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Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Refrigerator Dill Pickles
From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...Ten years ago, if asked if I put by pickles, my answer was a resounding, "No." Twenty years ago, it was a terse and less polite, "Get real." My response thirty yeas ago is best kept to myself. My failure to get with the program wasn't based on laziness, I've just never cared for preserved pickles. I thought they were salty and limp, and found their color just plain unappetizing. I wasn't a complete snob about them. I did love the brined, unprocessed dills that could occasionally be found in be found in barrels in some markets and delicatessens. I just never took the time to find out how they were made. Shortly after we moved to this area, I began to experiment with refrigerated pickles for certain Thai and Vietnamese dishes, and in the process learned I could make our favorite pickles in much the say way. I first mastered a refrigerator version of bread and butter pickles because my family loved to have them on hamburgers. I worked on garlic dills for several years but couldn't get the flavors right. I was about to give up and admit defeat when I found a recipe by Bobby Flay and decided to try one last time. I'm so glad I did. These are great pickles and they require no special equipment to make. They can be eaten the day after they are made and keep for about two weeks in the refrigerator. My only caution is to make sure you have enough room to store them for that length of time. I hope those of you who are fond of pickles will try these. You won't be sorry. Here's the recipe.
Refrigerator Dill Pickles...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite courtesy of Bobby Flay
1-1/2 cups distilled white vinegar
1/4 to 1/3 cup granulated sugar
4 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
3/4 teaspoon dill seeds
2 cups hot water
2 pounds kirby cucumbers, sliced 1/4-inch thick
3/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh dill
3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1) Combine vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard seeds, coriander seeds and dill seeds in a heatproof bowl. Add hot water and stir until sugar dissolves and liquid is clear. Cool to room temperature.
2) Place cucumbers, garlic and dill in a large bowl. Toss to combine. Pour brine over all and turn to coat cucumbers. Cover them with a plate to weigh them down and keep them covered in brine. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight, stirring once or twice. Transfer to an airtight container and store for up to two weeks. Yield: 1 quart.
You might also enjoy these recipes:
Italian Giardiniera - Luna Cafe
Dill and Garlic Freezer Pickles - The Other Side of Fifty
Bread and Butter Pickles - Simply Recipes
Pickled Cucumber and Shallots - Indo-Chine Kitchen
Calico Pickled Salad - Drick's Rambling Cafe
Favorite Kosher Dills - Never Enough Thyme
Sweet and Spicy Watermelon Rind Pickles - One Perfect Bite
89 comments :
- sandra axelrod said...
You are so right! I make them all of the time because we love them so much.The only thing I do differently is use Seedless English Cukes. They stay crisp until we eat them up.
- August 4, 2010 at 12:13 AM
- scrambledhenfruit said...
I've made plenty of sweet pickles, but have never tried dills. I like that there's sugar in these, and that it makes a small batch. Sometimes I like that better than dragging out the big kettle! These sound like pickles I'll probably try as soon as the cukes recover from the drought.Thanks for sharing :)
- August 4, 2010 at 12:26 AM
- Sonia ~ Nasi Lemak Lover said...
I like cucumber pickles but adding dill is new to me, sound refreshing and good.
- August 4, 2010 at 12:30 AM
- Alicia said...
These sound so wonderful. I just wish I had the room to store them.
- August 4, 2010 at 12:38 AM
- 3 hungry tummies said...
Oh I just finished making some cucumber pickles too :) That is a beautiful photo!
- August 4, 2010 at 1:05 AM
- Monet said...
What a stunning photograph. Only you could make a jar of pickles look so elegant. I have never made my own before, but this seems like a simple enough recipe for me to try. Thanks for sharing!
- August 4, 2010 at 1:35 AM
- Jeannie said...
I love those cucumber pickles that they add into burgers...this should be just as tasty! Thanks for sharing Mary:D
- August 4, 2010 at 1:40 AM
- Ginny Hartzler said...
I have never made pickles before, but my husband loves the dills. And these look so crisp and fresh, I can almost feel the snap as I bite into one. Have you written a cookbook, are you published? You should. You have such good stories with your recipies, although I know that some of the recipes are not your own, like this one.
- August 4, 2010 at 1:44 AM
- Eileen said...
I love pickles but have never made them - too many memories of having to help my mom do them when I was a kid. Not fun. :) She used to make bread and butter pickles by the gallons it seemed. This recipe looks simple and easy, so I just might try it.
- August 4, 2010 at 1:49 AM
- Cristie said...
Mary, so you think there is no good way to can pickles? I have been searching for a recipe to do just that and your discription of canned pickles are exactly what I don't want! Limp is what I've experienced . . . I'm so interested in your post and will be making this tomorrow, but would love to find one to can.
- August 4, 2010 at 1:54 AM
- Sushma Mallya said...
Looks lovely and easy to prepare this one...
- August 4, 2010 at 3:14 AM
Well I learn something every time I read your posts Mary- I never realised a dill pickle was a cucumber (silly me!) we call dill pickles gherkins here which I think are different although they may be from the same plant family? Have a great day Mary, x
PS I forgot to say that I love dill pickles or gherkins in a pitta bread with tahini and slices of tomato...great recipe- thanks! - August 4, 2010 at 3:36 AM
- Ana Powell said...
One single click representing your awesome talent and good taste.
Great work ♥ - August 4, 2010 at 4:22 AM
- Diane said...
This sounds good to me but I need pickles that will last for two years, not two months so I will continue with the recipes I have been doing so far. Have a good day. Diane
- August 4, 2010 at 4:47 AM
- Lynn said...
I just need the coriander seeds and will make these with the last cukes from the garden. Such a dry, hot summer, my cukes have faded quickly:@(
- August 4, 2010 at 5:47 AM
seen a lot of pickle recipes lately and this one looks like a good one to start with. even if I don't know a kirby from a persian! cheers!
- August 4, 2010 at 7:02 AM
- Faith said...
Garlic dill pickles are my favorite type of pickle! I could eat them on pretty much any type of sandwich or even straight from the jar. I am putting this recipe on my list to make!
- August 4, 2010 at 7:14 AM
- FOODESSA said...
Mary...there was a period of time in my life where I craved pickles on a daily basis...and no...there was no bun in my oven. LOL. That, thankfully was a short term phase. Since then...I wasn't really attracted to them. Now I see these vivaciously colorful and fresh looking cucumber slices in your jar...they do look very appetizing indeed. If ever I'm in the mood again for pickles...this recipe is a keeper ;o)
Ciao for now and have yourself a great day,
Claudia - August 4, 2010 at 7:22 AM
- From the Kitchen said...
Aside from the fact that I'd enjoy seeing these displayed every time I opened the refrigerator door, they look and sound delicious. The kirby cucumbers are plentiful in our farmers' market now. Our older son is arriving for a week's visit (hoorah!). The time is right to prepare these pickles for my pickle-loving family.
Bonnie - August 4, 2010 at 7:29 AM
- Unknown said...
What a beautiful photograph! Thanks for this recipe, it does sound like a good one for one of my favorites. Interesting commentary on the way responses change over the years, how true;-)
- August 4, 2010 at 8:00 AM
- Allie and Pattie said...
Mary, I have an 11 year old who has 2 kosher dills every night for dessert! We attribute it to the fact that while expecting him I was involved in an accident with a Mt. Olive pickle truck (true story) ! I'll try these for him today :)
xoxo Pattie - August 4, 2010 at 8:04 AM
- Simply Life said...
oh those look like the perfect treat on a summer day!
- August 4, 2010 at 8:08 AM
- A SPICY PERSPECTIVE said...
I've got a basket full of garden cucumbers that are just begging for this preservation! They look so fresh and delicious!
- August 4, 2010 at 8:23 AM
- Victoria said...
I love pickles but there are long time I've made it! You give me the idea to make pickles again and try your recipe.
Thanks ! - August 4, 2010 at 8:42 AM
- Martha said...
Years ago I used to put up things -- including pickles -- but I've gotten lazy and haven't done it in "forever" -- but I may have to try these especially with the glut of cucumbers at the market.
- August 4, 2010 at 8:42 AM
- T.W. Barritt at Culinary Types said...
These look so inviting, and the jar is just brimming with summer! I tend to forget that refrigerator pickles are really quite easy.
- August 4, 2010 at 8:53 AM
- Claudia said...
Really? That easy? May have to give it a go. I wonder what cucumber-type I am growing!
- August 4, 2010 at 9:14 AM
- Unknown said...
Oh how I love pickles, but I'm you ten years ago :) Once again, though, you have inspired me to at least think about giving it a shot. I could save some money by making my own and they would be so much more rewarding! These look lovely!
- August 4, 2010 at 9:17 AM
- Shug said...
Have never made pickles, but I have a family that loves them...I am going to try your recipe and can't wait for the fam to rave over them. Thanks for sharing!
Blessings on this beautiful Wed. morning.
Shug - August 4, 2010 at 9:22 AM
- Susi's Kochen und Backen said...
Great recipe, I will be on the hunt for Kirby Cucumbers now so I can make this!
- August 4, 2010 at 10:29 AM
- Rita said...
I have made all kinds of pickles over the years but never made this recipe.. Great photo and I am really tempted to try this.
Rita - August 4, 2010 at 11:07 AM
- Unknown said...
What a coincidence! My hubby just made his own pickles for the first time using wonderful kirby cucumbers from the farmers market. Though they didn't look as pretty as yours, they did taste good!
- August 4, 2010 at 11:13 AM
