Tasty chemistry
We had some time to kill on Saturday, and so I was dragged (kicking and screaming, or at least protesting faintly ("My shelves are all full and I don't need more stuff!")) into a bookstore. There, on the big display table in front, with a generous discount, was the 2004 revised edition of Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking. I've been hearing about McGee for years. I'd never seen a copy before. I didn't actually curl up under the display table to start reading it, but I did gawk for a while and then buy one. I haven't nearly finished it yet, but I am in no way disappointed: hydrogen bonding in water and how this affects your food; the difference between cis and trans unsaturated fatty acids; the effects of heat on the structure and sweetness of fructose. (I started with the chemistry chapters.) I am in cooking geek heaven.
We also saw Batman Begins. I hadn't been expecting much, and left the theater surprisingly pleased. The characters felt like people; they had understandable motives and made human mistakes, be they black, white, or grey. I liked the casting. I quite liked the fight against a background of people in matching armor at the end of the training montage, though many of the later fights I found too dark and choppy to follow -- not out of genre, but irksome especially after the easier-to-follow fights earlier in the movie. I would've liked more than a nod to dealing with the incredible mess left at the end of the last big fight, but it at least got a nod.
In another round of raiding farwing's bookshelves, I picked up and read The Giver by Lois Lowry. The intended audience is young adult, I think; the protagonist is twelve, and there's not much in the way of cultural references (though that's also suitable to the scenario). It's set in a planned society that starts looking more and more dystopian over the course of the book. It was a fine and well told story, if rather depressing, but I kept being distracted from it by technical details about the world. Either the people are not quite human, or there's some tech that's never usefully described involved, and an aspect of how this works becomes important late in the story -- that which it was, or whether the author had some other idea entirely in mind for how that worked, was never made clear annoyed me immensely. Some details on how the community worked did, too -- for example, unless I misunderstood what I was reading dreadfully, their birthrate should be substantially below replacement rate.
A bit of practice has improved my duplicate stitch substantially, and it makes sense while I'm working on it, now, instead of having to stop and think every few stitches to be sure I still understand what I'm doing.
We also saw Batman Begins. I hadn't been expecting much, and left the theater surprisingly pleased. The characters felt like people; they had understandable motives and made human mistakes, be they black, white, or grey. I liked the casting. I quite liked the fight against a background of people in matching armor at the end of the training montage, though many of the later fights I found too dark and choppy to follow -- not out of genre, but irksome especially after the easier-to-follow fights earlier in the movie. I would've liked more than a nod to dealing with the incredible mess left at the end of the last big fight, but it at least got a nod.
In another round of raiding farwing's bookshelves, I picked up and read The Giver by Lois Lowry. The intended audience is young adult, I think; the protagonist is twelve, and there's not much in the way of cultural references (though that's also suitable to the scenario). It's set in a planned society that starts looking more and more dystopian over the course of the book. It was a fine and well told story, if rather depressing, but I kept being distracted from it by technical details about the world. Either the people are not quite human, or there's some tech that's never usefully described involved, and an aspect of how this works becomes important late in the story -- that which it was, or whether the author had some other idea entirely in mind for how that worked, was never made clear annoyed me immensely. Some details on how the community worked did, too -- for example, unless I misunderstood what I was reading dreadfully, their birthrate should be substantially below replacement rate.
A bit of practice has improved my duplicate stitch substantially, and it makes sense while I'm working on it, now, instead of having to stop and think every few stitches to be sure I still understand what I'm doing.