Posts filed under ‘bliss’
Audiobooks
Please listen. This actually took way less time to make than I thought, so if you like it, let me know in the comments. Thanks.
My Life In Four Programs
So, the calendars come next week and I’m in the middle of one comics project and starting to report another. In the meantime, I thought I’d share my current bliss: programs for Macs that help me make sense of life. Have a PC? Sorry, don’t care.
I don’t know about you, but I’m only as good as I am organized. Give me a free chunk of time and I’m aimless. If you’re like me, and you certainly might not be, you’re always looking for programs that make it easy to process your life as it happens and remember what you’re supposed to. Except for the one that you probably recognize, these cost money, and I thought I’d try and make the case for each so you can decide if it would plug an organizational hole in your life.
First up, Bento, comes to me via Professional Practices teacher and ultimate beard-master Alec Longstreth. This program is a super spreadsheet/database utility that is really intuitive to use. Ever worked on an project in Excel and realized that what you’re doing is just too complicated to work in one spreadsheet? Databases are the answer, but usually they are ridiculously hard to use and enter data into. In Bento, you can easily build a form for whatever you want (mailing list, ongoing creative project, complicated multi-step process, etc.) and then make it legible in one spreadsheet that shows whatever you want. I really doubt I could have kept track of the Beef Steak calendar so well without it. This one is new to me, and I’m using it for EVERYTHING.
Yojimbo I’ve had for a while now, but it still might be the hardest thing to describe. Besides being an awesome movie, Yojimbo is a program that collects all the ephemera and miscellany that you want to save. Memorable image? Recipe? Quotation? Forget folders somewhere on your computer. Yojimbo has it all in one place, searchable, browsable: tagged and bagged. My favorite use for it now is when I get a receipt or plane ticket I’m supposed to “print out” I go to file>print>PDF>Save PDF to Yojimbo. Always asking, “where did I write that down?” This is perfect for that.
Innocuos name aside, Things is way more than I ever expected a To Do program could be. It’s hard to tell from this screenshot, but you can easily organize a general list of tasks into “today,” “next,” “scheduled,” “someday,” and “projects.” This means Things can scale your most basic tasks into fantastically complicated projects in a matter of minutes. At 50$, this is expensive, but it’s probably the smartest of these four programs. It’s soooo satisfying to check off items and have them logged automatically at midnight.
Yeah, iCal comes standard on every Mac. But unlike Mail and Address Book, which are both pretty much rendered obsolete for me by Gmail, iCal remains really strong interface-wise. I find Google Calendar more difficult to use, though I think it probably works better for collaborative projects. Did you know it’s really easy to subscribe to other calendars, like U.S. holidays or indie comics conventions? I have a preference for iCal because I’ve been using it for so long, but it really excels at working with my other organizing programs (Bento especially) and is automatically synced with my ipod touch (and bluetooth phones sync really easy too). These programs all have apps actually, but I haven’t gotten there yet.
So yeah, sometimes I wish a single program did everything. Still, it’s not hard to remember what does what. On a comics project I might organize it in Bento, make notes on research in Yojimbo, schedule reporting in iCal, and make sure I do everything in Things. Each handles a unique function, and I bet you’d like at least one of them too. None of them paid me to write this, and they all have free trials if you’re curious.
That’s all I got this week.
And don’t forget to sign up your email on cartoopicayune.com!
I Still Love Food!
To new readers of this blog, it might appear like I am only interested in comics. But lo ho ho dear reader! This summer I return to one of my passions — selling cheese! I can hear you snickering from here, but it’s true! I’ll be working for at least two months in the Cowgirl Creamery shop located in San Fransisco’s Ferry Building. I’ve only been to California once, so I’m really excited to live there for a little while and “soak up the sun” as pop poet laureate Crow has said. Anyway, I found out yesterday and it was snowing for real again here, so I celebrated with this hearty meal:
Nothing fancy, but extremely delicious nonetheless. Harpoon beer, good tomato soup, good olives, and a fantastic grilled cheese. (Also note my mental meal: Adrian Tomine cover of The NYer and Bone in one volume on the left-hand side.) For grilled cheese, bread is important, and so is butter (Vermont Butter and Cheese Co. butter is the obvious choice), but it’s all about the cheese. When you’re melting cheeses, it’s important to take texture and melting temperature into account as well as flavor when choosing. For instance, I love Parmesan, but it takes forever to melt and it usually doesn’t melt completely.