- Angie's Recipes said...
I like to make the refrigerator pickles these days too...they are so fresh and appetizing! They are really great for these hot summer days.
- August 4, 2010 at 11:30 AM
- Unknown said...
your posts are always informative..loved the pickle...
- August 4, 2010 at 12:13 PM
- pigpigscorner said...
I should start making pickles! They are so versatile!
- August 4, 2010 at 12:33 PM
- Carol said...
They look so good! My grandma used to make pickles, I really have to give this a try!
- August 4, 2010 at 12:37 PM
- Pam said...
Your pickles look great and I want to try them as it has been a while since I have made them. Have a good day, Mary!
- August 4, 2010 at 12:49 PM
- Renée said...
They look so fresh and delicious, and I have all the ingredients. I'm making some today. Thanks so much!
- August 4, 2010 at 1:04 PM
- The Blonde Duck said...
I love bread and butter pickles!
- August 4, 2010 at 1:41 PM
- Sam Hoffer / My Carolina Kitchen said...
Wow Mary, those pickles are gorgeous. I've never made my own. Looks like I'm missing something good.
Sam - August 4, 2010 at 1:55 PM
- Joanne said...
Oh I SO need to make these. Have I mentioned that I am a pickle fiend?
- August 4, 2010 at 2:11 PM
- We Are Not Martha said...
I've been wanting to make these forever; I LOVE pickles :) And I always think something like this would make such a nice homemade gift for my dad. Thanks for the recipe :)
Sues - August 4, 2010 at 3:08 PM
- Adelina said...
love your shot (WOW) and pickle recipe- canning is almost like a religion is summer in MOldova, although we are doing the canning with slightly different equipment, jars and lids...This certainly deserves a try- so many aromas would make a great pickle!
- August 4, 2010 at 3:31 PM
- MaryMoh said...
Beautiful pickles. I love pickles. We eat so much spicy food that pickles are always most welcoming. It brings down the heat. I love cucumber and pineapple pickles.
- August 4, 2010 at 3:44 PM
- Jen_from_NJ said...
I love a good pickle! Thank you for the inspiration to make them at home. I just passed up some perfect cucumbers at a roadside stand and now I am really regretting it! Fabulous photo!
- August 4, 2010 at 4:18 PM
- Mary @Delightful Bitefuls said...
This sounds so great! Love pickles :)
Great blog!
Mary xo
Delightful Bitefuls - August 4, 2010 at 4:22 PM
- Eliana said...
I don't care for pickles myself but am tempted to try one now.
- August 4, 2010 at 4:24 PM
- Linda Starr said...
refrigerator dill pickles, now that is right up my alley. I love pickles. I once read they were good for digestion and weight loss, something about the vinegar. I was just at Sam's club and passed up the burpless cucumbers, sad to say.
- August 4, 2010 at 4:36 PM
- Katerina said...
I love pickles and use them a lot in salads, sandwiches and sauces. You gave me a great recipe so as to make my own. Thanks Mary!
- August 4, 2010 at 4:37 PM
- RV said...
It is so much different from Indian pickles yet they look so tasty.
- August 4, 2010 at 4:44 PM
- Baking is my Zen...sweet nibbles for the soul said...
I feel the same way you did about pickles. I too, like the garlic ones. I will try this! Thanks!
There is nothing better than a GOOD PICKLE!:)
Carmen - August 4, 2010 at 4:55 PM
- Baking is my Zen...sweet nibbles for the soul said...
Oh, and yes, the photo is fabulous. I want a pickle NOW! :)
- August 4, 2010 at 4:56 PM
- Miss Meat and Potatoes said...
That's so funny - I've always loved them. Even the bad ones! That said, dill is my favorite pairing with them so I know I will adore these. Thanks Mary...and Bobby:)
- August 4, 2010 at 5:02 PM
- Adventures in Domestic Cooking said...
Looks like the perfect pickles!!
- August 4, 2010 at 5:35 PM
- Barbara @ moderncomfortfood said...
Call me a sourpuss, but my favorite flavors are tart: lemons, key limes, cranberries, mangosteen, and (most of all) pickles in all their forms. I eat the latter virtually every day with lunch and can't get enough of them. Your wonderful recipe for proper dills, so reminiscent of ones I used to get as a child and can no longer find, is absolutely on my immediate must-make list. You're such a dear for sharing, Mary!
- August 4, 2010 at 5:38 PM
- nanny said...
Sounds like a recipe I use to make...they were wonderful....wish I had a garden.....
- August 4, 2010 at 7:30 PM
- Julie M. said...
You are the third person I've seen now who's posted about making their own pickles. I'm going to take it as a sign that I need to get my pickling book out and do this. Yours looks perfect!
- August 4, 2010 at 9:35 PM
- Julie said...
Yum...looks so easy! We're starting to get some cucumbers, so definitely bookmarking this one!
- August 4, 2010 at 11:24 PM
- Kerstin said...
My hubby loves pickles and would go crazy over these - I'm saving the recipe!
- August 4, 2010 at 11:25 PM
- Melinda said...
Yum! Yum!
Melinda - August 5, 2010 at 12:01 AM
- GLENDA CHILDERS said...
I love all of your recipes. But honestly, Mary, my favorite part of your blog is your comments introducing each recipe. . . you are interesting and funny. A winning combo. And a great recipe to boot. Nice work.
Thanks for stopping by Gg:Notes on the Journey. Always love your comments.
Glenda - August 5, 2010 at 12:58 AM
- Lucie said...
These would make me want to spend my time in front of the refrigerator door! Yum!
- August 5, 2010 at 1:59 AM
- Deb in Hawaii said...
Fun! I love quick pickles and these look really tasty.
;-) - August 5, 2010 at 5:14 AM
- nancy at good food matters said...
It took me bout as long to get with the "pickle program" too! I will have to try this refrigerator dill version. I am still a novice canner, so these refrigerator methods really suit. I like the serendipity of our similar posts---mine features zucchini refrigerator pickles!
- August 5, 2010 at 9:55 AM
- RamblingTart said...
That is the most beautiful jar of pickles I've ever seen, Mary. Ever. :-) And I know my pickles! While other little kids would sneak cookies and candy, I'd sneak whole jars of pickles. :-)
- August 5, 2010 at 7:14 PM
- Valerie Harrison (bellini) said...
I am a lover of pickles!!!!!
- August 6, 2010 at 12:17 AM
- PranisKitchen said...
thats a very simple recipe so delicious and nice picture.. what acolor the cucmber has..
- August 6, 2010 at 10:23 AM
- Peggy said...
these look and sound fantastic! I've never tried making pickles either, but I end up with 2 or 3 cucumbers every week in our CSA so I better start doing something different with them besides adding them to salads!
- August 8, 2010 at 10:40 AM
- Ally said...
I made these with the seedless cucumbers and it was delish! Thanks for posting the recipe!
- August 15, 2010 at 8:56 PM
- Mary Bergfeld said...
Mary said...
Anonymous - I can't post your question because of a policy regarding anonymous comments. I can, however,, answer you. 1-1/2 cups = 12 ounces vinegar or one and one-half cups.
Have a great day. Blessings...Mary - August 4, 2011 at 11:50 AM
- Cooking Rookie said...
Wonderful recipe and a gorgeous shot!
- November 28, 2011 at 6:47 AM
Sorry for the dumb question, but what are kirby cucumbers? lol
- January 9, 2012 at 9:58 PM
- Mary Bergfeld said...
Ann, Kirby cucumbers are smaller and thinner skinned than the cucumbers we use for salad. The usually are 3to 6 inches long and they are readily available at farms tands in the summer. They are sometimes sold as pickling cucumbers. Have a great day. Blessings...Mary
- January 9, 2012 at 10:59 PM
Mary, thank you!! Guess I'll have to wait until summer to make these. :)
- January 10, 2012 at 2:45 AM
- fadingstarlight said...
these look great since I cannot find garlic dill pickles here in Spain.. they seem to have alot of different types of pickles but that combination isn't here... will white wine vinegar work the same as white vinegar??
- January 26, 2012 at 7:23 AM
- fadingstarlight said...
Is it ok to use white wine vinegar instead of regular white vinegar? I live in Spain and white vinegar doesn't exist here. there are tons of different flavors here but plain.
- January 26, 2012 at 7:26 AM
- Unknown said...
I love beer battered pickles and see these making it on the plate beside my battered fish.
- January 29, 2012 at 4:04 PM
- Jessica | Cajunlicious said...
Mary, these sound delicious and I love how easy they are!
- February 4, 2012 at 11:24 AM
I love the look of these pickles! My husband and I LOVE pickles of any kind. But I have a question......... WHY can`t we just seal and can them like other pickles ? Surly they will last more than 2 weeks right? I am going to have to try them, I just hate that they only last 2 weeks.
Rosa Marie - February 26, 2012 at 11:46 AM
- Mary Bergfeld said...
Rosemarie, if you were to can these using a standard hot water bath, they would lose both color and crispness. Sorry. Have a great day. Blessings...Mary
- February 26, 2012 at 11:52 AM
- elisamaza76 said...
Hi! I've never tried pickling before, but this recipe looks delicious, and easy enough to give it a shot. I have what may be a newbie question: do I have to slice them, or will this recipe work for making whole pickles?
- March 25, 2012 at 1:53 PM
- Alef Bet Jewelry said...
We usually whole kosher dill pickles with a family recipe for years, but these look fantastic and easy! Going to try asap!
- May 9, 2012 at 1:30 PM
- Unknown said...
These look so yummy! I love all things pickle-y :P
- June 14, 2012 at 10:20 AM
These look really good. I think I'll try them tomorrow. Question about the yield though. Does it really make only one quart? (I noticed there are 3 1/2 cups of liquid, plus the cucumbers.)
- August 12, 2012 at 8:56 PM
- Refrigerator said...
I love this cucumber pickles, looking so yummy. I will try this recipe for making pickles.
- August 22, 2012 at 2:25 AM
Just made these pickles yesterday and they are fantastic... so fresh and crisp. The only thing I would do differently would be to not chop the dill, but rather, just add a few sprigs to the brine. Very easy recipe!
- October 13, 2012 at 12:48 PM
Do I have to cover them with wrap? What has happened if you just put them in the jar and in the frig..thanks
- July 18, 2013 at 6:21 PM
Thanks for sharing this. I have made it probably ten times. So good! Sometimes I even pour in some juice from the jar of chopped garlic...mmmmm
- July 27, 2013 at 7:53 PM
- Billy said...
Pickling is so fun! Thank you so much for sharing this recipe. Can't wait to try this at home!
- October 25, 2017 at 4:51 PM


