A woman taking a photo of her son with her cell phone, in Lausanne.

Thanksgiving

Being from the old continent, I don't really celebrate Thanksgiving. we have other feasts here, involving more interesting things than turkeys, such as pig's intestines or goose livers. Still, today the sudden urge struck me to hop on the wagon, as it were, and put something thanksgivensh up, so here is my most favourite video celebrating Thanksgiving:

Thanks, o Addams Family!

Batpigeon

The thing is, you never think much about all the pigeons watching Batman these days. Or did you, recently? Did you ponder the psychological effects of immersing the flight-capable descendants of the dinosaurs in a fictional world where a deranged multimillionaire is imitating the flapping source of his childhood trauma in a futile quest for justice? Didn't think so.

Oh, it'll be all right, we say. Let the poor, disease-ridden blighters have their fun - what else do they have between poisoned pigeon-food and anti-pigeon spikes? What harm can it do?

What harm can it do? Well, have a gander at this:

Yes, this is a deranged pigeon, thinking it is batman. And while one, lonely schizophrenic pigeon might be pitiful, or even funny in a sad, retarded way, think about how you feel when hordes of vigilante pigeons descend on the streets in a psychotic frenzy. How many pigeons are there in your city? Have a look outside. Look into their beady little eyes, judging you. And ask yourself: How much does a pigeon know about the concept of justice? Do you want it to act as your judge, jury and executioner? Do you?

Emotions: Joy, or: Modern Faerie

In my series of emotions (previously: surprise, rage, sadness and fear), I proudly present : Modern Faerie.

Life in the city is hard for faeries, and some fail to... adapt. Seeking solace in drugs, those poor creatures normally don't make it for long, and clapping your hands won't work here.

This is a drawing I've wanted to do for ages, but never felt up to. But when joy came up as a motive in my drawing course, I knew the time had come. Inked with a Pentel pocket brush on A4 paper, I am quite happy with how it turned out. Credit for the idea with the newspaper-wings goes to my teacher Julien.

In case you are curious about the process, here is a scan of the pencil drawing  I subsequently inked. Unfortunately I don't have any of the many preliminary sketches I did before, but I think I did at least eight before settling on this perspective and composition.

I was thinking of doing the same image in charcoal and chalk, but I think I will work on something different instead.

I feel like a scientist now

Pictured: Science

My first paper has been published:

Radio frequency breakdown between structured parallel plate electrodes with a millimetric gap in low pressure gases,

in Physics of Plasmas no less! It's the culmination of most of the stuff I did in the last three years, with maybe a second, more applied paper to follow next year.

If you really want to read it (and, frankly, who wouldn't?), but can't because you don't have access to Physics of Plasmas and don't want to shell out the thirty or so dollars they demand (shame on you! shame!), email me and I'll send you a pdf. Go on, email me! How else will you know how to properly construct your dark-space shielding?

Leather and drugs

I am back! Survived a brief bout of the flu - it must have been the Parisian flu, since I first felt ill at the conference in Paris. I didn't want to miss anything of the rather excellent conference, so I showed the flu who is boss, by eating copious amounts of paracetamol, ibuprofen and aspirin. This worked, to a degree, until I came back, laid off the drugs and was struck down by the Revenge of the Flu. Ugh.

But now I am better, and yesterday I spent four hours sewing. A year ago my favourite leather jacket's zipper broke, and yesterday the stars were finally right (Gliese 581 must be in just the right place in Librae for leather work!). I purchased a new zipper, a leather needle and set to work - you can see the result on the right. It works, and turned out less ugly than I had feared - everybody wins! Well except the old zipper. I tossed that bastard faster than you can say Gliese 581g may or may not exist.

Bollocks to this...

...I am off to Paris, to the 63rd Gaseous Electronics Conference. There may be some physics-related posts in the near future.

