the eternal question: what's for supper?

Lyapunov fractal

My friend Sameer has re-begun posting his favorite recipes on his re-newed blog Random Vibrations, providing hints to the eternal question I face everyday, "What's for supper/lunch/...?". Sameer is an expert on all things spice-related. He has delved into many types of cuisine, and prides himself on scientifically testing and optimizing his recipes, not to mention all criteria convex and quasi-convex.

something else to listen to

Image from Aquarium Drunkard

Aquarium Drunkard has posted three lists of their 10 favorite songs of '08. The mp3's for each are provided for download: 2008 Songs in Review.

Something else else: All of TV on the Radio's album Dear Science is streamed from their myspace page.

Everything is funnier in Lego form
Photo from Racing Thoughts

alternate reality

Apple fritter: my favorite type of donut
Photo by Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle

My favorite quote from today, so far:

In fact, there’s a whole alternate reality available to viewers of YouTube documentaries ...

from "Of shoe mailers, conspiracies and piccolos" on msnbc.

something to listen to

Photo by Ash [sleevage.com]

i'm streaming the full bright eyes album "cassadaga" from their myspace page:
http://www.myspace.com/brighteyes
it's nice of bands to let you listen to their music.
bbye

more common sense

Photo by Rymel, "Bursting Mud Bubble"
It saves minutes to boil hot instead of cold water for cooking. Minutes! Apparently, though, it is not a healthy thing to do, according to my Mom and this article: Never drink or cook with hot tap water. Who knew? Not I!

kristin's wisdom of the day

Here's a question I've been pondering since 15 minutes ago when I was deciding what to eat for supper, something my decades of education have not yet prepared me for:

How long do hot dogs last in your refrigerator once they've been opened?

It seems like a hot dog should be one of those things that doesn't go bad cuz it's pre-cooked and full of salt, preservatives, and other unnatural ingredients. Like, bacon lasts forever, right? So, I was planning on a meal of a semi-suspicious-looking, high-quality, Hebrew National All-Beef hot dog wrapped in a tortilla (I don't have any bread). But, I was told not to eat it, even though I had already cooked it and covered it in mustard, and it smelled really tasty, as it has been many weeks since I bought and opened the package. Alas, I ended up eating a plain tortilla for supper. Woe is me.

So, how long does a hot dog last once the package has been opened? May the world never know? I think that some scientific experiments should be performed to answer this question, but, until I have more proof, I will use the wisdom offered here: one week is safe, and the tasty tasty benefits of trying three weeks probably do not outweigh the unpleasantness of potential food poisoning.

Ode to a Thanksgiving Weekend

As I am still working on my two-week old, left-over sweet potatoes from Thanksgiving, I declare this post to still be timely. Well, I'm not promising I'm still going to eat the potatoes. They are in my fridge, and they are probably okay, but I am a little scared. I looked at them yesterday and decided that I would instead eat a quesadilla made out of an old, dried out tortilla and cheddar cheese that was beginning to change color. You know how cheddar cheese changes color -- it gets harder and more orange and maybe a little less opaque. Yeah, I probably won't eat those sweet potatoes. With Kyle out of town, there is no one to take me to the hospital if I die of sweet potato poisoning. That would be some way to go, though. So maybe this post is no longer timely.

In any case, above is a collage singing the praises of my Thanksgiving weekend. I took a lot of pictures over the weekend, but cannot share most of them because some unnamed people are worried that the internet will steal their souls if I post them. Just kidding, I understand, I am self-conscious about my picture as well. Notice that there are not any pictures of me, either. Stupid soul-stealing internet.

"Quit jivin' me tur-key!"
Don't flip me MOCA!
Don't forget about me man!
Train of inside jokes that only I understand!
Choo-choo!

LaTeX Links

Here is a list of the most useful links. I say that without qualification just to prove my nerditude.

• The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List. "This document lists thousands of symbols and the corresponding LaTeX commands that produce them." For instance, learn how to write
  
  
  
  among other, more useful things. This, along with the Short Math Guide for Latex, are obvious choices.
  
• Short Math Guide for LaTeX. "This guide is a concise summary of the essential features in LaTeX for writing math formulas, including features provided by the packages amssymb and amsmath. This is not a mere listing of everything available but a careful selection of the LaTeX commands that are especially recommended for authors' use. There is also some discussion of certain common uses and misuses of various commands that are better avoided for reasons of typographical quality or logical markup."
• Squeezing Space in LaTeX. "Here are some tips on how to squeeze a little more onto LaTeX pages. Note that these methods may adversely affect the appearance of the document, so use them with caution. Rephrasing and editing your text often leads to better results."
  
• LaTeX Wikibook. "This is a guide to the LaTeX markup language. It is intended that this can serve as a useful resource for everyone from new users who wish to learn, to old hands who need a quick reference."
• LaTeX/Tables Chapter. "In academic writing, tables are a common feature, often for summarising results from research. It is therefore a skill that needs mastering in order to produce good quality papers. However, if there is one area about LaTeX that I feel is the least intuitive, then I am afraid that this is it. Basic tables are not too taxing, but you will quickly notice that anything more advanced can take a fair bit of construction. So, we will start slowly and build up from there."
• LaTeX/Packages/Installing Extra Packages Chapter. How to manually install missing LaTeX packages. Related: CTAN, where to get missing LaTeX packages.
• LaTeX/Formatting, in particular The Space Between Words.
• The Indian TEX Users Group Online Tutorials for Latex.
• TeXcount. "TeXcount is a Perl script for counting words in LaTeX documents. It parses any valid LaTeX document, interpreting the text as text words, headers, formulae (mathematics) and floats/begin-end groups. To run the scipt, you can either download it and run it on your own computer, or you can use this web-interface."
  
• PS Tricks, and Documentation. How to draw stuff in LaTeX. Like these examples (the first two are from the documentation, the last one is from my research exam on belief propagation):
  
  
• Putting LaTeX in stuff:
  
  • textext for Inkscape.
    
  
  
  • LaTeX for Blogger. How to put math equations in your blog. You have to reach a supreme level of nerdidosity to want to do that. I had to update the Javascript to point to an authorized location of mimetex (actually, now using mathtex instead). Here is my edited version: latexforblogger.user.js.
    
    
    
    
    
  
  

I think er no I mean er yes but it's all wrong

For some reason (maybe a lack of cool bugs to photograph?) I got busy, and did not post here for a while. Then, I was less busy, but I thought my comeback post had to be like the cat's pajamas (aka the bee's knees). I also thought that maybe this blog could do with some actual words, emotions, whatever, not just pictures of and links to stuff. I thought I should write something about the election so that someday I could look back and see what a momentous occasion it was in my life, or whatever. But, of course, writing is hard, and I am no philosopher. Plus, pictures are pretty. I like pictures. Here's a picture:

Now tell me that didn't just spice up this whole post! It is turtles at the turtle+lily pond (not to be confused with the turtles-only pond) at Caltech, beginning of October. Anyways, my idea this morning was to post my latest (i.e. second) crossword, but maybe I'll do that in my next post.

Right now, I'll expound on why I woke up at 4:30 this morning. It is a fairly common occurrence for me, waking up Way Too Early, then getting stressed that maybe I should get some work done, then getting thirsty/hungry, so I get up for a drink/snack. Today I had Earl Grey tea. Tea is warm. That was nice. It got cold here yesterday. That was not nice. We'd been having such a lovely fall, if you don't mind the occasional wild fire. I spent much of last week working outside on my laptop, alternating between two fountains at school, and appreciating that I live in California and not, say, Alberta. But, all things must pass, I hear. Stupid winter. Makes me so cold. I am sitting in my winter coat, as we are cheap, environmentally-conscious (maybe), and scared to turn on the heater because we have not done so yet, and it will either (a) blow up the apartment or (b) smell really bad. Possibly both. That would really suck. Okay, yes, it is early. Perhaps it is a sign of my everlasting optimism that I wake up early? I'm always just so excited to get started with the day? And then a sign of my neverending disappointment with life that I want to go back to sleep at like 7am? Yeah, so, I like to take a nap at about 7am. In between 5 and 7, I sometimes get some work done. Because I am up so early, tho, I figure I have time to goof off, and I'll usually do my daily xword (it has to be done sometime, after all). Then, I'll usually find some other thing to waste time on. For instance, pictures of animals doing silly stuff:Photo from msnbc Animal Tracks