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Friday, February 17, 2012
Open Friday: Inspiring Illustrations
This in turn got me to thinking about illustrations from published adventures that I found particularly inspiring. The Erol Otus piece on the back of The Keep on the Borderlands has always been a favorite of mine, as has Jim Roslof's fight with the kuo-toa from the combined edition of Descent into the Depths of the Earth. I could cite lots more, but those two have always stuck with me, in large part because they expressed two equally important parts of D&D play: the grand beginning and the nitty gritty of combat against a dangerous foe.
So, for today's Open Friday question, I'd like to ask you: what are the illustrations in published adventures that most fire your imagination?
45 comments:
I can't point to many specific examples at the moment but without a doubt art, especially interior art, has always helped me visualize the right feel for a given adventure.
I used to spend hours making up NPCs based on illustrations. I didn't bother rolling stats or randomly generating anything... I'd tailor them to how they were depicted in the actual illustration.Rahasia, all three: the mass market one and Tracy Hickman's original line drawing that looks like an elegant version of a T&T line sketch and the RPGA limited edition. All three of them are very different, but, rather magically, are equally inspirational individually and as a set.
It doesn't hurt that the adventure itself was an early example of a "thinking but not a bunch of puzzles adventure," but also rare in that it isn't as much a "story-driven" one like Pharaoh. The only version I played was the RPGA one which, as I understood at the time (both had been issued by the time we played it - I have no idea how our DM acquired it), is quite a bit different from the mass market one.
But it was the cover of the robed lord, unleashing panthers in a corridor that I remember most. The foreground elf maiden with "were-skulls" in her background was, as I recall (probably incorrectly), an unusual shift at the time from other "basic" modules, or maybe it was just the first one of its kind that I had seen.I always loved Dave Trampier's cover for the original Gamma World. I thought it captured the spirit of the game perfectly
ReplyDeleteNot an adventure, but one of my favourite fantasy pics of all time. In the TSR version of the AD&D 2nd Edition PHB (I'm not sure which page and don't have the book handy) there's a picture of a female warrior in profile wearing scale mail lying in state. I always try to work similar images into the adventures and scenarios I write.
ReplyDeleteFor whatever reason, the black and white stuff has always been the 'gripper' of D&D for me:
There's that image in the 1st Ed DMG of the skeleton emerging from behind the fighter from the water as he tries to escape the flooding room. Everything about it makes me want to scream "TURN AROUND YOU DOOMED FOOL!"
The 'Victory' picture at the end of 1st Ed PHB of the man and dwarf leaving the dungeon.
And the ultravision picture from the 1st Ed DMG. I thought it was cool at ten and my opinion hasn't changed.- AnonymousFebruary 17, 2012 at 10:39 AM
The cover of the original Twilight: 2000. It just really captured the feel for the whole game.
ReplyDelete Great subject! Here are my favorites:
1. Angus McBride's cover for Riders of Rohan. My favorite hands down, for spotlighting such a bleak culture in an amazing freeze-frame.
2. Erol Otus' cover for Castle Amber. Not only did this module give me the most richly rewarding experience ever as a D&D player, the cover image was on my mind all the way through it.
3. David Sutherland's classic of the efreet on the DM's Guide. I know it's not an adventure, but like (2), it fired my imagination in the way that these evil giantish-figures, for whatever reason, did so well. (It also became a favorite for the way it heavily offended a fundamentalist acquaintance of my parents, who was convinced on the basis of this cover alone that D&D was Satanic).
4. Julek Keller's cover for Havens of Gondor. A Tolkienesque sense of haunting loss is so wonderfully realized here it's heartbreaking.
5. I agree that the kuo-toan piece by Jim Roslof is spellbinding, but I'm going to go with a different Roslof piece for my #5 -- Ghost Tower of Inverness, since I remember staring at that cover mesmerized for long periods of time.Pretty much anything Jim Holloway provided illustrations for whether it was his painted covers or his b&w interior pieces for all the old TSR modules. While The Endless Quest book, "Dungeon of Dread" was probably my first recollection of Jim's work, I thought it captured what I envisioned D&D to look like in my head. Seeing subsequent work after DoD just reaffirmed that notion.
Prime examples of some of Jim's work that stands out to me were his works from The Sinster Secret of Saltmarsh, The Lost City and Blizzard Pass modules, not to mention his work in MM II.There's an illustration in the Tunnels & Trolls 5th edition rulebook in the section on Saving Rolls: it has a woman in studded cloth armor walking on a tightrope over a pit of stakes, balancing herself with a short spear while two figures in the background look on. They may or may not be chasing her.
There's also a Trampier illustration on the title page of the original Gamma World, a scene viewed from behind, of a crouching figure pointing a ray gun at a silhouetted beast. It looks like he's been caught by surprise while investigating some strange flora on the ground.
Both of these strike me as people who've been motivated, by need or by a hunger for exploration, to take the risks they have. That's what "adventure" means to me.RepliesAnd I see I missed the "published adventures" part. D'oh. In that case, I'd have to say it's a toss-up between the "DCS & DAT" cover of module B1 for it's sheer WTF-ery, or the cover of D2: Shrine of the Kuo-Toa--not for its technical accomplishment or the composition, but because you've got adventurers fighting weird fish-men in front of a ziggurat to a creepy lobster-goddess.
I loved a lot of the art from Dragon Warriors. It was from the early Fighting Fantasy and White Dwarf school. Two pieces I remember (and could fine online) was this Russ Nicholson drawing of three enemy Warlocks and this comic strip that explained the rules of combat.
ReplyDeleteI dunno . . . strangely I've always found a slight disconnect between D&D as I've play it and D&D as it looks in the pictures. The Owlbear fight mentioned above is "almost right" except: why the dressed stonework and flying butresses? And why does it look so well-lit? And what is that oversized halfing doing there instead of my magic-user?
Sometimes my disappointment flowed the other way, as in the pictures looked better than what seemed to happen in a "real game": Who's playing the enchantress in the red evening gown? Where's Morgan Ironwolf? (Oh . . . sorry I asked, no really Greg, you should just go with being a dwarf lord. . .)There's a picture in the last reprint of the AD&D 2e PHB of what is possibly a ranger near a giant monster footprint. The picture is drawn from above with the ranger looking up with a look of fear and trepidation.
That sense of foreboding is something I try and infuse my campaigns with, the idea of "Oh Gods, we're going to die."
Because sometimes the heroes don't win. Secretly, I try to protect my players from death. I try and give them a slight advantage up until "The Big Game", that is the big nasty encounter that they've been working towards. Then the gloves come off. My players are on their own against the Big Badness.
My goal is to get the same reaction from my players as that ranger in the picture has, the "oh shite, we can lose this" feeling.That pic from The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth:
It really screams "AD&D" for me: mistery, danger, dark magicks and ancient secrets. I want my players to be confronted with vistas like that.
It's only a little, not-so-much-known piece of art, but I'm pretty sure that it has influenced the aesthetics of my campaings for almost 20 years.Dennis Loubet's work from Swordbearer, particularly the vista scene with the party at the top of a ridge/cliff surveying the landscape below whilst pointing presumably at their destination. I always wanted to build a CGI utility that would create these sorts of vista landscapes from my (or anyone else's) maps, but never got around to doing it.
ReplyDeleteRoslov's color "fight illustrations" are the best: the cover of D1-2 as you stated, but also the front cover of B2 and the back cover of S4 (Barrier Peaks). However, for sheer body of work in one book, nearly all the (non-jokey) illustrations in the DMG have inspired actual campaign/in-game material from me at one point or another.
Oh, yeah...Holloway's work throughout the I3-I4 (Desert of Desolation) series is fantastic, and the cover of I5:Tomb of Martek is one of my all-time favorite module covers...though unfortunately, I don't know who gets the credit for that last illo.Not from a published adventure, but from the 1st Edition Players Handbook. It's that picture of a bunch of dwarves and a halfling(presumably), turning a corner with a Magic Mouth speaking. They are walking by torchlight. They are heading around and down a staircase that at the bottom of which lurks something with glowing eyes. You can barely see the eyes and I missed them for many years.
Likewise, the illustration in the 1st Edition MM, of the adventurers plugging their way through strands of spider web, with a large monstrous spider waiting, is another that captures, for me at least, the ultimate feel of what the game is all about.I like the Hackmaster covers on their rulebooks and "rehacked" modules, inspired by the iconic covers of 1e products. They depict the bloody prelude to the scene on Tramp's PH cover, the grisly aftermath of the image on Sutherland's DMG cover, the unfortunate sequel to the mining tunnel battle against the aspis in "Smackdown the Slavers." They're hilarious, and for me, humor has always been a big part of the game.
ReplyDeleteNot a published adventure, but one of the most important fantasy images I've ever seen: a certain grey-robed wizard walking in the rain. This is what I always hoped RPGs would feel like: like the wide green country just visible through the mist. (That's the edition of LotR I read as a boy, too; I was lucky that way.)
ReplyDeleteWhile I loved Jim Roslof, Jeff Holloway and Larry Elmore, I was always intrigued by Jeremy Goodwin's artwork for the one-on-one Expert D&D module O2: Blade of Vengeance. The cover's not particularly good, but the interior illustrations are pretty fantastic, in that stereotypical 80s British style that I fell in love with through the Lone Wolf books and Warhammer and Talisman ads. B10: Night's Dark Shadow, has somewhat similar interior art, and great maps (as well as being a great epic adventure).
Outside of D&D, I was always impressed by the advertisements in Dragon Magazine for the 1st Edition MERP Middle-earth Adventure Guidebook and Bree and the Barrow Downs supplements; I think they were by the same artist - both featured scenes devoid of any characters (one of an arched stone bridge over a river valley; the other of the town of Bree as seen from a high bluff), by the light of a full moon. They always struck me as very romantic and haunting and lovely and suggestive of mystery - something I always wanted to try to evoke somehow in my fantasy games, and what I definitely wanted in a MERP game.RepliesThought of one more - One Hundred Bushels of Rye, for HarnMaster. It's a simple picture - a bushel of rye with blood dripping out the bottom. I never actually got to read the adventure, but the simple, stark and mysterious cover image always made me wonder about it.
You know, I'm not saying I *didn't* like all of the dynamic module covers that TSR published, but for whatever reason, it was these odd ducks that stood out in my mind...
Outside of D&D, I was always impressed by the advertisements in Dragon Magazine for the 1st Edition MERP Middle-earth Adventure Guidebook and Bree and the Barrow Downs supplements; I think they were by the same artist...
Well, sort of. They were frames from the atrocious 1978 animated film (like the cover of the Moria module).My absolute favorite piece is Larry Elmore's 'Dragon Slayers' from the 2e Player's Handbook - http://larryelmore.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/DRAGON_S.jpg
I know Elmore isn't everyone's cup of tea but that image is just perfect as far as I'm concerned.
I'm also really fond of Daniel Horne's 'Saving the Best For Last' from the cover of Dragon #126 - http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_aOuQOD5vUs8/Rv1U204g10I/AAAAAAAAAD0/_kg_byrAvV8/s640/savingthebestforlast11.jpg
For thirdsies I'll go with Dave Trampier's 'Magic Mouth' from the 1e DMG - http://www.weekendwastemonster.net/images/mouth.gif
Honorable mention to the 1e Player's cover with the party around the big fat idol.

