November 15th, 2009

Subject: Earth, Ocean and Space, All in One Place Time: 02:34 pm Current Mood: distressed

Mark and I had been living in the Bay Area for a while, but we hadn't really had that much opportunity for us to get out of the house so that I could drag him to all the places I'd loved growing up - the Monterey Bay Aquarium (when not half-closed for renovation), the California Academy of Sciences (when not completely closed for renovation), and the Exploratorium (which I don't think they've done anything to, at least yet). Since the Academy finished its reconstruction a year or two ago and we had time, we decided to head out there on Saturday. ( They say you can never go home again. . . )

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September 28th, 2009

Subject: Indian Summer Time: 11:35 am Current Mood: accomplished

One of the delightful things I've discovered since moving back to Cupertino is that it has a weekly Farmer's Market. ( Seasonal eating is something that's unfortunately gone out of style, but is slowly making a comeback. )

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September 9th, 2009

Subject: Moving Pictures Time: 05:37 pm Current Mood: frustrated

This weekend my parents (and my boyfriend) decided that I was going to catch up on the Harry Potter movies, so they could actually take me out to watch the movies when they came out and have some goddamn clue what's going on. ( You ought to be in pictures. . . )

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September 8th, 2009

Subject: New City, New Superheroes Time: 01:57 pm Current Mood: geeky

So, right now Champions Online is the new superhero MMO in town. It's another Cryptic work, which means that they've learned at least a few things from City of Heroes - costume customization is insane, power customization is actually possible, and there are no true archetypes per se. Ostensibly you can build the type of hero you want to be, from tankish brick to supporting hero, but are never really given sets and archetypes that can't solo worth beans like CoH used to have. I'd never actually been in a game during its launch phase before, so I don't really have much basis of comparison for Champions. It's been out for only a little over a week and it's already changed drastically; the day the game went live is when they basically put out an OMG!panic patch designed to slow things down since they had headstarters hitting 40 before the game was even out. Why they were surprised when I remember seeing a level 50 kheldian in CoH the day after the archetype was introduced to the game, I'll never know. People just do that, partly out of habit - in most MMOs there really is very little content before the endgame where you're supposed to be doing all your stuff, mostly dungeon-grinding and raiding - and partly just because they can. So, it's rough around the edges. Aggro is pretty much incomprehensible, if it's working at all. The total openness of power frameworks, allowing you to mix and match almost at will, is both the strength of the game and its weakness, mostly given a lack of really clear documentation for what things do what and what powers depend on what stats. A cut to XP leaves gaps in the levelling curve such that I spend a lot of time doing quests that give rewards that I can't use yet. They cranked up henchman damage, but left spawn sizes alone, which is baffling. Grouping mechanics really need to be less of a pain in the ass. Certain powersets really are kind of hurting while others barely changed from head start. And so on. I could go on. ( And yet. . . )

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August 19th, 2009

Subject: CoH 2: Electric Boogaloo Time: 12:10 am Current Mood: sleepy

This morning, after successfully peeling me off his computer, Mark set me up with my own Fileplanet account and subscription to the Champions Online beta. I've been playing it pretty much continuously since 2pm today. Or, I guess I should say, yesterday. SEND HELP.

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July 11th, 2009

Subject: Bibliophile Time: 08:34 am Current Mood: tired

So at some point recently, Mark took an inventory of our books, DVDs and games to see what all we had. We have over 740 books. Many of these are large. Some of them weigh a few pounds all by themselves (my electron microscopy and chemistry textbooks being the major culprits). And, true to the nature of packing books, they all have to go into itty bitty boxes to prevent them from becoming immobile bricks of books. I made that mistake on my first move, never again - to this day I still don't know how someone moved a 3x3-foot box filled with nothing but books. I also like how we keep swearing that this move will be the last move, but we still had a closet full of spare packing tape rolls. . .

