Darth Libris

1970s SciFi

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:53:39 GMT

Having heard that a movie version of the 1970's British television show UFO was in the offing, I actually went and rented the first three episodes on DVD to refamiliarize myself with the show and see if there was anything worthwhile to it beyond cute girls with purple hair in silver lame cat suits. A couple of things jumped out at me:

1. It really was an awful show, although the miniature work has a certain faded charm. And the moon shuttle 'launch via plane' arrangement actually has more in common with Spaceship One than anyone had a right to foresee at that point in time.

2. My GOD people smoked a lot on television in the early 1970s. The main characters are lighting up at a rate that would guarantee lung cancer by the age of 40.

3. I can't *believe* that this show did not become a minor icon of the gay community. If nothing else, the hunky lads on Skydiver with their tight beige pants and fishnet sweaters should have gotten somebody's attention.

4. I can't *believe* that this show did not become a major source for slashfic. The Commander Straker/Col. Freeman relationship alone seems like an endless source of material.

left overs

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:07:10 GMT

What to do with left over grilled salmon? Make a risotto with asparagus, lemon zest, lemon juice, mascarpone and parmigiano, and put the salmon on top of it. Yum.

sizzle

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 01:42:02 GMT

We went out to consume mass amounts of barbecue at Black Dog Smoke and Ale House, Urbana's latest culinary addition. They do one *HECK* of a pulled pork; they are in the North Carolina barbecue tradition, and have a very nice vinegar sauce. The ribs were absolutely the best I have ever had in my life; dark char on the outside, perfect pink, sweet and juicy inside.

However, their vinegar sauce, while tasty, lacks a certain incendiary appeal. Our friends J__ and M__ thoughtfully brought along a bottle of Dave's Ghost Pepper hot sauce. The Ghost Pepper is the Naga Jolokia pepper of India. It has a heat measurement of 850,000 - 1,100,000 Scoville units. Habaneros/Scotch Bonnets usually check in at 300,000 - 500,000 in comparison. I thought that the sauce would have the same consistency as other Dave hot sauces -- fairly thick. I was wrong. It came out of the bottle quite quickly, and gave a nice serious dowsing to my smoked brisket.

Yes, the Naga Jolokia is *exactly* as hot as it is reputed to be. It took my tongue about an hour to recover after the first bite of that brisket. Darned tasty though, and the hot sauce actually combined pretty nicely with the house vinegar sauce. Definitely worth reducing the inside of my mouth to a smoldering ash heap.

Ahem.

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:42:15 GMT

If anyone's wondering what to get me for Christmas this year.

Just sayin'.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:31:31 GMT

Apparently my state government has just declared Pluto a planet. Glad to know that they're focusing on the pressing issues of the and not letting themselves get sidetracked by trifles like a cratering economy and rampant corruption.

e-mail must die.

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:42:17 GMT

My view of e-mail today:

birthday wishes

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:54:06 GMT

Happy Birthday Galileo!

25 things Memeage

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 04:31:16 GMT

OK, I've been tagged so many times now that I'm going to provide the requisite list just to make all y'all be quiet about it.

1. I'm not going to tag anyone with this meme because I just don't like putting people on the spot.

2. I have thrown myself out of an airplane on more than one occasion. Free fall is overrated in my opinion, but parachuting rocks.

3. You know those 9" cardiac needles you see on TV? I've been on the receiving end of one while fully conscious. It doesn't actually hurt that much, but trying to remain completely motionless so that the surgeon stabbing you in the chest can stab you just so is really very unpleasant.

4. I have been to the Great Wall in China, as well as the Forbidden City.

5. I won an award from the American Legion in Junior High for an essay I wrote on the theme of "What's Wrong with America Today". I believe I said political apathy.

6. The fastest I have ever driven a vehicle is 117 mph. The vehicle in question was a Honda CB400 motorcycle. I was impressed it could actually make it to that speed.

7. I was in Los Angeles in for the Sylmar quake, San Francisco for the Loma Prieta quake, living in the East Bay hills for the Oakland Hills fire, and at an airport in New York preparing to fly to Washington DC on 9/11. Standing next to me during meteor showers is not recommended.