subset: commoncrawl


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The National Air and Space Museum holds approximately 17,000 space artifacts in its collection. More than 3,500 of those stem from the historic Apollo Moon landing effort, with 400 objects related specifically to the first successful lunar landing mission, Apollo 11. On July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed in the Lunar Module Eagle and became the first humans to step foot on the lunar surface while astronaut Michael Collins orbited above inside the Command Module, Columbia.
A selection of Apollo 11 objects and their current descriptions are viewable in this grouping. Curators in the Museum's Space History Department are constantly acquiring information about objects in the collection and updating our records. You are invited to leave comments and remembrances to help inform our collecting and interpretation efforts.


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Product Description 2013 Whip Wakeboard:
Featuring channels, rails and fins influenced by Aerospace technology, the Whip rides fast, efficient and focused. Delivering magnified flex performance, this premium core releases stored energy lightning-quick and more forcefully than ever by offering increased edging power and maintaining momentum on flat landings. Engineered to ride with or without bolt-on fins, this board pops hard on ollies, whips into the air on cable, slides right on rails and even boosts big off any wake.
INTERMEDIATE TO EXPERT : Ideal for riders who value controlled traction on edge, powerful pop, clean release off the water and those looking for ultra-efficient speed on and off edge.


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Travel Tips: Apps to Kill Time on a Long-Haul Flight
Long-haul flights are when I catch up on my movies, TV, and books. Good airlines now have a nice entertainment options, but sometimes you might get stuck with a budget airline that doesn't have any entertainment system or onboard wifi. If you have one of those flights coming up, there's no need to fret, as there are so many apps nowadays that you can use to keep you entertained.
1. FiOs Mobile App
This app is perhaps not one that might come to mind with other options like Netflix or Hulu, but did you know that the FiOs app lets you watch live TV from up to 140 channels, and also stream TV shows and movies on demand? If you are a FiOs subscriber, this is certainly a handy app to get before your flight! They even have offline viewing options for some content, so you can download some shows before you go off the grid aboard the flight.
Plus, if you're both a FiOs TV and Verizon Wireless customer, you can stream shows from the FiOs app data-free. Makes your live streaming those sports games or TV shows more guilt-free, right?
2. Netflix
The day Netflix introduced downloads and offline streaming was the day Netflix became a great app to have for traveling! Not all TV shows or movies can be downloaded at the moment, but there enough options and they make it easy to browse the ones that are. On your app menu, there is an "Available for Download" category with popular shows like Breaking Bad, Stranger Things, and more.
You can also use Netflix while you're in another country, although they have different content. I was able to catch up on Orphan Black when I was in the UK because they had newer seasons available there.
3. Amazon Prime Video and Audible
Amazon has really upped their prime membership perks with the addition of Audible Channels. I am putting these two together because they both come with Prime membership, although they are separate apps. Amazon Prime Video app has allowed downloads and offline viewing way before Netflix did, and their exclusive content also include some binge-worthy shows. Now the membership also includes access to Audible Channels and Prime Exclusive Audiobooks.
4. Podcasts
Technically not an app, but I love listening to podcasts and audiobooks while traveling. You get to rest your eyes while still being engaged by the story. Plus, some podcasts are so addictive that they're better to listen to in one sitting (like Serial and S-Town!), so they're perfect for a long-haul flight.
Got any podcast that you love? Let me know, I'd love to get ideas for my next flight!
5. Games
The key, of course, is to download games that can be played offline. Some offline games that can be addictive are Two Dots and 1010. Some games can still be played offline with limited features, like SimCity BuildIt.
Do you have any other apps you use while traveling long distance? If you do, please share below!
This post was created in partnership with Verizon FiOs, which is now rolling out in Boston, starting from Dorchester, Roxbury, and Roslindale.


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Dear Mr. President,
We now face a national crisis of such serious proportions that it dwarfs other issues, such as global warming, health care, and middle-east peace. It now threatens the very fabric of our society, and directly affects every citizen. And I can remain silent no longer.
It's still September, and every store near me ALREADY HAS THEIR CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS UP!
I have nothing against the holidays, Mr. President. Peace on Earth and all that stuff. But moving them up as if they were being held in another time-zone or alternate universe is getting out-of-hand. As far as I know, Christmas hasn't budged in my lifetime. And treating every day like it was Christmas (like the stores seem to want me to do) is not helping.
The well-respected Nick documentary program, The Fairly Oddparents, has carefully researched what would happen if Christmas were held every day (Episode 107, air date 12-12-01 I have kids, OKAY!). Their conclusion? It would be catastrophic.
There also seems to be a degree of unintentional discrimination. For example, Hanukkah starts almost a week before Christmas this year, but I don't see Hanukkah decorations going up 1 week before the Christmas ones. In fact, I haven't seen any at all yet. Or Kwanzaa stuff. Or Festivus. Or New Year's.
This seasonal perversion extends to other holidays, too. I mean, by January 2nd most stores are decked out with Easter junk, and on July 5th the Halloween crap is up.
So, Mr. President, I propose the following, federally mandated solutions (please note: I'm only including those holidays that retailers love. Let's face it, not many of us are out there buying gifts for Groundhog day or cards for Columbus day. I'm also leaving out local holidays like Delaware Statehood Day, the Montana Huckleberry Harvest Celebration, and the Byron, Illinois, Turkey Testicle Festival).
Valentine's Day Decorations will NOT be put up until the 3rd week of January.
St. Patrick's Day Decorations will NOT be put up until after March 1st.
Passover/Easter decorations will NOT be put up until after St. Patrick's day.
Independance day decorations (July 4th) will NOT be put up until the 3rd week of June.
Halloween stuff will NOT be put up before October 1st
Thanksgiving Stuff will NOT be put up before November 1st.
Christmas/New Year/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus stuff will NOT be put up until the day after Thanksgiving.
(Please note: there should be some flexibility here, as Hanukkah and Easter/Passover may vary, but decorations should NOT be hung more then 3 weeks prior to holiday onset).
An alternative plan would be to have a single annual holiday combining all of the above, called St. Christmukahpasseastkwanpatfourthnewfestgivingween. Decorations for the combined holidays may be hung for 30 days prior to this event, and MUST be removed the day after.
Punishment for business owners who violate these laws would be on a 3-step basis:
1st offense: Business license revoked for one month.
2nd offense: Tarred, feathered, and forced to eat fruitcake.
3rd offense: Drawn and quartered, then served with fava beans and a nice chianti.
Yours truly,
Ibee Grumpy, M.D.


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If the geological metaphor fashionable in Washington these days can be applied in Damascus, then Syria is moving perilously closer toward an existential cliff. President Bashar Assad on Sunday delivered a dramatic aria of defiance from the stage of the Damascus Opera House, rallying his base for a fight to the finish against a 21-month-old rebellion he dismissed as an unholy alliance between the West and al-Qaeda. The hour-long speech offered little hope that Assad might be about to end the civil war that has killed upwards of 60,000 Syrians by heeding the rebels' central demand: that he step down. Indeed, Assad rejected any negotiations with an opposition he branded "enemies of God and puppets of the West." He would only negotiate, he vowed, "with the master, not the servants" — a signal, perhaps, that his real message was directed at Western and regional powers. Condensed to a tweet, such a message might read: "Aprés moi, le déluge. Accept my terms, or own the consequences of Syria's breakup — which we all know you're desperate to avoid."
Assad did, of course, offer settlement terms, but those were not much different from his previous demands: rebels would cease attacks and outsider powers would stop backing them; state control over border crossings (many now in rebel hands) would be restored, and the regime would convene a "national dialogue conference" with those who reject violence in order to negotiate a new constitution and open the way for a political transition. Unsurprisingly, his terms were summarily rejected by opposition spokesmen who said the regime had offered no meaningful concessions. The U.S. State Department dismissed Assad's proposals as "detached from reality" and as "yet another attempt to cling to power." Until now, the opposition has insisted that negotiations are possible only when Assad agrees to go.
(PHOTOS: The Victims of Assad: Photographs by Peter Hapak)
"That was not the speech of a man seeking a compromise," says Syria expert Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma. "That was the speech of a man who believes his side can win. He offered no ray of hope that a political solution might be possible but instead sought to rally the troops and remind the West of the stakes." With neither the opposition nor Assad willing to talk to each other, mediation efforts by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, strongly backed by Russia, are going nowhere. "Assad's speech also challenges the West to rethink its policy, because the war is nowhere near an end," says Landis. "The rebels are not getting nearly the level of outside support they'd need to destroy the regime's military. And Assad seems to be warning that Syria itself could be destroyed in the process of bringing down his regime."
While there's a common perception in Western capitals that the regime is on its last legs, there are plenty of signs on the ground that it remains very much intact — and very dangerous. Assad's security forces have been forced to relinquish control of many rural areas and have even ceded the impoverished peripheries of a number of Syrian cities, but the regime has escalated its attacks on areas under rebel control in recent months, deliberately imposing a heavier toll in humanitarian suffering. And rebels in many areas appear desperately short of funds and military resources, despite promises of expanded support from outside powers.
(PHOTOS: Syria, Decisively Seen)
Assad may have also been playing on the West's ambivalence at the prospect of a rebel military victory by harping on the al-Qaeda theme. Washington last month designated Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda-inspired militia at the forefront of rebel fighting forces, as an international terrorist organization — a move that drew howls of protest, even from the leadership of the U.S.-backed Syrian National Coalition.
Assad has survived, as the New York Times noted last Friday, because almost two years into the rebellion, "a critical bloc of Syrians remains on the fence," skeptical of both the regime and of the rebels. Large numbers of Alawite and Christians who detest Assad and his regime remain unwilling to embrace what appears to many of them as a sectarian, Sunni Islamist rebellion. As Slobodan Milosevic had done in Yugoslavia, Assad has created a kill-or-be-killed mind-set among his core constituencies.
That's not a reality easily altered by the best efforts of Western powers to foster reconciliation plans in distant capitals in the hope that these will convince most of the Alawite and Christian minorities — and even many urban, wealthier Sunnis — that they have nothing to fear from a rebel victory. Those closest to the action are often less convinced of the alternative represented by the armed rebels, even if they're appalled by the regime's brutality. Grotesque scenes of Alawite soldiers being tortured to death by rebel captors may not have gotten much international-media air play, but they've gone viral on YouTube among the communities that fear for their fate should Assad be toppled.
Fred C. Hof, who until last September was the U.S. State Department's special adviser for the transition in Syria, wrote last week of the sectarian danger in Syria:
Some regime opponents insist … that the opposition (armed and not) remains overwhelmingly committed to a Syria of citizenship, one permitting no civil distinction among Sunni, Alawite, Christian, Kurd, Ismaili, Turkman, Druze, and so forth. One hopes they are accurate and truthful, and not merely trying to appeal to the sensibilities of Americans who perhaps do not understand how the world really works (at least in Syria). And yet how many members of Syrian minorities — fully one-third of the country's population — accept these proffered reassurances? Probably no more than a handful do. And why should they? What would weigh heavier on the brain of a non-Sunni Arab (or a Sunni Arab committed to secular governance): the occasional word about the primacy of citizenship, or the televised chanting of hirsute warriors and the exaltation by [Jabhat al-Nusra] in reaction to the fully justified (if ill-timed) U.S. designation of the group as terrorist?
In sum, the Assad regime has hijacked the Alawite community and large components of other minorities, holding them hostage to the survival of rule by clan and clique … If in the end Syria is really akin to Lebanon in terms of the supremacy of sectarian identification, it is finished.
That may be exactly why Assad has chosen to force what began as a peaceful protest movement for democracy onto the terrain of a sectarian civil war. This way, the stakes for millions of Syrians, and for regional stakeholders, are that much higher.
PHOTOS: Chaos and Killing in Syria: Photos of a Slow-Motion Civil War