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May 29th, 2009

Subject: Dining in Eden Time: 05:24 pm Current Mood: hungry

Vegetarian cooking gets a bad rap in this country. ( Semi-political ramblings and recipes about food sustainability go here. )

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May 15th, 2009

Subject: The Food Makes the Man Time: 10:47 am Current Mood: hungry

Humans have been attempting to find that special thing that differentiates us from the animals - in kind rather than just a matter of degree - for a while. ( Cooking up the modern man )

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January 13th, 2009

Subject: Skin of the Earth Time: 11:32 am Current Mood: contemplative

Dirt is, generally speaking, not a terribly sexy subject. ( It is, however, something I can go on about at length. )

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November 23rd, 2007

Subject: To Give Thanks Time: 05:44 pm Current Mood: lazy

( Insert self-indulgent holiday-themed rambling here. )

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September 1st, 2007

Subject: BEEEEEEEEEES Time: 02:09 pm Current Mood: amused

General Rajaxx There are several known bugs for this fight. Bug 1 - Respawn Trigger: Unknown (rumored to trigger when players standing on hills, unconfirmed and unlikely) Wave Number: Any Description: All previous waves repop and run in at once Solution: Having multiple waves at once is pretty much a guaranteed wipe. The only recommendation I have is to maximize crowd control and hope. ( Oh em gee ) I seem to make a habit of this sort of thing in various games.

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July 15th, 2007

Subject: More Than Meets the Eye Time: 09:20 am Current Mood: nerdy

So I went to go see Transformers yesterday. ( By this point, I'm sure you've heard everyone and their dog's thoughts on what the movie was like, but I'm going to give mine anyway. )

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June 25th, 2007

Subject: Megafaunal Musings Time: 08:54 am Current Mood: artistic

I've been getting back into drawing again lately, mostly animals since they're easier and more interesting to draw than people (as an aside, I've often noticed that artists seem to be good at one or the other but rarely both; in my case I lean towards animals). It being me, of course, the subject material tends to be dorkier than the usual tigers and dolphins. ( Exhibit A: Brawn )

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April 6th, 2007

Subject: Macrolicious Time: 11:55 am Current Mood: amused

I am a colossal dork. More importantly, I'm something of a reformed Trekkie, mostly in that I don't hang commemorative Franklin Mint plates of Starfleet captains on the wall anymore. As such, I think this may just be one of the best sites ever.

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March 3rd, 2007

Subject: Turning Japanese Time: 06:52 pm Current Mood: hungry

Japanese cuisine encompasses both elegance and simplicity; the idea being to showcase the natural flavors of the food without being overly complicated, while producing something that is elegant to the eye as well as pleasing to the palate. At least, that's the general idea, and it's the sort of aesthetic seen in the most commonly-encountered form of Japanese cuisine in America (i.e., sushi). Now, I grew up in a household where the extent of presentation was to stick a serving spoon in the pan of finished food. To be honest, I approach Japanese cooking the same way - to heck with this presentation stuff just so long as the result tastes good. I've been told that this misses the whole point of it, but since presentation seems to be at least half of the effort involved in a lot of these recipes, it does tend to make things quite a bit simpler. It's the sort of attitude that's not helped by the fact that most of my favorite dishes don't consist of fancy sushi or carefully-prepared bento boxes, but are generally the sort of donburi dishes prepared by streetside vendors and cafes. Honestly, some of these wouldn't look pretty even if I'd tried. For those of you that do like a pretty-looking dish, I've included notes on how to do so, assuming it's a recipe that lends itself well (or at all) to presentation. In general, however, Japanese cooking tends to be fairly simple compared to its Chinese counterpart, with longer cooking times and less involved preparation. ( Cooking with Jen: Oyako Donburi and Sukiyaki ) Next time: Roasted Chicken in Garlic Herb Butter and Homemade Chicken Soup; i.e., how to cook the same bird twice over. See you then!

