- 2 baseball-size squash  (chopped large)
- 1 clove garlic (chopped fine)
- 1 cup of Quaker oats
- 3 medium-sized mushrooms (Button or Baby Portabellas) – chopped small
- 1 Jalapeno pepper (chopped fine)
- 1/2 cup tomato (chopped small)
- 1/2 cup cucumber (chopped small)
- Salt/Pepper to taste

Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 30 mins
Serves: 3-4 people

1. Start by steaming the squash until it’s tender, about 10 minutes.

2. Once the squash is tender, mash it in a bowl with a potato masher until it’s broken down.

3. Add the garlic, mushrooms, pepper, and oatmeal. Stir until thoroughly mixed. The Jalapeno pepper will give the dish some heat, so depending on how hot you want it to taste, you can use a whole pepper, half, or just leave it out altogether. Remember, including the membrane and seeds will make the dish hotter. I used a whole pepper without the membrane/seeds for a nice heat, but not overwhelming.

4. Put mixture in a casserole dish, bake at 350° for 30 mins.

To serve, scoop a large spoonful on a plate and top it with the chopped tomato and cucumber. When you eat it, be sure to get a bit of tomato and cucumber with each bite. The taste and crunch go well together.

I think this is also a good base recipe to make your own creations. Add whatever you want and see how it comes out. Let me know the outcome.

Enjoy!

After I found the photo to use, I took a look at the shape of her face.  I decided to mirror one side of her face instead of using the original photo.  The left image below is the left side of the photo mirrored; the right side is the right side mirrored.

There wasn’t a whole lot of difference between the two, but I liked the way her chin looked in the right side mirror image.  It had more of a long, slender shape, better suited for the picture I had in my head.  Next came the shadowing and slight redefining of her facial features, especially the eyes.  I added some lighting and shadow around the eye sockets and blackened the eyeballs/pupils.

Next came the textures and more shadows.  The texture was actually a combination of two images…one of blue and green snakeskin I created in Photoshop.  The other was a dirt pattern to give the face a bit more of a rough and textured look.  I also added some red highlighting on the forehead to give the face a little more interest and depth.  Initially, the alien was female, so I added a shade of red to the lips to give it a more feminine appearance.

After watching a webisode by Bert Monroy, it gave me the idea to add some hair. There are about five layers of hair.  There’s a layer behind the blue lighting to give it a highlighted effect.  And several layers on top for the different hair colors along with more highlights and shadows.  I also added more shading in the face and gave the lips a green tint…a typical male in this alien civilization.  Click the image for a larger view.

In light of my recent interest with infographics, I decided to create one based on a census that Crayola conducted in 2000 to find America’s favorite Crayola color.  Over 25,000 people participated and below are the results broken down by kids, adults, women, and men.  Who knew blue was such a popular color across the board?

See the results for yourself here.

It also gives you the option to enter a username from a delicious account. It then creates a cloud from all the tags used in the account.  The larger sized tags are used more often, similar to your typical tag cloud.

These are the tags in my account, so I appropriately named this The Web Designer.  Pretty cool!

Take a look at some of the other words I used on the site.  It’s interesting to see what words show up most frequently when you enter entire books such as the Bible, Declaration of Independence, and the Kama Sutra (a few examples I tried.)

Then I took it a step further and created a simple magazine advertisement…

If it doesn’t look familiar, this was created from the butterfly shape in Photoshop, pictured below.

I used a stock photo of a butterfly to add veins to the wings.  Each wing is three layers deep with the vein texture on the bottom.

The rest of the effects in the image were basically trial-and-error experimenation with different blending modes and layer effects.  I was trying to make the wings look a bit more textured and shadowed to give them a more realistic appearance.

I tried out several different methods to create a glowing effect.  I did the antennae using one method, the abdomen (green rings) using another method, and the wings were done with a third method. The spots on the wings also have a bit of illumination to them.

I also added some highlights around the butterfly’s body, the inner part of the wings, and wingtips to give it some depth.

The story basically revolves around two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes, meeting friends and foes along the way.  The book is full of a variety of characters from giant polar bears and witches to angels and beings that move around on spheres.

The storyline touches on ideas of philosophy, theology, and spirituality and even goes to the point of somewhat retelling the story of Adam and Eve.  I’ve read that the series has drawn criticism from some religious groups due to its alleged negative portrayal of organized religion.  I did notice this while reading the book, but I’m neutral on the whole topic, so I was not bothered by it.

What I did find interesting were some of the changes made to the U.S. edition of the book.  One part in particular touches on Lyra discovering her sexuality and how the event is described.  Here’s an excerpt from the original (U.K. edition):

And now the U.S. version of the same passage:

Gotta love censorship in the U.S.!  All kidding aside, the book is geared toward younger readers as well as adults, so I guess they thought it was a bit too descriptive.  What do you think?

All and all, I enjoyed reading the book.  Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s going to be a sequel in the box office any time soon seeing as how the first film did poorly.  That’s too bad.  I’d love to see how some of the events in the second and third book would be portrayed in film.

You can see the original shapes in the upper-left corner along with the revised shapes after I added some color and texture.  Click on the image to get a better view.

Basically, people are starting to get annoyed by all the posts and requests they see on their Facebook accounts every day.  Hopefully, this two-step process will help to alleviate those annoyances so you can see more of what you want and not the stuff you could care less about.

Step 1 – Hide the Culprit From Your Feeds

When you see one of these annoying posts in your feed, roll your cursor over the post.  A “hide” button appears in the upper-right.  Click it!

At this point, you can hide the user if you choose, but we’re looking for the second option, hiding the posts from the app.  Click the middle option.

If you ever change your mind and would like to see posts from this app again, click the Edit Options link on your feed.  This link is currently located at the bottom of your feed on the right side.

Step 2 – Block the Culprit

Blocking posts from other people is only half the battle.  Now we need to block the app altogether.  Go the main page of the application.  For this article I chose Fishville (never played it…just using it as an example.)

See the “Block Application”‘ link down at the bottom, under the application name?  Click it!

Click the confirmation message that appears to confirm your choice.  That’s it!  You should be all set!

You will notice in the confirmation message it mentions this will not prevent you from seeing the application if other people have it installed…that’s why we did step 1, to hide those posts from other people.

Hope this helps to make your Facebooking a little less annoying.

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