Saturday, March 31, 2012

Pencil Drawings: The College Years

I've been doing some cleaning up this weekend and finally putting away a box of old textbooks from college. Biological Process Engineering, Essential Chemistry, Spanish Three Years... exciting stuff. Actually that last one is from high school. Apparently I'm a hoarder.

I also made this unfortunate discovery.

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That's TWO copies of Essential Chemistry that we own. TWO! Why did neither of us ever sell back our college textbooks?

Among other things, I found a sketchbook I kept during my college years. Or at least years 2003-2005. It seems I did find time to do some sketching. But only six sketches worth. And I know that three of these were for a school project.

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Random? Yes. Especially that hammer.




Thursday, March 29, 2012

Avocado Pies


Not just avocado, but avocado and lime. And coconut. And pistachios! It sounds crazy, I know. But these pies were awesome.  I don't usually post about food, but in addition to being yummy, they were some good-looking pies.

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I also forgot to mention the kiwi. Lots of green here. Very St. Patty's Day appropriate.

Yes, I did make them on St. Patrick's Day.

Here is the recipe. Go make these:





Friday, March 16, 2012

Shooting Stars

Not actual shooting-across-the-sky stars. But shooting/photographing stars. I can see why you might have thought that though.


These two guys have been shining brightly since at least last night. I only know this because Meatball has actually been letting us walk him at night. I did some intense Google searching and I think they might be Venus and Jupiter.

I know nothing about stars or planets so I could also be wrong.

BUT I did find this....


Looks kind of like my picture, right? And Earthsky.org says:

"Venus blazes like a lighthouse in the west at dusk in March 2012, as seen from all parts of Earth. In fact, all through March 2012, Venus and Jupiter – the sky’s two most brilliant planets – are the first “stars” to pop out at evening dusk, with Venus being the lower planet and Jupiter the higher in the first half of the month."

I'm going to have to say its Venus and Jupiter.

The waxing crescent moon won't appear until late March. It'll just be another excuse to drag my tripod onto the front stoop. Yes, I'm that person...



Thursday, March 15, 2012

Berndnaut Smilde

Washington Post, you've done it again. You're always opening my world to new things. First, pink slime. And now, this.

Okay, you can skip the pink slime article but you should definitely check out the Berndnaut Smilde article. Smilde is a Dutch artist who can, apparently, control the weather.

Nimbus II, 2012, Berndnaut Smilde

Nimbus, 2010, Berndnaut Smilde

See, I wasn't kidding. A perfectly sunny room is turned into a cloudy day. Crazy. The video on the Washington Post link is also worth watching. It's not in English, but you'll get the gist.
 
I was also browsing his website and found this interesting piece.


Cumulus Beeekstraat 98, 2010, Berndnaut Smilde

The caption reads:
"Aerogel, also known as frozen smoke consists of 99.8% air and is the lightest solid material on earth."

Never having heard of this until today, I am intrigued.