Mikoto Diaries

Savory Taro Cake

2010-02-12T00:08:00.000-08:00

Savory turnip cakes, savory taro cakes, and sweet glutinous rice cakes are often made for Chinese New Year. "Cake" sound as "high" or "tall" in Cantonese and carries the good meaning of "growing"… kids growing tall, adults growing in their career, etc.

Ingredients:

1 large taro root, ~2.5 lbs.
1 package of white rice flour - 1 lb.
3/4 tbsp + 3/4 tbsp salt
1-1/4 tsp sugar
2 tbsp Chinese rice wine
4 cups + 2 cups water
8-10 dried shiitake mushrooms
3 oz. dried shrimp
5 oz. Chinese bacon (lap yuk) 臘肉
4 sticks of Chinese sausage (lap cheong) 臘腸
4 sticks of Taiwanese style Chinese sweet sausage 台灣臘腸

Topping:

Roasted seasame
Finely chopped green onion
Finely chopped cilantro

Instructions:

Wash, then soak dried shiitake mushrooms in hot water, cover plate to speed up the hydration process
Wearing gloves, peel then dice taro into approximate 1/2" cubues -- touching taro with your bare hands will most likely make them itchy! I learned the hard way!
Bring diced taro, 4 cups of water and 3/4 tbsp salt to a boil in a pot. Remove from heat.
Finely dice Chinese bacon and two types of Chinese sausages into approximate 1/4" cubes
Wash, then soak dried shrimp in hot water in bowl for ~5 minutes; remove shrimp from bowl and save liquid for later use.
Remove dried shiitake mushrooms from hot water and dice into 1/4" cubes. Save liquid for later use.
Heat up a little bit of oil in wok or skillet, stir fry diced shiitake mushrooms, dried shrimp, Chinese bacon, and two types of Chinese sausages with 2 tbsp Chinese rice wine until fragrant and mixture is hot.
Add stir fried mixture into slightly cooled pot with taro (that already has 4 cups of water and 3/4 tbsp salt in it). Add in additional 2 cups water (combine previously saved mushroom water and dried shrimp water, add additional water if needed to make 2 cups), 3/4 tbsp salt, and 1-1/4 tsp sugar. Mix well.
Add white rice flour to pot and stir until smooth. Consistency should resemble that of rice pudding. Tip: If mixture is too runny, add more rice flour; if it's too thick, add more water.
Oil sides of heat-proof round containers. Pour batter into heat-proof round containers.
Bring water to a boil over high heat in a large steamer. Place containers into steamer, cover and reduce heat to medium-low, and steam for 1 hour. Smaller containers (e.g. small bowls) may only require 20-30 minutes. Test to see if cake is done by sticking a toothpick into it and check for white powder; if white powder is seen, that means you need to steam the cake for a little longer.
When cake is done, remove from steamer. Pour out any water that may have gathered on top of the cake. Let sit for ~1 hour.
Run a knife along the sides of the container to loosen cake out of the mode. Unmold cake from container if desired.
Sprinkle topping on top of cake
Eat right away or refrigerate until ready to serve.

Serving suggestions:

Taro cake may be served steamed or pan-fried
To pan fry, cut about a 1.5" horizontal strip of cake, then make into 1/4"-1/2" slices vertically so that you get thin rectangular slices. Heat up a little bit of oil in a wok or skillet. Pan fry the rectangular slices until golden brown.
Serve with oyster sauce or sweet chili sauce.

Variation:

Use dried scallops in lieu of or in addition to dried shrimp
Use only Chinese sausage and skip the Chinese bacon and Taiwanese sausage
Use fresh shiitake mushroom instead of dried ones

Cooking tips:

If you want to do a taste test before steaming all of it, ladle a small amount into a small glass bowl and steam it for 20-30 minutes. That way, you can taste and adjust seasoning as needed before steaming the rest of it.
If there isn't enough space to steam all the batter at once, it's OK to do it in a couple of batches.

This is the rice flour I used, can be found in many Asian supermarkets.

