Chris Martin

  • 2023 W2

    § No work next Monday for Martin Luther King Day and then a “work from home” faculty work day on Tuesday. Great. On Wednesday, students will rotate classes for their third quarter which means I’ll be teaching a group of kids I haven’t seen in eight-ish weeks. I expect it will be a nice change of pace.

    § I started watching Three Pines which honestly hasn’t hooked me yet and mostly had the effect of making me want to re-watch Twin Peaks.

    I also saw The Devil’s Hour. I thought it was pretty good and I was super happy to see that it’s a limited series. It turns out, stories are often better when they have a pre-planned beginning, middle, and end. Perhaps the accelerated rate that streaming services are canceling show renewals will encourage this trend to continue.

    Finally, I saw Pearl, Ti West’s prequel to X. I thought it had a fantastic atmosphere. The music was great, the set design had a fascinating quality of period authenticity while at the same time being unsettlingly plastic, even the colors were interesting in a way I can’t exactly place.

    § I swear, at some point in the past ten years autumn disappeared. The Midwest seemingly now transitions from 85 °F to 35 °F overnight. The season must have been more distinct before; whenever asked I would always list it as my favorite! Anyway, there were a few days in the 50s this week which was nice. Although, on balance, we also had like four inches of snow on Friday.

    I’ve noticed that the days getting longer is giving me an unexpected optimism. I am already starting to think about which vegetables I would like to try growing in the spring.

    § Links

    • Analog chess
      • “This is a version of chess where the pieces are not constrained to an 8x8 grid, and instead can move to any position on the board.”
      • See also: Really Bad Chess
    • Giffusion — Create GIFs using Stable Diffusion
      • I tried it out on Google Collab. It was a bunch of fun but the results weren’t especially impressive. I am still super excited for a true generative model for animation.
    • GLM-130B is an open source large language model. However, you should proceed with caution.
    • Q&A against documentation with GPT3 + OpenAI embeddings
      • A method of prompt engineering to easily “fine tune” GPT3 on your own data

    § Recipes

    • Gamja-tang — Korean pork and potato stew
      • Hmm… this recipe was good but 1) it tastes surprisingly similar to Kapusniak while 2) requiring a significantly more involved process to cook. I will probably make it again sometime though!
    • Chana masala
      • One of my favorites. Plus this used a bunch of frozen tomatoes from the garden, freeing up space in the freezer.
    • Not a recipe but I ate a pomelo — the largest citrus fruit — for the first time. I am tempted to say that I think it might be better than grapefruit. Much less bitter and possibly slightly sweater.

  • 2023 W1

    § Back to teaching after two weeks of winter vacation. Although, as always, I wish the vacation was longer, it feels nice to start getting back into my normal routines after the crazy holiday season. Worst case scenario: ten weeks until spring break, twenty-one until summer.

    § I have been listening to the album Distance by the band Erasers a lot after discovering it on James Reeves' list of favorite albums of 2022. Overall, the list is full of great minimal electronic artists that are all new to me. It is going to make the perfect soundtrack for some gray winter days ahead.

    § Longmont Potion Castle 20 was released on Friday. The tracks I have had the opportunity to listen to so far are amazing, as usual.

    § Three of the quails escaped into the garage which made for a real Yakety Sax evening as Caroline and I ran around trying to catch them in makeshift nets.

    § Links

    § Recipes

    Getting back into my work schedule this week meant much less cooking at home. I did at least get the opportunity to make one new-to-me recipe — arroz con pollo.

    Recipe discovery is difficult. I would love to find a personal cooking blog that is not full of SEO spam.

    • Cajun sausage and rice skillet
      • An old classic. I had to use some kielbasa that was left over from Kapusniak last week. Easy and quick to make and goes great with cornbread.
    • Arroz con pollo
      • This was good but not quite as good as my favorite Spanish rice recipe. I will definitely incorporate some elements from that recipe if I make this one again. A big positive is that I now have a huge quantity of very versatile leftovers.

  • 2022 W52

    Happy new year!