8. I spent the late 1980s trying to be a science fiction author in San Francisco. I drew enough rejection slips to realize that this was not the wisest career choice I could have made.

9. Having grown up in Southern California, I still think snow falling right where I live is so cool that I don't particularly mind having to shovel it. That being said, I have now lived in snow country long enough to be very grateful for the invention of the snow blower.

10. I have stood on the Great Cairn of Knocknarea in County Sligo watching the sun go down towards the Atlantic. I've stood on the banks of the Hudson River on a mid-Winter night watching the Northern Lights. But for sheer, jaw-dropping awe induced by seeing nature at its most beautiful, neither one compares to being in the high country in Glacier Park in Montana.

11. The coldest weather I've experienced is -28 degrees Fahrenheit (-45 with wind chill) in the Adirondacks. The hottest weather I've experienced is 114 degrees, rock hounding in the Mojave desert.

12. I am a reasonably decent cook, although I am much more at home on the stove top than in the oven. I like the ability to taste and tweak as cooking progresses. As far as stove top cooking goes, custard is my nemesis.

13. As mentioned elsewhere in this meme, I met my wife while mocking our fellow undergraduates in astronomy class for their professed lack of interest in cosmology, and proceeded to impress her with my knowledge of how the dome of our class's observatory could serve as an acoustic mirror to reflect sound efficiently from one side to the other. Yes, we are tremendous nerds. How did you guess?

14. New York is the most magnificent city I've ever been in, with London a close second. San Francisco is the most beautiful city I've ever been in, with Edinburgh a close second.

15. The hardest part of an academic lifestyle is that you go where the job is, which unfortunately all too often means leaving where the friends are.

16. I dropped out of U. C. Berkeley as an undergraduate. I tried to get readmitted as a graduate student without having finished an undergraduate degree on the strength of a 2400 GRE score. I met personally with the Dean of the Graduate College to plead my case, who informed me that anyone smart enough to get a 2400 on the GRE should have no problems at all finishing a year of undergraduate education in order to pursue a graduate degree.

17. I decided against having kids while still in high school. I haven't changed my mind yet.

18. I make a mean Sazerac, and a pretty fair Paez.

19. I am not the Jerome McDonough responsible for "Juvie," "Alky," "Addict" and "It's so so sad when an elf goes bad." You can feel free to stop writing me for help in staging a production of one of Mr. McDonough's plays.

20. I have been at two concerts that were released as albums: John Denver at the Universal Amphitheater ("An Evening with John Denver") and Chuck Mangione at the Hollywood Bowl (logically enough, "Chuck Mangione: Live at the Hollywood Bowl").

21. I have an excessive fondness for Broadway musicals from the 1950s and 60s which I appear to have inherited from my dad. If you need to know some of the lyrics from Irma La Douce or Kiss Me, Kate, I'm your man.

22. I have an unfortunate tendency to start unconsciously mimicking the accent and speech patterns of those around me. Worse yet, the accents get filed in my head and tend to intermittently resurface. I got a lot of curious looks from my dorm mates in college after I spent the summer working with a bunch of people from York, Edinburgh, Leeds and London, as well as questions as to why I kept saying 'pissed' when I meant 'drunk.'

23. The MOA2 project was responsible for my first trip to New York (a good thing), my meeting Bob DeCandido for the first time (a great thing), and my heading up the METS initiative. Two out of three and all that.

24. I am not particularly fond of public speaking, which is definitely a drawback for an academic.

25. I doubt that I deserve the good luck I had in meeting my partner, and in making the friends I've got, but I'll take it.

fud

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 06:11:32 GMT

Sometimes, a menu just really comes together.

Pecan/thyme crusted rainbow trout with horseradish creme fraiche
Broccoli sauteed with garlic and white wine and finished with orange and lemon zest
Mashed potatoes

We cannot get great seafood here, but darned if we don't get some pretty tasty river fish.

In other news, we just watched The Life Aquatic, and I think it's going to take me a loooong time to make up my mind about that film.

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:57:34 GMT

NASA has made a very high resolution image of the cockpit of the space shuttle available on their website. And you know you are just way too much of a nerd when your first thought on seeing the image is "man, if I was flying that thing I would so put plastic dinosaurs on the dash, like Wash has in Firefly."

"Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"

lights

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:27:14 GMT

Well, we're going to be having snow blocking out the night sky, but given the below auroral image from the space weather folks at NOAA, some people in Russia are getting one HELL of a northern lights display right now due to a coronal mass ejection that's just starting to hit Earth. If you've got a clear sky tonight and are in northern latitudes, you might want to take a peek outside to see if anything is glowing.

Life's Little Victories

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:35:12 GMT

Obama gets elected and all of a sudden rationality starts breaking out in the most unlikely spots. The Texas Board of Education just voted to abandon their previous requirement that biology teachers and biology textbooks must teach students about the theory of evolution's 'weaknesses.' Texas being a major purchaser of textbooks, this will have ramifications beyond Texas.

Gitmo closing down, the gag rule eliminated, science teachers actually being allowed to teach science.... I have to admit, while it's all good news, I've been so beaten down by the Bush years, that mass outbreaks of common sense almost make me nervous. I keep expecting some nightmarish, Obama-rips-his-own-face-off-and-reveals-he's-actually-Dick-Cheney kind of twist.

It's the librarian in me

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:24:46 GMT

For those wondering about that quote in President Obama's speech from the Revolutionary War, it's from Thomas Paine's The American Crisis (No. 1). The Library of Congress has digital text and images of the original available here.

The Long Day is Over

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 02:52:46 GMT

In retrospect, this week was one hundred pounds of suck in a ten pound sack. I ended spending huge amounts of time revamping a syllabus for this semester I thought was already solid, our cat Uiske went into emergency vet visit mode when our normal vet wasn't available *and* the weather outside was in "I will kill you in seconds if you screw up" blowing snow/sub-zero temps mode, I had to do a four hour faculty meeting, and spent this morning waving a hair dryer underneath my kitchen sink in order to thaw the pipe leading to our dishwasher, which had frozen solid from the -17 temperatures we had overnight. Joy.

I am fighting back the only way I know how: food. So, dinner was New York strip steak, seasoned with Maldon sea salt and pepper, done medium rare and topped off with Maytag blue cheese and a ruby port reduction sauce done with garlic, thyme and balsamic vinegar, sweet potatoes roasted with honey and olive oil, and sauteed asparagus with lemon zest and parmigiano-reggiano, and a Luna cabernet sauvignon. I'm going to follow that up in a bit with European drinking chocolate with Germain-Robain brandy. Live is looking up at the moment.

ice art

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 18:50:52 GMT

So, we have yet another ice storm going on here today. Not as bad as the last one, but enough to put a nice, solid 1/8" layer on our walks and driveway. I foolishly decided to try to get the morning paper without putting on cleats. Usually I can shuffle over the bricks outside our front door to the lawn and walk out to the paper on the grass without a problem.

Usually. Fortunately I suffered no greater injury from flying ass-over-head on the bricks than a slight bruise and a tremendous loss of dignity. OK, on to the grass, walk down the lawn, grab the paper, turn around to come back...and see my own foot prints, in white, coming down the lawn. The ice had coated the individual blades of grass and was thin enough to be shattered by my walking on it. The shattered ice was still clinging to the grass but all the little fractures made it look white, not transparent, so every step you took on our lawn left a perfect little white ice foot print behind you. Almost cool enough to make me forget my bruised hip. :)

unhealthy habits

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:10:22 GMT

Tonight I tried to replicate the duck quesadilla with Hoisin and creme friche from Umami restaurant in Croton, NY. I was reasonably successful. Not very healthy, but oh so tasty.

Interesting wildlife

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:24:20 GMT

parisgreen and I went for a New Years walk in Meadowbrook Park. She spotted a pheasant, which I missed. Further on, I noticed that there were some stumps by the river in the park that looked like they had been whittled. Closer examination revealed that rather than being whittled, they had been chewed. And there were a lot of them, all 2" to 6" trees by the river. It appears a beaver has taken up residence in Urbana.

happy new year!

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 17:59:39 GMT

To start out the new year right, we did a serious breakfast this morning: omelettes with thyme and gruyere, applewood smoked bacon from our local Amish, hot gougeres, Peets' coffee and orange juice. Yum. I can now hibernate until Spring.

