mattbell

I also squeezed in a visit to Hoover Dam during my Vegas trip, paying an extra $20 to see a couple of more esoteric areas of the dam that are normally closed to tourists.  My experience of Hoover Dam was a bit bittersweet.  While I was impressed at the number of tourists who streamed in to see a large and technologically interesting but fairly unattractive-looking historic engineering project instead of simply gambling in Vegas, seeing the dam reminded me of the much larger Three Gorges dam in China, which I saw a few years back when it was under construction.  Hoover Dam was built during an era when US urban engineers dared to be big and bold with their projects -- buildings like the Empire State building, bridges like the Golden Gate bridge.  These were symbols of national pride.  However, the US has stopped pushing the limits of construction technology, leaving it instead to places like Tokyo, Shanghai, and Dubai. 

We are certainly making progress in subtler ways; energy efficiency has dramatically improved, and mass customization techniques are allowing for new types of structures with fine nonrepeating detail and an organic feel.  There are also certainly drawbacks to structures like dams, which can damage ecosystems despite providing clean power, and I don't advocate aggressive damming of every valley in sight.  Also, there are also certainly other areas in which America is excelling, including most major internet businesses.  However, it seems that new construction and civil engineering projects don't fire our imaginations anymore.  I don't want to see our urban development mired in a morass of entrenched interests and excess regulation, leading us to gradually fall behind as it becomes too difficult to make progress.  For example, building a modern SF-LA high speed rail seems hopelessly complex and political. 

Anyway, the visual experience of Hoover Dam, built in a jagged and lifeless canyon of burnt-brown with a tangle of power lines emerging from a central core deep in the ground, is not unlike a mid-1900s rendition of Mordor.  The stark landscape helps add to the feel of the project's audacity.

Zion is a canyon in Utah known for its variety of soft reddish sedimentary rocks.  The composition of these rocks has allowed rivers to carve exquisitely textured yet enormous ravines into them, creating an extremely beautiful place.  However, in winter, these rocks get covered with snow, enhancing the contrast and making the grinding work of the water even easier to see.  Pictures of Zion in winter were amazing enough to convince me to drive three hours from Vegas after my conference ended to check it out.  It did not disappoint.  I spent the day hiking four major trails, taking in as much as I could.


The textures were fantastic.  The lines of snow deposited in darker and recessed areas highlighted the range of ways that the rock had been carved.

Here are the results from our baking-very-dark-things adventure -- my attempt to create bittersweet desserts that aren't available in the market.

Recipe #1 -- a standard dark chocolate cupcake recipe (makes 6 cupcakes)

1/4 cup unsweetened chocolate powder (used Dagobah brand)
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 stick butter
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 whole egg
1/2 egg yolk
1/8 tsp vanilla

Recipe #2 -- modified version of recipe #1:

1/4 cup + 3 tablespoons (almost 1/2 cup) unsweetened chocolate powder (used Dagobah brand)
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 stick butter
4 tsp sugar (1/3 the original amount)
1/2 whole egg
1/2 egg yolk

Recipe #3 -- recipe 2 + a dash of Yellow Masala Curry powder.

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Frostings:
Frosting #1 was whipping cream + a small amount of sugar + vanilla
Frosting #2 was whipping cream + a small amount of sugar + vanilla + unsweetend chocolate powder
Frosting #3 was whipping cream + a small amount of sugar + vanilla + ground nutmeg (1/2 nut for 6 cupcakes of frosting)

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Recipe #1 -- the standard recipe -- was a bit on the sweet side but had great texture.
Recipe #2 -- the low-sugar, extra-chocolate recipe -- had a less sproingy texture due to lack of sugar, was a little doughy in terms of the flavor, had somewhat limited expression of the chocolate flavor despite the extra chocolate, but was at the right level of sweetness for me.
Recipe #3 -- the yellow Masala curry -- had the texture problems of Recipe #2 but had the best flavor.  It's proved once and for all that yellow curry belongs in cupcakes.  

Going forward, we are going to try modifying recipes #2 & #3 to add a bit of salt to enhance the chocolate flavor and another egg to help create a more spongey cupcake texture.  

Frosting #3 was the most interesting -- the intense nutmeg flavor only slightly cut by sugar added a strong kick to the frosting.  

