I'm not much of a milk drinker but hubs is and, after closing down the homework club and emptying the club fridge of anything that could go bad over the holidays, we ended up taking home a gallon of milk that had been just barely used (to make icing for a cake) but that was just past its sell-by date. Thom used up a little bit, but it started going sour pretty quickly, so we were left with 2/3 of a gallon of sour-but-not-yet-bad milk. So I decided to make cheese.

Yogurt cheese, actually, which is a two step process of 1) making yogurt and then 2) making cheese out of said yogurt. Here's the recipe I used as a basic guideline (I've done cheese before, using an acid rennet and I know the basics of yogurt making, but I've never made yogurt cheese and so I wanted to make sure I had my proportions right). (Follow this link to the main page for all sorts of cheese-making recipes, from mozzerella to parmesan.)

So yesterday we did the heat and innoculate thing using a few TBSP of my breakfast yogurt, leaving the resulting concoction to sit toastily in the crockpot (occasionally turned on low for a few minutes to keep the temp up) for about 6 hours while we enjoyed our Christams gifts.

The resulting yogurt base went into the fridge overnight, where it proceeded to separate into a layer of thick proto-cheese under a whole lot of whey. Which was not the intended result (I probably got the yogurt too hot - that'll make it separate out every time), but one that actually saves me some time draining the otherwise incorporated whey out of the cheese. So I spooned off most of the whey into a container (it'll later be used as the liquid in my bread recipes - yum!), and hung the remaining mixture in a clean and bleach-sterilized old pillowcase over a bowl in the sink to catch the rest.

I'll give the cheese a bit of salt when most of the whey is out, then hang it some more, twisting the pillowcase to compress the cheese, until I get a nice thick, spreadable consistency. Given the milk's already tangy base flavor, I should end up with a pleasantly sharp cream-cheese-like end product to enjoy with my home-made (whey enhanced) bread.

And that, my friends, is what you do with almost-but-not-quite-gone leftover milk in the fridge. Mmmm...homemade tangy spreading cheese. Beats crying over spoiled milk anyday.

First inhabited island to disappear beneath rising seas.


Happy New Year to the new reality.

Susan Henderson, writer of the Successful Dilletante, interviewed me a while back for her newsletter. The interview is up now at her site, so if you're interested in how I got to where I am today, you can stop by and check it out for yourself.

Okay, so not really, since only British citizens can whip out the "Sir" thing on us lowly plebes. But still. It beats the crap out of another Grammy.

Bono receives an honorary knighthood from the Queen

Bono for Beneificent Dictator!

Mmm...Pinot Grigio and gingerbread cookies...

I am soooo winning this war, Republicanly speaking.  ;-)

Spent the better part of the day updating my various online networking profiles. I'm big on online networking, although it was more important when I lived in Missouri where I was hundreds of miles from the nearest civilized metropolis.

For the past year, I've been so occupied with first the move and then this whole Americorps service, that I've virtually (heh) dropped off the face of the earth, as far as my network is concerned.

Friends email, wondering if I'm ill or dead or whatnot. I've ignored my copywriting business except to keep up with current leads or contracts and sporatically update my online portfolio. And my coaching has gone completely into hibernation (due mainly to the fact that after working with schoolkids all day, I've got nothing left to give when I come home).

So, one of my goals for this holiday break is to update all of my online connections and shopfronts to reflect what's going on, as well as turn the burner up on the copywriting gig a bit by doing some active networking and putting the word out that I'm open for business - reaching out and touching folks all over the place. I'm also working on fine-tuning my copywriting niche. Then I'll be doing the whole shebang all over again for hubby's online presence.

Hopefully,, the end result of all this tinkering will be the development of some of that nifty income stuff. Yanno, paying the bills and all that.

So, if you haven't stopped by my Ryze page or LinkedIn profile in a while and you want to see what I've been up to, now's as good a time as any. It's all fresh and shiny right now. If you wait, you'll just be getting dusty old leftovers with the rest of the slackers.

All bow down before our scaly Overlord and Savior!

Apparently, a Komodo dragon in England's Chester Zoo has gone through what is technically a virgin birth and produced fertile eggs - even though she's not been around any male Komodo dragons with the necessary "Tab A" to complement "Slot B."

Parthenogenesis, or self-impregnation - is not unknown in the natural world. But this is the first time it's been documented in Komodo dragons.

The kicker? The babies are due right around the holidays.

Guess the Pope had better start looking for a really big heat rock...

Via BoingBoing, apparently, Australian courts find that even linking to copyrighted material is a matter of piracy. In this ruling, they determined that a blogger or website linking to copyrighted items is as guilty of copyright infringement as the infringer, if the infringer used that link tto do something illegal with the linked-to materials.

The ruling was on whether or not a site that merely linked to copyrighted mp3s was guilty of infringement if folks who followed the links downloaded the mp3s without paying for them. Their answer is "HELL YES, YOU PIRATICAL FREAKS!"

However, there's nothing in the language that precludes you or I being sued for linking to that article above, given that it is copyrighted to the Sydney Morning Herald, if Bubba in Social Studies follows the link and then decides to cut-and-paste it into his weekly assignment on current events. Bubba's a bad boy, no doubt. But now I can be responsible for his bad behavior as well.

By this legal measure, the internet itself is virtually a wasteland of criminal activity run amok. Google is the Mafia (nothing but organized links as far as the mouse can click). Bloggers are the street whores, passing out tasty tidbits of clicky goodness to all and sundry for the paltry price of a few GoogleAd clicks - or, even worse, for free!
And let's not even start thinking about all those websites all over the world linking to each other in daisy-chains of copyright perversion known as link-swapping or web-rings. God forbid someone should download a free ebook somewhere and be sucked into a life of crime by the temptation to share it with a friend. Oh, the humanity!

My solution is simple. Quit linking to all those people who are so frightened by the potential for fifth-hand, throughput breech of contract usage. I mean, between the web copy, the advertising and the graphics, there's enough copyrighted material on their sites to start an entire crime epidemic. If enough people quit linking to Universal, Warner, Festival Records, BMG and all those other folks who start hyperventilating at the sound of a mouse click, they'll get their wish to be left alone on the internet to live their lives in peace.

After all, there's nothing quite as safe as a website with no inbound links, no?

OMFG this is hilarious! This poor guy is being stalked by the 18th century composer of the Canon in D.

The Pachelbel Rant.


Via: VideoSift

And you thought the NSA were everywhere...

British researchers have discovered that the smarter the kid, the more likely they are to become a vegetarian as they get older.

I knew that. :-D