Recently (a few weeks ago) we purchased a couple of kilos of a good grade, cheap flour here in NZ, along with a package of 1kg of raw sugar. The first part of this was used up making the cookies last weekend. The rest has gone into making loaves of good quality, long fermented bread. The results so far have been good: one loaf 2-3 days ago, ( Read more... )

Its raining in my saucepan ( Read more... )

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

--Blaise Pascal: mathematician, scientist, and secretly, alchemist.

Yesterday was mid-month, and that means payday for most people. Doing our budgeting together, I was recognizing how much of a shoestring it is we're living on. Yet we make it! Lately the arbitrary nature of money has been a subject for my contemplation ( Read more... )

So after testing some ideas on espiritkat earlier, I realised its more a problem of reducing shading to appropriate values. Most of the time, light is coming from above in pictures. Light strikes a surface and illuminates it. when a surface curves downwards or away from the source of the light it gets darker. When it straightens out, it gets lighter, but ( Read more... )

In the past I've been really curious about how the emboss plugin in applications like Photoshop and GIMP create realistic 3D surfaces, so today I did a bit of experimenting. Its simplicity is surprising for what it does ( Read more... )

Summary:1. Start to "invent" with no emphasis on an initial goal, using the other rules, and use this as a springboard for creativity ( Read more... )

I spent the afternoon experimenting with this equation, as well as the so called "halfway to black" system, and posted my results on Facebook. Light and shadow are so important to our brain in determining realism - even more so than color is. One thing I've discovered while learning about various artists shading and drawing techniques is how ( Read more... )

The last 2 nights I've been taking arginine just before bed. Last night I did arginine and niacin. The first night I forced myself to stay up past what would be considered normal, last night I did not ( Read more... )

LJ... meet Penny. Penny, meet LJ.

She's kind of a bit rough around the edges so far, so be gentle to her :).


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