For our party last night, we obtained some very nice Hackleback caviar from justcaviar.com. It's sustainable, and it turns out, local. Most of the Hackleback caviar in the U.S. comes from Illinois and Kentucky. More importantly, it was excellent. Nice, buttery taste. And about 1/7th of the cost of import. We have much left over food from the party, but the caviar did not last. :)

ice weasels are cavorting

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 22:46:46 GMT

Tonight's forecast low: -1 F / -19 C
With wind chill added: -25 F / -32 C

"weather outside is frightful," indeed.

I just went to buy our tree. 10 minutes outside (we're actually at -25 F with wind chill already due to high winds) and my new, heavy duty, glove-within-a-glove winter gloves were almost useless. Better luck with my new -45 F rated snow boats, which did just fine.

And apparently we have it good compared to Iowa. Des Moines' overnight low is -12 F, -30 with wind chill. Just something to make you coastal folks feel better about your winter weather.

ice, ice baby

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:39:54 GMT

parisgreen and I drove back from Chicago yesterday, following a pretty significant winter storm (NB: 33rd floor of a deluxe suite overlooking the river in downtown Chicago is a very nice place from which to watch a winter storm). We waited until the afternoon to leave Chicago, in part to give the highways a chance to clean up. Good move on our part. Most of what fell in Chicago was snow, but as soon as you got a few miles south of Chicago, it apparently was all ice storm. Trees in the Kankakee area had a half-inch of ice on them. The ice lessened in thickness as we got further south, but basically everything from Kankakee to Champaign got iced. Very pretty to drive through afterwards, but thank god we didn't have to drive through it while it was happening.

In other weather news, we have more snow on the way for tonight, with an overnight low of 7 degrees. Tomorrow's high is 9, with wind chill values expected to be in the -9 to -14 range. Ah, winter life on the prairie.

the meal

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 04:15:26 GMT

So, for parisgreen's 50th birthday celebration we went to Alinea for dinner, Chicago's premiere temple of gastronomie. Let's get right to the point: best meal of my life to date, and it will take a lot of work on somebody's part to top it. Here is the full menu with wine pairings:

Trout Roe w/parsnip, licorice, ginger
Henriot "Souverain" Brut Champagne N.V.
The trout roe was harvested by somebody in Minnesota I believe and salt cured for 24 hours. It came with little balls of parsnip puree, coconut, and a gelatin ball of maple syrup that had been cured for a few years in bourbon barrels.

Cauliflower, five coatings, three gels, cider
Ermacora di Friulano, 2007
This was a set of cauliflower custard cubes, each of them coated with a different seasoning, along with some other gel cubes of various flavors, in a apple cider soup.

Wild Striped Bass, chamomile, shellfish, celery
J.L. Chave Crozes-Hermitage Blanc "Sybele", 2007
OK, a chamomile/saffron gelatin sheet, with crispy tapioca/saffron puffs, wild striped bass, some shellfish custards, and what I think were madolined wafer thin slices of celery that had been crisped somehow.

Yuba, shrimp, miso, togarashi
Potato, black truffle, butter
Francois Raveneau Chablis Premier Cru "Vaillons" 2000
Two separate pieces that came together. The first was a sort of crisped stick wraped in shrimp pieces, yuba and togarashi with a yuzu mayonnaise for dipping.
The potato thing was a single large spoonful of potato soup with a single slice of black truffle that you took as one shot.

Alaska King Crab w/ popcorn, butter, curry
Chereau-Carre Muscadet "comte Leloup de Chasseloir, Ceps Centenaires', 2003
The waiter described this as "all about the butter." There was a ribbon of popcorn puree, with bits of crab, different types of corn, an encapsulated ball of clarified butter that you burst and spread over the other ingredients, dried onion rings, and a few other things. Not large, but by the time you finished it, you felt like you were a piece of lobster that had just been dipped in drawn butter.

