More Delicious Science!!!

It's been a great winter break for me, for the most part.  A little bit unfortunate, but overall pretty good.  Sadly my lab work has not been going well at all; cells not growing, torn asunder and whatnot.  Because of this I sought out other avenues to be awesome.  One was making my recent videos, the second cooking.  In particular, for Christmas this year I got the incredible gift of a large capacity KitchenAid stand mixer:

So shiny it is!!!

So the other day, after a particularly unpleasant day in the lab and bad news, I thought to myself "I should use that fancy mixer of mine".  So I thought to myself "OMG CAKE!!!!"  So I made cake.  With science!!!  And the mixer.  But mostly SCIENCE!!!  And lemons.  Soooo many lemons.

These will make cake.  Because yum.  

Dry ingredients for cake, after sifting through a metal sifter.

Initial "batter", just butter and sugar, simply a base for everything to be added to.

Proteins from the eggs smooth everything out, giving a nice consistency. Dry mixture adds all the happy volume and needed chemicals for baking while the buttermilk keeps the batter liquid-esque.  Also lemon juice and peel because how can you have lemon cake with no lemon?

See?  It's like magic.  We go from a bunch of random stuff on the counter to ready to bake cakes!!  Also on the counter.  But still!!

Since this is an awesome fancy layer cake, we need two other things.  Or rather want two other things.  First is a filling for between the layers and the other a frosting for outside.

Filling is a lemon curd.  Very simple.  Sugar, corn starch (to thicken, similar to a gravy or soup), water, lemon juice and peel.  Heat and stir stir stir.  Water evaporates, allowing starch and everything else to thicken up the curd.

Egg yolks for the curd.  Proteins always help stickiness and thickness.  Add half curd to this, while back to pan.

Back to the pan with you!!!!!!

Keep up heat and stirring, nice and thickened.

Yes.  Butter.  Because butter makes everything more delicious.

After adding butter, still nice and thickened, but now needs to cool.  To the refrigor-migator!!!

As I mentioned, cake needs an outer coating, aka frosting.  Because frosting delicious.  And proper for layered cakes especially.  In this case, we've got lemon cream cheese frosting.  Very awesome sort of thing.

Just toss it all in!!!  Cheese, butter, lemon juice and peel

Mix-a-licious!

Adding powdered sugar (aka confectioner's sugar) has a similar effect to adding starch, thickens and, or a sort, strengthens.  We're at 'hard peak' when strands stand straight on their own, perfect for spreading.

No wire racks for cooling :( .  Assembly takes place on table of awesome!

OMG FROSTING!

2 Stacked with curd in between.

Ready for curd!

Second layer of curd, ready for top layer now.

Mmmmmm.... frosting time!

Not too bad.  I can say with confidence this cake is frosted.

Told you!

OMG CAKE!!!!  It has LAYERS!!!  Like and ogre!!!  Or a parfait!!  Or an onion!!  Either way OMG!

Bit crumbly, but by no means bad.

This piece is gone now.  I don't know where.

Baking is certainly an interesting cooking technique, and there's so much science behind it that my mind tends to boggle a bit.  The now humble cake is a surprising achievment brought by knowledge of primarily chemistry and, most likely, the simple idea of "I want something NOMS!"  If you're interested, please let me know if you'd like the specific recipes for everything, definitely not very tough to make at all.  Thank you all for reading and I'll see you next time!

A Gear Change is Finally Here

Hello all!  After many videos of board games (mostly due to being less time intensive), I've gone a bit back to form with a new video game video!  I've recently had the great opportunity to have a decent amount of play time again and took advantage to do a general review of an often overlooked and misunderstood genre, the aRPG.

The particular game is Marvel Heroes, unsurprisingly based in the Marvel Universe (Earth-616 for those that know and care) where you get to play as the superheroes.  Each one of them has their..... own..... you know what, I'll just let the video talk instead.  Enjoy!

Thanks very much for taking a look!  I'll see you next time!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Hooray!  So it's been a very very very long and busy few weeks since my last video.  Between my work not going correctly in the lab to my fiance defending her Master's thesis (yay!) and numerous other stressors (*cough* puppy *cough*) I've had very little time for my hobbies.  Thankfully I found some time to record and set up my latest video, Games that you can Learn From!!!  Yay nerdness!!  Please enjoy and have a wonderful Turkey day!!

P.S. Incidentally, my cells cot contaminated the other day, so my time for the holiday is split unfortunately unevenly between a sickly fiance and cooking turkey and stupid cells the pick the worst time to be stupid.  Hopefully it'll all work out in the end!  Bye until next time!!

Alternate Video FTW!!!

As my last couple of posts said, my editing software has been giving me trouble with the latest video I wanted to post.  Thankfully I had a backup plan.  Also nice as a way to make certain the software works normally.  Well, it does!  So here's my video, on board games based off of myth and legend.  Make sure you suit up!

Gaming Violence 101

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been having a great many issues with getting my latest video to render out output correctly on my computer.  Amongst rage and angst of not being able to get things working, I came across several examples of issues regarding people and their reactions to violence in video games.  This primarily came up as the video I'm working on is about not only a violent game, but one that is particularly unusual in how it's presented.  If I ever get it working you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, my hobby of video game playing is frequently a hot-button issue regarding teen violence and whatnot.  While there is a fair amount of research on the subject, NO study has found a significant correlation between playing violent video games and violent behavior in 'regular' life.  While some studies have focused on characterization within video games (i.e. if you empathize with the 'bad guys', you're more hostile to neutral characters compared to empathizing with 'good guys').  I recently saw a TV panel on Fox News where Grand Theft Auto 5 (which had been released the week prior at the time) was brought up during a discussion of killings in Chicago.  I was thankful that one of the panelists noted the fact that no data exists showing the correlation.

I also found this interesting article, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10964-013-9986-5, which examined 'aggressive behavior' (bullying, etc.) in kids after being exposed to violent games.  The interesting part of this was that the kids had previously been diagnosed with mental disorders (Depression/ADD being the major ones).  Again, NO DIFFERENCE.  NO CORRELATION.  NOTHING.  I get very frustrated when people point to video games as reasons behind so much violence while the actual issues go unexamined.  It's a waste of time, effort, and resources.

Why do I bring this up?  Last night I watched Criminal Minds with my fiance, specifically Season 8, Episode 8, "The Wheels on the Bus".  In it, the 'unsubs' as they're called, re-create a video game using actual people, forcing them to kill one another.  Think Hunger Games combined with Gam3r and a dash of The Running Man (not the dance, the movie from the 80's).  In the end, it seems to me that issues in TV and movies create this stereotype angry loner gamer that just wants to re-enact everything that they play on their games, and it is, by and large, eaten up by the public.  By perpetuating the stereotype it becomes engrained in the minds of many and therefore very difficult to change.  We as a society just need to accept that people are, for the vast majority, anyway, able to distinguish the difference not only between fantasy and reality but the general idea of right and wrong.

I'm going to call this a research-based rant, so go me.  Hope that you all enjoyed and please feel free to discuss.  Thank you and hopefully next time we'll have a video :D.

Work and Play

There are many reasons that I do the work I do.  First and foremost has by far been my medical history.  Fraught with (what I believe to be) probably a bit more than my share of health issues, I soon became interested in performing scientific research, specifically with genetic diseases of all manners.  One important aspect of scientific research has also intertwined with something else that I've enjoyed for a large portion of my life: computers.  The connection?  Put simply, troubleshooting.  In a larger context, problem solving.  One thing that I've always loved to do is solve problems.  There's something incredible about the feeling of being able to fix an issue.  When you start, something isn't working, be it a computer booting up, software not working, or an experiment doesn't give any viable data.  Getting from that point to a workable product/data brings a wonderful sense of accomplishment.

That being said, everyone has a breaking point.  For many it's fast, for many scientists it tends to take substantially longer to reach.  Not to mention IT people.  Patience is an incredible virtue for both scientific research and technologies.  Again, this is work, and I enjoy it, and I'm good at it.  I have a knack for getting stubborn computers to work and working through molecular biology experiments.  At work.

Once done, however, I enjoy doing what probably anyone else does: relax and hang out.  The last few months have made this very difficult.  Work has been ridiculously uncooperative, the puppy that my fiance and I got has been driving us completely insane, and we generally have not had a great deal of time to just chill.  Unfortunately or fortunately, there aren't a great many things that I enjoy doing as hobbies.  For anyone that reads my posts regularly, you know that a large portion of these are focused around playing games; tabletop and video.  More recently I've been making my little videos portraying not only said hobbies, but my opinions on numerous topics.  Fun times and a good way for me to relax and be with myself, in a sense.

As some of you may know, the last week or so I've had a great amount of difficulty getting my latest video to render correctly in the editing program I've been using.  It's one of those things that just drove me completely nuts.  Yes, I enjoy fixing things and figuring out what's going wrong, but this is not WORK.  When I'm working with my hobbies, is it too much to ask for things to work?  I mean seriously.  If my experiments don't work, fine, let's figure it out.  But my free time to do things I enjoy?  There's only so much I can take.  It's ridiculous.

Not only, but it's one of the things that I haven't been able to figure out.  I went through a great deal of work trying to fix this issue.  Reinstalling software, re-doing the entire video, reading I don't know how many forums, trying different rendering methods, everything I could think of.  Finally, I thought that it may be a hardware issue, so I decided to upgrade my RAM (from 4 to 8 GB).  I figured that was a likely issue, as the software kept crashing at somewhat random times, including during rendering.

While attempting to remove the screws from my computer, the driver I was using got ruined, now basically looking like a nail.

Enter precision screw set.  Thankfully these won't be stripped by screws, huzzah!

Memory upgrade successful!  So now we're fine, right?

Short answer is no, still not working.  After weeks of work, struggling to get my video software to cooperate, and spending a substantial amount of money, it is still not working.  I am essentially at wits end and could not be more frustrated.  The few things that I do solely for myself are not coming to fruition.  Not a good place to be.

All that aside, I strive forward.  Why?  Because, in the end, there's no point to anything else except moving on.  Things don't always work, but so what?  Yelling and complaining to the computer doesn't make the software function correctly.  Throwing a fit and banging fists doesn't make a reaction work in lab any more than it makes a computer change its function.  Yes, spending whatever little free time and effort I have available to so things I enjoy to only have said things fail is by no means an enjoyable experience in the end, but it is still a learning experience, and I did get 8 GB on my laptop and a cool driver set, so, like I said, why does it matter?  Does it matter only right now or will it matter forever?  Think about it.  Just the thought for the.... month I suppose.

*whew*.  So, rant over.  Hope you enjoyed it and that maybe, just maybe it can help someone see through some of their own issues.

This long already?

Wow, how time flies when you're trying to get a PhD.....  Unfortunately I haven't had nearly as much time available to work on videos and finding random things to blog about.  Between new puppy, starting the last portion of my PhD dissertation, and generally trying to keep my sanity, free time has been in very short supply.  Regardless, I've finally finished a new video!  A list of some of my favorite strategy board games (with a decent number missing, mind).  Enjoy!