Sous vide, pork

I made a 24 hour pork roast yesterday (despite RelaxMax's disapproval) - my thanks go to Frank who informed me on how to rise the temperature of a rice cooker: just wrap it in a towel, since the warm setting has no temperature control, depending on the thermal properties of the cooker to reach its temperature.

Wrapping the rice cooker in a towel raised the temperature to 64 degrees Celsius. I seasoned the pork roast with some rosemary and thyme, and left it in its zip-lock back to stew for a day. Then I seared its outside in my trusty cast-iron pan (a roast is a bit too large to comfortably sear with my blowtorch). Very tender.

Sous vide, first try

I've been wanting to try out sous vide cooking for the longest time, unfortunately my kitchen is just too small to fit a water bath in. But recently I had a sudden brain storm - the rice cooker I recently bought has two different settings, cook and warm. And the warm setting maintains a temperature of 57 degrees Celsius. Perfect for a medium rare steak, but just too low for poultry. Yet a bit of experimentation showed that I could use the cook setting and a digital thermometer to set the temperature to, say, 63 degrees, and then the warm cycle would maintain it for two hours, easily. So I bought some turkey fillets and voilà:

Seal them into a zip-lock bag with some salt, pepper and herbs, drop it into the water and wait for two hours. The meat comes out delicious and tender. But Boris, I can hear you scream, what about the delicious Maillard reactions you get in a pan, the crunchy brown bits that impart so much of the flavour? Well, fear not, gentle reader: Enter my favourite kitchen tool, the blowtorch:

This is cooking the way I like it

Mmmh. Don't let the awful white-balance fool you, that piece of dead turkey was scrumptious.

Lab safety

I recently noticed that an important safety feature was missing from our lab, so I rushed to supply it:

Note the red tassel. 'Raptors despise red tassels, true fact.

Do you know how many casualties per year there are, due to people getting sucked into space-time warps and having no arms to defend themselves against the lizard-men of dimension X? Or dinosaurs? Do you?

Didn't think so. You'll thank me when all that stands between you and a pack of hungry 'raptors is your trusty lab-spear. Here is a close-up of the safety-sign I made - you are welcome to use it in your own lab. Just don't forget to replace the safety spear if one of your colleagues has been sucked into the warp.

Sunrise in Quy Nhon

It is a great injustice that the best light and the best colours happen at sunrise. You'd think sunset would have the same effect, but no. Dawn is where it's at, mostly because the gods hate photographers.

Half past fucking four in the morning, Quy Nhon, Vietnam

Of course, everybody else and their grandma is already up and chipper

Why not jog in the pre-dawn light? Why not stick a fork in your eye while you are at it?

The sky, it is mocking me.

I'd say a mellow yellow, only it is still not even bloody 5 am

To add insult to injury, the first morning I misjudged the time and trudged down 10 minutes too late. This is, of course, the time where the sky shows you the fading remnants of the most awesome colours ever, just to mock you. Thank you, sky of Vietnam.
But! There is a way to trick the forces of nature - just stay up until sunrise. Of course, you will be too drunk to take any good photos, although you'll think you are snapping the next Pulitzer. Oh well... back in the hammock.

More brush pen

Blame Stephanie, who encouraged me when I posted my first sketch...

More imagery from Vietnam, the photo I based it on can be found here.

Brush pen

Tried out a brush pen yesterday, below you can see a quick 2 minute sketch of a guy in a rice field. Very interesting way to draw, since you can't correct anything.

crappy iphone picture of hasty sketch

Edit: Rotated picture, added link to original



- tales from the road

Nasobem

Ah, the Nasobem. Scant records exist of this elusive species, which is rumoured to persist in the Mekong-delta in Vietnam. Unfortunately I did not manage to see it when I was in Vietnam, although I did hear a curious snuffling noise in the underbrush once. Might have been a Nazgul, though. I did find this depiction on a piece of parchment in an old pagoda near Cần Thơ:

An octopus doing in the brackish waters of the Mekong?
You just can't trust those ancient sources.