An Atypical Life

As the snow finally melts away, I start to get busier and busier. Here’s what I’ve been up to the past week:

• Work: supporting new projects as usual, writing position papers, working on newsletters, technical enablement, beta testing.
• House: cooking every night (pasta from scratch, ramen from scratch, gourmet hamburgers…will try and post some pics soon), planning garden, staring at wall that needs repairing and trying to motivate to fix it, regular cleaning, indoor gardening…
• School: Developing axiology, epistemology, methodology for design research approach. Gave guest lecture on internal Wikipedia politics.
• Other: Dealing with horrendous migraine. Developing novel database application. Attended One Of A Kind show with friends and got fabulous clothing, jewelry, housewares. Reverse engineering synth. Looking at motorcycle today. Petting cat to deal with stress from everything else i listed.

i am participating in this year’s thing-a-day exercise - to stimulate my creative juices.

Others I know or have just met who I will be following for thing-a-day:

• nyar
• dyslexia
• mithril
• …maybe you? Sign up today - last day to sign up!

There’s been a lot of blog linkage recently to steampunk computing modifications - steampunk keyboard one-offs, commercial keyboard offerings, laptops, R2-D2s, etc. I love the aesthetic, but I don’t really have the time (or cash) to fully modify my computing setup. Instead, when it came time to soundproof my 2nd story home office, and I had to remount my Ergotron laptop/monitor/keyboard arms, I decided to add some “steampunk” appointments.

Behold the steampunk Ergotron pole mounts:

More pre-construction, fabrication and glamour shots are available. Details after the jump.
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So I didn’t get into the studio. A pity. Instead I was helping to tear up the backyard for the new workshop/garage (photos shortly), and cooking Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. Thanks to everyone who came over to help work in the backyard, or to eat food!

That means, instead of making music, I turned this:

Into this:

The full menu was as follows:

• Roast turkey (hormone and antibiotic free, from Rowe Farm Meats; brined and cooked Alton Brown style)
• Turkey gravy, made purely from the pan drippings and giblets
• Sweet corn bread stuffing (Alton Brown style)
• Halved boiled sweet potatoes (sometimes, simple is best)
• Whole-berry orange/cranberry sauce (C. brought this - delicious!)
• Halved, steamed fresh organic Ontario Brussel Sprouts in Mustard Butter (don’t knock ‘em if you’ve never had ‘em fresh from the farm, steamed properly!)
• Cherry cream cheese streudel (bought at the St. Lawrence Market)
• Peach Chiffon Pie (recipe below the fold)
• Apple Ricotta Coffee Cake (tip: don’t use a food processor, just cut the lard in. And use animal shortening!)
  
• Fresh vanilla tea, fresh whipped cream

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