On the Properties of Breakfast Cereal

Breakfast cereal was one of my childhood cornerstones.  I was raised on raisin bran!  Sprinkled spoonsful of sugar on my frosted flakes.  My brother and I ate chex like it was going out of style.  Cereal was our meal of choice watching cartoons on Saturday morning.  We ate tons of the stuff just to get to the toy prize at the bottom of the box. 

So I consider myself an aficionado when it comes to the qualities that make a good cereal experience.  One element that remains key to thoroughly enjoying a bowl of cereal is minimizing the splash.  That moment after you've chosen your bowl and spoon, poured the right amount of cereal to just  match the three-serving picture on the box, and gotten out the milk.  Suddenly a feeling of trepidation;  is the milk going to splash out of the bowl?  

Here's a quick ranking of cereals from greatest splash factor to least:

Corn Flakes (or any flake cereals), Frosted Mini Wheats (or Life), Raisin Bran, Cookie Crisp, Honeycomb, Lucky Charms (I swear it's because of the marshmallows), Kix, Cheerios, Rice Crispies (or , Grape Nuts), and finally Chex (surprisingly).

My research (and the frequent presence of near-empty boxes of cereal) led me to blending my cereal mixes.  During commercial breaks on Saturday morning I would race to the kitchen.  Generally I would blend various cereals for their texture (making sure not to put floating cereals like Cheerios or Kix at the bottom of the bowl--of course) layer upon layer, and finish with a non-splashing cereal like Kix or Chex.  (NOTE:  Rice Crispies at the top tended to get everywhere, and meant I couldn't fit as large a quantity of cereal.)

Here are a few of the most intriguing cereal combinations:

TOP:            Corn Chex  

MIDDLE:    Rice Crispies

BOTTOM:   Frosted Mini Wheats

TOP:            Honey Nut Cheerios

MIDDLE:    Raisin Bran (too splashy to be on top!)

BOTTOM:   Grape Nuts

T+M+B:   Quaker "Crunchy" Corn Bran   (It's actually my favorite)

Least Favorites:  

#3 Cap'n Crunch (because it shreds the inside of my mouth!)

#2 Life Cereal (i.e. sweetened wood shavings) followed by 

#1 The the worst cereal experience is pouring out the last of a box of cheerios and getting a large mass of crushed+powdered cheerios on top of your happiness.  

...but I digress.... since it seems I am not the only person who knows about mixing breakfast cereal.  Instead I propose a challenge. The Splash is a function of height, surface tension of the milk, and cereal shape. There must be a use for such exhaustive research on cereal Splash!  Somebody here had better come up with a good application. Discuss.

Each year I end up working on a project that embraces the feeling of Halloween. 
 

In college I started work on a clay sculpture of a gargoyle that was essentially me channeling this horror show I watched on TV when I was a kid:  The Gargoyles (1972).  The plot synopsis calls it: "A horror tale involving an anthropologist researching his book on demonology with his photographer daughter in a bizarre adventure that has a group of gargoyles, descendants of a monster whose skeleton the two have stumbled on, menacing the pair in order to retrieve the bones of their ancestor."  It scared me [lots]!

I made the hideous clay gargoyle friendly looking and called it Elgin.  Up to last year he sat on the porch of our house.  Then he got stolen!  (The sincerest form of flattery for an artist, right?)

So this year I decided to make another gargoylesque thing out of rolled newspaper tubes and tape.  I call it a "skink".  

Watches Amanda gather leaves.

He's a little camera shy.  

Family Website

I'd like to make a website that looks something like the following:

I. Home Page--This would be a welcome page, showing an overview of the website without giving away too much personal information--just news highlights and whatever's been updated on the website.

II. Login Page--Really secure website. You've got to type your info to get any further. Once in, you are allowed to make changes to the website...add your News, add what you know about a person, post pictures, etc. (Probably have the person's name recorded with the changes they made and the time of the changes--and as webmaster be able to roll back to see a previous entry that got erased--tactfulness, and what have you).
III. News--this page would have a Calendar, allow people to post changes to the calendar, and have a Forum to post messages about what's going on with each branch of the family.

