Stylistic choice, not laziness

FLCaLda

Bacteria Bread

This is sourdough starter. It is basically flour and water that has been sitting at room temperature for well over a week now. That may sound dangerously unsanitary, but those conditions encourage a balance between naturally-occuring yeasts and lactobacillus bacteria, the same types of cultures found in yogurt (as well as plenty of other foods). They produce lactic acid, which both inhibits growth of other harmful bacteria and gives sourdough its distinctive flavor. And it is delightfully bubbly:


This is the risen, unbaked dough:


And here is the finished product, a beautiful golden-brown.


Beneath the pan, the browning leaves something to be desired...


On the right is an identical loaf baked in a different type of loaf pan. I'm not exactly sure what the difference is, other than color and possibly material.


This is a better comparison. I think the dark pan might be hollow, but I'm not sure how that would encourage the all-around browning.


I forgot to make the bread with bread flour, and instead used all-purpose. It still tastes good, but the crumb is unusually soft (not enough gluten), and it doesn't even have as much chew as plain white sandwich bread. This will be rectified in the future.

Episode VI: Return of the Yoda

Hey, I took a week or so off from Yoda, because I obviously have literally thousands of other very important things to do. Obviously.

I spent time on this

While watching Hulu, as I am wont to do, I found myself on the receiving end of a PSA wherein Christopher Meloni berates me for leaving the water on while I brush my teeth. Putting aside the fact that I don't do this, he states that leaving the water on wastes "8 gallons" every time you brush.

This did not sound right to me.

If I were a normal person, I would have simply shaken my head and moved on. I am, however, an obsessive nerd, so I grabbed my measuring cup and stopwatch and headed to the bathroom.

Step 1: At the water flow rate which seemed reasonable for teeth-brushing, I measured 4 cups of water in 29.1 seconds. This translates to 1 gallon every 116.4 seconds. Thus, wasting 8 gallons would take 931.2 seconds, or 15.52 minutes. This is sliiightly longer than the 120 seconds recommended for brushing.

Step 2: Leaving the water on at full blast, the 4 cup measure filled in 9.1 seconds. Calculations suggest 8 gallons in 291.2 seconds, still more than twice the recommended brush length. That's at a water flow rate that could nearly chip enamel.

FINAL MESSAGE: Yes, saving water is Good Times. However. Please don't make up numbers. It just makes you sound dumb, and me sound increasingly unhinged. The End.

Quite sad, really

This comic is mainly notable in that it features zero of my traditional "two talking heads from 3/4 front angle" frames, which is a STYLISTIC CHOICE and not at all a COP-OUT due to SUBSTANDARD DRAWING SKILLS.

2003 is topical (UPDATE)

This guy? Douche. Or at least I remember him as such during the 2003 Air Force Academy rape scandal. 6 years later, a current web search is not so revealing, so I'm not sure what was so douchey about him. This is the only credible information I could find:

"Gilbert, who later went on to become commandant of cadets at the Air Force Academy in 2001, was accused by several cadets of derailing their cases and pursuing punishments against them. Gilbert denied that."

I think that's douchey enough for an intensely lazy photoshop.

UPDATE:
Many thanks to Matt for finding this article, which states:

Gilbert came under particular scrutiny for comments he made to the Denver weekly Westword about Lisa Ballas, a 21-year-old senior who had reported being raped. At one point, he compared her conduct to walking down an alley with $100 bills sticking out of a pocket.

This article also reveals the shocking fact that the "S" in his name stands for "Sylvanus."

Brigadier General Sylvanus Taco Gilbert III.

I'll let that sink in.

Some Hourly Haiku

see also: supple underbelly

4-5 PM:
I have been alone
all day at the com pew tor.
I am going mad.

5-6 PM:
Someone updated
the wiki on my eye thing:
Keratoconus.

6-7 PM:
"Pain perdu" is the
French word for" french toast," which means
"lost bread" in English.

7-8 PM:
Photoshopping might
be more trouble than it's worth
sometimes, but oh well.

8-9 PM:
Took break from eye strain:
computer to focus on
eye strain: cross stitching.

9-10 PM:
cross stitching takes so
much time, but what else do I
have planned this evening?

9-10 PM, supplemental:
I may have had to
look it up, but yes, evening
is two syllables.

10-11 PM:
Getting quite tired.
Probably heading to bed
after a shower.

11-12 PM:
shower, wash, clean, scrub,
rinse, dry, deodorant on,
sleeping naked, zzzz.

Back to the photoshoppes

Django Fett

Megamix

My parents bought a new mixer recently, so I get to have the old broken one. Still! Kitchenaid Professional 600 Series stand mixer! It is a little sad how excited this makes me.

Just because it's mine now doesn't mean it's magically fixed, though. I do have a shiny new engineering degree, so why don't I just open this sucker up?

GUTS GUTS GUTS GUTS!

It's pretty obvious from the start that the worm gear has a rather large chunk taken out of it, probably from trying to mix something that did not want to be mixed:


There's also a small chip on the shaft threads (ha, "shaft"), if you can tell from this blurry photo:

I didn't notice it when I first ordered parts, but the front bearing for said worm gear is badly bent and cracked. Also pictured is the threading chip I found hanging out in the gear housing grease:


Total cost of all repair parts: about 30 bucks, with another 30 if I decide to get a new metal gear housing (the plastic one it came with is slightly cracked). Not bad for a mixer that has an MSRP of $500.

The Death of Innocence

I am 74 years old.

The Life Cycle of Cranberry Walnut Bread

The bread is mixed. This is like the embyro stage, I guess?

The bread rises. Larval stage. Sure.

It rises some more. Like some kind of... pupa? I don't know, this isn't an exact science or anything. Stop questioning my arbitrary cross-genre nomenclature decisions.

The bread is baked into a beautiful butterfly. I just looked it up; the adult stage of an insect which undergoes complete metamorphosis is called an "imago." SCIENCE!

The bread is then eaten so I have energy to make more bread.