In late 2012, I moved to the UK. I came here on exchange to Middlesex University in London from the University of New Orleans. I was in school for Film there, but lucky for me, Middlesex had a TV Production Tech Arts course that would give me film credits in the US. That's what I thought. That was the credit equivalency, but my transcript wasn't received by UNO in time for me to be awarded financial aid. I have always relied on financial aid to stay in school since I had no college savings and had a pretty irregular income.
Oh well. While in the UK, I also got married, which meant I could return here once I was certain I couldn't finish school. I do hope to finish school eventually, but it still seems like a waste, $13,000 for one year of out of state internet college. It took me a while to decide I'm definitely finishing it one day, but I know I will, unless I become some sort of bum instead.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Thursday, December 19, 2013
New Arthropoda Layout
So, I recently changed the name of my blog to Arthropoda. The only people who would know this are those still following me. Those people, few or none, are the only ones who might notice, or they might not if they're the type to subscribe to a hundred blogs. They probably are that type. I never told anyone I know personally about this blog. That used to be because I just wanted to talk about anything here and describe my inner feelings. I'm still probably going to do that a little, but in a more structured way. "Arthropoda" is the name of a real project I've been planning for years and will be the name of my insect cookbook. A few other insect cookbooks exist, but unlike those, this one will not be centered around novelty. Some other insect cookbooks that exist are these:
Eat-a-bug is all novelty. Look at that cover! How much more sensational can you get? Sure, it's fun if you're not taking it seriously, and that's fine, but I guess mine will be for a more serious demographic.
Creepy Crawly Cuisine is definitely better. It's still a little dependent on novelty, but again, that does make it a fun read for people not totally serious about eating bugs.
I'm not saying novelty is a bad thing at all. It gets people interested. But, a book needs more than novelty to be actually useful. Both of these books do have good facts. Eat-a-bug doesn't take itself seriously at all, which bothers me if only because it means people who read that book probably won't begin to take culinary insects seriously either. Creepy Crawly Cuisine is nice because it never really seems to be joking at its own expense (taking the piss! I'm not British). There are so many great tables of nutrition information, distribution, and more! And, the recipes are interesting and actually take into consideration the flavor of the insect with the other ingredients used. The best Eat-a-bug does is add bugs to existing foods somewhat willy nilly. The only real issue with Creepy Crawly Cuisine is that it isn't very accessible to people who aren't ready to get super serious about cooking with bugs. The recipes are incredibly diverse, so much so that a different type of insect is used in almost every recipe, and some of them are pretty hard to obtain. That's okay, no points off! It's great that a book like this exists in the first place, and variety is great. It just means the people between demographics have trouble getting started. How do they know they'll like this sort of thing at all? Should they first try Stink Bugs in Green Sauce or a Teclates Omelette? It can be a little intimidating. What I want to do is make a book that isn't at all intimidating but is still totally serious about the subject. I want to figure out lots of recipes with easy stuff like crickets, mealworms, and waxworms (all of these happen to be favorite ingredients at the Audubon Insectarium in New Orleans, where I read these two books and first got some experience cooking bugs). I don't want to mask the flavor of the bugs like how Eat-a-bug seems to try to do, but actually use them as a real ingredient that deserves to exist in the culinary world.
Blogger has a really low limit on image size for a background, so this web thing is the best I could figure out how to do in a day. If there's some secret to it, feel free to let me know what it is. I have great potential backgrounds, but they all look awful or have to be tiled if I'm going below whatever it was, 300 KB I believe. When I first found this blog again last week, my old layout was pretty fucked, bad formatting and broken widgets everywhere.
Eat-a-bug is all novelty. Look at that cover! How much more sensational can you get? Sure, it's fun if you're not taking it seriously, and that's fine, but I guess mine will be for a more serious demographic.
Creepy Crawly Cuisine is definitely better. It's still a little dependent on novelty, but again, that does make it a fun read for people not totally serious about eating bugs.