Silly cow! Okay, my expounding is getting less fun for me, and probably I should get to work for real now. Or at least start my daily xword. Ta ta!

where not to poke your finger in pasadena

From blackwidow

From blackwidow

Last night, we were out hunting crickets (that's a thing we do), and we found that we had some competition. A large, wily cricket got away from Cap'n Bringdown, but ran into this nasty looking black widow (see pics). The scuffle that followed was very quick and efficient. Cap'n Bringdown thought we should try and catch the spider, but, as you can guess, Cap'n Bringdown was not the brains of this particular cricket-hunting expedition (Aside: I have got down quite the cricket catching system. It involves a large plastic juice bottle, a plastic cup, an envelope, and a funnel (a rolled up piece of paper).) Anyways, we left it alone, and I stopped by on my way to school during the freak rainstorm this morning to check to see if she was still there. I took some pictures from as close as I could put my camera. Despite all the wonderful advice I received that I should stick my finger in there and get her to come out for a better picture, I did not, and thus I survive to go tell the world about the practical applications of fruit fly behavior analysis. So, the take away message from this blog entry is to be careful where you poke your fingers on the corner of Wilson and Cordova in Pasadena :).

From blackwidow

From blackwidow

praying mantisauri week

It must be time for the praying mantisauri to come out, as I have encountered four mantises in the past couple days. Four! Wowiwiwowwow! First, I found Dwayne on Thursday on the wall of my apartment complex.

From mantisauri

I caught him and put him in a cookie box, as I had had a pet praying mantis last year and she was an awesome pet. I then spent too much time that I should have been working on finishing my infinishable journal paper digging in the dirt and catching bugs to feed to Dwayne. I put a bunch of roly polys (see my exposé on roly polys here), then a couple snails in Dwayne's box, but he didn't seem interested at all. I thought maybe he was a choosy mantis and did not like thick exoskeletons, so that evening I also caught him a cricket and a juicy caterpillar. Still, he did not seem interested! I gave him til Saturday morning to think about what he was doing, at which point all the juicy bugs were dead and crispy at the bottom of the box, then I let him go. There are a bunch of photos of our long goodbye on Picasa here.

While I was getting leaves to make Dwayne's box more homey, I saw this guy, let's call him Crudmuncher, on the wall.

From mantisauri

I put Dwayne in this plant in my apartment complex, where there happened to be another mantis, we'll call him Death from Above:

From mantisauri

Okay, last one! We found Mean Green Eugene yesterday while walking from our picnic at Caltech to our snack at Starbucks.

From mantisauri

I caught her and put her in my lunch box for safe keeping. It is perhaps wrong that I am still catching bugs and keeping them in my lunch box. Anyways, Mean Green Eugene is an awesome pet! I put her in another cookie box, and have fed her a bunch of juicy spiders (see above photo). She is ruthless! I took a video of her eating the last spider, which also had a nice juicy egg sac attached. It's not all that interesting, as she is in her cookie box and you can't see her that well, but, whatever:

Get the T-Shirt, for real

I've been designing silly T-shirts again. The latest is an Electric Monk "Double Bologna" World Tour concert shirt (Electric Monk is Kyle's currently-on-indefinite-hiatus band). In case there are other people out there who want to show that they're so hip they're into bands that don't exist yet (saw that tag line on Threadless at some point), I thought I'd make the shirts I made purchasable by others at my new Cafe Press store, Monkeytron Jujubee's Fantabulous Emporium of the Ironic. I also put the Suteki shirt I made for Kyle's birthday and the "i like fish" shirt I made for my dad's birthday. Cafe Press only lets me put one design per shirt style for free, so if you have some design/shirt/color combination in mind, let me know.

