Category / Deco Gear

Translating creativity.

by Sixer

Granola

Where did it start, this search for the great granola? A few years ago, for sure. Sometime before I stumbled across She Who Eats’ amazing blog, with its thorough analysis of flavours and ingredients. I used her matcha granola as a template for years, whenever I got tired of thinking about breakfast and wanted something quicker. I needed granola when I was making my own yogurt, as an excuse to continue the exercise. And then, just this year, in February, I had the idea for a granola bar. The idea . . . well, it was a good rough draft we shall say. But not something publishable. And anyway I found the best wheat cracker recipe shortly after and that fixed me as far as on-hand snacks went.

But still. Granola.

It ought to be so simple – crunchy clumps of goodness. Not too sweet, not too bland. And yet it stays out of reach, with recipes resulting in a kind of sugar coated crumble: great for sprinkling over things but not quite satisfying to eat. Too sweet, really, for breakfast every morning, or for an early evening snack. Not even Cooks’ Illustrated could break the mold of mediocrity. So when I decided to go off wheat this month, and therefore give up my beloved crackers, I knew something had to change. And so I changed it. The result: practically perfect. I mean, there are changes I have to make, and also changes  I want to make. But the basic essence of this is golden. If you have an afternoon, please try it out, make it your own, and tell me how it works for you.

Glorious Granola  – adapted from She Who Eats

  • 3 cups of oats
  • 1 cup of pumpkin seeds, the roasted and shelled kind
  • 1 cup of sesame seeds and sunflower seeds (in whatever proportion you wish. My sister requested less sesame)
  • 1 cup chopped dried fruit (I used mango and ginger. You’ll probably want to increase this to two cups)
  • ~ 1/3 cup sugar (I used Jaggery (which comes in chunks – I blended it), so this number is something of a guess)
  • 1/2 cup oil (you can probably reduce this to 1/3)
  • Vanilla Extract
  • 1~1 1/2 cup brown rice (hot from the pot, or else microwaved with a bit of the oil)


Put oven at 250 degrees and toast the oats for about 30 minutes

Mix together all the fruit and nuts and sugar (Obviously you can put whatever of these you want in – the above is just what I had on hand. I would probably put the sugar and any other flavorings right into the rice mixture next time). You can put some of the oil here, but this too I think could be put all in the rice mixture. When the oats are almost ready, blend the hot rice, oil, and vanilla (and possibly salt) until a smooth, thick liquid emerges. It takes a minutes or so. Pour this over the nuts et. al. Add the hot oats and mix it, mix it, mix it. You want everything to be perfectly combined. Press it into the bottom of a lipped pan. Go and wash the vessel you blended the rice in before it cools and becomes glue.

It takes about 50-65 minutes to bake. Halfway through pull out the pan and flip the granola over, breaking it up a bit into chunks, to ensure it dries out on both sides.

Let cool and enjoy!

by Sixer

Skipping a Beat: Or, the Tempo Revs Up

Dear Readers,

I have been thinking of you quite often over the past few weeks. For one thing, I really wanted to post at least once every month this year, and was all ready to pop in on the last day of March, even if my entry only said “Made it!” And yet, somehow, I missed it. For once it is productivity that is stopping me, for now when I have both energy to do something and time to do it I find a dozen different projects lie happily at my feet. Thus the theme of this blog, I suppose. A woman of many hobbies, and devote of none.

To show how much I’ve thought of you I have some pictures. They prove my intent to share these mini-milestones, for I certainly do not take them for myself, and I have yet to start instagraming. See, here’s one from March showing the first little seedlings:IMG_0687

Behold, arugala (I’m pretty confident about this, but considering the lemon balm/lime basil incident. . . . ). There are also little poky leaves which are either cress or borage (or lemon balm, I suppose). Now that they are developing real leaves I’m siding towards borage. The dill is coming out too now, its seedlings like little blades of split grass. A volunteer army from last years horridly lanky pair. Saturday I went out and “weeded” as an excuse to stare deeply into the dirt and soak up the beautiful warmth of the sun. I did a little thining, and confirmed that the mundane looking seedlings in the door-wise corner are indeed cilantro, as I hoped. The seedlings smell of it all ready, and I wait in hungry anticipation for the summer. All I need now is for some of the winter thyme to show itself and my joy will be complete, as far as the large box goes.

IMG_0703

Look, whales!

Oh, what is this picture? Knitting? Yes, do not be shocked, this is a glimpse of a Christmas present for the Geekette. Finished in March and given hastily before I could find yet another thing wrong with it. I am really happy about them, but those decreases on the left hand! Finishing wool mittens in March was an excellent strategy to chase away the chill weather, but not a good idea if you want immediate confirmation of their long-term comfort. That’s okay, they are done and it’s not her birthday. I can cultivate a little patience for the weather’s whims.