I'm not saying novelty is a bad thing at all. It gets people interested. But, a book needs more than novelty to be actually useful. Both of these books do have good facts. Eat-a-bug doesn't take itself seriously at all, which bothers me if only because it means people who read that book probably won't begin to take culinary insects seriously either. Creepy Crawly Cuisine is nice because it never really seems to be joking at its own expense (taking the piss! I'm not British). There are so many great tables of nutrition information, distribution, and more! And, the recipes are interesting and actually take into consideration the flavor of the insect with the other ingredients used. The best Eat-a-bug does is add bugs to existing foods somewhat willy nilly. The only real issue with Creepy Crawly Cuisine is that it isn't very accessible to people who aren't ready to get super serious about cooking with bugs. The recipes are incredibly diverse, so much so that a different type of insect is used in almost every recipe, and some of them are pretty hard to obtain. That's okay, no points off! It's great that a book like this exists in the first place, and variety is great. It just means the people between demographics have trouble getting started. How do they know they'll like this sort of thing at all? Should they first try Stink Bugs in Green Sauce or a Teclates Omelette? It can be a little intimidating. What I want to do is make a book that isn't at all intimidating but is still totally serious about the subject. I want to figure out lots of recipes with easy stuff like crickets, mealworms, and waxworms (all of these happen to be favorite ingredients at the Audubon Insectarium in New Orleans, where I read these two books and first got some experience cooking bugs). I don't want to mask the flavor of the bugs like how Eat-a-bug seems to try to do, but actually use them as a real ingredient that deserves to exist in the culinary world.
Blogger has a really low limit on image size for a background, so this web thing is the best I could figure out how to do in a day. If there's some secret to it, feel free to let me know what it is. I have great potential backgrounds, but they all look awful or have to be tiled if I'm going below whatever it was, 300 KB I believe. When I first found this blog again last week, my old layout was pretty fucked, bad formatting and broken widgets everywhere.
Monday, December 16, 2013
Starbound
Starbound is a cool game. My character is one of those fin people, Hylotl, and her name is Phinneus. Whenever I have to quickly think of a name for something, it almost always is a pun. The first sword I found was a red one that looked like the front of the Hylotl ship, a red jagged tooth upper jaw with an eye.
My first impression of Starbound animals was that they were very similar to pokemon, with the obvious exception that you can't catch and keep them. They look extremely varied and use attacks in a similar way, and most of these attacks correspond to high powered pokemon attacks (Body Slam, Bubblebeam, etc).
My first impression of Starbound animals was that they were very similar to pokemon, with the obvious exception that you can't catch and keep them. They look extremely varied and use attacks in a similar way, and most of these attacks correspond to high powered pokemon attacks (Body Slam, Bubblebeam, etc).
Friday, December 13, 2013
Back?
Just a minute ago, I was on Facebook when I saw something about fat-pie.com. That reminded me of http://meadowman.blogspot.co.uk/, which I haven't checked in a very long time. There wasn't anything new to me there, but I realized that last post was done about the same time as my last post here.
We're supposed to assume that project is ongoing, even if we don't get updates for years. That post was done so long ago, but we're supposed to believe the Meadow Man isn't dead. Why then should I give this up, even if I have almost nothing to say for years? I had much less to say before than I probably do now, but I still did posts every month or so, boring as they were. Should I do posts again, given I have no readers? I never had any, but I never assumed I would someday or wouldn't forever. Am I such a different person now that I can't come back?
One day I will finish everything I have started and then have a little sleep. Then I will start a set of new projects and keep people waiting again. I shall repeat this until I die.
We're supposed to assume that project is ongoing, even if we don't get updates for years. That post was done so long ago, but we're supposed to believe the Meadow Man isn't dead. Why then should I give this up, even if I have almost nothing to say for years? I had much less to say before than I probably do now, but I still did posts every month or so, boring as they were. Should I do posts again, given I have no readers? I never had any, but I never assumed I would someday or wouldn't forever. Am I such a different person now that I can't come back?