Baldr

Yesterday, I went and picked up my new puppy. My puppy is a purebred Saint Bernard with strong champion ancestry from Conifer Creek Farm in Rough and Ready, CA.

After a great deal of consideration, I have decided to name my puppy Baldr, after the Norse God commonly associated with light and goodness. I had previously been considering Heimdallr and Odin but Heimdallr sounded too cumbersome and the breeder, a very friendly man by the name of David McKague, related to me the story of a Saint Bernard named Odin who had been nothing but trouble. As much as I like to be contrarian and see Baldr as a bit like the Jesus of the Norse, it really is a good name. Baldr was often called Baldr the Good for a reason and I think that it's a very respectable and good sounding name for a dog.

I will post pictures as soon as soon as I get an xD card for the camera a friend gave me or am able to get someone else to take some pictures for me.

A Non-Purists Perfect Frozen Margarita

Having experimented with margarita preparation a bit this weekend, I feel that I have come up with a perfect recipe for a non-purists margarita. Feeling as I do about cocktail preparation, I have foregone the use of the abominations that are premade margarita mixes but as pure as my cocktail preparation intentions are, my recipe does not make use of freshly squeezed lime, so I cannot truly consider it a proper margarita recipe. That said, I think the results do speak for themselves:

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup Tequila

  • 3/4 cup Triple Sec

  • 1 cup (half can) frozen Limeade Concentrate

  • Ice

  • Margarita Salt

Preparation:

In a 2 liter blender, combine Tequila, Triple Sec and Limeade Concentrate. Add enough Ice to fill blender. Cover and blend. Serve in glass rimmed with margarita salt. (To rim a glass with margarita salt, take two wide, flat bowls, fill one with 1/4 inch water and the other with 1/4 inch margarita salt, then dip a glass, rim first, in the water followed by the salt)

Variations:

As variations on the above recipe, the Triple Sec may be replaced with any orange liqueur. Blue Curaçao, for example, will make for an equally tasty but very blue margarita. Of course, Grand Marnier or any other orange liqueur is also acceptable.

The Great Card Catalogue Project

About a week ago, I undertook the project of cataloguing my Magic: The Gathering card collection and I finally finished earlier today. I am using a program called Magic Suitcase to do my cataloguing. The goal is to improve improve my awareness of what cards I have and my ability to construct decks. Having completed my cataloguing endeavor, I am now able to use the application to get statistical information on my collection. Following is a spattering of information about my collection:

Total Cards: 10,886

Gold: 97
Artifacts: 725
White: 1677
Blue: 1665
Black: 1690
Red: 1692
Green: 1667

Lands: 1699
Artifacts: 725
Creatures: 4194
Enchantments: 2006
Sorceries: 750
Instants: 1511

Rare: 522
Uncommon: 2175
Common: 8189

There, that ought to be far more information than you wanted as regards my Magic card collection.

Sunset on Neptune

(updated )

I've invented a new cocktail, which I've decided to call the Sunset on Neptune because it's blue, red and pretty. The drink looks different depending on what direction you look at it from and your lighting conditions, ranging from light blue, to deep violet, to dark red. In addition to its fantastic aesthetic qualities, the Sunset on Neptune is a very tasty and fairly alcoholic orange/grenadine flavored beverage. The ingredients are as follows and there are a few different ways to make it: (all quantities are approximate and should be varied to personal tastes)

  • 1 part Vodka

  • 1 part Blue Curacao

  • 2 parts orange juice soda (Polar Orange Dry, Orangina, or the like; not orange soda)

  • 1/2 part Grenadine

Take a glass full of ice (preferably large cubes) and pour in the vodka. Add the orange juice soda and stir. Add the Blue Curacao to the mixture; now if you stir, the mixture will be blue, but it you don't there will be a thin green/orange layer on top with a slightly different flavor. Now, slowly pour the Grenadine into the mixture; if you stir now, the drink will be purple but, if you don't stir, you will have a red layer at the bottom and a blue layer on top. If you decide not to stir the Curacao or Grenadine layers, you'll get a really neat red/violet/blue/green/orange/etc. thing going with a nice flavor gradient as well. Overall, I'm fantastically pleased with the concoction and would love to hear feedback from other people.

Also, I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that the same thing can be done with orange juice instead of orange juice soda and I'm going to go ahead and coin that Neptune's Screwdriver.

Oh, and if you've got a better name, I'm not married to Sunset on Neptune.

From the land of ASCII

(updated )

And out of nowhere, 3D ASCII art:

         ,---------,               ,---------
       ,/|       ,/|            ,-'|      ,-|
     ,/  |     ,/  |         ,-'   |   ,-'  |
     ----+----'    |         ------+--'     |
    |    |    |    |        |      |  |     |
    |    |    |    |        |      |  |     |
    |    |    |    |        |      |  |     |
    |    *----+----|        |      *--+-----|
    |  ,/     |  ,/         |   ,-'   |   ,-'
    |,/       |,/           |,-'      |,-'
     ---------'              ---------'

Yeah, I know it's not that great, but I was staring at a whole bunch of text a bit ago and I started wondering if you could do half decent 3D with ASCII art. Consider it an unpolished proof-of-concept. Oh and if it's turning up as a pile of gobbledy-gook, you need to change your browsers monospace font to be an actual monospace font.