Here is the back in more detail:

Down and out in Caltech and my Apartment

Here are some random pictures I took ... recently. Pictures are fun.

From random photos taken around labor day 2008

Obligatory picture of my mice doing something weird. In this case, they are sleeping. Poppinfresh likes to sleep in the corner in between their house and the walls of the cage. I think that is rather strange.

From random photos taken around labor day 2008

I discovered my camera has a mode called "Night Portrait" or something like that. It takes multiple exposures and uses the flash twice. I guess it must be figuring out what is foreground based on what is illuminated by the flash and single-exposing that, while double (at least) exposing everything else. I don't know why it would have to flash twice for that ... maybe to let you know that it is capturing data and you should stand still. Well, being the rebels that we are, we did not stay still, so there are a lot of Ghost Kyle pictures, which amused me to no end (until my camera's battery died ... I am very simple). This is one of the more solid looking pictures in front of the Beckman something or other at Caltech (every building at Caltech is named Beckman this or that). I like fountains. When I think about how I like to sit near pools of water, I am reminded of the monkeys in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

From random photos taken around labor day 2008

And here is me, in front of a different Beckman building. Like I said, I am simple.

From random photos taken around labor day 2008

This is a really weird picture of Kyle swinging a construction cone in front of Baxter which appears to be on fire, oh, and the trees are made out of awesome lightning (PS I learned how to spell lightning today!). AWESOMO!

From random photos taken around labor day 2008

Here is Kyle doing his special in front of the library. If you know what a special is, then you, too, are supercool.

From random photos taken around labor day 2008

I think this picture has kind of a Ninth Gate kind of look to it.

Okay, that's it for now. Oh wait! Here's a video of me feeding the turtles at the pond here:

neutral milk hotel online

Neutral Milk Hotel is a long defunct band that I am just learning of. I was introduced to them by these beautiful, well-produced covers of their song "In the Aeroplane over the Sea" on Youtube:
Acoustic Monk - In the Aeroplane over the Sea (Cover) (nrml)
Acoustic Monk - In the Aeroplane over the Sea (Cover) (slow).
Here is the original song on Youtube:
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea.
Here is The King of Carrot Flowers Part 1 in a fairly awesome fan-made video:
Neutral Milk Hotel - The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. I.
Here are live versions of Two-Headed Boy (part of it, anyways), Gardenhead, and all parts of The King of Carrot Flowers:
Two-Headed Boy, Gardenhead, King of Carrot Flowers Pts.1,2&3.
Here is Holland, 1945 on Youtube:
Holland, 1945.
And the full Two-Headed Boy:
Two-Headed Boy.


There is quite the collection of mp3s and videos from NMH at
this fan site.

jenny lewis online

Here is a link to a page with links to mp3s for most tracks from Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins' Rabbit Fur Coat:
Aquarium Drunkard :: Jenny Lewis :: Gives Her Album Away.
You can get the one missing track, a cover of Handle with Care, from
Captain Obvious's Covers Mix-Tape VIII:
Handle with Care
NPR's All Songs Considered has a streaming version of the title track Acid Tongue available here.
NPR also has a streaming broadcast of a Jenny Lewis concert with many of the above songs here.
Here is a link to the Postal Service song Nothing Better on Youtube.

aye-aye-aye

[[Embedded Google Video Endangered Aye-aye in action]]
Neat-o weird-o vide-o of an aye-aye (a kind of lemur from Madagascar) finding, catching, and eating a grub. Other fascinating videos and images of aye-ayes can be found here.

Here's an old-timey illustration of an aye-aye:

lickity stickity peanut butter yum

Continuing with the theme of blogging my favorite, all-original recipes, here is my recipe for "lickity stickity peanut butter yum".