Screen shot 2015-04-15 at 7.06.38

Now this is really for you, I have been learning HTML and CSS. Prior to this I’ve picked things up mainly by poking into themes and making Decollate – fun but maddening. This time I am trying to learn from the ground up. I have watched the first few videos of Do Not Fear the Internet, interspersed with the appropriate lesson section from Code Academy. Here is my review of Code Academy after completing their basic website course: they make things quite easy to follow and allow hands on application to drive each point home. I love this way of learning, their use of badges and percentages, and their general layout. Only three things have annoyed me so far:

1) The window where you get to see your changes magically manifest is buggy (in Safari) and instead of scrolling you have to select the contents and drag in order to see anything below the top two inches.

2) The website likes to refresh and Boot You Out. I googled it and, for once, I’m not the only one with this problem. Frustrating but not really a big deal (it usually saves your progress).

3) The course I’m taking is how to make a website. We had just gotten started on the topic that I really, really care about – positioning – when they pulled out the magic wand and shouted “Bootstrap.” I think bootstrap is cool and all, but not in a class. Please teach me how to actually position things first, and then introduce me to possible shortcuts. I’m taking their HTML & CSS language course next and I’ll let you know if it covers the subject any better.

Between these two sites I am learning quite a bit, and you can keep up with my progress here (when I finally insert a link ^_^ EDIT: Done!). Eventually I will be able to make my own theme, and then there will be no stopping me (bwhahaha!). Look forward to it!

 

IMG_0733

A more recent picture of sprouts.

by Sixer

Looking Back: 2014

This is my 2014 Japanese review. Really I should have written this in August or September, because that’s when my language study suddenly took off and flourished. I could feel myself improving everyday, and was happy to sacrifice other pursuits in order to spend more time studying. I started watching Jdramas  without subs, though, I’m afraid, not my favorite one and none of my anime simulcast.

 

The instigator of all that new found momentum was Kawaii Japanese. in the beginning of August I read their post about HabitRPG and joined without blinking. I participated in their Japanese subtitle challenge, winning the first one and completely failing the second (but still attempting it, which was worth something). For the challenge I watched Nonbiri with Japanese subs open in a window next to it, and paused to enter sentences into Anki whenever there was one that seemed eligible.

This was basically every minute.

And entering the sentences meant breaking them down, word by word.

 

I have never watched a show so slowly before.

 

I didn’t translate the sentences into English on the cards, oh no. I went hardcore and made them JPN>JPN. Nonbiri turned out to be a good show to do this for. The girls all had a different way of talking, which meant I was exposed to various styles of Japanese (as a language with varying forms, mostly based on politeness, such variation is important). Not only that, it’s a rural, slice-of-life comedy, so the sentences I translated were often short and somewhat funny, while still containing those ubiquitous phrases that pop-up everywhere once you know them.

Here’s an example of one of my cards:

Front : まさか　ウイルス感染で登場人物全滅とは

Back:

ウイルス→　”バイワス”
感染（かんせん）→病気　（ウイルス方）

登場人物（とうじょうじんぶつ）→映画と本の中に人たち。

全滅（ぜんめつ）→全部死ぬ。人も。所も。世界も。

(Ah, going through these reminded me how fun it was, but also how completely unhelpful my cards would be to other people. I went a little out there on some of my “definitions!”)
That being said, the show made me want roll my eyes in a bad way, though I’m willing to consider that this might just have been the process, which took forever. As soon as the second competition was over I ditched it. In fact, as soon as the competition was over Nanowrimo was upon us, and as soon as that was over the holidays were here, and, basically, I did nothing but the bare minimum – put a podcast on in the background, listened to some songs, watched my (subbed) anime, and read 精霊の守人.

 

Ah, Moribito (守人), where do I began? Moribito has long been one of my favorite anime, I watched it over two years ago when Crunchyroll first put it up, and immediately re-watched with my brother. And then they took it offline and I couldn’t watch it anymore. Last summer I bought the light novel off of Amazon. It was ridiculously cheap for an imported item, about $11, and considering that it’s 340 pages of words, words, words definitely more bang for your buck than a manga (sorry Natsume). I dived into the book and, despite being completely over my head in incomprehensible kanji, found I could keep up with the story well enough thanks to the furigana and my familiarity with the plot and characters. I might not know exactly what was going on in detail, but I understood just enough to know where in the story people were. And then there were the times when I understood whole sentences. Magic.

