The Chestnut Tree

A lovely animated short:

Domo-o-Lantern

Even though I have been in Canada for a long time, I have never made a jack-o-lantern. My family usually buy pumpkins but they always turn into soup before I can get a chance to carve it. Maybe it’s because the concept of playing with your food is still quite foreign to my parents. This year, the company that I am working in is having a pumpkin carving contest. It gave me a good excuse to tell everyone not to cook the pumpkin that I picked from the farm last weekend. Since I’m a beginner in pumpkin carving, I decided to make it into a Domo lantern since Domo has simple lines and I am confident that I can make it work. The fresh of the pumpkin is harder than I thought. It took me quite awhile to open up and clean up the pumpkin. Once the pumpkin was cleaned, the carving part went smoothly. I am pretty happy with the final result!

The pumpkin itself will not be edible anymore but I saved the pumpkin seeds so that I can make toasted pumpkin seeds. I remember having them at the Blackcreek Pioneer Village when I was on a school trip and they were quite delicious. By making this snack, at least part of the pumpkin can be eaten. I mixed a little bit of oil, salt and maple syrup to the dried pumpkin seeds and toasted them on a pan until they turn golden brown. I have to say they are pretty yummy.

When I am toasting the pumpkin seeds, it makes me wonder what kind of seeds are kwatji (瓜子), the red seeds that we usually eat during Chinese new year. My mom thinks that they might be seeds from watermelons but how would you harvest the seeds from the watermelons? I hope they don’t just collect the seeds that people spit out while they are having watermelons.

Marie-Antoinette’s Dress at the ROM

Marie-Antoinette’s Dress at the ROM.

The ROM is currently having a series of mini exhibits. Each month, they are showing one special item out of their vault for a few short weeks. For this month, they are showing one of Marie-Antoinette’s court dresses. The dress dates back to the 1780s and it was designed t be worn with the support of wide panniers under the garment. I am quite impressed that the detail silk floral embroidery on it is all done by hand. Even nowadays, with all the technological advancement, we can hardly find anything quite like it. The only thing that strikes me as being odd is that the dress seems to fit a rather small woman and I am definitely not tall.

Closeup of Marie-Antoinette’s Dress at the ROM.

Last night, the ROM was also showing the Hollywood version of the Marie-Antoinette movie to accompany the exhibit. For a half-priced Friday night admission, it is actually quite a good deal. However, the movie doesn’t quite live up to my expectation. The movie tries to show Marie-Antoinette as someone that is different than what she is being remembered. It portrays her as a lonely woman who might not understand the suffering of her people but she is more down to earth than our history books have portrayed her. Probably, this movie is a pretty good tour supplementary to Versailles as well since most of was shot in the real Versailles. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t have much of a story. It seems to be a rather elaborated music video. As the person who introduced the movie has said, it’s all about dresses, cakes, and shoes, then more dresses, cakes, and shoes. And I agree. That’s probably the main things that are interesting in the movie.

Curtains in Marie-Antoinette’s bedroom in Versailles.

Want to see the dress? You better hurry since the dress will only be on display till October 26. If you miss that, you might need to fly to France to see something similar.

My Very First Gelaskin!

The Gelaskin that I ordered last week has finally arrived in my mailbox. Hurray! I have always been skeptical about sticking anything on my electronics because glue tends to melt overtime and leave a nasty mess on the shiny surface. Why a sudden change of heart? Well, there are quite a few coworkers of mine who have purchased them before and they are really pretty. If you have seen those neat graphics on gelaskin.com, I’m sure you will change your mind as well.

You can see some of the skins in this video:

The skin works perfectly on my ipod touch. I like how it occupies only the back and leave the screen area untouched. The ipod touch itself has a sleek design. I rather it keeps part of its character. You can even download matching wallpaper on their website too!

張君雅小妹妹 – Everyone Says Good Good Eat

I am a sucker for snacks and cute packaging. Snacks in pretty packaging are simply resistible which leads to the occasional unfortunately disgusting snacks. But I guess I finally got lucky! I bought this Taiwanese snack called 張君雅小妹妹 which is basically fried noodles reshaped into little smalls. The idea is very similar to the Japanese version of Baby Star Crispy Noodle Snack but the Taiwanese version is easier to eat. And the best part is the packaging is really cute! I love the puffy face girl. You can even download emoticons from its website. How can you not love a snack that comes with cute emoticons?

This commercial is kind of cute too:

Where Are All The Apples?

In my family, Thanksgiving weekend usually means that it is time for apple picking. I really love seeing abundance of red apples hanging on trees, waiting to be picked by their lucky new found owner. Unfortunately, the trees were bare this year and all the apples have fallen on the ground. While I couldn’t pick any apples on my own, I still enjoy this mini trip to the Applewood Winery and Farm. The thanksgiving weekend was blessed with unbelievably warm weather. It was delightful just to walk around and see the beautiful fall foliage. The pick your own apple activity was turned into treasure hunting. Little kids were running all over the orchid to look for the rare apple that was still hanging onto the trees. I found a few red delicious but they were not my favourite kind. I might as well leave them to the kids, so that at least they could have some fun. However, you can’t really leave a farm without buying any food. That would turn into a 100 mile of nothing and I will be haunted by the ghost of global warming. Instead of freshly picked apples, I picked a plump pumpkin for carving and bought some honey, apple cider and the specially brewed Crazy 8 raspberry apple cider. Yummy! As for freshly picked apples, I better go earlier next year!

Kiefer Sutherland in a Japanese Commercial???

24 is a pretty good show but putting Jack (Kiefer Sutherland) inside a Japanese commercial selling energy bar, Calorie Mate, is kind of strange. Don’t believe me? See it for yourself:

PHP.js

I love PHP but I hate javascript. However, what do you do when there’s no choice? Well, I have found this site. It has over 170 php functions that are converted to javascript. This site is very handy for people who are used to the php syntax. Even a simple php urlencode function can be turned into a nightmare if it’s written in javascript and I am glad that these scripts have saved me a lot of time.

Saving Word Document as PDF

I have just got a new computer recently. While I am very happy with a newer, faster, prettier computer, installing all my softwares back to the computer is such a pain. I have just realized I can no longer save my word document as pdf and I had no idea what I did to my last computer in order to add that functionality. If my memory is correct, I have probably added the Adobe Reader Professional or something similar but I have no idea where did the software go. Fortunately, a search on the internet gave me this link. I have immediately installed the plugin and it works like a charm without spending a penny.

African Miracle Berry

Imagine a fruit that can turn anything sour or bitter into something sweet. With that, we will finally be able to eat those blend “healthy” food without showing a long face. Good news is that this miracle fruit actually exist and it was discovered by an explorer, Chevalier des Marchais, in 1725 during an excursion to the native West Africa. The fruit can turn sour lemon juice into delicious lemonade. Unfortunately, the attempt to commercialize the fruit failed miserably. It is believed that the research was sabotaged with the sugar industry in order to prevent loss of business caused by a drop in demand for sugar. We are not sure whether the accusation is true or not. However, maybe it’s not a bad thing afterall since while the fruit changes the perception of taste, it does not change the food’s chemistry. Excessive amount of acidic food can cause oral ulcers. Also, as discovered by the Toronto Star’s test kitchen, it can also turn perfectly good wine into a super sweet and yucky concoction.

There is a great video on the Toronto Star website about this great fruit. You can watch it by visiting this link: http://www.thestar.com/fpLarge/video/509122.