MacAlpine.org

I’ve always assumed that the purple house was built in 1881. Why I assumed this I don’t know. Because the house is the only family style residence in a very commericial part of central square, I was under the impression that it was still here for historical reasons. It was only last nite that I learned the truth about 4 Blanche St. In casual conversation with the landlord, a young lady inquired about the age of the house. Oleg, the Russian landlord, replied “How the frick do I know, turn of the century or some thing like that.” “But wait…What about the sign on the front of the house, wasn’t this place built in 1881?”, I asked. To which Oleg replied, “This is what is great about America, I make the sign!” But the best part was that he chose the year 1881 because he only had to make two templates for the numbers!

Today we made ice cream in lab by hand. We sped up the process considerably by using liquid N2. Liquid N2 is damn cold approximately -196C or -321F, thus we were able to make ice cream in about 30 seconds. Inspiration for this project came from Slashdot. Here is the ice cream recipe we used:

• 2 large eggs.
• 3/4 cup sugar.
• 2 cups whipping cream
• 1 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a large metal bowl, whisk the eggs until fluffy, whisk in the sugar until smooth, combine with the milk, cream and vanilla. After it is all mixed slowly pour in the liquid N2 while stirring. The mixture will locally freeze solid, but keep stirring until the the ice cream is smooth. Add liquid N2 as needed. Shuyan Chen documented the ice cream making with pictures.

• Combining the ingredients.
• Adding the liquid N2.
• Almost there.

Today I bought a new back pack for Kirby. The pack was purchased from Wolf Packs. This is the second pack I’ve bought for Kirby, the first mysteriously disappeared during my ex’s last move. I’m not bitter, but the pack was nicely broken in This time I upgraded to the new ‘Reflector’ style — one step down from the top of the line. We will see how the K’man likes his pack in a few weeks.

This is the home page of David MacAlpine. This site is intended to be a running commentary on things I find interesting/useful. The page contains only valid html and css (lifted shamelessly from the css/edge. The scrolling effects and hi-lighting links on the menubar are all done with CSS and HTML — no javascript. Unfortunately, Microsoft Explorer for windows has a broken implementation of CSS1 and scrolling effects are not quite right. If you came to this site using Microsoft Explorer for Windows, I would suggest that you use a web browser that correctly supports the published HTML and CSS standards.