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Sancoale is a new sans serif that is simple and geometric. It is a contemporary design that is distinctive and unique, but not too far outside the box. This makes for a typeface family that is very useful for many applications. The design is simplified without stems or spurs in the default character set. The OpenType alternates do include alternates with stems, and there are six weights with true italics. Please see the informative .pdf brochure to see these features in action.
OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages. Sancoale is a great choice for a professional designer that wants to achieve a simple but still unique look.


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VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.
Some of the features of VirtualBox are:
- Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don't have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.
- Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.


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Channeling my inner New Yorker with an all black outfit and a little dose of color from my lipstick and hat. If I had a winter uniform that required little thought, this would probably be it.
PS: 20% off everything on ASOS.com ends today with the code Superbowl20.
Photos by Kim


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From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that our on-going lemon extravaganza has been postponed for a day. That little thing called life has gotten in the way and my time was needed elsewhere today. I lost the light before I could photograph the last of my lemon treats, so I still have two outstanding recipes to share with you. On Sunday, I'll feature a wonderful tea cookie, called a Lemon Thin, and on Monday, the jewel in my crown, a Lemon Mousse Cake will take center stage. As for today, a friend needed help with a commitment she had made and asked for my assistance. So, on a very meatless Friday, I found myself knee deep in sweet sausage, Sicilian meatballs and a truly stellar ragu. This recipe was clipped from on old issue of Gourmet magazine and those of you who try it will not be disappointed. The sauce is thick and rich and is infused with the flavors of pork and beef and the barest hint of cinnamon and fennel (from the sausage). The meatballs are extraordinary and herein lies the problem. While adults will love their fine texture, children will spend the entire meal picking out the currents and pine nuts that contribute to their wonderful flavor. My job is merely to warn of such hazzards. Unfortunately, yours is to deal with them. In Sicily, this dish is served on Shrove Tuesday and it's an integral part of their Carnival celebration. Traditionally, this dish would be served in two parts. The pasta would be served as a first course and the meats would be piled on a platter and served as the second. Gourmet magazine recommended piling the meats on top of the pasta. You don't want to do that. While it may be authentic, it looks terrible. Instead, cut the sausage into pieces and toss it and the meatballs into the penne. This is lovely peasant food and it is perfect for cold weather. The trenchermen in your family will love this dish. Here's the recipe.
Penne with Sausage Ragu and Sicilian Meatballs...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite courtesy of Gourmet Magazine
3/4 cup fine fresh bread crumbs from Italian bread (crusts discarded)
1/4 cup whole milk
1/2 cup (2 3/4 oz) whole almonds with skin, toasted
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 pound ground beef chuck
1/2 cup finely grated pecorino Romano or Parmigiano Reggiano
1/4 cup dried currants
1/4 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 large egg
Sausage Ragu
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Sicilian Meatballs (above)
12 sweet Italian sausage links (2-pounds total)
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 large garlic clove, smashed
2 cups dry red wine (i.e. Chianti)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes in puree
1/2 bay leaf
1-1/2 ponds ridged penne
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1) To make meatballs: Place bread crumbs and milk in a medium bowl. Stir to mix. Pulse almonds with sugar in a food processor until finely ground. Add to bread crumb mixture, along with remaining ingredients, and mix with your hands until just combined. Roll mixture into 1-inch meatballs and transfer to a plate. Refrigerate if not cooking immediately.
2) To make the sausage ragu: Heat oil in a large 8 to 9-quart pot until oil shimmers. Working in batches, brown meatballs, turning occasionally, about 4 minutes per batch. Transfer to a plate. Prick sausages with a fork and brown in the same pot, turning occasionally, about 5 minutes. Transfer to another plate. Reduce heat to moderate and cook onions, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrance is released, about 30 seconds. Stir in wine, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes and puree and bay leaf. Return sausages and meatballs, along with accumulated juices to center of pot. Cover and simmer for 1-1/2 hours.
3) To prepare pasta: Bring 6 to 8 quarts of water to a boil. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of salt and return to a boil. Following package directions, add pasta and cook until al dente. Drain well and return to pot.
4) To serve: Add peas to ragu and simmer, covered, for 5 minutes. Adjust salt and pepper to taste. Add pasta. Cut sausage into 2-inch pieces. Add sausage and meatballs to pasta and toss to combine. Serve immediately. Yield: 8 to 10 generous servings.
You might also enjoy these recipes:
Baked Ziti with Mini Meatballs - Gonna Want Second
Baked Pasta with Chicken Sausage - The Sweet's Kitchen
Pasta Ponza - Playing House
Chicken Lasagna - The Brunette Foodie
Sausage and Mushroom Cannelloni - What's Cookin' Chicago?
Orecchiette with Spicy Italian Sausage - Chewing the Fat
Baked Penne with Spinach, Roasted Red Peppers and B.A.C.O.N. - The Recipe Girl
Farfalle with Mushrooms and Sausage - Angelnina's Cottage


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American Flag over a Bunker at Fort Moultrie, Sullivan's Island, South Carolina
SULLIVAN'S ISLAND, South Carolina - Fort Moultrie is part of the Fort Sumter National Monument at the entrance to Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. The fort has played a crucial role in defending the harbor from the time of the Revolutionary War through World War II. During that time it has undergone multiple upgrades, from the original palmetto log walls to the newer heavily fortified earthen bunkers.
- Filename
- American Flag over a Bunker at Fort Moultrie, Sullivan's Island, South Carolina (Copyright David Coleman)-021.tif
- Copyright
- © 2016 David Coleman
- Image Size
- 7360x4912 / 159.6MB
- http://havecamerawilltravel.com/copyright
America American flag American history Charleston Harbor Civil War site Fort Moultrie General William Moultrie North America Revolutionary War South Carolina Sullivan's Island U.S. US US flag USA United States United States of America coastal coastal defense coastline defence defenses defensive fortification historic site military military history national park stars and stripes
- Contained in galleries


text: Night Lights - Nick and Sally are making shadow puppets with the Cat in the Hat, but the batteries in the flashlight have gone out! They jump into the Thingamajigger and shrink down to visit the fireflies that live in the backyard. There they learn that the fireflies communicate by flashing their lights. And when the fireflies provide the light the kids need, the shadow puppet show can continue! Go Snails Go! - Nick, Sally and the Cat have been invited along on a snail expedition! They jump into the Thingamajigger and shrink down to meet up with Lewis and Clark, the two snails leading the way! As they travel through the forest of Slippity-Goo, having fun sliding in their own shells, the kids learn about all the different ways snails use their shells.


