First try at carving a block of wax into a tooth. Not really done, but you get the point. 
The root would be crappy to have though, need to melt some wax back onto it so it doesn't curve like that.
So I made homemade pasta today. This is the second time I've done it, so I wasn't totally confused about what to do this time around. The recipe - which makes a single serving - is very simple:
3/4 cup of flour (note: I used all-purpose flour, and cannot vouch for the proper "durum" flour or whole-grain flour)
1/2 tsp extra virgin olive oil (good quality olive oil is important!)
1 large egg
Salt and pepper to taste
Note: You'll also need a rolling pin. Or a cleaned-off, empty bottle of wine.
That's it. Those are the ingredients.
To start, put the flour in a bowl. Make a hole in the middle, and put in the olive oil and the egg. Stir it all together (I used a fork) until the flour, egg, and olive oil are blended. The two times I've made pasta with this recipe, I quit "mixing" the dough once it turned into a collection of floury balls in the bowl. At this point, I used my hands and formed it all into a single pasta-ball.
Next, use your rolling pin (or your bottle of wine ... which I used the first time around), and roll it out until it's really thin. In the interest of space, you might consider breaking the dough into two halves before starting.
Once the dough is sufficiently thin, cut the noodles. Make them as narrow or wide as you like (I aimed for an average size). As you move through this stage, make sure to sprinkle flour over the dough, the roller, and the finished noodles.
First Picture: The dough has been rolled out, and most of the noodles cut. Since you won't end up with a perfectly rectangular strip of dough, there will be discards. I balled the remains (at the top of the picture) and used those for some experimental ravioli.
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Second Picture: All of the noodles have been cut, some parmesan cheese has been grated, and the pasta discards were reformed, rolled out, and made into raviolis (into which I stuffed some shitty mozzarella cheese. I cooked those later. Didn't come out so well because the filling was lame and the pasta was too thick).
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Next, you'll want to have some boiling water handy. I made the mistake this time of waiting until after all the noodles had been cut before I began heating the water. This resulted in the noodles drying out a bit more than I would have liked. You'll want to add salt to the water for some flavor.
Third Picture: Boiling the noodles. The white bubbles at the top are starches. Make sure you have enough water in the pot to allow the noodles to roam around.
When it's all done, strain the water out, and put whatever you want on it. I used a store-bought pesto and some grated parmesan cheese.
Voila!
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View My Newest Creation before reading.
It's the Web 2.0 and by now most of you have seen or heard of Wordclouds (aka Tag Clouds). I created the subject of this post to jump start my recent lack of extracurricular education. Though not technically a Tag Cloud -- it's horizontally aligned as opposed to a cloud-like grouping -- it fills much of the same mental desire.
It's ecstasy distilled to continuously refresh the page and see the array of colors and word formations. It would be doubly good if I could figure out a useful way to properly rotate the words so that they fit into a nice formation.
If you have a block of text you'd like to use as a seed, Wordle makes it so easy a caveman could do it. Take this post for instance.
Brought to you by The Lab.
Guys, this movie is amazing.
YEAH.
I've been a busy bee. Cry if the files are too big. I'll edit.
Deck
Pond
Vegetable Patch
Super Awesome Annual Border Garden
Now who's the pansy? bitches
I thought this was a really brilliant find on Reddit. The comments, of course, find some faults in the information (for example, Polaris is not one of the brightest stars in our sky, and not all of the characteristics of flight are properly explained), but I still think this is fantastic.
Note: I probably still could not do anything with this set of information. What does the pancreas of a dog look like? What does tungsten look like? Let's not delve any further and just hope it will save humanity anyway after we obliterate each other.
No, that isn't an obscure metaphor. There is an actual representation of a fantastical bird-like creature on the wall of my home. Here is a forest view of the enchanted area for reference. Scroll down for a closer look at the beast.
Behold! There the Chocobo sits in profile, echoing the style of cave scrawled buffalo depicted by early man.
Is this a sign of luck? An ominous warning to be heeded? I like to think of it as a gentle reminder that I am being watched over by spirits from beyond. That there is a god, and he is a giant bird.
Wait! That's it! We were being told all along and never knew...
Do you know the way to salvation? H is for the Horrid Hot Hemroid Hell you will visit if you do not worship the One True God, Big Bird. The Bird is the Word. You have been warned.
I think the world should know of this and love it.
I just gave this site a try, and I find myself listening to more and more of it. Perhaps I just always needed a complex database and algorithms to adaptively present me with music I may like. Each song makes it smarter as I rate it. Maybe Kizi could like music, now that my eclecticism can be more accurately analyzed.
What really sold it for me was the "Squaresoft / Instrumental" pre-made station, featuring fully orchestrated renditions of Chrono Trigger music. Using that as a baseline, it then adapts to personal preference. Magic.
http://www.pandora.com/
Those of you I've talked to know that my Home Theater PC (HTPC) has been done for a while now. Problem is, I've been too lazy to post the pictures I'd taken online until now.
I uploaded them to a flickr set so everyone can head over there and check them out. I keep threatening to do an actual photo gallery system here but haven't found the time. In all honesty I have plenty of time but I use it working and playing World of Warcraft.
Molly and I are canceling our cable this week so in about... a year the computer should pay for itself. I'll take some pictures of my current entertainment system and post them up here soon.
I just a few minutes ago dropped my laptop computer cord into the toilet. Just the end that plugs into the computer, and a few more inches, including two areas with exposed wires. I dried it with my boxers briefly, and it works just fine. I am using it now to power my computer to author this post. I just really think that you all should know about this incident.
(Just in case you were wondering, my wordplay in the third sentence is purposeful.)
I built myself an upgrade computer from the old 2005 XPS Gen 3 last week. Ordered all the parts from newegg. Here are the specs and links-
CPU-
AMD Phenom 9850 BLACK EDITION 2.5GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard-
ASUS M3A79-T Deluxe AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard
Memory-
mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
HDD-
2x Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 1.5Gb/s Hard Drive
in RAID 0
Floppy- Check
Optical-
LG Black 6X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 6X Blu-ray DVD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA Internal Blu-ray Burner 6X Blu-ray Disc Burner & HD DVD-ROM Drive Model GGW-H20LK
Video-
SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card
PSU-
Rosewill RP550V2-D-SL 550W ATX12V v2.01 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Power Supply
Case-
COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW Black Aluminum Bezel , SECC Chassis ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
OS-
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit for System Builders
Blu-ray Support-
Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 Ultra
She runs like a dream
Well all the beautiful summer flowers died off in the November freeze. In early December I dug out an ~200 gallon pond for some water gardening. I'm still working on the coping and waterfall. I have about 200lbs of rocks left to place. In the pictures you see about 500lbs. roxrhevi. So far I've only been able to find some water mint and I'm nursing equisetum to plant around it.
Also I planted a little flower bed with violas and alyssum for Ms. Boo to look at out my window. I think it needs a bunch of bulbs or something behind it. Maybe snaps after this cold surge.
I need to spray my snapdragons with hot sauce cause the squirrels be eatin the flowers.
This week I'm building a new Computer. I'll have all the parts in tomorrow!