Spring

2010-02-04T23:51:00.000-08:00

Just last week, I was admiring interesting shapes/lines the "naked" trees form. It seems all of a sudden, flowers exploded on this tree across the street. When did Spring sneak up on us?

This was my photo of today. Of the 18 photos I took of this tree, I liked this one (original below) most as it is relatively sharp (it was very windy today, making it challenging to take a sharp photo that's not completely dark) and just the overall composition. What I didn't like about the original photo was how cluttered it seemed; my eyes were pretty distracted, not knowing where to focus. Here're some things I did to bring out the photo more -

First I cropped out most of the flowers on the lower left that's competing for attention. Since they were at about the same distance as the main flower cluster, those flowers were also in-focus and taking away from the photo
Playing around with the Tone Curve in Lightroom, I brightened the photo a little bit. In the end, I liked the "Creative-Direct Position" preset and went with that.
Wanting to bring out the main flower cluster more, I used a tip from the Shutter-life blog and de-saturated all but the colors belonging to main flower cluster in Lightroom. In this case, I set all except yellow & orange colors to -100; orange was set to -29 and yellow -45. I had to take away more of the yellow as it brings out the leaves too much when yellow was more saturated.
By now, the photo is fairly mute, using split tone controls in Lightroom, I brought back just a touch of color to the photo. I used orange/red for highlights (saturation of 12) blue/purple (saturation of 4) for the shadows.
For the finishing touch, I added a 50px vignette to the photo using Photoshop as described on Digital Photography School's vignette how-to entry.

SLO Photo Walk

2010-01-31T23:40:00.001-08:00

It was a long and productive board meeting in SLO this past weekend. But I was able to squeeze in a couple of hours to join Prentice and Dylan on their monthly SLO photo walk. It was fun!

Playing with the wide angle lens

2010-01-09T23:28:00.000-08:00

Julian got me a ultra wide-angle lens, the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8, for Christmas and I have been having a ton of fun with it.

For my 365 photo of today, we grabbed our tripod + camera case and headed to the Bay Trail by Kincaid's in Burlingame to take some shots. I had a hard time deciding between these two shots. What do you think?

365

2010-01-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

Taken at Ocean Beach 1/2/2010

Inspired by Prentice, a graduating Cal Poly student and an awesome photographer I met at Mustang Mentoring Day, I started a 365 project 1/1/2010. The basis of 365 is just to take/upload a photo a day. The goal can be simply to record each day of one's life, providing a mosaic to review at the end of the year; or further utilize it into as a tool to improve one's photography skills. Prentice's 365 is a twist on Flickr, where one takes a photo of himself/herself each day, which makes it even a bigger challenge!

For now, mine will just be a photo a day, taken mostly with my Nikon D90, but perhaps sometimes with my HTC Touch Pro2 camera also. You'll find it at http://pod.nilgiri.net/xtine; see http://pod.nilgiri.net for links to my friends' 365. At first, I wasn't sure how the experience will be; but so far, I can already see that it will -

1) At a minimum, I will take more photos each day in hopes that there's one that I like enough to post to my 365. Like anything else (e.g. piano), this will give me additional practice at photography

2) Get me into a habit of taking photos and processing photos quickly to upload each day

3) Get me into a habit of using idle time to think about creative/meaningful shots out of everyday people/places/things

Welcome 2010 and the beginning of my 365!

Fountain in front of Grand Hyatt SF 1/2/2010

Do you ever wish...

2009-12-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

As we got on the freeway today around 6:00 pm earlier this evening (12/31/09), we found that the metering lights were on, although traffic was flowing smoothly on the freeway. While metering lights are effective when traffic is congested, it artificially slows down traffic during times like today. If only metering lights can be controlled via a sensor that detects traffic!

Past, present, and future...

2009-12-24T01:02:00.000-08:00

Cal Poly President Baker recently announced that he will soon retire after over 30 years of service. I really like the following quote that was included in the xmas card he sent this year.

We must welcome the future,

remembering that soon

it will be the past;

and we must respect the past,

knowing that once

it was all that

was humanly possible.