My ideal cheeses for grilled cheese are “semi-soft” cheeses: good up to the rind, they have some give when you press them, and well, they melt beautifully. In my mind, the first cheese I think of in this category is Appalachian, made down in VA. Anyway, this sandwhich had two of these cheeses, but the one I can remember the name of is Dorset, a local washed-rind cheese that’s new to me but that I like very much. Also, see that green spot in the soup? I have to thank Pat and Caitlin for their tip about making ice cubes of cilantro — super useful.
Valentine’s Day Cupcake Tour
The cupcake trend has hit DC with full force. Forget donuts and frozen yogurt, there are at least 4 popular boutique cupcakeries within city limits. For Valentine’s day this year, I figured that the lady and I would do our best to try some of them out. Here’s the route we took, and all the pictures. (She also tweeted the whole way, if you’re into “new media.”)
We started at Baked ‘n Wired. One of my bosses wrote an article about the cupcake obsession, and picked out this place for making “the only just-right cupcake.” (First, watch the accompanying video, it’s great! Second, AU students who have taken photography should note the photo credit at the top of the article.)
I thought it was amazing. I got a “chocolate satin” cupcake, and apparently I was making a lot of strange noises as I demolished the thing. The icing was extremely creamy and luscious, but the flavor of the cake itself was huge. Without being overpowering or too buttery, it was really delicious.
Next we walked over to Georgetown Cupcake, which I’ve heard is more in the Magnolia Cupcake tradition, and it is ripped apart in the above-linked video. Frank Bruni loved this place. I went to Magnolia when I went to New York over a year ago. I took these pictures there, and remember waiting a long time but really enjoying it. Unfortunately, there was a really long wait at Georgetown, and we spotted a kid we really dislike in line, so we decided to go elsewhere.
We walked to Hello Cupcake in Dupont. We took our cupcakes home for later, and it did make a nice dessert. I mean, let’s be serious, it’s hard to not like a cupcake! The Baked ‘n Wired cupcake was more fresh, but the Hello cupcake (I got a peanut butter blossom) was more classic tasting. B+W was definitley the winner, and I really reccomend it, even at $3.50 a pop. I’m still curious about Red Velvet over in Penn Quarter, but I’m sure I’ll get there sooner or later.
Larry Engel’s Eggs
First of all, I apologize in advance if this ever gets to be the near the top of the list when you google documentary filmmaker Larry Engel, because this is not really about his career. Prof. Engel as I’ve known him, works at the School of Communication at American University, where I have three block classes a week this semester. He also has chickens. He has a sign on the door to his office advertising a dozen eggs from his farm (where I’m not certain in New Paltz, NY) for three dollars. When I first saw this, I thought, “OK, that’s kooky.”
The next time I was shopping for eggs at Whole Foods, I noticed that even the cheapest fair-seeming (as the NYT notes, there is no cut and dry label) dozen was $3.19. So yesterday I flagged Prof. Engel down for some eggs. Today he handed them to me and said “I’ll need that box back, eventually.” Later, I had a chance to look at them in preparation of my first Engel-omelet. As you can tell from the picture below, no two eggs are the same. Some are long and more oval-shaped, and some have much darker shells. They are delicious.
I love this whole situation so much. This food could not be more local: These eggs are taking a trip that Prof. Engel has to take every day anyway so transportation costs are zilch. The label reads, “No Antibiotics/No Hormones/Free-range.” And while I doubt very much that Prof. Engel needs the business from selling these eggs, it supports his hobby and enriches his community (i.e. me and other customers).
It also reminds me of my own family. My mom grew up on a farm in Fountainville, PA, and my grandfather tended his own egg-laying hens before taking the train to town to teach electrical engineering at Drexel every day. Growing plants and animals to eat and sell—farming, in other words—does not belong solely to the laymen. Now more than ever, it is neccesary to care and know about the food that you feed yourself. The best oppurtunities are often unexpected, and in this case, delicious.
Interested egg eaters in DC can inquire at larry.engel@mac.com.
