Easy Cheesy Potatoes

Have you ever bought a pack of that "easy melt" cheese?  It's the stuff that comes in wrapped slices like American cheese, but it's especially made for making grilled-cheese sandwiches (aka it's probably mutant Velveeta).  It makes a fine grilled-cheese sandwich, but ever tried to eat that stuff plain?  It's nasty.  It's not real cheese.

So a year or so ago I bought a pack of the easy melt stuff, not knowing what I was getting myself into.  Several months later it was still in my fridge, and it hadn't grown any mold yet.  This could be proof that it's an orange, hydrogenated dead-zone similar to the ones found in the ocean, only it was in my fridge which is almost as disturbing.

So, getting to the point:  one day, faced with a 2 month old half-pack of undead easy melt slices and some very much alive potatoes (they always sprout eyes by the time I use them), I created this recipe:

EY's Easy Cheesy Potatoes

Need:

• washed potatoes (doesn't matter what kind they are, or if you peel them.  I buy what's on sale and keep the peels on.)
• 6-8 (or maybe 10) slices of single-slice cheese product of your choice
• water
• oven-safe casserole dish or baking pan large enough to hold everything without overflow
• aluminum foil
• knife

How to:

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg Fahrenheit (176 Celsius)
2. Cut up the potatoes into slices about 1/4 -- 1/2 inch thick.
3. Lay potatoes in bottom of dish/pan, layering to 2 slices deep.
4. Add enough water to surround but not cover the potatoes.  Tops of potatoes should be sticking out of the water.
5. Unwrap singles-slices and lay a single layer on top of potatoes like a big cheesy blanket.
6. Cover pan with aluminum foil.  Place in oven.  Place on top of cookie sheet if using a small or shallow dish.  There's a chance it will boil over.
7. Cook for about 45 minutes, or until potatoes split in half when you stick a fork in them.
8. Remove pan from oven.  Remove foil.  Serve with vegetables and/or meat of your choice.

Servings:

Creates as much as you put into it, or about 1 person per potato if we're talking russets.  Smaller potatoes and you're on your own.

Nutrition facts:

How should I know?  The nutrition info for an unpeeled potato can be found here.  Read the package on your chosen cheese product and do the math.

Earworm of the day: Can't Shut Up by Anthem Lights

Jimmy!

At risk of becoming captain obvious, I have changed the background color of Penguins With Jet Packs from black to graphite.  I had a comment that the white-on-black was a little hard on the eyes.  I can't complain; graphite is very in right now for animation software and it's reasonable to believe they're on to something.

It's been very wet up here in Chicago, and the rain only stopped an hour ago.  Luckily it hasn't been too windy for umbrellas.  I finally invested in a set of register pegs so I can utilize the light tables in the 4th floor lab.  I have a short animation I want to make, but drawing in the computer is so tedious.  I wonder if good ol' pencil and paper will be better or worse.

Today I had a mini-animatic due in Storyboarding.  We were given a 12 second soundclip from the TV show South Park and asked to make an animatic with it.  The visuals were up to us.

I have never watched an episode of South Park (though cultural osmosis has taught me it has something to do with satire, vulgarity, annoying voices, and the repeated slaughter of a particularly unfortunate character named Kenny.)  My unfamiliarity with the show meant I was free to make up whatever explanation I wanted for what I heard in the soundtrack.  This was incredibly fun.  Here is the result:

New thing to note: it's always best to create a mobile version of an animation in iMovie before attempting to upload to blogger.  The original copy was apparently too large.

And yes.   I did look up who this "Jimmy" character was after I was done with the project.  No, I do not have an interest in watching South Park any time soon.

Earworm for the day: The Russian folk song "Korobeiniki"  (old-school gamers, you're welcome)

Error Some Place

One day I decided to re-create one of my favorite art projects in Maya.  The image is of a radio-active dinosaur:   

The original is color-aid paper on matte-board.  The assignment was vibrating color (yes, it's fully intended to seer your retinas, and the digital scan doesn't do it justice.)

So I went into Maya, modeled a 3D version (only took two tries!  I'm improving!), created and exported the UV map and did some preliminary coloring and lighting just to start getting the feel of how to re-compose the picture for 3D space.

I hit the render button...

...and I hit a brick wall titled "//Error: setParent: object 'renderView' not found."

Apparently it's a bug in the latest Maya.  A horribly frustrating bug.  Luckily a short google search yielded great results.  Found the fix here.

Hooray for the internet.

Earworm of the day:  Animaniac's Ballad of Magellan  Staying historically (semi)accurate through off-screen violence!

Turtles, Arowanas, Pirhanas

Went to the Shedd Aquarium today for the first time since I was... 4?  5?  Well, it's been over 12 years so it was time to go back.  We went out for brunch first though at this amazing place called Yolk.  The food was very good and Dad loved the coffee.  The aquarium was fun.  They had an exhibit about the amazon, which included some of the biggest freshwater fish I'd ever seen.  Forget trying to catch one with a fishing pole; they'd pull you under before you could reel them in.  There were also a lot of turtles.  We saw an aquatic show that featured white-sided dolphins and a talented sea-lion.  It was surprisingly short, but I guess it's best not to tire out the animals.

The sad thing was, most of the fish I knew the names of, I learned from facebook's Fish World game.  Well, you can't say I haven't learned anything.

On another topic:  When one is creating stuff, it's always good to check if it's been done before.  I can't say yet whether or not someone else is developing a tv-show with ninja hamsters, but I did find the game Ninja Hamsters vs Robots.  Now if only I can get past the 3rd level.

Earworm of the day: Wake Up by The Arcade Fire (because the Shedd uses it in their aquatic show).

