While visiting our cousin Tedra in Texas I saw that she had this lamp.  I loved it.  So I decided to build one for myself for the low price of $22 excluding the price of the bulb.  Here are the results.  I took a little artistic liberty with the design.

Here is a video that I produced for a group project for a class at TEDS. I enjoy the ‘producing’ aspect of it, shooting the video, editing, etc. A creative thing that is a new challenge.

Dawson Trotman from Karl Hall on Vimeo.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/what-is-time/

I read this article and I keep hearing him asking the question, “But what ‘created’ the original low entropy state?” except he doesn’t use creation language, even though his example is a creative example, a chicken creating an egg.  The chicken orders the mess of nutrients [and such] that it has ingested, and creates an egg.

I hear what he is saying, but I also hear what he is really trying not to say, which is the word ‘created’.  I read about his fantastic work, and it reminds me of another story told by Hebrew Poets thousands of years ago who were asking the same questions… Why do things always seem to get messy?  Was it ever different than this?  Will it ever be different from this again?

Janelle is a budding expert on many things culinary… she wanted to try a mocha twist on the espresso affogato.  Here is the how-to…

Step 1:  Three mini-scoops of vanilla ice cream into a chilled 4-5oz mug.

Step 2:  Shave/cut up a bar of good quality chocolate into small pieces.

Step 3:  Brew two great shots of espresso.

Step 4:  Pour the espresso over the ice cream.

Step 5:  Sprinkle the chocolate onto the hot espresso, this will help the smaller pieces melt instantly, and the larger pieces will remain in the drink more toward the end to enjoy with the remaining solid ice cream.

Finished Product!

Enjoy!

It sorta a dessert and drink mixed… more dessert than a root beer float, but more drink that a thick shake.  It is very intense, the espresso and the chocolate blend quite well and are balanced by the sweetness of the ice cream.

Willem A. VanGemeren is an enigma; he just doesn’t quite fit the TEDS mold.  He is great.  This is from class today, a [nearly] direct quote, regarding the problem with concentrating on the concrete issues in eschatology.

“God will always surprise us because what he gives us is all the time better.  This is why Jesus as the Messiah, which is not at all found in the OT, is where we find the uniqueness and surprise of the NT, that is, this Jesus IS God.  The OT is looking for the ideal human as the Messiah, but as we see in Isaiah no one can actually do it, each one fails.  So Jesus gives us something far better than just the ideal human, God himself came down to work salvation.  So our focus on expectations can allow us to completely miss the entire point, maybe just like a lot of the 1st century Jews did when they were expecting the messiah to be a political leader.”

I am fairly certain that most evangelical churches would have problems with this.  The mere fact that he maintains that Jesus does not literally fill the ‘messianic prophisies’ in the OT would get him booed out of a lot of churches. I am fairly certain that I completely agree with him.

Choice Architect:  A person who has the responsibility for organizing the context in which people make decisions.

via “The Skilled Helper, 9th Edition” pp 189-190

A single shot, 5 oz. latte for Janelle. Check.

Much improving barista skillz. Check.

(not that my espresso skills were lacking, just my latte art skillz)

Janelle and I enjoy our Saturday mornings…

The first is Janelle, drinking espresso at my request.  The second is her cappuccino.  The third is my espresso extraction through the bottomless portafilter.

Here are a two of my most recent projects.  Both were low budget solutions.  The first is a table to get all of my espresso stuff in one place, on one counter top.  The second is a new amalgamation of parts combined to form a track bike that will be seeing some use on the Northbrook Velodrome this summer.

Stats:  Fetish Position Track Frame, SRAM track crank [with external bearings], Origin8 track bars I traded for, all black Tessa wheels that I convinced someone to give me, etc.  If I live 5 minutes away from one of the [only] 18 velodromes and only an hour away from another, I should take this opportunity to do some racing, right? Right.