 

Don’t let the past tense fool you, I’m still in the middle of this book. I’ve been “reading” it with minimal lookup since July. At first my reasoning was that reading near a computer is impractical. But with my iPhone loaded with imiwa this is no longer a valid excuse and I’m forced to admit that it just goes completely against my boar-headed nature to pause in the middle of reading. Looking up one word leads to looking up another, and soon I’m no longer reading, just word collecting (more on this in another post). Still, even with minimal word lookup, my reading ability has skyrocketed. From understanding unconnected sentences like, “チャグムの目がまるくなった,” to being able to follow conversations. To everyone out there studying: take heart and force yourself to stay exposed to multiple media even if it seems totally beyond you. Your mind was designed to learn language, you just have to give it enough materials. I really think that watching shows without subs reinforced my reading skills. It’s almost like I can imagine how the conversation sounds now even if I don’t know exactly what they’re saying.

Okay, we’re almost done. In 2014 I started cleaning out my podcast library. This has been done with far less enthusiasms than my other learning methods. A few years ago I went on a wild spree and downloaded something like thirty likely looking podcasts. I subscribed to some of these, but only listened to a few, and those only rarely. The result is that I had over 600 podcasts episodes waiting for me in August. I have taken that number down to about 550 . . . . My goal is to whittle that down to 0 (as best I can, some of them are still updating) and then delete them all and keep only my four or five favorites. I already know what the first four subscriptions will be: MHN (Music Hyper Market), Sound LIbrary, Kikudrama, and Udon Chururchuru. I have a few contenders for fifth place, and might end up with a sixth if I ever get the hang of listening.

 

So, there’s 2014 in review, with a bit of a sneak peek into my 2015 plans. I spent more effort than usual in August and September and the result is visible enough to make me want to up my game a bit this year. Next time I post I’ll show you how I’m planning on using technology to make the most out of 守人. Until then,  またね!

by Sixer

Operation in the Interlude

It’s lunar new year, which means most of my shows have gone on hiatus this week, and I’m stuck between planning out The Garden and building those beds. {{1}} [[1]]But I did get my strawberry seeds on Thursday![[1]] What’s a girl to do in the interlude? How about install memory at 6 o’clock on a Saturday morning? It’s really the perfect time to do it: no distracting noises, no nagging deadlines. Just you and the harsh white glare of the lamp. You and the barely audible sounds of the screwdriver. You and the certainty that something is going to break.

It actually wasn’t hard at all, for anyone interested in upgrading their computer’s memory. The most agonizing part was taking the old memory out – it was really wedged in there!  My darling is an iMac 5,1,  and the upgrade took her from 1GB to 4. Since I also invested in a terabyte portable drive this month, I feel like I’ve gotten a whole new computer (not that I want to replace you, Anastasia). Of course the real question is, does the new memory make her go faster?

Uh, Yes?

Come on, if I were the type of person who could tell that right away, would I still be using a computer from 2006? Still, I think that single webpages are loading better now. Time to test running multiple applications at once.

 

by Sixer

Translation: コスモス (Cosmos)

A cosmos field I often biked pass in Japan.

A cosmos field I often biked pass in Japan.

Here’s a pretty piece of prosery from one of my Actual-Japanese Japanese Books, 鈴の鳴る道, by 星野富弘. It appears under a picture of cosmos, one of my favorite flowers. I love the way they looks like a watercolor when growing altogether in a field.

風は見えない

だけど木に吹けば

緑の風になり

花に吹けば

花の風になり

今、私を

過ぎていった

風は

どんな風に

なったのだろう

I freaked a little when I rediscovered this a few months ago, because I knew almost every 漢字. This happens a little more each time I “study,” but it still feels like a big deal.  The only two characters I didn’t know, and had to look up, were 緑 and 過ぎ, and they weren’t necessary to get the basic gist. I like to translate this poem so:

We cannot see the wind itself

Even so, it blows through the trees

Becoming a green gale

It blows through the flowers

Becoming a wave of flowers

Now it is myself

Which the wind has passed through

What kind of wind

has it become?

Obviously, this is a pretty self-reflecting translation. But it’s how I read it, all by myself, ignoring the words “passed” and “green” out of illiteracy. The word wind – I just couldn’t bring myself to repeat it so many times. I stuck in some rather fanciful additions instead. Yes, they add variety, but more then that I think “green gail” more  clearly expresses the idea of all the leaves in motion than “green breeze.” After all, what we have is no longer a quiet, respectable tree, but a manifestation of the wild wind. I got to see this poem in action this morning. It snowed last night and then gusted all day long, sending swirls of sparkling pixie dust whirling through the sky. 雪に吹けば／雪の風になり. The world lends itself as a body to the invisible wind, and in return that wind teaches it to dance, showing how detailed and complex its world is. When the wind tugs at my skirt, or blows icily against my face, what kind of wind is it making of me?

There, that’s my defense of my artistic license. How would you translate this differently? Do you think I’ve missed the meaning?