das loft

A pretty time-lapse video of the clouds (1.0 MB)

[ no comments ]

I fixed my cousin's old two-person tent today. I had to use a tent pole repair kit, sawing the pole to size then sanding the end using a detail sander so it would fit into the other pole. I'm happy about this, because now I can finally go camping if I feel like it (it's about time). I'm thinking of visiting those caves at Horne Lake by myself. Maybe I'll camp there overnight. But first I'll need to buy a pot, a water filter, and whatever else one needs for camping for one night.

[ 1 comment ]

Sometimes I feel like such a loser because I don't get people's jokes. For instance, everybody and their uncle seems to know where the "1. Do something 2. ??? 3. Profit!" thing comes from: South Park, right? Another recent one I failed to get is "You had me at hello," which is from Jerry Maguire, another movie I shamelessly didn't see.

Good thing there's Google, so I don't have to resort to embarrassment to figure them out. But it doesn't help that "left out" feeling...

If only TV would suddenly not suck. Then maybe I'd watch it and stop being such an outcast...

[ no comments ]

I wrote this song a little while ago using Soundtracker, in case you're interested. It's my first MOD, and I'm welcoming constructive criticism.

[ 1 comment ]

A glowing long exposure of the house at night (just for fun):

Here are some photos of Brian's mother Irene's garden I took a while ago. It's full of fruit trees. It's also quite beautiful.

[ no comments ]

Here is a time-lapse video of our melon patch. We're trying to catch a glimpse of the culprits that are pecking at our melons. If they keep it up, we may end up with none to sell. We believe they're ravens or crows. I had the camera taking a shot every 5 minutes all afternoon and then all night, but no culprits were seen. As you can see, we have helium birthday balloons set up to scare them away, but they don't seem to be particularly effective. Next step: robotic scarecrow?

[ no comments ]

Time-lapse video of the night sky during the perseids

[ no comments ]

Last night I took one hundred 15-second exposures of the night sky over the course of about three hours. Out of those, I managed to get only two with meteors. Here is the best one:



A time-lapse video is coming.

[ no comments ]

Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, I've been busy, okay? "Busy?" you ask. "But of course," I reply. "Summer isn't about doing lying around, drinking beer, shooting the breeze. It's about making something of yourself. If there's one thing I've learned it's this: If you try a little harder, you can do it. Remember that, Billy. Don't be so hard on yourself. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That's what my good ol' gramps used to tell me."

Okay, enough of that. Well, I've been goofing around on the computer every day, actually. Last night I was up till three. What's been occupying me: I've been getting started on writing the next version of sfs, the software that runs my website, Open Eyes. Jon and I will be working on it together. I've also started fooling around with MODs, a way of composing music on the computer (similar to MIDI). That's why I was up till three. It's fun. Unfortunately, I'm still about as bad at composing music as I was in grade 8.

Brian just came by and gave me a bunch of green, seedless grapes. They're from the field, and they're delicious. A bit sour still, but otherwise perfect. So many hidden gems growing around here...

This morning I joined Anna and the "painter ladies" in Irene's garden. Every week or two they get together to paint or draw. I used watercolour pencil crayons, and spent most of the time sketching the outlines of the scene. Then I started colouring it in. I was there long after they left. I wish I could stop focusing on the details and get the big picture, as my mum always used to tell me. I've got a lot of work to do on my technique.

I truly want to go to Upana Caves on the island. They're the deepest north of Mexico! That's amazing. If only somebody wanted to go with me.

[ no comments ]

Those 36 English muffins also turned out really well. You actually fry the little circles of dough on a griddle with a little butter to "bake" them. They're really good, except they don't have those enormous air holes inside them the way the store-bought ones do. The recipe called for 1 tsp. of baking soda. Maybe if I added another tsp. of baking soda, they'd fluff up a bit more. Well, next time. They were fun to make. You roll out the dough and cookie-cut circles out of it and let them rise, and then you fry them.

[ no comments ]

Hey, this San Fransisco sourdough bread is awesome! It doesn't even taste like sourdough. It tastes like a perfect halbweiss loaf of bread, like the ones I used to get in Switzerland (and that one that Jon and I took on our hike in Alt. St. Johann). I'm never going to use yeast from the store again.

[ no comments ]

I made lots of sourdough goods over the past 24 hours. I had prepared too much starter, so I had to use it up. I used three recipes from sourdoughhome.com. I baked two San Francisco sourdough loaves (I haven't tasted them yet, but it looks like they turned out well). I'm making 36 sourdough English muffins (they're rising now). And last night I made a dozen sourdough blueberry muffins. Those are a bit odd. The recipe called for two cups sugar, so instead I put in the equivalent of four cups sugar using a stevia solution I had prepared (which is mighty sweet if you just lick a drop of it cold). That's two tsp. stevia. I put in twice as much stevia as I thought I should because somehow one tsp. didn't seem to be enough for a dozen muffins. And then I baked them. Besides the odd blueberry, they are not sweet at all! That's really disappointing. They say stevia isn't appropriate for baking, but I thought it was just because stevia doesn't have the volume or texture of sugar. Maybe it's also because when you bake something with stevia, it gets neutralized? I don't know...

[ no comments ]