Eye-Fi camera cards

A year or so ago I purchased a card for my digital camera from http://www.eye.fi/.  This simple little card makes me happy at least once a week.  It's genius: it is wifi aware.  Which means that once you take a picture, it tries to connect to the internet and upload the new pictures.  You can have it save just to your computer, or automatically upload to Flckr, Picasa, or a number of other sites.

Here is my happy use case.  Often while at work, I'll get an email that looks like this:

Which means that the family at home has been taking pictures, and my day is interrupted by a cute and often candid update of what my fantastic family is up to today.  

The new cards will also upload videos, which means that I rarely, if ever take my card out of my camera anymore.  

Overall, this is one technical gadget that makes my life easier and has extremely low friction.  Exactly what a quality item should be.

Mont Blanc Fountain Pens

I grew up admiring my father's Montblanc fountain pen, having worked through scores of fountain pens myself I have yet to make the leap. Maybe when I grow up.

Here is a long soliloquy of an article, with lots of nice pictures.
http://www.luxist.com/2010/11/16/birth-of-a-montblanc-making-the-worlds-finest-pen-and-why-you-sh/

Studio day

I feel like I'm making good headway.

The kiln is cooling.

Made a couple more pieces just in case.

Theo even helped with one of those bottles. it was fun.

There are for or so bowls drying around the studio, this platter form I've been working on, and a bigger tray .

Oh, and this guy

showed up at one point.

I think I may just fit in one more bisque firing before loading up and heading out to the firing with Simon and they guys this weekend.

today was an easy one

Some mud work

Firing coming up soon. I suppose I should do some backwards math. If I'm heading out Thursday night, then I need Thursday to cool the bisque kiln, which means I need to fire on Wednesday. Since I don't own a microwave anymore to quick dry pieces, I should give it a day or two or more to dry which means Sunday wheelwork would even be pushing it. Ahhh the excitement of the chase.

carrying on

Mostly keeping up with making something every day. The last couple days have been working on mote digital creations. Went to a great networking event tonight with some very smart techie folks. Got some good ideas on how to make the Macalester web apps.

GAE with GWT

Today's creating is admitadly a bit techie.  I wanted to port a glaze storage application I had made some years ago to python and hosted on Google App Engine, then I got distracted by the shiny object that is GWT.  So I made a GWT app hosted on Google App Engine.

cledwyn-gwt.appspot.com

Nothing more than installing the IDE, and uploading with minor tweaks, but hey, it's still something.

More decals

Second sitting working with the glaze decals.  Seemed a little different on stoneware than porcelain.  And I think I am getting a sense for when to peel away the tissue paper.  Not that tricky, but tricky at the same time.



I am really enjoying these decals, getting a little creative with cutting and piecing them together we'll see if any of the details hold up durring the woodfire later this month.

Bowl.

Using some clay from http://www.mattanddavesclays.com/.  Nice porcelain to use.  have not fired any yet so well see later this month.

Very late, of to bed.

Chocolate Bobka

Some time ago I worked my way through the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking book and mostly enjoyed it.  The thing that was nice about it was that they tried to take much of the pressure off of the process of making bread.  They were good salesmen on the topic.  Then with the second book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients I thought it would be even better, but then I realized that even though they were saying how simple things could be, they were still suggesting that you buy a specialized food container for the bread, specialized ingredients (wheat gluten, wheat germ, etc) and I thought, forget that.

So now, I make the bread for our family every week with a much simpler method.

--In a large mixing bowl add--

4 c. wheat flour

3 c. white flour

2 t. salt

1 palm full of sugar (so anywhere from 1/4 c to 3/4c depending on your mood, or skip it, whatevs.)

2 T. yeast (or two packets)

[optional] Add 1/4 wheat germ

**mix dry ingredients**

--add to dry--

3 1/3 C tap water. 

a couple glugs of oil.  Olive oil is nice, canola is good, caster is not.  (couple glugs would be anywhere from 1/4-1/2 C depending on your mood)

-Mix with a wooden spoon, or the fork you used to mix the dry until all the flour is decently well moistened.  

-Place mixing bowl in the fridge overnight.  (you could do this on the counter and wait an hour and a half but since we are skipping the kneading step, if you let it sit for a long time that gives the mixture time to self saturate with the liquids.)

-In the morning (or whenever you feel like it) turn the oven to 375, place a baking sheet on the bottom rack and put some (4-8C) boiling water in it. (this will keep the oven moist)

- break the dough into two pieces, place in greased loaf pans, or on a cookie sheet if making a boule.

-let rise about 20 minutes and place in the oven for 45 minutes give or take.  Loaf should be evenly brown when turned out of the pan. 

This makes two loaves which is just a bit more than our family of 4 needs for a week.  

We sometimes make one loaf and save the other half for pizza crust.

 

The picture above has the two loaves, then I also made a half recipie and upped the sugar (a heaping handful) and added some chocolate to the dough.  then in the morning I  smushed [techincal bread term] the dough out, sprinkled a healthy coating of brown sugar, some cinamon, and more chocolate powder on it and rolled it up. Baked it with the other loaves and it was great.  I don't have a picture of the finished product because there is such a short window of time before the loaf is mostly gone.  As you see above.  :)

Father/Son sewing project.

Some time ago I made my wife some bulk bags.  We a big fans of shopping at our local co-op. And there is something satisfying about buying goods that you will later combine into a meal and feed your family, and buying the goods without the unnecessary packaging.  The last batch of bags that I made were unbleached muslin.  And it has been immensely satisfying to be in the checkout line buying our groceries nicely packed in bags I made myself, for meals that we will make ourselves later this week.

Ok, enough waxing poetic, the big bags that are particularly useful for oats and flour seem to be in short supply.  So I stopped into the nice folks down at Treadle Yard Goods and bought a yard of this cute fabric.  It was a bit more expensive than unbleached muslin, but I decided it was one of those relativistic scenarios and threw down the extra $6 for the designer fabric.  How lavish of me.  I really spare no expense for my lovely wife.

Oh, and it was a fun father/son activity to work with my 4 year old boy to setup the sewing machine and sew up a bag.  Start 'em young and all.

Decals

I got some decals from Gary Erickson a few days back.  I tried applying them to some pots today.

From

Some parts worked really well, some not so much. Gary's information sheet said that you would eventually get a feel for it. I thought I did for a couple, but then, just as quickly, it was gone.

I have not decided if I would put these in the wood firing this month, or try and work them in to an electric firing.