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To be sure, there are some great things about this job. To first approximation you are your own boss, and even when it comes to teaching you typically have a tremendous amount of freedom. It has often been said that being a prof is like running your own startup -- you have to hire the staff (the students), raise the money (grant proposals), and of course come up with the big ideas and execute on them. But you also have to do a lot of marketing (writing papers and giving talks), and sit on a gazillion stupid committees that eat up your time. This post is mostly for grad students who think they want to be profs one day. A few surprises and lessons from my time in the job...
Show me the money. The biggest surprise is how much time I have to spend getting funding for my research. Although it varies a lot, I guess that I spent about 40% of my time chasing after funding, either directly (writing grant proposals) or indirectly (visiting companies, giving talks, building relationships). It is a huge investment of time that does not always contribute directly to your research agenda -- just something you have to do to keep the wheels turning. To do systems research you need a lot of funding -- at my peak I've had 8 Ph.D. students, 2 postdocs, and a small army of undergrads all working in my group. Here at Harvard, I don't have any colleagues working directly in my area, so I haven't been able to spread the fundraising load around very much. (Though huge props to Rob and Gu for getting us that $10M for RoboBees!) These days, funding rates are abysmal: less than 10% for some NSF programs, and the decision on a proposal is often arbitrary. And personally, I stink at writing proposals. I've had around 25 NSF proposals declined and only about 6 funded. My batting average for papers is much, much better. So, I can't let any potential source of funding slip past me.
Must... work... harder. Another lesson is that a prof's job is never done. It's hard to ever call it a day and enjoy your "free time," since you can always be working on another paper, another proposal, sitting on another program committee, whatever. For years I would leave the office in the evening and sit down at my laptop to keep working as soon as I got home. I've heard a lot of advice on setting limits, but the biggest predictor of success as a junior faculty member is how much of your life you are willing to sacrifice. I have never worked harder than I have in the last 7 years. The sad thing is that so much of the work is for naught -- I can't count how many hours I've sunk into meetings with companies that led nowhere, or writing proposals that never got funded. The idea that you get tenure and sit back and relax is not quite accurate -- most of the tenured faculty I know here work even harder than I do, and they spend more of their time on stuff that has little to do with research.
Your time is not your own. Most of my days are spent in an endless string of meetings. I find almost no time to do any hacking anymore, which is sad considering this is why I became a computer scientist. When I do have some free time in my office it is often spent catching up on email, paper reviews, random paperwork that piles up when you're not looking. I have to delegate all the fun and interesting problems to my students. They don't know how good they have it!
Students are the coin of the realm. David Patterson once said this and I now know it to be true. The main reason to be an academic is not to crank out papers or to raise a ton of money but to train the next generation. I love working with students and this is absolutely the best part of my job. Getting in front of a classroom of 80 students and explaining how virtual memory works never ceases to be thrilling. I have tried to mentor my grad students, though in reality I have learned more from them than they will ever learn from me. My favorite thing is getting undergrads involved in research, which is how I got started on this path as a sophomore at Cornell, when Dan Huttenlocher took a chance on this long-haired crazy kid who skipped his class a lot. So I try to give back.
Of course, my approach to being a prof is probably not typical. I know faculty who spend a lot more time in the lab and a lot less time doing management than I do. So there are lots of ways to approach the job -- but it certainly was not what I expected when I came out of grad school.
Update 4/24/10: Thanks to Mike Belfrage for pointing me to this interview with Niklaus Wirth where he echoes some of the above sentiments.


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Sunday, August 22, 2010
Chiang Mai Curry Noodles with Chicken
Our three year old sous-chef.
...and the kitchen apprentice who was born with a wooden spoon in his mouth.
From the kitchen of One Perfect Bite...Tonight was an unplanned noodle night. That's not an unusual occurrence when my family gathers, but having to alter at least one of the recipes to please the tastes of a three year old is something I haven't done in a very long time. I was given very specific instructions. He wanted fat noodles with chicken and yellow gravy and he agreed to be my official taster. We added and subtracted things from a Thai recipe called kao soi and came up with a curry noodle dish that he actually enjoyed. Half the fun, of course, was slurping slippery noodles, but he ate some chicken and had a few vegetables and shared his dish with others at the table. What I hadn't counted on was that those who are no longer three would also enjoy it. Who knew? While the noodles only resemble a dish in the Thai or Asian cooking repertoire they are a wonderful introduction to the food of the region. The rice noodles and vegetables I added to the recipe are atypical, but crispy noodle nests always top the dish when it is served in Thailand. I make my mine by reserving a small portion of cooked egg noodles and deep frying them. This is extremely easy to make and all the ingredients can be found in a good sized supermarket. I've cut way back on the curry paste and powder that give this recipe its heat. I'm including the authentic amounts in parenthesis for those of you who want to sample the real deal. This is a great family recipe and I hope that those of you with adventurous souls will give it a try. Here's the recipe.
Chiang Mai Curry Noodles with Chicken...from the kitchen of One Perfect Bite
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 teaspoons red curry paste (2 tablespoons)
1-1/2 pounds boneless chicken, cut into chunks
1 large carrot, cut into fine julienne strips
1 small red pepper, cut into fine julienne strips
1 medium onion, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 (14-oz.) can coconut milk
1-3/4 cups chicken stock
1 teaspoon ground turmeric (2teaspoons turmeric or curry Powder)
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1/2 pound dried Chinese-style egg noodles or wide rice noodles
1/3 cup coarsely chopped shallots
1/3 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro
1/3 cup thinly sliced green onion
1) In a medium sauce pan set over medium heat, warm the oil until it begins to ripple, and then add garlic. Cook for about a minute and add red curry paste, stirring it to soften it, about a minute. Add chicken and cook for about a minute, tossing to combine it with the curry paste. Remove chicken from pan and add carrot, red pepper and onions. Stir over medium-high heat until softened. Return chicken to pan. Add coconut milk, chicken stock, turmeric, soy sauce, and sugar, and stir well. Bring to a slow boil, and lower heat to bring it down to a simmer. Cook for about 8 minutes, until flavors have begun to meld. Stir in the lime juice, remove from heat, and cover to keep warm.
2) Cook the noodles per package instructions. Drain, rinse in a colander under cold water, drain again, and divide noodles among serving bowls. Ladle on hot curry, and sprinkle each serving with shallots, cilantro, and green onions. Serve immediately. Yield: 4 servings.
You might also enjoy these recipes:
Rebecca's Asian Noodles - Chow and Chatter
15 Minute Asian Noodles - Steamy Kitchen
Mie Goreng - RasaMalaysia
Pad Thai - Joy's Thai Food
Garlic Butter Noodles - White on Rice Couple
Mee Goreng - The Perfect Pantry
56 comments :
- Martha said...
Jim loves Thai curry and I will have to try this.
- August 22, 2010 at 1:04 AM
- Ginny Hartzler said...
I love noodles and this looks great. A cutie pie in the picture with a very funny caption. Are you still without washer and oven?
- August 22, 2010 at 1:44 AM
- KathyB. said...
Your grandson is adorable and a wooden spoon in the mouth means he gets the best of what is stirred in the pot. The noodle dish sounds like one all of my grandchildren and their parents would love. I will be making this!
- August 22, 2010 at 3:09 AM
Your grandson is just the cutest!! He's way more adventourous than me! I generally don't like Asian flavours, but seeing as the recipe comes tried and tested from the palate of someone born with a wooden spoon in his mouth, I'd be willing to give it a try.
Blessings Mary...from Emmalene - August 22, 2010 at 3:13 AM
- Lucie said...
How great to have such open and welcoming taste buds at such a young age! I will really enjoy trying this :)
- August 22, 2010 at 3:21 AM
- Alessandra said...
I love thai curry noodles, especially if they have coconut milk or cream in it. This I can do, but using tofu instead of chicken (being a veggie), and it works well because the tofu absorbs the curry and coconut flavours.
But while I am in Italy i cannot find easily all these ingredients, so I will wait to get back to New Zealand to make curries again!
Thank you for reminding me that curries exist! :-)
A. - August 22, 2010 at 3:46 AM
- Katerina said...
These noodles look really good. I am glad you reduced the amount of spices. I like my meals mildly spiced.
- August 22, 2010 at 4:06 AM
- My Little Space said...
According to the ingredients you have given, this sounds more sweetness than spicy. I'm sure your grandchildren would love it. But I never thought the little chubby enjoying it too! How great! Haha.... He must be having lots of fun here! Oh I'm sure you & Bob having a fantastic time too. Enjoy your day.
Blessings, kristy - August 22, 2010 at 5:00 AM
- J e l e n a said...
Ooooooh, yes it's hard to cook when there are children involved, acomodations for everyone have to be made. But it's the little one that count the most and heir smile is a thanks for all the effort an empty bowl!
- August 22, 2010 at 5:01 AM
- From the Kitchen said...
We do enjoy a good Thai curry. I'd cut back on the heat for a handsome little fellow with a wooden spoon in his mouth too. Hope you're continuing to enjoy the visit with family.
Bonnie - August 22, 2010 at 7:50 AM
- Lea Ann said...
ok, That photo with wooden spoon caption is too funny! Love curry, thanks for this recipe.
- August 22, 2010 at 7:57 AM
- Diane said...
I have to agree with every one's comments, Thai curry is always good. Diane
- August 22, 2010 at 8:05 AM
- Cooking Gallery said...
I love noodle and I love curry, this recipe cannot go wrong for me...! And your grandson is adorable...:)!
- August 22, 2010 at 8:10 AM
- Allie and Pattie said...
Mary, My little grand-daughter always insists on cooking with me when we're together and nothing ever comes out resembling what was intended- but we've never had a bad meal together. He's just beautiful!
xoxo Pattie - August 22, 2010 at 8:13 AM
- Unknown said...
We LOVE Thai food but I haven't tried it on my kids yet - your story inspires me to give it a try! Thanks for your kind words on my blog...it made me smile. Things are looking up! :) Thanks Mary!
- August 22, 2010 at 8:22 AM
- PeggyR said...
Yum another winner of a recipe!
- August 22, 2010 at 8:41 AM
- What's next said...
Sounds wonderful! I'm looking forward to trying it. I love Thai food!
- August 22, 2010 at 8:52 AM
- tinyskillet said...
Yes I love Thai curry and have to adjust the seasoning too. Both daughter and husband can't take it too spicy, but we are willing to sacrifice for our family! :D
- August 22, 2010 at 9:28 AM
- nancy at good food matters said...
It's always wonderful to have the children involved in the design and prep of a meal; they can't help but enjoy (or at least try!) the creation.
Great recipe to open up American tastebuds to the bold flavors of Southeast Asia.
Such a sweet photo too! - August 22, 2010 at 9:56 AM
- Sushma Mallya said...
Nice recipe and lovely pic of your grandson...he looks so cute..
- August 22, 2010 at 10:47 AM
- Kath said...
You have adorable grandsons! Of course you would make the noodles that the 3-year-old likes, and it looks like he has great taste!
- August 22, 2010 at 10:51 AM
- Susi's Kochen und Backen said...
This looks great! My husband is not a giant curry fan but by cutting back on the amount, I think he would go for it. Your grandsons are adorable :o)
- August 22, 2010 at 11:32 AM
- Ana Powell said...
Really cute, your sous-chef and apprentice are absolutely lovely.
Delicious and great noodle dish presentation.
Very creative too.
Wishing you a happy Sunday ♥ - August 22, 2010 at 12:16 PM
- Kim @ Two Good Cookies said...
I love Asian noodle dishes but always feel so overwhelmed by the recipes. This looks delicious. And easy. I can't wait!
- August 22, 2010 at 12:18 PM
- Unknown said...
they look so cute and cuddly..lovely recipe...
- August 22, 2010 at 12:20 PM
- Keeley said...
This looks delicious and I have almost every ingredient on hand. We purchased some Thai red curry paste last month and I felt that two tablespoons was way too spicy for my family. I can't wait to try this dish.
- August 22, 2010 at 12:43 PM
- scrambledhenfruit said...
So wonderful you're enjoying your family! Kids and noodles just seem to go together. All of my children (and grandson) love noodles and it's the perfect dish for young and old alike. Thanks!
- August 22, 2010 at 2:37 PM
- Adelina said...
Will try it-what a gorgeous dish again. You little grandson is soooo cute!
- August 22, 2010 at 2:43 PM
- Jen_from_NJ said...
What little cuties! I am definitely adventurous and would love to give this noodle dish a try.
- August 22, 2010 at 3:30 PM
- Monet said...
Such cuties! I loved seeing these photographs of your precious family. I always love noodle night, and this looks like a creative bowl of good eats!
- August 22, 2010 at 3:44 PM
- Foodiewife said...
Wow, Mary! I overcame my aversion to curry by falling in-love with red curry. I have all of these ingredients. I especially love the idea of the coconut milk. I have bookmarked so many of your recipes that when I say "I want to make this", it will take a while to go through all the others that look so good. I definitely will make this, though. I can almost taste the flavors.
- August 22, 2010 at 4:01 PM
- Houdini said...
Nice dish. Joyce, my Thai cooking instructor in the mountains of Northern Thailand, told me in every Thai curry you start with garlic and cilantro roots, jointly pounded. That's one of the very few differences between your recipe and what I learned. I also observed that Thais add the meat to the boiling liquid, water or coconut milk, not fry it first, as we would.
- August 22, 2010 at 4:11 PM
- Unknown said...
I have to try this recipe, it really looks good, your sous chefs are adorable:-)
- August 22, 2010 at 4:25 PM
- giorno26 ¸¸.•*¨*•. said...
Hi Mary,
le foto dei bimbi sono semplicemente fantastiche :-)
Chi sono ?
Buona giornata. - August 22, 2010 at 4:43 PM
- Farmer Jo said...
Oh, it looks like a great twist on Kao Soi! I can't wait to try it!
- August 22, 2010 at 5:03 PM
- Faith said...
Your little sous chefs are just too cute! I love a good curry and this noodle dish looks fantastic! I haven't tried making a Thai curry at home but I'm inspired to with your lovely recipe!
- August 22, 2010 at 7:19 PM
- Unknown said...
This dish looks so delicious! I love your sous chef and soon to be sous chef...they are darling!!
- August 22, 2010 at 8:43 PM
- Kerstin said...
Awww, what cute little helpers! And such a tasty meal too - I can never pass up curry of any kind!
- August 22, 2010 at 9:28 PM
- JEANNE said...
Hello Mary, your post is adorable. Your little guy is worth every altered recipe one might cook. I have never been a fan of curry. I think I would prefer the altered recipe by far. Big smile.
Thanks for your sweet comment.
Hugs, Jeanne - August 22, 2010 at 9:36 PM
- Biren said...
I like a bowl of spicy noodles any time. Even my teenage boys will enjoy the mild version. I of course would prefer the spicier version.
I am really impressed that the cute little guy enjoys curry :) - August 22, 2010 at 9:58 PM
- Krista said...
This is a beautiful noodle dish. I'm used to designing recipes around pre-schoolers, and this one trumps anything that I've come up with lately. Definitely one the whole family will enjoy. I wish I had a bowl right now.
Your grandsons are adorable! - August 22, 2010 at 11:10 PM
- Lori said...
A delicious meal! I love the pics of your grandkids. Love that line about being born with a wooden spoon in his mouth. Love that Mary.
- August 22, 2010 at 11:32 PM
- penny aka jeroxie said...
You have beautiful grandkids! And lucky ones to have you as well.
- August 23, 2010 at 12:33 AM
- GLENDA CHILDERS said...
YUM! Lots of my favorite ingredients. . . can't wait to try this one.
Glenda - August 23, 2010 at 12:35 AM
- Deb in Hawaii said...
Such adorable boys. ;-) The noodles look wonderful for my curry noodle cravings--a fun and creative dish.
- August 23, 2010 at 1:35 AM
- Sonia ~ Nasi Lemak Lover said...
My family love noodles too, your noodle sound delicious and nice.Your grandkids are cute and adorable.
- August 23, 2010 at 4:00 AM
- Salsa Verde said...
Hi Mary,
I love noodles and that recipe sounds delicious. Amazing pictures from the sous chef and the apprentice. They are so handsome!!
Lia. - August 23, 2010 at 7:09 AM
- Rita said...
Your sous chef is adorable!
- August 23, 2010 at 10:40 AM
- Gloria Baker said...
Love your pictures! gloria
- August 23, 2010 at 12:37 PM
- Baking Barrister said...
Totally adorable sous chefs ;) And totally awesome dish--I love these flavors and am trying to add them into my cooking. Great place to start!
- August 23, 2010 at 2:42 PM
- Jennifer said...
Those babies are adorable and the noodle dish looks soo tempting. You have quite the wide range of cooking skills!
- August 23, 2010 at 2:44 PM
- FOODESSA said...
Mary...this dish is not only lovely...it has the making of an all aournd pleaser too. I do love Asian food so much that I fusion it with some of my Italian dishes.
Your grandson has a very inspiring look ;o)
The recipe seems a little long, however, I know that it's all needed to make it the best...so thanks for everything as usual ;o)
Ciao for now,
Claudia - August 23, 2010 at 6:45 PM
- JG said...
A good sous chef is always needed! :)
Your Curry Noodles look so good. My family enjoys noodles in any dish. - August 24, 2010 at 11:27 AM
- Zupan's Markets said...
There's something about this recipe that is calling to us....it instantly made our stomachs growl over here. Can't wait to try it!
- August 26, 2010 at 12:31 PM
This caught my eye immediatly! I havne't made a "real" curry yet and i think this would be great to try out!
Your grandson is adorable and one lucky little boy! - September 5, 2010 at 10:33 AM
- Reeva krev said...
the kid just cute....
nice article btw
Bali Islands
Asian Noodle - November 29, 2011 at 12:11 AM


