling rack (cookie tray/baking tray is hot! so they'll continue to cook on the bottom after you take them out...hence my overbaked cookies so many years ago lol)
I like to finish the cream puffs off dipped half in milk chocolate, and then drizzled with white chocolate for a beautiful finish.
Instead of filling it with pastry cream, I get vanilla pudding and use less milk to make it dense. I added some pure vanilla extract to give it more of a fresh vanilla flavor. Works well and a great time saver. Plus this Knox? unflavored gelatin I bought is freaking expensive... like $9 for a small container. I'm saving that more for savory applications like giving stocks more body.
Pics coming soon, just wanted to save this spot to come back to!
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| From Joe Of All Trades |
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Blackberry Storm: First Thoughts After Hands On
After lunch today my coworker and I went to check out the new Blackberry Storm. He's got Verizon right now and has been debating on getting the Storm or switching to AT&T and getting the iPhone. We've talked to Verizon salesmen, gotten our hands on today, and I was sorely disappointed. EVERYTHING'S laggy and awkward. For taking 1.5 years to come to market (after the iPhone), the user interface is really clunky and slow.
First off the "clicking" touchscreen is not as useful as I thought it would be. I imagined they would use a soft screen and allow clicks in that method (more like a Nintendo DS touchscreen), but instead the touching is done through a hard screen (similar to iPhone) using galvanic skin response(?) to navigate and then the entire screen is a button. It's not like each key has its own click, you have to press the entire screen down to select something. Then you have a second or so delay, and the action takes place. The keyboard is difficult to remove from the screen. I had to go to a menu, and select hide keyboard. It takes a few seconds and a lot of selecting and pressing. There is no "tap" select like the iPhone.
Zooming in requires selecting the zoom button and pressing down on the screen and it's very inaccurate to boot. Sometimes the webpage will zoom in a little bit, sometimes it will blow it up so you can only read 3 words at a time. Zooming out? You have to click the zoom out button, there are no finger gestures of pinching and widening like on the iPhone.
Want to view the webpage in landscape mode? Sure, just rotate the Storm. Then.wait.five.seconds... oh, it suddenly switched. There are no smooth animations to rotating the screen or showing and hiding the keyboard. Everything just appears. In the iPhone the devs took the time to make everything well polished and appealing to users.
Overall the experience felt very awkward, clumsy, and slow. It basically felt like a Blackberry with a touch screen. Using your fingers is somehow less accurate and quick compared to a roller ball. Where's all the testing and fine tuning and polishing? You might as well be using one of the other touchscreen phones that were rushed to market to capitalize on this new type of smartphone.
Right after I got back to work I googled "blackberry storm review" seems like most people were pretty disappointed. I agree with most of the statements here, but he doesn't mention that tethering your Storm to your laptop will do absolutely nothing... unless you pay another $30 (on top of the data plan, now total data plan = $60 on top of your voice plan) to pay for that capability. A Verizon modem EVDO card costs $60 per month for limited (not unlimited) usage. So basically you pay for a $60 data plan, and your phone's data plan is free. An extra $3 for visual voicemail? How crappy, it's included on the iPhone.
An older (80 or so) guy asked me, "So, you giving up your iPhone just yet?" Me: "Nah, I'm pretty disappointed." He pulls out his white iPhone, hands shaking either due to age or motor function affecting disease, and says "Me neither"
LOL
First off the "clicking" touchscreen is not as useful as I thought it would be. I imagined they would use a soft screen and allow clicks in that method (more like a Nintendo DS touchscreen), but instead the touching is done through a hard screen (similar to iPhone) using galvanic skin response(?) to navigate and then the entire screen is a button. It's not like each key has its own click, you have to press the entire screen down to select something. Then you have a second or so delay, and the action takes place. The keyboard is difficult to remove from the screen. I had to go to a menu, and select hide keyboard. It takes a few seconds and a lot of selecting and pressing. There is no "tap" select like the iPhone.
Zooming in requires selecting the zoom button and pressing down on the screen and it's very inaccurate to boot. Sometimes the webpage will zoom in a little bit, sometimes it will blow it up so you can only read 3 words at a time. Zooming out? You have to click the zoom out button, there are no finger gestures of pinching and widening like on the iPhone.
Want to view the webpage in landscape mode? Sure, just rotate the Storm. Then.wait.five.seconds... oh, it suddenly switched. There are no smooth animations to rotating the screen or showing and hiding the keyboard. Everything just appears. In the iPhone the devs took the time to make everything well polished and appealing to users.
Overall the experience felt very awkward, clumsy, and slow. It basically felt like a Blackberry with a touch screen. Using your fingers is somehow less accurate and quick compared to a roller ball. Where's all the testing and fine tuning and polishing? You might as well be using one of the other touchscreen phones that were rushed to market to capitalize on this new type of smartphone.
Right after I got back to work I googled "blackberry storm review" seems like most people were pretty disappointed. I agree with most of the statements here, but he doesn't mention that tethering your Storm to your laptop will do absolutely nothing... unless you pay another $30 (on top of the data plan, now total data plan = $60 on top of your voice plan) to pay for that capability. A Verizon modem EVDO card costs $60 per month for limited (not unlimited) usage. So basically you pay for a $60 data plan, and your phone's data plan is free. An extra $3 for visual voicemail? How crappy, it's included on the iPhone.
An older (80 or so) guy asked me, "So, you giving up your iPhone just yet?" Me: "Nah, I'm pretty disappointed." He pulls out his white iPhone, hands shaking either due to age or motor function affecting disease, and says "Me neither"
LOL
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Food Art
Found this today while browsing at work:
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/11/creative-food-manipulation.html
Few things I've seen, many I haven't!
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/11/creative-food-manipulation.html
Few things I've seen, many I haven't!
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Crazy 3D parking garage signs
http://www.ridelust.com/stereoscopic-parking-garage-im-freaking-out-dude/
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