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sqbr: pretty purple pi (I like pi!)
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 11:52 am
Because I'm an idiot I didn't get my camera until the last full day of the con so have almost not photos. But what I did get was Rob and Lise's awesome Molecular Gastronomy Hour. It reminded me a bit of Kitchen Chemistry.

The main star was Sodium Alginate. That post has the main gist, so briefly:
Sodium alginate is a flavourless gelling agent which forms a harder gel in contact with calcium.
We put a mix of cream and yogurt into unflavoured sodium alginate gel and got, well...a mushy mess. But in theory the gel covered milk balls sound cool :)

We then got a syringe of coke gel and dripped it into calcium chloride and made teeny little salty sweet balls. They needed more rinsing than we could manage so looked better than they tasted but again, the idea is cool :)

(The panel also included a comparison of banana smoothies with and without xanthum gum, but since I can't eat any of the ingredients but the banana and it just looked like banana smoothies didn't record that bit)
sqbr: And yet all I can think is this will make for a great livejournal entry. (livejournal)
Friday, January 23rd, 2009 07:56 pm
One of those things which I've been linked to intermittently and finally gone "Oh, wait, this is cool!": http://www.illdoctrine.com/ the video blog of Jay Smooth, a very cool slightly nerdy hip-hop artist who talks about all sorts of things in a really engaging, intelligent, entertaining way.

..and is also very cute *cough*

As someone with a small soft spot for hip-hop I don't like the way hip-hop culture tends to be portrayed, part of me feels rather uncomfortable with the way that say Nerdcore sets itself up in false dichotomy with "real" hip-hop artists who are assumed to never be nerdy etc themselves. (Which is not to say that's all there is to nerdcore etc, just that I get that vibe sometimes)

And now for something completely different: Really cool viral ad for watchmen in the form of a 1970s tv broadcast, via [livejournal.com profile] sonictail. You know even if this movie totally sucks, it will be worth it for stuff like this and the vid material. (I've been an Alan Moore fan long enough to set very low standards for a "good" adaptation)

Finally, as someone with (relatively minor) accessibility issues I was also a bit uncomfortable about all the people crowing about Dick Cheney being in a wheelchair. I wasn't sure I could be bothered posting about it and lo! Deconstructing Cheney's De-Inaugural Wheelchair does it for me. Life is good.

(1st and 3rd links via [livejournal.com profile] sparkymonster who's lj I randomly clicked to from somewhere totally unrelated)
sqbr: pretty purple pi (I like pi!)
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 03:58 pm
And now I start remathsifying I can't stop myself...


Last two links via [livejournal.com profile] sassamifrass.

(*)And they have a special theorem just for her birthday. She has a lot of maths cred :)
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