IV. Genealogy--I really like the Visual Thesaurus (go here and click 'Look it Up') and would like to see a family tree program like it.   The genealogy page would look like this: 

excepting that
A. The dot's would represent Unions (marriage) out of which come Children
B. The boxes on the right would show biographical information about whoever you click on.
C. The color of the connecting lines would represent the relationship (parent-child, sibling, married, divorced, etc.)
D. You could add to the tree (just a click and type away), or you could add stuff to the biographical info.
E. Here's what the biographical info would entail:
1. Name, Birthdate, Date of Death, Place of Birth, Place of Death, all that stuff
2. Medical concerns
3. Biographical synopsis of their life
4. Photos, newspaper articles, map of travels
5. List of parents and children, friends, other relationships outside the family
6. Interests and activities
7. Anecdotes from people who knew the biograph-ee

V. Who's Who--this would be an alphabetized phone list, with links to the biographical info above, and give internet presence info too. There would be a section for friends of the family.

VI. Writings--anecdotes written by family members about things like: "How we met", "Growing up with Grandma and Grandpa for parents", "Heirlooms". There would be a different forum started every couple of months.

VII. A timeline with a map--you scroll over the timeline and dots appear on the map (with comments beneath), representing where members of the family are at that time--it could even have search criteria, so you could look at one person, or one branch of the family at a time.

Anyway, that's what I'd like to see.

Yikes! Bikes!

I live in Spokane, WA. At beginning of summer I bought a commuter bike from Pedal-2-People, a non-profit organization geared towards bicycle education and ridership. It's great! (So is P2P!) Since summer started I've biked to work at least 40 times, so that's about 160 miles...about 6 gallons of gas. Oh well. It will add up eventually.

One of the issues with riding a bike is knowing the rules of the road. Today I decided to look them up online. Turns out there are laws governing bikes!

Of equal importance, there is etiquette to riding with traffic, and that's what I'm most interested in with this post. Here's my contribution: "Behavior on the Road". Please feel free to add your bit as a comment.


1. Bikes are a fact of life. For drivers: don't tailgate, they are granted the same rights AND responsibilities under the law (end of story).

2. Be aware that the public opinion of bicycles is newly forming. Anything you do that isn't "Same Rights, Same Rules, Same Road" really undermines that message. Therefore, do STOP at stop signs. Signal at intersections. Don't let cars push you around. Be aware of your less-visible/more-likely-to-get-splattered status and think about the obstacles ahead that might push you out into traffic.

3. Don't be a jerk. In fact, say Hi when you see a fellow biker. You're both in the same situation.

4. Passing--Keep right except to pass or to turn left. And when turning, use your hand signal.

5. Oh yeah, if you're thinking of parking on a bike lane, PLEASE DON'T!

I know I'm running on here, but on a side-note it's pretty cool that cyclers are required to wear helmets. It encourages the question "Why" to which I would answer: out of consideration for others who will have to clean up the mess if you crash.

Quality Programming

As we get older, do we become less impressionable?

Recent exploration of TV programs shows a new line of Reality Television, teams of people (professionals) working together to some goal. I've recently seen "Design Challenge", "Project Runway", "Shear Genius". In these shows are strangely familiar characters in different circumstances. The entertainment factor for me comes from watching these different people cope with the group dynamics, and in being able to predict who won't get through to the next round. In fact, I'm getting pretty good at predicting.

Perhaps the reason for the popularity of reality television is that lingering childhood "need"* to learn behavior by observation.

Discuss.




(*need = latent instinct for imprinting...is it ever entirely surpressed?)

In passing

Amanda and I are moving to a new apartment. I haven't been posting but have many ideas. More to come.

Musical Robot

Dear Blog,
I had a funny idea today, and I am going to tell you all about it.
Actually, it isn't really developed, buut it is a funny notion...
I thought it would be cool to have a robot that listened to, or watched people cross a room,
and that only had the ability to interact by playing the elevator music faster or slower.
I'm not entirely sure what the machine's purpose would be, but it's actually sounding a little creepy.
Maybe it's not such a good idea after all.
All the same, I'm probably not the ONLY one who thought of it.
Anyway, gotta go.