Thursday, January 31, 2013

A cookie (in a cup) for my hubby


Today is hubby's birthday, and he loves chocolate chip cookies, so tonight I tried this recipe to make him a special dessert: a chocolate chip cookie in a cup. Surprise, it turned out! (Yay me!)

This was far better than making a whole batch of cookies, which takes up too much time for a weeknight and involves me eating way too much dough. Since you mix the dough in the cup you "bake" it in (in the microwave), there's not much clean-up, either.

I think I'll be hanging on to this recipe. Definitely a good one for when you just HAVE to have a cookie, but don't want to make a whole batch.

no. 2 pencil: Chocolate Chip Cookie in a Cup



Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Mitch Resnick: Let's teach kids to code [Recently Watched]

I watched this over my lunch break today. I think Mitch Resnick says a lot of important things in here. People do seem to have the impression (and I fall into it now and then myself) that you only need to learn to code if you're going to be a programmer or a web developer or something along those lines. But Resnick points out that learning to code helps kids (and adults) learn other skills through coding.

Great video. Take the time to watch it.

 

Monday, January 28, 2013

A 200-year-old book and a current web series that make me squee

Pride and Prejudice was published January 28, 1813 and the world has been reading it non-stop ever since. It's one of the few books I have re-read multiple times.

To mark the day, let me point you (once again) to my latest obsession: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. This is a web series which follows a modern-day Lizzie through the (slightly altered) events of P&P. If you want to jump in from the beginning, you can find a handy playlist here (and don't forget Lydia's videos here - of course, Lydia being Lydia stopped adding videos to her playlist some time ago, so you have to just poke around and try to watch them in order).



If you'd like to dig further into the goings-on of the story (many of the characters have their own Twitter, Tumblr & Facebook pages), check out the webpage, which will lay it all out for you (including Lydia's vids in the proper order, folded into the bigger story). The story is set to wrap up in March (after which I plan to go back and re-watch and re-read everything to catch the cues & clues I missed the first time). It's interesting to know more-or-less where the story is going , but to have no idea exactly how this version is going to pull it all off, plus there's the added fun of watching the characters interact outside the videos (for me, this is mostly on Twitter).

Have you been watching? If you haven't, do you think you'll give it a try? What's your favorite adaptation of Pride and Prejudice? (I think this one's up there, but it's not complete yet, so I'll withhold full judgement until it is. I think so far, it has my all-time-favorite Georgiana and possibly the most adorable Mr. Collins ever. Yes, adorable.)

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Frank Conroy on irrelevant details [Writing]

Writer's Almanac mentioned Frank Conroy today and included this bit:
He once scolded a student for using irrelevant details in her short story. He said: "The author makes a tacit deal with the reader. You hand them a backpack. You ask them to place certain things in it — to remember, to keep in mind — as they make their way up the hill. If you hand them a yellow Volkswagen and they have to haul this to the top of the mountain — to the end of the story — and they find that this Volkswagen has nothing whatsoever to do with your story, you're going to have a very irritated reader on your hands."
She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways by William Wordsworth | The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor