Category: Art

Posted on

Chicken Taco Salad

I’ve been having fun with time-lapse videos lately. Here’s one of me making Chicken Taco Salad from this evening. All ingredients can be substituted as per what you have and how much you like it. This recipe was basically me just eyeballing it.

Recipe:

two large chicken breasts
1/2 cup corn (I used corn on the cob)
a head of romaine lettuce
1 tomato
1 avocado
1 cucumber
a couple handfuls of nacho chips
some grated cheese
a couple dollops of plain yogurt
an equal amount of your favourite salsa

Cook chicken until brown and reaching an internal temperature of at least 74°C. Mix the rest of the ingredients and serve.

Posted on

Rice Crispy Squares

Looking for a super-easy treat for the next potluck you attend? There’s nothing easier then rice crispy squares.

Enjoy:

3 table spoons butter
1 package (about 40) large marshmallows (or 4 cups of mini marshmallows)
6 cups rice crispies

1. In large saucepan melt butter over low heat. Add marshmallows and stir until completely melted. Remove from heat.

2. Add rice crispies cereal. Stir until well coated.

3. Using buttered spatula or wax paper evenly press mixture into 13 x 9 x 2-inch pan coated with cooking spray. Cool. Cut into 2-inch squares. Best if served the same day.

Posted on

Ooey Goey Puffed Wheat Squares

If you like Puff Wheat Squares, you are going to love these.
I got the recipe from http://www.mennonitegirlscancook.ca/2009/10/ooey-gooey-chocolatey-puff-wheat-squares.html and modified it slightly. This version uses 2 cups less puffed wheat and substitutes in 2 cups of corn flakes. You can do it either way.

Ingredients
8 cups puffed wheat
2 cups Corn Flakes
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup corn syrup
1 cup white sugar
6 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions
Combine butter, corn syrup, sugars and cocoa powder in a heavy saucepan.
Bring to a boil. (Very important)
Remove from heat and add vanilla.
Pour over puffed wheat
Mix well and press into a greased 9 x 13 pan.

Posted on

Barton Fink

After many years seeing it top lists of the Cohen Bros. best movies I finally saw Barton Fink streaming on Netflix and decided to watch it for the first time.

When it was done, I thought to myself — as many viewers of the movie apparently have, what was that all about? Luckily in 2018 I can do what viewers in 1991 (when the movie came out) could not do: Google it.

And to my delight, this Medium Article popped up, “Writers Come and Go”: 10 Reasons Why Barton Fink Is the Best Movie Ever Made About Writing.

Every semester, I show my Creative Writing 1 students the 1991 Coen Brothers film Barton Fink. Those students who are foolish enough to enroll in Creative Writing 2 (and unlucky enough to have me again for a teacher) watch it a second time in that course. Students always ask: “Why are we watching this?” This is a good question — I encourage my students to seek answers, and questioning authority has been my modus operandi since I was a child. I’m happy to discuss all of this.
[…]
Barton’s ego is the villain of this story. So convinced is he of his genius that he becomes blind to the desperate needs of everyone around him — Charlie, WP Mayhew, and Audrey. He fails to see his art as a tool to improve the world, and instead sees it only as a means of attracting praise. Therefore he fails as a writer. I don’t want my students to follow in his footsteps.

The movie is excellent and made all the better after reading the above analysis.

I wish I were a decent writer. This web page is about the closest thing I have for an outlet and I’m lucky if I can just whip something up once a month to kid myself into thinking this blog isn’t completely dead. Maybe this movie will be the inspiration I need to get back into blogging. Or maybe this entry will sit on the front page for the next year, symbolizing my own Barton Fink like writing block.

Posted on

Stairway to Heaven Copyright Trial Appeal

The battle over “Stairway to Heaven” will rage on for at least one more chapter as the copyright infringement case heads to a federal appeals court. Rolling Stone Magazine has the details.

At the crux of the “Stairway” lawsuit is the accusation that the IV classic copies a riff found on Spirit’s instrumental “Taurus,” which predates the 1971 single. In his appeal, Malifoy wrote that the jury did not find the two songs “substantially similar” because they were not permitted to hear the version of “Taurus” that Jimmy Page allegedly ripped off.

(via)

Posted on

Iconography

Lately, I’ve been taking part in online courses from the Adobe Education Exchange. My latest class, Graphics and Illustration, asked us to represent a movie using just four simple icons. Here’s my attempt:

A perfectly round green hobbit door, the one ring, the lonely mountain, and Smaug the Dragon

This assignment was a lot of fun. At first I wondered what I could possibly make but then instead of worrying about picking a story that would be too hard to make icons for, I just thought of a story that I really liked and went for it.

I wanted to keep all of the line sizes the same but when I got to the dragon in the forth icon, I ran into issues with such thick lines in a small place and decided to have secondary lines at half the thickness. I like how it turned out.

Update: I was just recognized with a “Special Mention” award for notable artwork in this week’s class. I’m very excited because it’s something that I’ve been striving to achieve.

Adobe Weekly Winner icon

Update: I updated the image so that Smaug is a red dragon. I’m not sure how I missed that when I originally created the images.

Posted on

Attack of the Drones

A few weeks ago, my brother Gary invited me to go with him to the Calgary drone fair. I left before him and found out later that he came home with a brand-new Phantom IV drone. I tried flying it yesterday for the first time.