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Thanks to Aviva for providing the cooking mastery and to everyone else for helping.  

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After baking, we played Bananagrams.  Look closely at the crossword on the lower left.  Someone's mind is a little dirty.



Also, this is a Water Caltrop, a relative of the Water Chestnut.  The flavor is uninteresting, but the fruit looks like something out of Hades:


 

So I don't follow baseball.  That's not to say that baseball isn't interesting... I'm sure there's plenty of depth and nuance to it, but it takes some work to get to that depth.   However, I'm fascinated by how it's affecting San Francisco.  During the second World Series game I took a walk around the stadium and absorbed a bit of the enthusiasm of the crowd.  It's truly a spectacle, from the people crowding into the free standing room seats at the back of the stadium to the people in the boats outside the park with the game on radio hoping to catch a home run to the people just standing around the stadium in team costume and celebrating.

 
 

It reminds me of Vietnam!

In case you were wondering, this is what Yosemite valley looks like in near-infrared.  Near-infrared is different from thermal infrared, which shows temperature.  In near-infrared, which is commonly used in see-in-the-dark security cameras, foliage is very light, while water is very dark and murky.  I brought a near-infrared camera along on my trip to Yosemite yesterday. 



 
 
 
   

Full set on flickr.

If you like these, I also have some near-infrared pictures of the japanese gardens in San Francisco.

After having a late sushi dinner in which the arrangement of the fish in the chirashi eerily resembled Chthulu, my co-adventurer and I found our way into the post-midnight mists of the former military base at the northwest corner of San Francisco, seeking adventure.  We started under the Golden Gate Bridge and made our way out into the darkness, wandering our way through old World War II gun turrets, searching for the narrow, steep path to the beach.  We stood at the edge of a precipice, doused by the sounds of crashing waves but enshrouded in so much mist that we could see only grayish nothingness below.  After playing with long exposures and light, we descended to the beach.  The only occasionally visible bridge beckoned in the distance, and we made our way back towards it, stopping occasionally to dare the waves to hit us.  By then it was close to 2am, and a few miles away, a city of hundreds of thousands was finishing up its partying and starting to hail cabs home.  We were completely in solitude, as if we had traveled hours to some far-off place.

 
 
   

The Golden Gate Bridge... beautiful Art Deco icon, overphotographed into near-banality by tourists and professionals alike.  It's still awesome.

 
 


Full set on Flickr

My friend Paul took me for a short flight around the Bay Area today.  We flew around sunset, and the views were beautiful.

Some of the highlights:

 
 

Bay Bridge construction:

 

 

Closeup of BART:



Strange salt ponds (?) near Palo Alto:



Paul:

 

Full Flickr set

I have completed my projects for Balsa Man.  They are the culmination of more than four hours of work (which, at the 1/16 scale of Balsa Man, is equivalent to over 64 hours of work on an actual burningman project!) 

The first project is the epic 24 inch construction, Cruder Awakening. 

   
 

Coincidentally, it bears a certain resemblance to the most impressive project anyone ever did at Burning Man:



My second project, Infinite City, is meant to explore the nature of human existence in a world that is very finite yet infinite at the same time. 
Technological possibilities offer an unbound dream of future progress, yet all-too-real resource constraints force us to confront our own limitations.  In addition, as we navigate this mirror-like maze of possibilities and limitations, we often go on long journeys and travel to distant places, both physical and conceptual, only to find a reflection of ourselves.  Ultimately, can humanity escape from our increasingly self-created hypercomplex fractured prison of self-reflective function?  Only time will tell.  Don't believe everything you read in an art blurb.

 


Come to Balsa Man!  It'll be fun!  It's this evening pre-sunset at an unnamed beach in San Francisco!  Call me for exact location. 

I've been doing indoor rock-climbing as my primary form of exercise since mid-April, and it seems to have had a significant impact on my amount of muscle.  Since I started tracking my lean mass in mid-May, I've put on around 10 pounds, mostly muscle.  I've put on close to 20 pounds since I got back from my trip, (at which time people described me as rather emaciated).  Meanwhile, my girlfriend, who's been doing a fitness challenge, has dropped her body fat percentage by 6.5% while adding a few pounds of muscle. 



I wish I had a good "before" photo...  This is the closest I could find.  I look kind of emaciated in this one, which was taken about three months after I got back from my trip: