Month: May 2019

Since last year, my parents have been pestering me to get a job. After a lot of procrastinating, my Mom told me there was a job for digitalizing photos. Not wanting to work outside the house or look for a job, I decided to try digitalization. Honestly, I don’t really care about digitalization. Prior to this, I didn’t really delve into the realm of photos in any way, nor do I plan to pursue a career in this field. But its a job and I probably won’t get one I enjoy anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. 

My first client was a friend of my Mom’s. There were two parts to the job. First was a large portrait. The second was several albums full of smaller photos. Unfortunately, the modeling was behind some glass. This meant I needed a way to take the picture without any glare. Thankfully, my Mom showed me a video on how to do so. Once we took the picture of the portrait, I returned home with the albums to resume shooting there. In my room, I set up the lights around last week and spent a good hour taking all the photos from one album. I pretty sure there are still one or two more, so I still need to do that. 

As for what I plan to do in terms of editing, not much. Maybe some additional cropping but that’s about it. The app I used to take the photos already did a good job correcting the lighting and other technical bits. I’ll probably end up turning the photos in PDFs and recreate the album digitally. Rearranging the photos as they were before, put in dates if there were any, and that’s it. Nothing too fancy. 

Next, I need to figure out a company name apparently. So far, this feels more like a favor to a family friend than anything else, but if I need a company name, okay… Right now, I’m thinking of more anonymous names that don’t hold any connection to me. As cool as having a company is, I don’t think this going to go anywhere. So I’ll probably choose a name along the lines of Photo Digitalization. Something that has digitalization in it, because at least people will know what I do. Right now, names are pretty vague and it that last thing on my mind in terms of what I need to do for this project. t. 

So far, I like to think I’ve been moving at a decent pace. I have the portrait and one album done right now. Like I said before, it not like I really wanted to do photo digitalization of all things, but beggars can’t be choosers as they say. Given the choice, I would have liked to try 3D modeling using Blender, making a game through coding, or maybe even do 2D animation, which I enjoyed quite a bit during Media Arts. Then I would have posted it on youtube or something. Granted these wouldn’t have made me money but at least I would have gained some experience in the fields I wish to go into (programming, animation, video game design, etc)… However, what’s done is done, so let’s hope I don’t screw this job up. 

During mothers day, I gave my mom a free meal ticket. Meaning, during any day she wants, I will cook one meal. So from now until then, I have a lot of time to decide what meal I would like to cook. 

From what mom has told me, she would likely ask for a dinner rather than a lunch or breakfast. This means I have to figure out a dinner plan that will serve four people. I could always make the curry I did last time, but that would be boring. Instead, I want to see what else I can make. 

Since I’ve already done curry, which I consider Asian, I will be trying to avoid that kind of cuisine. Instead, I would like to try focusing on European or American dishes. I thought maybe making burgers or something like that, but mom is on a low carb diet. This, unfortunately, this limits my options. Of course, I could make several dishes, but I’m a horrible multitasker and it would just be easier to make two or one dishes. I did consider making steak, but we already have that occasionally. Besides even if I did make steak there would be nothing I would change drastically about it. One option I thought about and actually could work was a salad. However, it does seem kind of boring. 

Eventually, I just searched up low carb meal options. Unsurprisingly, none of the recipes uses anything from the grain family food group. However, I did find a lot of meals did use chicken. So I thought, perhaps I could maybe make a chicken dish of some kind? When I began thinking of a chicken dish I could make. My mind immodestly went to the chicken kabobs. However, I know dad doesn’t like that kind of food and if I do make it will just be more work. In the end, after looking around the internet for a bit, I settled on making a chicken cobb salad. Like I said before it is kind of boring but I couldn’t really think anything else. I guess it also helps we have had this dish before so I do know everyone will at least eat it. I don’t have an exact recipe right now, but I will likely look for one after posting this blog. 

Besides the salad, I thought about making a side dish as well. Since I already have the low carb aspect figured out, I can really do anything I want for the side dish. What I do know is that I want to try doing something with potatoes. I was thinking along the lines of fries or something like it. The last time I used the vegetables, my preparation speed was painfully slow. Hopefully, this time around, I have improved a bit. 

Overall, everything is still up in the air but I have a general plan laid out. I will likely make a chicken cobb salad with some kind of potato dish on the side. Like before, my goal is basically not to burn the house down and increase my prep speed. 