    § The Pocket Operator has become my newest obsession. I had forgotten how much I enjoy experimenting with little musical toys. Begin the countdown to when I finally give up and buy an OP-1.

    § I got on a serious weird movie kick this week after watching Triangle of Sadness after Alex Cox and Merlin Mann mentioned it on a recent episode of their Do By Friday podcast.

    Triangle of Sadness was alright but I thought The Square, also by Ruben Östlund, was amazing. Although I will admit that some of my enjoyment could be a consequence of going to art school and seeing a lot of hilariously embarrassing aspects of myself in many of the characters.

    After watching the two Östlund movies I inevitably had to see The Lobster, a movie I had been avoiding since seeing The Killing of a Sacred Deer a while back and not enjoying it much at all. I ended up loving The Lobster! It might be that Lanthimos writes such amazingly strange, surreal, uncomfortable dialog that I find it all too disturbing in a horror movie but hilarious in a comedy.

    § Re Triangle of Sadness: this song has been stuck in my heard since seeing the movie.

    § There was an unbelievable pink sunset on Wednesday evening that I was actually able to capture a nice photo of. This is usually the type of situation that I find Apple’s computational photography engine “corrects” for, making it really a difficult subject to photograph.

    § Links

    § Recipes

    The unintentional theme this week was cabbage which is definitely a new favorite vegetable — kimchi, sauerkraut, what’s not to like?

    • Kapusniak, Polish kielbasa and cabbage soup
      • This was one of the best meals I have made in a really long time. Highly recommended. The only thing I will do differently next time is add a liiiitle more chicken broth to thin it out slightly.
      • Also, here is a video of Kenji making this recipe
      • JANUARY 8 UPDATE: I just realized that when I first made this recipe and wrote the above I had accidentally used half of the specified amount of broth — 4 cups instead of 8 cups — which explains a lot! So now I would suggest either using somewhere around 6 cups of broth or letting the whole soup boil down and condense for a while. Still a great recipe.
    • Cabbage Rolls
      • This turned out better than I expected but also was more of a pain than it was worth.
    • Kimchi soup
      • I like spicy foods but this was too spicy for me. It could be the chili flakes I used though. Next time I will either use less chili flakes or a different brand.
    • Thai-style beef with basil and chiles
      • Not too special but pretty good! I made this one to have with the kimchi soup and it was a good sidekick. Caroline really liked it though.

  • 2022 W51

    Remember how last week I mentioned that I successfully got through my final week of classes without getting sick? Well, almost immediately after hitting publish I started coming down with a cold. At least it wasn’t especially bad and I was back to feeling nearly 100% by Wednesday.

    Anyway, this was my first week off this year and, despite the cold, I ended up accomplishing some of the household tasks I have been putting off for far too long. Most notably, painting a wall in my kitchen and deep cleaning the basement floor where it had been stained by cyanotype chemistry.

    Recipes

    • Tajín grilled chicken
      • This was good but would have been better had I used an actual grill instead of the stovetop and broiler. Note to self to try it again next summer.
    • Chile crisp fettuccine alfredo
      • A better combination than I was expecting. I added lemon juice which was a good choice. Next time I make this I will probably try adding ground pork too.
    • Thai carrot and sweet potato soup
      • Eh, this was alright but definitely missing something although I am not sure I can pinpoint what exactly

  • 2022 W50

    This was a strange week, as expected, with lots of student absences due to the flu, RSV, covid, and early vacations. Shockingly, I was able to avoid catching any of the illnesses myself and can now spend these next two weeks catching up on things at home and, I hope, relaxing. This is really my first chance to expirence the perks of a teacher’s schedule and I don’t intend to take it for granted.

    It snowed for the first time this year overnight Friday. The holiday season has truly begun.

  • 2022 W49

    Next week is the last week before winter break, not that I am counting.

    I made some homemade pizza in the outdoor pizza oven on Saturday. For the first time my gluten-free dough tasted the same as my glutenous dough. I hope this means my gluten-free skills are improving and not that I simply don’t know how to cook with gluten anymore. Anyway, the pizza was good and I don’t think I will have many more opprotunites to use the pizza oven until spring.

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