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January 29th, 2007

Subject: Swearing at Chestnuts Time: 12:16 pm Current Mood: hungry

I am a food person, as most people that know me can attest. You've probably run into the type - the ones that will talk about and plan future meals over dinner, share recipes over lunch, and drool over cookbooks even if the recipes therein are more complicated than sanity dictates (I tend to think about these type of recipes as "food porn"). They have multiple cookbooks and download even more recipes off the internet, and the recipes tend to involve arcane ingredients such as shiso, arugala, and endive. Okay, so maybe I'm more of a food snob. But I digress. At any rate, I was living in a primarily immigrant area of San Francisco when I learned to cook, and the cheapest ingredients by a long shot were the things sold in the tiny Chinese and Russian groceries nearby. So for me it's normal to go shopping in a store where I can't read most of the signs (let alone half the labels) and to breathe in the distinctive smell to immigrant groceries that's missing from the large, sterile chain stores. I've been told that Asian groceries in particular smell "gross", but the thing is - that smell that's so strange? It's the odor of actual food. It's the smell of vegetables that are locally grown and kind of uglier than the ones that you find at the local Albertson's, all knobbly and dirty with a smell like garden-grown produce; the smell of ripe apples; and the paranoia-inducing scent of freshly-butchered meat, which has more of a smell than I've grown used to from the pre-packaged stuff (I always worry it's gone funny). And above it all there's the smell of fish: raw and fresh, frozen and foreign, and both kinds being stuffed into the deep-fryer whole. This is the food I learned to cook, and although it's been a long time since I've had the time to really shop for the proper ingredients and prepare it, I've started to get back to it lately. Cooking is one of the things I largely left behind when I went into grad school, for better or for worse, but mostly for lack of the time to do it. After a year of mostly eating fast food, restaraunt food, and meals cooked out of boxes, it's nice to go back. Cooking is a labor of love, and something that's meant to be shared. ( Cooking with Jen: Kal Bi Jchim and Sesame Salt ) Next time: Making Japanese food at home (a.k.a., the ugly way). Stay tuned!

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January 16th, 2007

Subject: The Winter Beach Time: 12:38 pm Current Mood: blank

It's New Year's Day in Southern California, bright and sunny and clear and cold, and to top it off I'm standing on a beach a few miles north of San Diego, being buffeted by a remorseless ocean wind. ( New Year's reflections )

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December 11th, 2006

Subject: Chargezzz Time: 02:45 pm Current Mood: irritated

So there's a couple of things I've learned over the course of this thesis project. The most recent one seems to be that short of taking out a second mortgage, you do not print this sort of thing at places like Kinko's. A buck a page for 240 pages, huh? You want to print them all in color, despite the fact that I have maybe 38 pages altogether that even involve color? To hell with that, I could probably buy a new printer for that much and not have to deal with the hassle. Heck, it'd probably be easier than backseat-printing over some poor employee's shoulder for the next few hours. I'm now a bit afraid to find out how much the final printing's going to run me, whereupon I have to both print it twice and on pretty pretty acid-free archival paper. I wonder if I could rent out a kidney to cover it or something.

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July 6th, 2006

Subject: ARGH Time: 12:10 pm Current Mood: stressed

Just in case you've been wondering how I've been lately: ( RRRGH ) Yeah. It's been one of those kind of weeks.

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February 28th, 2006

Subject: Forever Time: 05:16 pm Current Mood: thoughtful

I write very little in my journal these days, since I don't spend time in long, meandering thoughts worth penning anymore - unless your idea of an interesting conversation involves a broken record of "still working on the thesis", of course, which I'm sure the people around me must have tired of weeks ago. It's the sort of numbness that sets in during the last hours of a very long hike, a mental weariness that drowns out thought about anything much save whatever's right in front of you. I'm sure at the other end it will be worth it, or at least I hope so. . . but damn, I'll tell you, I'm getting pretty tired of staring at data points that represent conodonts right now. ( So I went looking for something else to stare at instead, and found. . . )

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