Sunday, October 26, 2008

a (mostly) quiet friday night in the studio


In photo, left-right: my desk, Eammon's desk, Eammon, Titan the wonder pup

Saturday, October 25, 2008

new camera!

I have a new camera! Yay! It is a Panasonic Lumix. I can't wait to play with it.

And then comes along a campus-wide PC computer virus spread by USB devices. Now I am reluctant to plug the camera into my computer, lest it become contaminated.

So I will post instead a picture of the funky white deer that live in a former army base in nearby Seneca. I saw them grazing near the base boundary fence. They are not albino, but a genetic mutation that has flourished in this isolated deer population, because of the restricted breeding pool (they are fenced into th
e base completely, which is a huge huge area so it's nothing like, say, a zoo).


















Note: These are not photos that I took, to be clear.


Tuesday, October 14, 2008

pauvre appareil numérique

My digital camera has pretty much bitten the dust. The forward/back buttons for reviewing photos on the camera do not work. Neither do the flash selection buttons or macro setting buttons work, since they are the same as the forward/back buttons. Add to that the lag time which has seemed to increase as the camera aged, not to mention the very poor low-light performance and the nonexistent motion stabilizing... and you have a useless piece of digital equipment. A moment of silence, please...
My blog will display greatly diminished photo whimsy for now.
Sadly, this also means that my dear readers will not be able to view the cute apple clafoutis I made this past weekend as a treat for Mike and me. But I have a recipe:

Mini Apple Clafoutis

fruit:
2 fresh apples: one Granny Smith, the other red cooking (I used McIntosh)

custard:
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup half and half
pinch cinammon
dash nutmeg
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon edible lavender flowers (optional)

Accompaniment: Vanilla Ice Cream

special equipment: 1/2 cup ramekins, set of 4

Instructions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Halve and seed apples (I use a melon baller). Do not peel. Cut into ~1/4 thick bite size pieces.
Butter ramekins. Fill 3/4 full with assorted apple pieces. You will have excess apple to snack on. Place ramekins in a casserole pan.
Whisk eggs well. Add about 3/4 cup of milk and 1/3 cup half and half (sorry, I didn't measure, I'll post more accurate measurements when I make it again). Whisk to combine. Add sugar, spices, and lavender. Whisk again.
Dole out the custard evenly among the ramekins.
Use a teapot to carefully add water to the casserole, surrounding the ramekins with water about halfway up their sides.
Bake for 20 minutes or until light brown on top. Serve warm, with vanilla ice cream.

Chef's notes: I might try making this with the asian pears I just picked. And you could change it a little by adding citrus zest and omitting the lavender.

Happily, though my digital camera is dying, another major machine in my life, my yellow velo, is back on its wheels and all 8 gears. Working in tandem (har har), Mike and I tinkered for a bit and fortunately it didn't take long to locate the problem (cable too tight, probably because it got cold out and the metal shrank), and solve it.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

I know tis heresy, so help me Olmsted...

Landscape architecture-speak that makes me wince internally:

-dynamic flow
-materiality (and sticking -ality on the end of random words, i.e. functionality)
-organic nature (i.e. I'm really loving the organic nature of this curve. It has real dynamic flow.)
-architectonics (a meaningless word--is it even a word?--that is used in place of the word 'architectural,' a perfectly fine word)

List to be added to as it grows (and I grill my classmates for additions)...