The Importance of Having Backstory

I love making up wacky characters of various kinds.  It's one of my favorite things about writing.  Usually though a good character is something that springs to my mind by accident.  Most of my characters, when I first write them, are incredibly flat and it may take months or years to flesh them out into a person I'd want to write dialogue for.

This holds especially true for my character Beth, who is meant to be the protagonist of the story Animalburg.  I decided that in-story she was 12 years old (my Animalburg characters have human-esque life-spans) so I assumed that she would start the story a little flat, and gain characterization as I wrote.  But I could never put pen to paper.  The character bored me, and one can't write with a boring character.

The other day I got off task and created a truly out-there character named Cylee.  She's an 7 1/2 ft tall space alien with bright green fur.  She was born during a pivotal battle of a revolutionary uprising on her home planet.  She grew up in a world of cultural turmoil.  As an adult she took a job as a grunt on a space cargo-ship.  She's traveled all over the galaxy, picking up snatches of other languages, fashion ideas from other cultures, and married a space-age gunsmith.  Her best friend is an alien that looks like a porcupine dragon.  She has an attitude, shows affection shoving people around (getting various results depending on the size of the recipient), and she knows how to curse in 10 different languages (though she's only conversationally fluent in Kenlilia and Trade-standard).  Needless to say, she's very fun to write, especially when paired against my character Owl who is much smaller than her.  She tends to treat him like a child, much to his annoyance.

Cylee yanking Owl into a stairwell, and out of danger.

And then it hit me what was wrong with Beth:  I had never given her a back-story.  So, to start the thought process, I drew Beth as a three year old.

Now I have to figure out how she went from wearing pink and dragging around a blanket to wearing cargo shorts and aspiring to be a ninja.  This will indeed be fun.

Earworm for the day: Halo by Manic Drive

Rodent in Motion

The above is a short project I worked on over the weekend, trying to animate the walk-cycle of a cartoon mouse.  By no means is it a life-like walk; it's really very simplified and I think a mouse would have a much faster gait.  I'd imagine it almost like a quick trot.  Or perhaps the front legs trot while the back legs bounce like a rabbit.  It's impossible to find a good reference video.  I typed in "mouse walk" on YouTube.  I got 20 ways to sync sound effects to foot-falls.  I tried "mouse slow-motion".  I got 100 videos of small toys and lightbulbs being decimated by mousetraps in epic slow-mo.  (Why lightbulbs?  I'll never know.)

Between Mickey-mousing and shattered filaments, I did find this very talented rodent.  Unfortunately he is too quick, and the video is too poor quality, to actually get a reference from.

Speaking of references, I found a fascinating book with detailed drawings of various animal skulls from all angles.  The skull is the underlying reason (quite literally) to why heads of all vertebrates look the way they do.  The book was made for biology students, but it practically begs the 3D modeler to put a page in the scanner and create an bison or lion skull to add to their portfolio.  I'm debating weather to do so, and if so what animal to pick.  Decisions, decisions...

Earworm for the day:  I've got nothing.  Enjoy an annoying-song-free day.

The Battle to Keep On-Task

Woman walks in on a rat's birthday party.

Happy Friday everyone.  So far so good on my goal to keep this blog updated.

My plan is to post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from now until who knows when.  I want to have at least one link to an interesting web page in every post.  This does not count the earworm link.  That's just there because my brain is like an iPod shuffle.  In addition, I would like to post a picture or drawing once a week and an original video (aka made by me, not just swiped off YouTube) once a month.

We'll see how that goes.

I don't have any insightful musings for the day, but while digging through my bookmarks for a link to post I found Murphy's Rules of Combat.  Enjoy.

Earworm for the day: Chris August - Battle

Warning: science inside!

I am determined now.  I really must update this blog more regularly.  I've said it a billion times (well, maybe more like 3).  Anyway, this time I'm armed with a checklist.  Maybe that'll keep me motivated.  Praying about it too will probably help.

So anyway, a new school year has arrived and I'm back in the wild and windy city of Chicago.  I am adjusting to living on the 13th floor of a building.  This is one floor higher than the highest classroom I've ever been in (Business Ethics last winter).  The upside is there's always a breeze and a good view of the sunrise/sunset.  The downside is getting up and down efficiently.  Today, just for kicks, I took the stairs.  Going up.  I made it, but had to sit down and gasp for air upon arrival.  Never doing that again.  Well, unless I really want to get in shape...

One of my classes this quarter is Environmental Chemistry.  Awesome thing about college:  My teacher works for the EPA.  Scary thing about college: there's a door down the hall that says "WARNING: Radioactive Material Inside!"  Yeah.  There are actual bona-fide scientists doing relevant research in DePaul's facilities.  Just as long as no mutant animals go charging around the building, I'm all for it.

So back to chemistry class.  We're learning about air pollutants:  where they come from, what they're made of, and how specifically they damage our bodies and our stuff.  Being a college course, this involves some actual chemistry stuff, like Lewis structures and balancing reaction formulas and knowing that pure oxygen is typically diatomic and why it's typically diatomic.  And what "diatomic" means.

It occurred to me, while playing pyramid solitaire, that it would be really cool (and really educational) if all this chemical reaction stuff could be turned into a card game.  It would be simple really.  Turn the periodic groups into stats, be able to trade in element cards for compound cards, and vice-versa.  I almost mentioned it to my teacher today.  I'm kind of glad I didn't.  I went online first and googled "chemistry card game".

I found Elemento.  I totally want this for Christmas now.

And now I can put aside my idea for a card game and rest easy knowing that it's been done.  But not before I send this link to my teacher.

Earworm of the day-- Forget and not Slow Down: Relient K