-- George Santayana

(photo by ibarra_svd)

I am Legend

2009-12-22T23:50:00.000-08:00

Watched "I am Legend" finally tonight. Can't decide which ending I like more. I can see the theatrical version appeals more to the general public. Read a little more about the movie and the book on wiki. It's true that one can't tell in the movie that the "Dark Seekers" are vampires.

Found this neat little widget on the movie website.

Visit the Official I Am Legend Website

Actionable Information

2009-10-29T23:09:00.001-07:00

These two words have been on my mind a lot lately - actionable information (or actionable data). There's so much interesting information and data out there that it's easy to be bombarded. News is always interesting, but most of it is not something I can take action on. My Google Reader queue grows to an unwieldy 600 if I don't pay attention to it for just a week! I love data and spreadsheets and can come up with all kinds of interesting analysis with the information. But how much of it is something that is useful, that I can do something about?

To do away with the clutter, I ask myself whether the information/data is something that would cause me or the organization to take action or change the course of action, and furthermore define those actions (i.e. if x then y).

Non actionable information is acceptable, however, in moderation (limit to no more than 10-15 minutes a day). I find it useful especially in small-talk. ;)

Weekend in SLO

2009-10-20T14:41:00.001-07:00

My favorite cave

The view you see on the edge of the cave

Another wonderful weekend in SLO! This time, we visited Hearst Castle on Tour #2, a highly recommended tour! We got to see William Heart's bedroom, office, library, a bedroom located in where one of the two bell towers used to be, the kitchen, and Julia Morgan's wooden hut.

Touring @ Home (2)

2009-10-11T23:58:00.001-07:00

One year after Academy of Sciences re-opened after its renovation, we finally had the opportunity to visit on a free day. We spent ~2.5-3 hours there and were most impressed the 4-story Rainforest and the Morrison Planetarium!

On the stroll up, we noticed these little strawberry poison dart frogs amongst the Bromeliad plants, within reach of the walkway, not behind any containers or cage!

10 different types of birds and 10 different types of butterflies roam freely within the rain forest globe. On the walk up, we saw this Blue Morpho butterfly resting on the rail.

The Morrison Planetarium is the largest all-digital dome in the world with a 75-foot diameter projection screen tilted at a 30 degree angle. We saw the "Fragile Planet" film when we were there and it really felt like we took a journey from the museum's roof to beyond the milky way. The Morrison Planetarium is definitely the most awesome planetarium I've visited!

Whether you are a visitor of San Francisco, or a local who has yet to visit the museum, I highly recommend it!

See following for a video from the Steinhart Aquarium

D90 camera bag search saga

2009-10-10T00:22:00.000-07:00

Since I ordered my Nikon D90, I have been on the lookout for a new camera bag. I wanted something that doesn't look funny with a dress (if I were to attend a wedding, for example) or a suit (so Julian can carry the bag also), comfortable to wear, and provides room for my current gear plus a little room for growth; a really nice-to-have is to have sufficient secure space for the knick-knacks normally in my purse so that I can just carry a camera bag instead of a camera bag plus a purse. My current gear includes the Nikon D90 body with 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6 lens kit, the 35mm f/1.8 prime lens, the SB600 speed light, and miscellaneous items such as remote, batteries, memory cards, filters, etc.

Unlike the good 'o days of a choice of 2 or 3 bags at the store, there are many, many choices online with, unfortunately, not very many reviews. To top it off, most bags really don't look all that great next to a dress (this rules out sling shot type bags/backpacks). I won't bore you with the details of my saga but want to share with you some deciding factors that hopefully will help you with your search:

Decide how much you want to spend - is it ~$50, > $100, or price is no object (check out the Billingham bag if price is not object for you!)?
Gather the dimensions for your gear and compare that to the internal dimensions of bags. Determine if you'd like space for a laptop also. Don't get fooled by the external dimensions as some bags, such as the stylish National Geographic Walkabout satchels has decent external dimensions, but the camera insert is significantly smaller. Where available, always go to the manufacturer's site for dimensions to eliminate human error in translating the requirements on a reseller's site.
Once you've narrow it down to 3-4 bags, in addition to reading reviews on Amazon, search for blog entries or forum posts that may mention these bags. One trick that I used in searching for blog reviews is by doing an image search and clicking on images that looks different from the manufacturer product shots.
When it comes down to it, as Ken Rockwell says in his bags post, it really is a matter of personal taste. Ken recommended the following brands in his post: Tamrac, Tenba, and Lowepro.

Here are some bags I considered:

Internal Dimensions	Width	Depth	Height	Price**
Min. requirement*	8.7"	4.1"	6.5"	N/A
Lowepro Stealth Reporter D100 AW	9.8"	6.1"	5.9"	$69.95
Lowepro Stealth Reporter D200 AW	9.3"	6.9"	7.7"	$81.53
Lowepro Rezo 170	8.7"	4.5"	7.9"	$45.04
Lowepro Rezo 180	9.8"	6.1"	7.3"	$64.95
Tenba black label medium satchel	12"	4"	7.5"	$124.95
National Geographic midi satchel	6.9"	4.3"	6.5"	$89.90
National Geographic medium satchel	7.9"	4.3"	6.5"	$144.90

*Minimum requirement was calculated by adding dimensions of my gear together (imagining how they would loosely fit in a bag).

**Price as of 10/9/09 on Amazon

As you can see, putting the list on a dimensions grid immediately eliminated a few choices. (I was very sad that the National Geographic bags were outed; they were the best looking ones in the bunch!) In the end, it came down to the Tenba black label and the Lowepro Rezo 180 for me and I opted for the less expensive one of the two. With the money saved, I can buy a couple more filters for my lenses!

Julian's Garden (6)

2009-10-10T00:08:00.000-07:00

This photo was taken about a week ago. The tomatoes were of a darker orange hue today and were the first tomatoes harvested from Julian's hard work these last few months. These sun golds were super sweet! Last I counted, there were 61 sun gold tomatoes on the plant; 3 harvested, hopefully 58 more to go! The rest of them are still growing and still green. The bay area has turned significantly cooler on September 30th, so not a lot of fruits has popped up on the heirlooms yet. One of them (the one seen in the last post) has 3 tomatoes growing on the vine; another, which has a flatter-looking fruit, has 4. For a change, we are hoping for warmer weather to give these tomatoes a chance!

The basil started flowering, which ruins the taste on the leaves, so Julian decided to chop them all off and started new seedlings. The cilantro seeds that he planted in a planter in the front has yielded three little sprouts and the first leaves are coming out. Let's hope the squirrels don't locate this planter!

Julian's Garden (5)

2009-09-18T18:40:00.001-07:00

Julian's basil plants have turned into a little forest. Other than using them in heirloom tomato salads, we have also plugged leaves to make pesto, which is quite yummy when used to cook fish or make pasta or sandwiches (mix with mayonnaise to make pesto mayo!).

The sun gold is growing well in the front porch. The first sun-gold tomato has grown almost to its full size. It is still green, however. On last count yesterday, we have about 15 tomatoes on the plant!

Our first heirloom tomato! This one is still a baby fruit but it's growing a little bigger each day.

Remember the plant that got snapped in half by the squirrels? Julian planted the two halves in the same pot and they are doing well. But since they're still so small so late in the season, we're not sure whether we'll get any fruits from this plant. I'm just happy to see that it survived.

Speaking of survival, the lone surviving cilantro next to the basil is still there. It has grown quite tall. When the squirrels came a couple of weeks ago to eat the basil, they knocked over this poor cilantro on its side. But, it continues to survive and growing along the wall. Flowers are blooming on the cilantro plant.

Photos from this post was taken with the AF-S DX NIKKOR 35mm f/1.8G lens.

Time-lapsed video of summer in San Francisco by Ben Wiggins

2009-09-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

Another Cloud Reel... from Delrious on Vimeo.

Sukiyaki recipe

2009-09-17T19:46:00.000-07:00

This sukiyaki dish is a dish I learned from my mother-in-law, who is Taiwanese. While I have no clue how close this is to the traditional sukiyaki dish, it is delicious and great comfort food! It takes about 3 hours to make this dish, though most of the time is simply letting the pot simmer over low heat. Believe it or not, this dish tastes best when cooked in a Mishina Nabe (Japanese clay pot). [Side note: I learned some good tips about prepping a newly purchased Mishina Nabe and will post that in a subsequent post. ]

The following recipe is good for 4 servings.

Ingredients:

Soy sauce soup base, e.g. "Ninben" brand Tsuyu no moto. Kikkoman Memmi
1 package of yam noodles
1 package of soft tofu
3-4 varieties of fish cakes, e.g. kamaboko, narutomaki, chikuwa, etc. You can basically get whatever types of fish cake you like. I like kamabobo and narutomaki for the color they add to the dish.
1 package of imitation crab meat
3-4 varieties of mushrooms, e.g. enoki, shitake, shimeji mushrooms and whatever Japanese mushrooms I could find at the supermarket that looks good
1 napa cabbage
1-2 carrots
1 onion
8-10 slices of sukiyaki-style (thin-cut) beef

Instructions:
1. Using a soy soap base, add water to dilute and heat up liquid mixture in pot. Follow instructions on bottle for proportions. I generally use about a 1:7 ratio or so. Taste mixture and adjust accordingly.

2. Thinly slice up an onion, roughly chop up 1-2 carrots, and add to pot

3. Slice up one whole napa cabbage and add to pot

4. Cut up (if needed) different types of mushrooms and add to pot. If you're using dried shitake, make sure you wash them, soak in hot water for 1-2 hours before using.

5. Bring to a boil and simmer over low heat for about 2-3 hours.

6. 1 hour before eating, add in different types of fish cakes, imitation crab meat and yam noodles

7. A few minutes before eating, add in diced tofu

8. Serve with white rice

Cal Poly Fall Launch video

2009-09-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

In addition to the usual Week of Welcome (WOW) festivities, Cal Poly Univeristy Housing is offering a brand new program this year called "Fall Launch - Class of 2013" for the 3800 freshman who are living on campus this year.

One component of the Fall Launch Program is scheduled for yesterday, Monday September 14. This component is called " Launch your Academic Success". Yours truly was asked to create a short video to share advice or career related anecdotes that would be helpful for a freshman Cal Poly student to hear and think about. Here it is (or see higher res version on YouTube).

I received feedback that the video was well-receive! :D

Touring @ Home (1)

2009-09-12T22:03:00.000-07:00

When we visit other places, countires, we discover amazing sights and attractions. Oftentimes, just as amazing sights are right under our noses in our hometowns. Last week, we hiked the costal trail in San Francisco. We entered the trail at El Camino del Mar and Point Lobos Avenue, just up the hill from the Cliff House and the Sutro Baths. Here's a little history about the trail from Urban Outings on SF Gate:

The Coastal Trail follows the rail bed of the steam-powered Cliff House railroad, which was built by Adolph Sutro to lure people from downtown San Francisco out to the baths and the Cliff House. Although landslides forced the railroad to close in the 1920s, the rail bed itself is now part of the Coastal Trail, with dazzling views of the Pacific Ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands.

From there, we passed the Painted Rock and came out to the resdiential district on El Camino del Mar in Outer Richmond. The houses there were exquisite. See for yourself some doorway photos photos I snapped.

From El Camino del Mar, we hiked to China Beach to take a quick break, then headed back the way we came. On the way back, we took the stairs down to Mile Rock Beach. It's a whole other world down there. Breath-taking, relaxing, all the worries of the world left behind...

We spent some time sitting on the rocks by the beach, listening to the fog horns of commercial freights and the crashing waves.

First impressions: Sprint HTC Touch Pro 2

2009-09-10T21:08:00.000-07:00

My first impressions with the HTC Touch Pro 2.... I like it!

Days with phone: 2.5

Features I like on the phone

Some of these are specific to the HTC Touch Pro 2, some applicable to all PDA/smartphones with Windows Mobile.

Synch Outlook contacts with the phone's address book. I no longer have to manually enter contacts on my phone and Outlook separately!
Touch Pro 2 specific: Synch FB profiles to contacts and see profile photos on phone and in Outlook
Touch Pro 2 specific: Easier to use (just put the phone down, face-down) speakerphone with excellent voice clarity
Touch Pro 2 specific: The larger screen makes it easier to read on the phone and easier to use maps applications. When I'm sitting in the doctor's office waiting for Julian, I'm able to catch up on my reading on Google Reader
Touch Pro 2 specific: The 3.2-megapixel camera included on this phone is not too shabby (see photo taken of Arty below). It includes control for ISO (Auto, 100, 200, 400, or 800), focus area, brightness, white balance, sepia/grayscale effects, metering mode (center or average) and even a self timer. There's a panoramic mode to stitch photos together. So far, I've only played with designating the focus area and brightness of photos. Can't wait to try the rest!
I've got my Google Apps gmail work account set up (via IMAP) on the phone - this allows me to see first thing in the morning, before I even get out of bed, whether new work emails have come in overnight and respond to them. This is especially handy since I have engineers working in a different time zone.
Love having a qwerty keyboard again, and the tilt screen is dope!

Takes some getting used to:

When the phone rings, you see who's calling along with the calling number, a slider in the middle with "answer" to the left, and "ignore" to the right, and a mute ringer button on the button. I'm still getting used to moving the slider to the left to answer the phone. Of course, I could just click the "call" button instead to pick up.
This morning, when sending an email while in bed, I kept touching the "Send" button on the lower left of the touch screen as I was typing, thus accidentally sending multiple copies of the email before I was ready to send.
I found the "Task" application a little difficult to use. It was difficult to create a task with a due date. I had to create the task, then go back to the task to add the due date.

Problems encountered so far

I have encountered a couple of problems so far; both problems seem like they are Windows Mobile OS related.

My screen refused to scroll from left to right once. But like most Windows problems, nothing that a reboot wouldn't fix. ;)
Today, as I updated some contacts and tasks in Outlook and tried to synch with the phone via Windows Mobile Device Center, the software reported a synch error, with a super-useful error mesasge of "activesynch encountered a problem on the desktop". (Update: the synch problem happened a 2nd time soon after I published this post! I have a feeling this is going to be an annoying issue.) Upon a quick search, this seems to be a common problem introduced with Windows Mobile 6.1. As suggested in a Microsoft forum post (here's another), I deleted the partnership with the phone and everything is functional again, although I had to set up "Favorites" under Contacts and re-connect some profiles to Facebook. Other suggestions from the post to fix the issue:

Uncheck each synch area and check them back one at a time to identify issue. It seems like tasks was an issue with a quite a few folks.
Back up existing Outlook pst file, create and use a new pst file, restart outlook, delete partnership with phone, synch, and then restore backed up pst file
Look for scanpst.exe under c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\ and run the program to repair errors in the Outlook pst file
Run Microsoft Office Diagnostics

Julian also got the same phone. His came with a sticky 'a' key. Sprint took care of that right away and he received a new phone the next day! But suffice to say, probably a good idea to try all your keys on the qwerty soon after you receive your phone to allow plenty of time to resolve the issue if that were to happen to you too.

I'm so happy to be able to answer my phone again! This mini-computer might change my life greatly!

Update: xda-developers has very useful forums by phone. Touch Pro 2 is listed under Rhodium. I'm waiting for Julian to look through and try the list of software recommended. ;)

Update 2:

It turned out I did not have a double-send of my gmail email. It simply saved 2 copies of Sent mail into my Sent Folder (gmail keeps one copy, then the phone tells gmail to keep another copy - thus the duplicates). The good news is that the duplicate is only my Sent box. Here's a forum post with more information about the issue.
I noticed that my battery drains pretty quickly, until I scanned the PC Magazine review and realized that it must've been caused by the setting to have the phone check for new emails every 5 minutes. I have now set it to every 30 minutes and see if the situation improves.

Picnik

2009-08-30T01:29:00.001-07:00

I made some quick exposure adjustments, vignetting, and color adjustments to the cilantro survivor photo using Picnik, a web-based photo processing site. You'll fine the original photo in my earlier post. What do you think?

Picnik offers commonly used adjustments (crop, exposure, red-eye, colors, sharpen, resize), 30-some fun effects (vignetting used above is one of them), cute stickers, fonts, and frames for decorating photos as part of the free service. To play with dodging, burning, levels, curves, and touch-ups, you'll have to upgrade to their premium service for $24.95/year. The site is easy to use and a good fit for the casual photographer who enjoys jazzing up their work with some neat effects.

Photo of our 1st tomato w/focal b&w and vignette effects applied

Julian's Garden (4)

2009-08-29T19:28:00.001-07:00

As we melt in this Indian Summer weather in the bay area, Julian's tomatoes thrive. The tomato plants seem to have grown twice as tall from just these past two weeks. A few inches of it probably came from yesterday's 90-100 degree weather. Flowers are blooming on three of the plants.

A little fruit started growing where one of the flowers wilted. Our first baby tomato! We think/hope this is the Sun Gold.

We're not sure whether the 4th/5th (used to be 4th, until it got split in half by the squirrels) is going to survive or grow in time to bear fruits. Both parts of the plants seem to still be doing OK though. Seen here is the top part of the what used to be the 4th plant.

Basils have grown into a little forest. We have no complaints and are happily making pesto from them. Yesterday's lunch: turkey sandwich with fresh french bread from Anderson bakery and pesto mayonnaise made fresh from the garden!

We've given up on growing cilantro but this lone survivor is still surviving! It doesn't grow much like how it used to, but we're just happy to see this plant survive.

Adobe Lightroom

2009-08-29T18:20:00.000-07:00

I started playing with Lightroom recently and really like it so far. Before I picked up Lightroom, I was confused what Lightroom is vs. Photoshop. Is it just a dumbed down version of Photoshop for photographers? Sort of.

I find that Lightroom is much more intuitive to use for the common adjustments used in photography such as white balance, exposure, brightness, contrast, tone, hue/ saturation/ luminance, lens vingnetting, sharpening, cropping, straightening, etc. Adjustment are made in a non-destructive manner; the original photo is untouched and modifications made may be exported to a separate file when you're ready. Modifications are carried over between sessions so if you're not done tweaking a photo, there's no need to export and re-import to continue in another seating; changes are automatically recorded (but not exported to a file until you're ready). Outside of the core photo optimization stuff, Lightroom has built in flagging and filtering for easy organization of photos, which I've found useful to sift through and organize photos; while this functionality is not available inside Photoshop, it exists in Adobe Bridge though I never used it much before. Furthermore, Lightroom also has print optimization and several output formats including slideshow, PDF, and several very nifty web formats. Check out the web output example I created of a recent album, uploaded via the included-ftp client inside Adobe Lightroom.

Lightroom doesn't replace Photoshop, however. Any touch-ups, such as removal of distractions on Photo, blemishes-removal, or creative masking/treatments of different parts of the photo still needs to be done within Photoshop. Layers are also only available within Photoshop.

In the photo at the top of this post, I used Lightroom to adjust exposure and colors in the photo; then I opened a copy of the Lightroom-edited-photo in Photoshop and removed the distracting elements on the bottom left and right. Click on the photo to see a larger image.

Resources for learning Lightroom:

Video tutorials provided by Adobe
Free Lightroom video tutorial from Scott Kelby's photo walk site
Lightroom Killer Tips
More on the topic of Photoshop vs. Lighroom - see video from the Lightroom 2 Learning Center

Manila clams with Thai basil and Serrano chilies

2009-08-21T00:21:00.001-07:00

This recipe is from a Taiwanese cook book that my sister has. She cooked the dish on Mother's Day and it was delicious! So I asked her for the recipe and tried it for myself. I am happy to report that it's an easy recipe, but does require a little bit of preparation.

Preparations:

Soak 2 lbs. manila clams in salt water for an hour or so. Before cooking, take a used (clean) tooth brush (or whatever food brush you have) and clean surfaces of the clams' shells. Chuck any clams that do not close when you pick them up.
Wash and pick off leaves from 15 stems of Thai basil
Finely chop 9 gloves garlic
Cut up 6 slices of ginger
Wash and slice up 4-6 Serrano chilis. I used 6 chilis and it was yum! But 6 chilis does add a little more heat than the average spicy level. So decide how many chilis to use depending you and your guests preferences.

Cooking steps:

Stir fry with some olive oil: 4-6 Serrano chili sliced, 9 cloves garlic chopped fine, 6 slices ginger
Add in 2lbs.of clams and stir fry over high heat
Add seasoning: 3 Tbsp Chinese cooking wine, 6 Tbsp soy sauce, 1.5 Tbsp sugar, and 3/4 tsp salt
Stir in leaves from 15 stems Thai basil

Preparation time: ~45 minutes

Cook time: 5-10 minutes

Sharpening in Photoshop

2009-08-20T01:32:00.000-07:00

In Scott Kelby's book, I read about and used frequently the unsharp filter to sharpen photos. Scott recommends the following general settings (and you have to play with them to see what works for the photo you are sharpening):

Subject	Amt	Radius	Threshold
People	150%	1	10
Cityscapes/Travel	65%	3	2
General	85	1	4

Today, Julian told me about his ex-coworker Pius' adventures and site. Pius has been traveling for the past 6 years and became quite an awesome photographer. Traveling and shooting photos, what a life! So jealous! Anyways, checkout his site Daily Travel Photo. Beautiful shots.

From Pius' site, I came across Photoshop tutorials by Mark Johnson and watched the video on sharpening. Although not as simple as the straight forward use of unsharp filter, it's a technique that's more sophisticated and can be recorded into an action to allow for easier usage. I sharpened the photo above with the High Pass method.

Julian's Garden (3)

2009-08-15T00:28:00.000-07:00

I've been keeping up with take photos of progress in Julian's garden, just haven't had a chance to put up the photos so here they are.

7/26/09

Shortly after I put up the last post, Julian's garden was attacked again! It kept eating the cilantro and took bigger bites out of the basil also! At this point, the lone cilantro that survived had grown out a tiny bit. Julian also transplanted the tomatoes into 12" diameter planters. These were the first photos taken on my brand new Nikon D90!

One of the three transplanted heirloom tomato plants

Poor basils and cilantro looked a little sad

8/1/09

We were in shock when we came home to find that the tomato plants were attacked! Julian also transplanted his last (4th) suviving heirloom tomato plant. From seeds, we've seen a 50% survival rate so far (8 seeds yielded 4 plants).

Basil grew back nicely and were getting tall

Julian planted new cilantro seeds and you can see the sprouts coming out in the background. This lone cilantro from the first batch sure is a survivor! Attack after attack, and it's the last cilantro standing!

8/9/09

Basil plants grew more dense; we started harvesting them and using the basil leaves in heirloom tomato salads. Tomato plants recovered from the attack, and that lone cilantro is still surviving!

Flowers were starting to bloom on 2 of the tomato plants!

8/14/09

Tomato plants were attacked a 2nd time a few days ago. This time, the smallest one that was transplanted last was stripped down to its bare stems, but it is coming back. Yellow flowers are now visible on one of the tomato plants. Today, we also picked up a few 'stands' from Smith & Hawken's going out of business sale (6 stands for less than $8, pretty good deal!) for the tomato plants and the plants are now having an easier time staying upright with these stands in place.

Basils are growing nicely but cilantro is eaten again. *sigh* Maybe we need to move the cilantro to another location...

On a separate note, I figured out the menu item change on the D90 (a1 -> single point) to manually select the different focus points on the camera and had an easier time selecting what I want to be in focus on photos. I previously thought that I would be able to make this adjustment using the WB button and primary command dial change to AF-S. Anyways, I'm delighted to have found this menu item as it gives me much better control over where I want the camera focused (without having to reframe the picture all the time)!

See the stands? We like them! Very handy...

Poor plant was attacked We knew this happened during the day, though we still couldn't figure out the culprit.

Little yellow flowers are opening on one of the tomato plants