Mostly photography/graphics, cooking, and short stories
Things I have loved madly recently:
-Pandora. A fairly good selection, actually, of Renaissance choral stuff (yay!), German art songs, and obscure Broadway; and a terrible selection of violin soloists.
-GIMP. Who needs Photoshop?
-Liquid Rescale for GIMP. Wow. Utter coolness.
-LaTeX. Given the necessary evil of proposal-writing, at least one can do it in a relatively painless way.
-Mark Bittman's The Minimalist Cooks Dinner. Really simple recipes that taste delicious-- see below; also, an incredibly wonderful sauce for salmon that involves lightly browning garlic in olive oil and adding dried tarragon and sherry vinegar to the warm garlicly olive oil (basically, to taste, but let's say 2 parts oil to 1 part vinegar... if anyone cares I'll try to look up the exact quantities tonight). I have no idea why this is so good-- it didn't sound that interesting, but it's spectacular!
-Frozen raw shrimp (also from Bittman). I have always been scared of cooking shrimp. Now I do not know why. Thaw 1 lb of Trader Joe raw shrimp (he recommends shelled, which I used) in the refrigerator overnight and fry it in a medium-size frying pan under medium heat with 1/8 cup olive oil, a tsp cumin, a tsp paprika, salt to taste, pepper, until pink (and the backs are clearly cooked), turning once, don't overcook too much (though you have some leeway). It is better than ANY restaurant shrimp I have EVER had (though to be fair I don't think I usually order shrimp at expensive restaurants).
-Courtesy of xkcd, Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story. Complete with totally awesome surprise ending! The absolute best thing (perhaps only good thing) to come out of the current financial crisis.
-Sarah Rees Brennan's YA short story "An Old-Fashioned Unicorn's Guide to Courtship." It is no big secret that I read anything mistful writes. I'd probably read her laundry list if she decided to post it, because I have confidence that she'd make it hilarious. YMMV; my sense of humor lines up fairly precisely with what she writes.
"Courtship" has the familiar Brennan traits of general hilarity ("The Dowager Duchess Whyte had skin as white as snow, hair as black as ebony and a nose as red as blood, probably because of the secret drinking."), the minor-character-stereotypes-taken-to-hysterical-absurdity, the fantasy romance that's actually kind of sort of based on something, and while I'm laughing and not quite paying attention, I feel an odd shiver and realize she has happily been cutting up my heart into pieces. This, being a short story, didn't really have time to cut it up very much... maybe just a couple of nicks. You couldn't make someone human and let them be hurt.
(Also, an accountant named Miles! Who likes making plans! Was that an intentional reference?)
-Pandora. A fairly good selection, actually, of Renaissance choral stuff (yay!), German art songs, and obscure Broadway; and a terrible selection of violin soloists.
-GIMP. Who needs Photoshop?
-Liquid Rescale for GIMP. Wow. Utter coolness.
-LaTeX. Given the necessary evil of proposal-writing, at least one can do it in a relatively painless way.
-Mark Bittman's The Minimalist Cooks Dinner. Really simple recipes that taste delicious-- see below; also, an incredibly wonderful sauce for salmon that involves lightly browning garlic in olive oil and adding dried tarragon and sherry vinegar to the warm garlicly olive oil (basically, to taste, but let's say 2 parts oil to 1 part vinegar... if anyone cares I'll try to look up the exact quantities tonight). I have no idea why this is so good-- it didn't sound that interesting, but it's spectacular!
-Frozen raw shrimp (also from Bittman). I have always been scared of cooking shrimp. Now I do not know why. Thaw 1 lb of Trader Joe raw shrimp (he recommends shelled, which I used) in the refrigerator overnight and fry it in a medium-size frying pan under medium heat with 1/8 cup olive oil, a tsp cumin, a tsp paprika, salt to taste, pepper, until pink (and the backs are clearly cooked), turning once, don't overcook too much (though you have some leeway). It is better than ANY restaurant shrimp I have EVER had (though to be fair I don't think I usually order shrimp at expensive restaurants).
-Courtesy of xkcd, Federal Reserve Skateboard: A Short Story. Complete with totally awesome surprise ending! The absolute best thing (perhaps only good thing) to come out of the current financial crisis.
-Sarah Rees Brennan's YA short story "An Old-Fashioned Unicorn's Guide to Courtship." It is no big secret that I read anything mistful writes. I'd probably read her laundry list if she decided to post it, because I have confidence that she'd make it hilarious. YMMV; my sense of humor lines up fairly precisely with what she writes.
"Courtship" has the familiar Brennan traits of general hilarity ("The Dowager Duchess Whyte had skin as white as snow, hair as black as ebony and a nose as red as blood, probably because of the secret drinking."), the minor-character-stereotypes-taken-to-hysterical-absurdity, the fantasy romance that's actually kind of sort of based on something, and while I'm laughing and not quite paying attention, I feel an odd shiver and realize she has happily been cutting up my heart into pieces. This, being a short story, didn't really have time to cut it up very much... maybe just a couple of nicks. You couldn't make someone human and let them be hurt.
(Also, an accountant named Miles! Who likes making plans! Was that an intentional reference?)