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Big Money often gets what it wants in Washington. But not always.
In few policy debates is that more true than in the proposed overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.
The big donors and corporate leaders of the Republican establishment mostly favor remaking U.S. immigration laws to give those now here illegally an eventual door to citizenship and to increase the annual quota for guest workers.
A letter sent by major GOP donors, business chiefs and political strategists Tuesday to House Republicans underscores as much. Among the signers of the letter from Republicans for Immigration Reform: sugar baron Pepe Fanjul Jr.; Charles McNeil, CEO of NexGen Resources, an energy company; and Karl Rove, who needs no introduction.
An excerpt from the letter from Republicans for Immigration Reform:
Standing in the way of reform ensures that we perpetuate a broken system that stifles our economy, leave millions of people living in America unaccounted for, maintain a porous border, and risk a long-lasting perception that Republicans would rather see nothing done than pass needed reform. That is not the path for the Republican Party.
It may not be the path for the party as a whole, but that doesn't mean it isn't the path for some Republican members of Congress. They might invite a primary challenge if they voted for any legislation that gave legal status to immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.
The current effort recalls the push by major GOP donors and the business lobby, often one and the same, to support earlier efforts to revise immigration laws in 2006 and 2007. In 2006, there was an open letter to Congress from a group of Texas business types urging lawmakers to pass legislation to revise the immigration laws.
Those attempts during the Bush administration came to naught; there was just too much grass-roots opposition to the notion of giving legal status to immigrants who either entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas.
Much money has been spent since the last immigration overhaul go-round. The Sunlight Foundation estimates that between 2008 and 2012, more than $1.5 billion has been spent on immigration lobbying. "We count 6,712 quarterly lobbying reports filed by 678 lobbying organizations in 170 sectors mentioning 987 unique bills, associated with more than $1.5 billion in lobbying spending," the foundation wrote.
But the chances of an immigration overhaul seem no less fragile now than seven years ago. Indeed, they might even be worse. The last time a comprehensive revision of the nation's immigration laws was being discussed, the Tea Party movement didn't exist.
The Tea Party wasn't there to threaten primary challenges to Republican incumbents who support "amnesty" for immigrants. It wasn't there to ensure that GOP lawmakers clearly heard the fierceness of the opposition to providing a citizenship pathway.
This explains the timing of Tuesday's letter. Lawmakers are heading home to their districts for the August recess. As Carlos Gutierrez, a Bush administration commerce secretary and former Kellogg Co. CEO who heads the Republicans for Immigration Reform, told CNBC: "The month of August is very key because they go back home and they go to town hall meetings and they hear from the extreme hard-liners, the anti-immigration [side] ..."
That's what Big Money is trying to overcome. But while it has money on its side, as we've seen before, that doesn't mean it will have the votes at the critical moment.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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I have a guest blog posting up on Intellectual Ventures' blog on why a patent war — or "patent thicket" in scholarly parlance — cannot be defined solely in terms of the number of patents involved in the legal and commercial conflict.
Check it out at: http://www.intellectualventures.com/index.php/insights/archives/how-many-patents-make-a-patent-war
As an aside, this issue is important because I keep hearing from some quarters that historical patent wars, such as the Sewing Machine War of the 1850s, weren't patent thickets for precisely this reason; that is, relative to the number of patents involved in the "smart phone war" today, there were simply too few patents involved in these earlier legal conflicts for them to be identified as "patent thickets."
For instance, Professor Mark Lemley made this point in a comment to my recent blog post, Today's Software Patents Look a Lot Like Early Pharma Patents. Although this short blog posting addressed only how software patents and early pharma patents were both accused by famous judges of being too complex or too vague for the courts to handle efficiently, Mark instead decided to make the tangential comment: "Um, except for the part where there were 250,000 pharmaceutical patents covering the same product." (This was made on Facebook, and so, sorry, no link.)
Pofessor Michael Risch has a great blog posting on why the oft-repeated claim that there are 250,000 patents covering each smart phone is overblown, especially as this statistic is used in the increasingly overheated rhetoric in today's policy debates in which many people are treating as settled fact that there is a so-called "software patent problem."
But even if Professor Risch is wrong and there are in fact 250,000 patents covering each smart phone, this would still not justify the claim that the number of patents is the primary cause of today's patent war.
I often heard this point from my fellow academics when I was researching my article on the Sewing Machine War of the 1850s — that things are somehow different today because there are lots more patents covering the same commercial product — and thus I specifically address this issue in my paper. In fact, I spent several pages discussing this issue and why the premise "thousands of patents = patent war" is profoundly mistaken.
Given the prevalence of the "250,000 patents cover each smartphone" and similar claims today, though, I realize that it's an important enough point to carve out these several pages and reproduce them in a blog posting (so that people don't have to sift through a 50-page article to find it).
So, as I said, check out my guest blog posting at IV's blog, and poke around there a bit to learn more about the cool things that IV is doing with the patented innovation that it creates, acquires and licenses.