For most of my life, I only cook on very rare occasions and I’ll be sharing one of these experiences. For our unit 3 summative in food and nutrition, our class was tasked with creating a meal for our families. During this beginning stages of this project, I was wondering what I would make. I for one wanted something different. Something that we didn’t eat often. However, I knew if I made something too outlandish, the higher the chance nobody would eat it. I also wanted something easy to make to lessen the chances of me screwing up. In the end, I made the compromise of making curry chicken. I knew this would be a safe choice as everyone in my family likes this dish. However, unlike the curry chicken we eat regularly, I would be using a different recipe. Instead of curry blocks, I would be using ingredients like curry paste, power, and coconut milk. It would be different enough for me to enjoy and similar enough for everyone else to enjoy. 

I will admit, after choosing the recipe I would be using I did little preparation until the day of cooking. Luckily we had almost all the ingredients for the most part. Anything we didn’t have, I would substitute it with a similar ingredient. During the day of cooking, I started prepping at 5:30. Since the recipe estimated the dish would take around 50 minutes to complete, I was aiming to finish at around 6:30. I didn’t happen. The first thing I did was collect the ingredients I need, which didn’t take long compared in the grand scheme of things. Next, I washed all the vegetables I would be using under cold water, then I had to cut them. The most time-consuming part of this was definitely pleasing the potatoes. I didn’t keep track of time, but it took a while for me to peel the skin then get rid of the eyes. Hopefully, in the future, my speed will increase when it comes to this. After preparing all the vegetables, I had to cut meat. At this point, mommy told me to use all of the chicken in the package. This led me to double the original proportions, from serving four to eight. With the chicken cut, I moved onto mixing the ingredients. Using the coconut milk, curry powder and paste, I made the curry which I set aside for now. 

Now came the actual cooking. Using a wok, I first put in the chicken, then the potatoes and other vegetables, and finally the curry mixture. While I waited for the curry to cook, I prepared the vegetable dish. I didn’t follow any instructions and mommy told me what to do. Basically, I just microwaved some frozen broccoli before putting it into a pot with sauce. From this point, it was just cleaning and waiting. After around 30 minutes the meal was ready to be served.

Overall, I really happy with the results. It was edible and nothing went wrong. I guess the next time I do something like this I would like to improve my prep speed. As the estimated 50 minutes turned into 2 hours. In the end, I liked it and my family seemed to like it as well. 

Something people don’t really know about me is that I like history and mythology. I watch documentaries on WW2, watch videos on the Greek Pantheon, and learning about ancient civilization. But where does this all stem from? Well, anime! Today, I’ll be talking about the franchise that pushed me into the world of mythology and history, the Fate series.  

So what is the Fate series? The Fate series is an anime that pits 7 legends from myths, history, and literature into a battle royal. From well know figures like Dracula to more obscure heroes like Irelands child of light, the Fate series has it all. Like most people, I entered the Fate series by watching its most famous anime, Stay/Night. Out of all adaptation from the Fate series, Stay Night likely has the most well know legends like King Arthur and Hercules taking center stage. However, that’s is just the tip of the iceberg. Stay/Night only introduced me to the Fate series, what actually made me want to look into the backgrounds of certain character was definite the mobile game FGO. Instead of just 7 legends, this mobile game has way more, over 200 more. Because of FGO, I ended looking into the history and time periods of figures like Alexzander the great, Souji Okita, and Nero Claudius.

Normally when I look into a historical figure, I first go to the Fate wiki. Admittedly this the least historically accurate representation a character can get, however, it still gives me a basic rundown down of what they are well known for. An example of this is Paracelsus. Using the Fate wiki, I can gather how he was a famous physician and alchemist active during the Renaissance, after omitting all the magic from the Fate universe. From the wiki, I move to Wikipedia. Although Wikipedia isn’t 100% fact, it still gives a more detailed and factual description of the character I’m looking into. Using Wikipedia I managed to learn about Paracelsus real name and contribution to medicine. Normally from here, I would look up actual biographies or documentaries on youtube. An example is “The Legends of History”, which has great videos on legends like Mochizuki Chiyome and Gilles de Rais. . 

Overall, the Fate series is something I treasure. Both as a franchise and for opening my love for history and mythology. As more and more characters get added to FGO and other Fate projects, I wonder what other legends they will include.