Ingredients:
1 jar creamy peanut butter you do not plan to share with anyone afraid of your cooties
1 licking knife

Preparation time:
1 minute

Preheat oven to 75 degrees. Unscrew lid from peanut butter jar. Coat licking knife with a reasonable amount of peanut butter. Eat until gone.

patented space age out-of-this-world moon pancakes, with blueberries

Here's the recipe for my mouthwateringlydelicious blueberry panceggs:

Mix:
1 cup Trader Joe's buttermilk pancake mix
1 cup milk
1 large egg
3 tbsp sugar
It should be very liquid-y.

Heat butter in pan. Pour batter into pan, completely covering the pan with about .5 cm of batter. You gotta completely cover the pan so that you get perfectly round pancakes. Add lots and lots of frozen wild blueberries. The organic wild ones are good cuz they are small and a random person in the Trader Joe's told me they are 3x higher in antioxidants than the regulars. Anyways, pour them in, then when you feel you can, flip the pancake. This is a real trial, cuz the pancake is huge and really liquid-y. Even a master chef like me sometimes makes a mess. Cook til it's cooked, then serve with fake lite syrup. On the side so that you can dip the pancake in and get exactly the right amount of syrup on each bite. Okay, c'est tout!

mice on a wheel

rick-rolling

Do you know what the internet phenomenon "rick-rolling" is? As I'm nearing 30 (i.e. nearing being really truly old), I am no longer with it, and only just learned what it is today. Through a rather complicated chain of procrastination, starting with the crossword clue "Pile of hay"=RICK, I ended up on this definition from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling.
It seems that some clever internet people out there are/were putting up seemingly bland, innocuous looking links that in fact led to this super-awesome music video of the song "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI
Of course, hilarity often ensues if you are, say, at work, and your secret love for crappy 80's pop is broadcast to your entire office. See, this is the kind of internet chicanery I can get behind, cuz everybody's day can be brightened once by the awkward gyrations of Astley & crew.

doodle-oo

Here's a little doodle I drew while watching TV on the Internet a while ago. I inherited an old scanner, and decided to scan it in yesterday. I'm thinking it needs some work adding color to it.

more mouse pics

This pic was left on my camera when I got to Hawaii; figured I'd upload it so I'd have extra space:

From New Mousies!

This is a picture of them all napping in a part of an ice cream cone box. You can see Premium (the mostly black mouse) and Spazmotron (the fatter mostly white mouse) in the back, and the two new babies in the front. The babies have been named. The orange one is Shazam! and the white one is Poppinfresh.

cheezburger in paradise

We arrived in Kauai late-ish (depending on whether you ask a Hawaiian or a Californian) last night. It was pitch black pretty much everywhere, so I was amazed when I woke up this morning! Above are some photos I took from and around my hotel room. Cap'n Bringdown is still sleeping and I was told not to go too far (I get lost easily :)). 

get the t-shirt

Cap'n Bringdown has come up with another brilliant scheme to fulfill his dream of having $10 million. T-shirt designing! The history: for his birthday, I made him a T-shirt using Cafe Press. He thought it was so awesome that we should submit it to Threadless, which is a site that sells user-designed T-shirts that win their contest. The winner gets like $2000, which, while not $10 million, will almost pay for our trip to Hawaii next week. Anyways, please vote for me whenever/if ever my T-shirt design gets accepted to the contest. Here's a link:

flies are pretty

As someone who (these days) spends most of her time watching flies (i.e. I am a fly expert (p.s. I am also a Greeble expert)), I have to admit that flies are not pretty. But I think these plots I am about to post are beautiful with a capital U. Not in terms of formatting (Matlab is being a punk today) but in terms of actually demonstrating a pattern! I won't go into any details about what they are demonstrating, as that is privileged :) information, so please, make up the details yourselves :).

baby photos

I've got two new baby mousies! Here are some photos:

Look at the babies!

Aren't they precious!

Gratuitous butt shot

Everybody's butts!

Ha ha! Charade you are!

Escher's Ascending and Descending, In Lego

Read about it's construction here. Related to today's NYT xword clue: "It produces more than 20 billion bricks annually" (A: LEGO).