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One thing's for sure, Liz O.: when I see yellow snowmen, I think "you're in" trouble.
- Related Wreckage: Whirled Peas
Also, I know it's a pain entering your info with each donation - believe me, I do! Unfortunately, almost no one accepts Paypal donations - and John and I are not comfortable collecting your money to give ourselves. So please, don't let the extra minute or two of data entry prevent you from giving. The sites are secure, the companies are reputable, and I'm personally trusting each one with my own info and credit card number.
Finally, many of the charities, including this one, have no immediate tracking ability for donations. We will contact each individual charity at the end of the day to try to get our numbers and will try to post them when we know.


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Recently my daughter puked in the car. On herself, on the car seat and a little bit on the car itself. Was it a mild case of H1N1 flu? Too much Halloween candy? Who knows? And it doesn't really matter – bottom line is that it smelled as foul as you could possibly imagine. This was no little milk spitup which only smells slightly off – this was absolutely horrible.
Luckily, I was safe at work while this nonsense was going on, but when I got home I got put in charge of cleaning up the car seat. My plan was to just take off the car seat cover (ie the padding they sit on) and wash it. I was hoping that all of the puke had landed on the car seat which would make it easier to clean since I wouldn't have to take the seat out.
I'll just take the cover off and wash it
Unfortunately, when I tried to remove the cloth cover I realized that it was attached so that you couldn't easily remove it for washing. Given that it's just cloth I would have thought you could just make it so it could be removed/added while the seat was installed – maybe with a few velcro snaps here or there. Well guess what? That cover was carefully engineered so that it was tightly integrated into the seat and harness straps. In order to take it off you not only had to remove the car seat which is a small pain – you also had to remove all the harness straps and buckles etc. This was a huge pain since I had never done it before – the seat came assembled when we bought it.
I was pretty annoyed when I realized it was going to take more than 1 minute to get the cover off – enraged is a more accurate word. If you are wondering the car seat in question is called the Safety 1st Alpha Omega Elite Convertible Car Seat.
It was so difficult that I had to get the instruction book just to figure out how to take it apart. Total time to get cover off – 45 minutes. 🙂
Putting it back in
Once the cover was washed then I used my handy instruction book to put it back together. It took a while but that was partly because I kept forgetting parts and having to redo everything. Even once I got the seat back in the car I realized I forgot to put the base on. I will say one thing – once I did it then I realized it wasn't that hard so the following weekend I took the other car seat apart for washing, and it wasn't a big deal (since I knew what I was doing). His seat had been installed for about 2 years so I figured it wouldn't hurt to clean it. 🙂
Are all car seats this poorly designed?


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Before the first Apple PC, a "personal computer" was pretty much an expensive calculator, built from a kit, which could answer math problems with switches and lights. The arrival of the Apple II turned its complex predecessors into something anyone could use, and 3D printing might be about to undergo a similar revolution. While we're still far from the Star Trek dream of being able to print food or replicate complex products like an iPod, 3D printing is on the cusp of moving into your business or living room and being incredibly useful.
From drawing board to plastic
If you've never watched a 3D printer, they can be a lot of fun – check out this video to get a sense of the state of the art today. These guys scan a crescent wrench, take the image of it, and produce a working duplicate using a 3D printer. I have my doubts whether it would truly be as strong as a steel wrench, but it does appear strong enough for most uses. Imagine: If you wanted to make the wrench larger, smaller, have a bigger handle, you could just adjust it on a computer, then print the unique result to solve your particular problem.
You wouldn't ever need to buy a tool set, just print the tools you need as you need them. The only problem is, these 3D printers are pretty expensive right now. But they're getting more affordable, and are already one hell of a long way more useful than the personal computers (or even small business computers) we had in the market before the Apple II shipped.
Rapid prototyping
Most current 3D printers are used for rapid prototyping. Whether used to print functionally accurate models, or to create parts that then can be used to create molds for cast parts used in prototypes, these printers have cut the time to market significantly, for everything from turbochargers to the actual cars they go in.
We're only at the tip of this inflection point, because people don't like change much. Engineers used to more traditional methods of prototyping – like clay or wood models – are slowly coming around to the idea of using one of these printers. Once they do, or once the next generation of engineers does, you'll likely see not only more innovative products, but better ones. After all, with 3D modeling, they can do more prototyping and discover more problems sooner.
So you'll see the results of 3D printing long because you'll likely be able to buy one. In fact, many of us are likely seeing the result now but don't yet realize it.
In the home
The Holy Grail of this market – the one that could do for 3D printing what the iPod did for portable music players – would be an in-home printer. We are likely going to see one of these long before the end of the decade. Reducing the cost of something takes far less time than creating it in the first place, and much of the savings will likely come from making these in higher volume.
From printing art to models, tools for older cars, solid parts, moving parts, house trim, even clothing items like belt buckles, ordinary consumers could find all sorts of uses for a personal 3D printer. Think of something cool, model it on our PC, then make your thoughts solid, and reach into the printer to scoop up your custom-designed gadget. You won't even need to know how to model for yourself. Want a reproduction of the thing you just saw in the Disney Star Wars movie on your desk? Just download the model file and print it.
A torch looking for a bearer
So, 3D printing is ripe for a revolution, but which company will be the one to pull it off? MakerBot has made a strong push with its affordable Replicator models, but it might not be too late to rule out some older names, either. Oddly enough, HP may have a unique vantage point here. It has already dabbled in commercial 3D printing with the HP-branded Designjet 3D, and currently dominates the traditional consumer printer market with nearly a 40 percent market share. If HP can execute the transition from one to the next, this could be its path to becoming the next Apple.
Whether HP execs see this or not, I think that 3D printing has a good shot at being the next big thing. Do you agree, or do you think some other technology like personal robotics will hit first?
Editors' Recommendations
- Fighting football injuries with 3D-printed, hyper-personalized pads
- The future of sustainability: A look at the next evolution of environmental tech
- Hit takers: The cutting-edge engineering making football helmets safer than ever
- Inside the quest to 3D print a perfectly palatable steak
- The 50-year old Silicon Valley lab that practically invented modern computing


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Company Combines CAD, Lasers & Robotics to Build Better Buildings
December 20, 2012
A problem that has plagued the construction industry for years is the technology gap between building engineers who work on construction sites and the architects who design the plans used to put up a building.
Theometrics is working to bridge that gap through automation. It has created a digital layout and robotic system for taking architectural measurements and plans and applying them accurately to a construction site.
The New York company says it is pioneering the field of "architectural navigation." Its system uses tablets equipped with CAD and lasers to map out a construction site in much the same way GPS does.
Sam Stathis, the founder and CEO of Theometrics, is an electrical engineer and contractor with 32 years of experience. He has witnessed firsthand the need to automate the construction industry to eliminate mistakes caused by faulty measurements.
"With conventional methods, it's nearly impossible to get the type of accuracy we can with laser equipment," Stathis told us. "The bigger problem also is I would have to rely on my predecessor's work. If there was a mistake made, you never knew who made the mistake, and oftentimes, even if I was accurate, I would be using an inaccurate benchmark."
The inherent problem that creates errors and costs the construction industry billions of dollars every year is that, even though architects and designers use CAD and computer systems to design buildings and take their measurements, those on site during the construction process use an archaic method of string and tape measures to measure points located on architect drawings.
Vincent Frasca, vice president at Theometrics, told us that, to automate this process, his company has repurposed technology from a surveying instrument called a total station to measure distance with a laser.
The technology, which the company calls a master station, can use CAD via a tablet to point to sites in a construction environment with a laser, take measurements, and draw line work in CAD. "You select a coordinate in CAD -- an end point, midpoint, point on a curve, it doesn't matter," Frasca said. "The instrument will turn and point a visible laser right to that spot and transposes the accuracy of CAD to real life with no paper step or tape measure."
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I used an old pickle jar and a bubble bowl that I bought from Walmart. I wanted the bubble bowl to look like a vintage fish bowl so I glued a candle holder to the bottom to act as a pedestal.
Since I have a problem keeping indoor plants alive I decided to use just one tiny fern and a variety of mosses, bark, stones, a bird and twigs.
I've always been fascinated by these little self contained worlds. When I was a tween my mom had a terrarium in our living room. Since it was the groovy 60's it was on a white plastic pedestal and the terrarium was in a plastic bubble that sat on top. I loved that thing and used to imagine myself meandering around in that little world.
I like to buy giant jars of pickles from Sams and since I'm always saving jars and cans for crafting, I used one of those pickle jars to make a second terrarium. Again I only used one tiny fern, moss,stones, bark and twigs. I also added a couple of tiny eggs.
I also added moss and eggs to a vintage mason jar to add to the vignette, continuing the nature theme I was going for.
I popped a small plant in milk glass urn under a cloche to help round things out. I don't know how long the poor thing will last!
Just a little winter pick me up! Thanks for stopping by. I'll be joining these parties this week,
Savvy Southern Style
Ivy and Elephants
Stone Gable
Craftberry Bush
My Romantic Home


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The Linwood Taylor Memorial Captain's Choice Golf Tournament will be held at Tanglewood Park on February 2, 2014 at 12:00 P.M. There will be a shotgun start on the Championship Course. Golfers can make their own foursome or will be assigned to a team.
The entry fee is $45.00 per person for Tanglewood members or $65.00 per person for non-members. This price includes lunch before the tournament, 18 holes of golf, prizes, and appetizers during scoring.
See the application and contact the Tanglewood Golf Shop at 336-703-6420 for more details.