Showing posts with label genious. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genious. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Computer Fun

A while ago I was looking through the software that came bundled with my laptop, and I came across something called "LightScribe." I hadn't heard of that before, but it turned out to be this crazy feature that uses the laser in your CD burner to print labels onto specially manufactured blank CD's:

Original and backup copies of CD

This was my first time using it, and I guess the results are about what you'd expect. It took a full 20 minutes to print a label that was mostly empty space, the color is a dull gray on khaki, and I paid $15 for 20 of the special CD-R's, which I think is what blank CD's cost in like 1998. But it does actually work, and even the smaller type came out nice and crisp.

Really I'm just happy that this kind of goofy invention gets made. It reminds me of Thunderscan, the product where you replaced your ImageWriter's ribbon cartridge with an optical sensor to turn it into a scanner.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Non-water liquids as beverage media.

I've had this idea before that one could make a cape codder with extra cranberry flavor by starting with pure cranberry juice and diluting it to drinking strength with vodka rather than water. The resulting drink would be as flavorful as a regular cranberry juice cocktail and as alcoholic as a normal bar cocktail. You might want to add some sugar as well.

Anyway, my lover and I were recently discussing coffee brewing. She was a big proponent of brewing methods that keep the coffee hot, so that it doesn't end up being too cold after you add a lot of milk. One solution is to steam or otherwise heat up the milk before you stir it in.

I was mulling this over, so to speak, and it struck me that you could do something similar to my cape codder variation, brewing the coffee directly in hot milk (or a milk/water mixture) rather than water.

You would probably want to use a manual drip brewer or French press so you don't have to worry about getting old milk all up in a machine that's not easy to clean. Then just heat some milk up on the stove and pour it in. You could even try milk in a Moka pot.

This approach is preferable to water brewing and adding cold milk in that it doesn't cool off the final beverage. It is preferable to heating up milk separately in that it only requires one heating step. And it is preferable to either in that it does not dilute the coffee.