plip blog » Photos

More water, more spider webs

mrjones — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 22:16:46 +0000

Apparently the shutterbug in me loves spiders as well as their webs when wet. Or, maybe I just need an excuse to try to master my (still some what) new camera.

In any case, here's some water in the setting sun light:

Spiders abound

mrjones — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 22:30:38 +0000

I never really paid much attention, but apparently there is a spider season. We're clearly in it! Tons of webs and tons of spiders. It's cool.

Here's one I found just around the corner of my house to compliment the web in my back yard from last post:

Spider web and Hard Drives

mrjones — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 03:09:10 +0000

What to do on a sunny weekend? Why, hose down your local spider web, line up hard drives and take videos and photos of them all, of course! It is pretty insane just how fast that hard drive head moves. Check out the video below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bees

mrjones — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 21:56:30 +0000

Woody's B-Day

mrjones — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:35:12 +0000

I had a lovely time tonight celebrating my friend Bill's birthday. Happy birthday Bill!

Here's a photo; be sure to click through to see them all:

B-Day Dinner Fun

As well as two videos from the night. You had to be there:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Level Up to Bees Knees

mrjones — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 05:15:04 +0000

So, y'all remember how much I loved American Born Chinese? Mr. Yang's latest is Level Up and I just finished it. It's great! Not quite as good as ABC, but it stands on its own.

There were a couple things about this book that resonated with me. The first is the addictive behavior of a young kid playing a video game. And not just any video game, but the video games my generation grew up on: NES, Super Mario Brothers, Zelda and the like. I actually wasn't that good at these games back in the day, but I wasted hours down at Freeway Variety, the local five and dime store, watching my friends play (oddly the only mention of Freeway online is the glossary for a movie from some guys who grew up in my "hood"). To this day there's still a few friends who I can say, "Elf needs food" and they'll finish the saying with, "badly!".

The second thing that resonated with me was that at that age, I read a lot of comic books. I would go to Comic Relief (clearly I haven't been in a while, I just found out they're closed, R.I.P.), go around the corner and by two slices from Arinell Pizza (it was 1/2 the size back in my day. Really!) and sit and read comics. That same night I'd go home and read every comic I'd gotten that day. Then I'd re-read them. How does this tie into Level Up? Well, I just couldn't wait to start, let alone finish, the graphic novel, so I sat and read it as fast as I could, just like back in my salad days. Just like the protagonist in the book and his video games.

One big difference between eating Arinell's pizza or 10 rolls of Smarties 'til I'm sick while I read comics and graphic novels, is now I'm all grown up! I can have adult drinks while I read. Ya know, like Bees Knees! My wife recommended a recipe from Not without Salt. Bees knees are tasty! Oddly, I think I might try the next ones with a bit of rosemary:

2 oz gin
3/4 oz Honey Syrup
1/2 oz Lemon Juice

NWOS suggests doing the honey syrup like simple syrup: 1 to 1 of honey to water, bring to simmer, let cool and use. However, I cheated and just did the 1 to 1 measurement using piping hot water, and then stirring the bejeesus out of it. Worked fine and no dirty pan.

Oil, Water and tasty Vodka

mrjones — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 03:07:00 +0000

Well, OK, not all three together. First up, while doing dishes some hot water hit some congealed butter at the bottom of a Pyrex. The butter melted, but not into tiny particles, but into larger circles. It was memorizing. Well, it was for dorks like me, have a looksee:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Now on to the tasty Vodka. This is slight variation on the standard Cosmo:

1 part Imperia vodka
1 part Cointreau
1 part cranberry cocktail
Juice from 1/2 a small lime

The best part? I'd tried to do the same with tripple sec and a lemon the night before and my super cool wife bought me the right proper Cointreau and a lime. I came home to find this (see first pic) which I had to make into a tasty drink using the above proportions:

Spicy Vodka Martini

mrjones — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 03:17:30 +0000

Wow! I doubt I'm the first to discover this, but a spicy Martini is damn tasty. Here's how it went: Our friend from twtitw was over and had brought a batch of his tasty Pickled Carrots. The next day I was enjoying the last few carrots and paused. "Hmmm, you know what would be good?", I thought aloud. "A spicy martini with the dregs of the pickled carrot juice!". Indeed, it's true.

I started by taking the recipe from Chronicle Books', "Mini Bar: Vodka":

2 shots vodka
1/2 shot vermouth

Pour the two ingredients over ice in a shaker, shake, decant into an iced glass and add in twist (w00t!) or olives (gross).

My version is the same, but instead of vermouth, I used the pickle juice and instead of a twist I used some of the jalapenos. The end result is oh my, just so tasty! I'm not sure why I'm adding these photos, they're pretty bland and poorly lit.

Sunlight, flowers and a baby's butt

mrjones — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 04:12:27 +0000

These photos were taken over a 24 hour period. Though I didn't know when I started with the sunset last night (first up below), these photos very much ended up being an homage to my friend Steven and his blog. Primarily I appreciate his pause in the day to take photos of the lake and reminder that your devices are not your master.

Baby Spider Pictures

mrjones — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 22:37:23 +0000

My in-laws have an awesome back yard and against their above ground pool I found a mom and her baby spiders hanging out in their web. After finding an improv light source of an upside-down steel dog bowl for a mirror and a watering can as the mirror tripod, I had an impromptu photo shoot. Only four or five came out OK. I aspired to make them as good as Hans', but no luck. Where's my DSLR and macro lense?!