Wagyu Beef, maitake, smoked date, Blis Elixer
Au Bon Climat Pinot Noir "Isabelle", 2004
They bring you the Wagyu beef well in advance to thaw; it's been dipped in liquid nitrogen so that takes a bit. It's a single, carpaccio-thin slice. They then bring a small bowl that has a smear of smoked date puree topped by a sauteed maitake mushroom. They then drape the Wagyu beef over that, and pour over a vinaigrette made from sherry vinegar aged in the bourbon casks they previously held the maple syrup (see above) and rendered Wagyu beef fat.

Lamb, lemon, fennel, coffee aroma
Poeira Douro 2003
Various little bits of lamb (including sweetbreads) along with a bit of braised fennel, a lemon gelatin ball, and a coffee/something gelatin ribbon, served with a aromatic censer containing spices and salt and a hot rock, just there to add aroma to the experience.

Eggnog, encapsulated.
Just what it says. Eggnog somehow encapsulated in a gelatin sphere. You take the whole thing in a shot and bite down and get an explosion of eggnoggy goodness.

Sweet Potato, bourbon, brown sugar, smoldering cinnamon
Sort of a deep fried sweet potato pie on a cinnamon stick; they light fire to the end of the cinnamon stick to add aroma to the whole experience.

Bacon w/butterscotch, apple and thyme.
Pretty much just that. A small slice of crisp bacon drizzled with butterscotch and a bit of apple and thyme.

Roasted Persimmon w/walnut, rum and carrot
Hans Nittnaus "Pinorama" Trockenbeerennauslese 2001

Chocolate w/prune, olive and pine
Olivares Dulce Monastrell, 2004
A Valrhona chocolate sheet overlaying prune puree and olive gels, with a pine ice cream (yes, pine ice cream) and a pine nut soup to the side.

Candy Cane
An intense peppermint ice cream encrusted with peppermint spun sugar. On a stick.

Finished up by espresso that could not be beat. The presentation on all items was amazing. The texture contrasts were amazing. The flavors were amazing. The wine pairings were perfect. The service was excellent. Best. Dinner. Ever. Even beat out the omikase at Morimoto's in Philadelphia.

They have just published a book, including recipes. I was forced to buy a copy. I figure I'll try one recipe a year, just to see if I can do it.

Budget crisis solved

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 04:58:23 GMT

Like many states, Illinois' budget is getting hit pretty hard by the financial crisis. However, unlike some states, Illinois has a mandatory, online annual ethics training program which all state employees (including yours truly) must complete. When you complete the online training, you get to print out a little certificate stating that you have completed the training for that year. My proposal for making up the shortfall in Illinois' tax revenue this year: auction off the Governor's certificates for having completed his ethics training on eBay. I'm thinking the state could get good money for these.

"Bye-bye, boys! Have fun storming the castle!"

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:20:48 GMT

The Fourth International Digital Curation Conference was held last week in Edinburgh, and the hosts at the DCC decided on a special venue for the conference dinner: Edinburgh Castle. At the tip-top heart of the castle, actually, in a building that was formerly a barracks on Crown Square across from the Royal Apartments. So, we got to eat our dinner with live Scottish harp music and watch the snow falling outside.

Note to self: if ever storming a castle, do so when it is *not* snowing. It's a miracle that none of our party slipped and broke a leg hiking up the rather steep steps and cobblestones leading to the castle. Photos of the approach to the entrance of the castle at night after the cut.

The Castle at Night:

A Close Up of the Entrance:

Yours Truly on Guard Duty:

Cross-Cultural Communication

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 18:57:19 GMT

I was invited over to Brussels to do a talk on our Preserving Virtual Worlds Project at a conference on Serious Games being thrown by Faro. Unfortunately, I was the only English-speaking presentation, and the rest were in Dutch, limiting my ability to get a whole lot out of them. I did get quite a few people chatting at me during the breaks, though, and learned some interesting things about how higher ed is approaching games in Belgium, so not an entire lost. Amusing highlight of the day for me, however, was during one of the breaks, when from one of the small groups of people chatting in Dutch behind me I suddenly heard someone say, "LEEEROOOOYYYYY JEnkinssss!!!!!"

Some things evidently translate well across the language barrier, and weird machinima is on the list.

Art Restoration in the Subway

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:34:28 GMT

The Masstransiscope, a moving image art installation by Bill Brand, located on the B & Q lines in Brooklyn, has now been restored. Here's some video about the installation: