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First I made chile crisp and then I made tofu and green beans with chile crisp.

I used the Serious Eats recipe as a start and used their method, and looked at others for ideas. It can be flavored many ways to your preference and with things on hand, so I had to make various substitutions, including the following: I used dried arbol chiles, some dried small chiles I grew, and some dried peppers from my cousin's house in France. I didn't have Sichuan peppercorns so I used a peppercorn blend. I don't have MSG or dried mushroom powder so I skipped those and added some good soy sauce for umami. I subbed a cinnamon stick for star anise and cashews for peanuts. Cardamom pods are green, but the seeds are black--this confused me especially in a tiny quantity so I opted to get out the seeds from three pods and crush them. Lastly, they don't expressly say it but I chopped up the fried shallots and garlic before adding them, and tossed the cinnamon stick of course. Came out pretty tasty. https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2018/04/homemade-spicy-chili-crisp.html https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/recipes/chili-crisp/ Tofu and Green Beans With Chile Crisp https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1020993-tofu-and-green-beans-with-chile-crisp?smid=ck-recipe-iOS-share

Off call so I had to go out and do something before we are slammed in the coming weeks. Road a creak for about 100 yards before my motivation reached its limit. After than I moved on to some easy flowing single track.

Interesting, I made chile crisp greenbeans for Lance tonight!

There’s more.

Love this. Also love the "TRUST THE PROCESS" sign conspicuously placed in frame. Philly 76er/Sam Hinkie fans?

New PsychFurs! Can’t wait for the rest of the album, if this is any indication.

Milky Way from a cave on the Australian coast. Click for slightly larger. Chicago O’Hare tunnel.

Thank you. Using a T2 amplifier as a test bench might be… not so smart. Milled this test board today. On heat sinks; 10m90s current sink to the right and high voltage npn to the left. The small board on the left is the battery that killed my T2.

I bought a pair of these headphones because I really wanted to see how good they could be and to support this new comer. My experience is pretty much similar to Birgir's. I like the build quality. The clamping force on the head isn't that much, which is a good thing. However, it can be a bit too loose. The headphones almost fell out of my head a few times. About the sound, they sound very similar to my Omega clone. I might be a bit bias, but my Omega clone has just a bit better bass extension. Overall, I would say that the phones are very nicely built. The headband can use some improvement. The price, IMO, is a bit pricey putting it in a similar price range as the Stax SR007.

better late than never... Assembled the case today

I've had my set for over a month now and I would take them over the SR-009's but then again... never liked the 009's. I've been meaning to write up some impressions for the last couple of weeks so now might just be the time. First of the build quality is outstanding which means they are pretty heavy but yeah... very well made. The only issue I've run into is that there is a tiny bit of play where the forks attach to the cups but after a month of daily use they seem to be no worse for wear so probably not a long term issue either. I would also like some strain relief on the cables as they leave the cups (the 007Mk1 issues spring to mind) and on the plug but these are not easy to do on small scale build. They ideally have to be injection molded and well... that isn't cheap. Still this is me and I'm picky... 😉 The packaging is also superb and small touches like the markings on the cable splitter are appreciated. The fit is very much SR-Omega so a bit loose on the head and they have almost slid off a couple of times, usually when I'm lost in assembling some PCB boards or something like that and forgot they are there. Not really and issue under normal use. Now for the sound, same system as usual, Denafrips Terminator dac feeding a Carbon CC. I've yet to try the other set of earpads so they have the stock set attached... I think. Anyway... the set they shipped with. TL:DR, I like them a lot though I wouldn't call them an SR-Omega clone...they very much their own thing. Balanced sound signature over all but not quite as warm and relaxed as the Omega. There is a small bite to the mid-range that bothers me a bit on some recordings but far away from the SR-009 level of aggression. So not as smooth as I'd like it but that smoothness was also the Omega's downfall in some areas. Bass is not up to the SR-007 levels of depth, control and quality but perfectly fine and superior to any of the 009's. It's linear and extended but not the best there is. Still this is a more relaxed sounding set compared to the 007's so that is to be expected. Sound stage is controlled, yet expansive but can't quite pull off the layering trick the 007's can do so well but again... not really a complaint. Overall I don't think it is fair to compare them to the SR-Omega due to their status and the sad fact that so many Omegas out there sound far from stock. Bad earpads, badly treated drivers etc. all change how the old ones sound like while this one is nice and fresh... also not silly money. So very much recommended and it's always welcome when I have no complaints when testing something new. Small bite to the midrange that bothers me from time to time, not quite as engrossing as the SR-007's but yeah... just a different type of sound and nothing wrong with that. Finally, this set has been running for well over a month now and the amp used is being subject to a lot of power cycles (i.e. I'm using the time at home to do some stress tests) and they have had no complaints. No imbalance issues, charge up instantly and dead silent drivers.

Put on my fairy wings this morning.

Amazing. And the kitchen looks great as well. Chicken provencale, cauliflower gratin, and rice tonight.

Lily still loves cooking shows and recently has been bugging me to have a cake-off with her. It was my turn this weekend to make my cake for judging. She helped me in preparation for making her cake next weekend. It's a chocolate cake with dark chocolate frost and chocolate ganache and raspberry filling between each of the three layers of cake, topped with more frost and ganache. It was fun to make, I'll report back with how. it tastes later. Maybe not professional grade, but at least the flour that I buy at the grocery store is going to good use. I rode 30 miles to prepare for the fact that this cake is allegedly nearly 1000cal/slice. EDIT - not sure I ever posted a "complete" picture of the kitchen, if not, this gives you a good idea of what it looks like now.

You just cost me $50.

Peter Beard, a New York photographer, artist and naturalist to whom the word “wild” was roundly applied, both for his death-defying photographs of African wildlife and for his own much-publicized days — decades, really — as an amorous, bibulous, pharmaceutically inclined man about town, was found dead in the woods on Sunday, almost three weeks after he disappeared from his home in Montauk on the East End of Long Island. He was 82. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/19/arts/peter-beard-dead.html?referringSource=articleShare His well-documented personal life—Beard’s image should probably reside in the dictionary next to the word “dashing” (and perhaps also near “shambolic”)—likely spelled the end of a number of marriages, including some of his own. (Beard was married to Mary "Minnie" Cushing and, later, the model Cheryl Tiegs before marrying Nejma Khanum, the daughter of an African diplomat, in 1986; she and Beard have a daughter, Zara.) He and Truman Capote traipsed across America with the Rolling Stones on their Exile On Main Streettour in 1972; he was close with Jacqueline Onassis and generations of Kennedys (and had a long relationship with Onassis’s sister Lee Radziwill) and was a fixture at Studio 54. In addition to solo shows at the International Center of Photography in New York and the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, among others, he often bartered his work to pay bar tabs around Montauk and to settle bets with friends. https://www.vogue.com/article/peter-beard-tribute-remembering-the-wildlife-and-fashion-photographer/amp