Rant Things

Current Mood: Thirsty & Tired

Going to try and make a pie crust with cream cheese instead of butter or shortening tomorrow. Maybe also brown sugar instead of normal sugar. And if that turns out well enough, form it into little tartlet shells with yuzu curd in the middle. Wish me luck.

Beyond that, mostly photo fun today:

• Impressive set of animal pictures, but the text’s all in Russian, so I’ve no idea what it says. Beware the squirrel porn in the middle. Via Reddit.
• More lovely nature pictures, this time of the landscapes, and from Japan. Via Reddit.
• And even more pictures, this collection from Brazil I think, of tiny and baby animals on fingers. Via Reddit.
• Someone made? designed? something? a briefcase made from bacon. Via Reddit.

Tonight’s video — violinist Paul Dateh and a DJ Inka One from LA making really impressive violin-and-hip-hop (ish) music. It’s really, really impressively good, especially when they get further into the medley. I only dabble in hip-hop listening, but I’d buy their music.

Current Mood: Exanimate & Tired

Not much tonight. I had to get up unpleasantly early today, so a quick post, dinner, and bed for me.

Here are things I found:

• This is, as the page says, absolutely huge, esp. given how I have a relative who works on things like this. Astrophysicists at Lawrence Livermore National Labs have taken visual (ok, infrared) pictures of three extra-solar planets. More at space.com. Previously all planetary detections have been by inferring the planets’ existence from gravity wobble and things like that. Via Reddit.
• These folks staged a bunch of scenes for Google’s Street View camera car; you can see the scenes via their page and via Google Maps. Via Neatorama.
• The world’s oldest joke book — really, it comes from ancient Greece! Via Reddit.
• Apparently this is not a joke: a treadmill you can travel on. Via Reddit.

And for tonight’s video, we have a toddler who doesn’t appear to be quite sure what’s happening, but he and the crowd are having fun:

Current Mood: Exanimate & Tired

Okay, I got sick, and slacked on posting. I think I’m better now. Even the lingering cough is mostly gone.

Meanwhile, we have a new president-elect (yay!) and weather that’s starting to look more wintry.

Here are a few links I’ve stored up:

• Someone watched the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the ark is stored in a giant warehouse with millions of other crates. This person then decided to imagine what might be in those other crates. Explore Warehouse 23.
• Information on Obama’s administration at change.gov.
• Drawings where one scene melds seamlessly into another.
• It’s not a bug, it’s a….
• Some information from reporters who spent time with the campaigns, with promises that what they saw wouldn’t be released until after the election. There’s some scary stuff about Sarah Palin.
• A short interview from the BBC with Sir Ken Adam, Production Designer for many of the early James Bond movies.
• A small set of people celebrate Obama’s election victory at the Lincoln Memorial. Photo, Article. (via Kottke)
• In scary news, Paris Hilton apparently has only one facial expression.(via Kottke.
• If you take a picture of stars, upload it to Flickr, and add it to the Astrometry group, a program will take your photo and try to identify the constellations in it. It will then label all of the identified objects in the photo. (Via Kottke)

And finally, a song in Polish. Not sure what it means, or why. But it’s catchy.