Matthew Supert

A couple of weeks ago Megan and I won a goodie basket from the chocolate fair at the Morton Arboretum. In the basket was (obviously chocolate) some olive oil and some dark chocolate balsamic vinegar from the "Olive Tap". We decided to adapt the olive oil ice cream recipe from Jenu's ice cream book, leaving out the nuts in the recipe to instead make just a pure olive oil ice cream. 

First off, if you are into making your own ice cream. Get this book. The recipes here are not only fantastic, but they are super easy to make since they do not require you to make a custard with eggs. Instead Jeni uses cream cheese as a base. 

This ice cream came out incredibly smooth and in fact did taste like custard when we were mixing it. It probably helped that the olive oil was as high quality as it was. This was a super easy recipe that nailed it out of the park. 

The year is off to a fine start, so let's check in on what I am reading so far. I had a couple of books roll over from the end of the year into January and February. I finished up Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Both were wonderful books and if you haven't read them you really should. You can read my reviews of them at the links above, but they are probably entrenched enough in popular culture that you would know going in whether they would be for you or not.

I decided to start reading Young Miles, which is the second omnibus of the Vorkorsigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. I read the first omnibus book, Cordelia's Honor, a few years ago and really enjoyed it. I am surprised that it has taken me this long to get back around to reading more of this series. The writing in this book is superbly done so far, but for some reason it isn't quite capturing my attention. It is odd as there are parts where I have a genuine smile on my face while reading. Perhaps I am just not in the right mindset at the moment for this book. I will continue through the book though as it is a fairly easy read.  

I also went to the library this weekend and picked up the audiobook of Ancillary Justice. This is another sci-fi book and typically I don't read two of the same genre at the same time, but I have heard just too many good things about this book. First impressions after the first couple of chapters is that this books is really well done. I am enjoying the mixed narrative perspective in this book a lot since our main character is an artificial intelligence that can inhabit more than a single body at once. The narrator for this audio book is quite good as well, being able to reflect the proper tone for different characters. I have listened to the Sword and Laser podcast talk about this book when they read it as a group about a year ago and so far it is holding up to impress so far. 

So, tied into my recent notebook acquisition I am now working to improve my handwriting. My cursive handwriting I have always felt was "OK", but my script has been terrible. Following the line with the Midori modification video, I found another video from the "Stuff and Things" Youtube channel in which the host talks about his efforts to improve his handwriting. That video brought me over to a great website called iampeth.com. It is an interesting repository of old handwriting and calligraphy styles. From there I began to drill down and found the Ames Guide to Self Instruction in Practical and Artistic Penmanship. I am using some of the worksheets and style phrasing in that book to practice. 

Megan is also practicing her handwriting using the guides in that book. 

This past Christmas just about everyone in my family received Midori Traveler's notebooks as gifts. The idea started out with me from my motorcycle trip this past summer to the smokey mountains. I had wished during that travel that I had a notebook to write a daily journal of the trip while i was on the ride. My idea originally began with the concept of utilizing a Moleskine notebook. As I continued my research though I found out about the Midori Traveler's notebook. 

Long story short, I ended up buying everyone notebooks since a lot of my family has either been traveling a lot this past year, or will be traveling this coming year. I found myself though coming out of the holidays with no book for myself, despite the idea sort of originally being for me. Megan bought me a notebook for Valentine's day and went a step further by making some custom paper booklets for the notebook. You can see one of them with some pantone paper pictured above. 

I also decided to modify the notebook by adding some addition spine strings to it following this video from the "Stuff and Things" youtube channel. 

My most recent recipe from my cookbook series comes from The Sriracha Cookbook. I have made a couple of recipes out of this book before, but this dish was probably the most involved one I made out of this book. It called for sushi grade tuna, which I had some trouble finding at first. Megan took me though to an asian grocer in Naperville called H-Mart. This place not only had the tuna that I needed, but it was one of the coolest grocery stores I had ever seen. All sorts of fantastic foods, fresh fish (they kill them for you) an more. If you happen to begin in the area, it is worth stopping by the mart just to check it out and perhaps buy some of the green tea kit-kats or some other Japanese candy.

So, back onto this recipes. This was actually a pretty easy dish to make.  It basically was some Sriracha coated tuna that was seared on either side for about 60 seconds and then served with rice and some stir fried vegetables. Add some sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds and you're done. For the veggies I used both Yu Choy Sum and Chinese Broccoli and briefly sautéed them with some more oil before putting it all together. The fish ended up being sliced thinly, perhaps 1/4" thick. 

It was a simple dish and one worth making again. 

This past week I have decided to try my hand at building a map in Halo 5's forge. This is not something I have done before, but I figured I would give it a go to see how the process was. 

My first map is based off of the map "Training Grounds" from Titanfall. Since I needed to basically learn the basics and tools for forge I figured going off of a known map layout would be a good first approach. I also felt that I could make a good "Big Team" map. Here is a quick preview of what I am working on. I am probably 90% done with this at this point.  I just need to tweak some of the small details and also figure out why the strongpoints aren't capturing while testing. 

As big of a music nerd as I am, I have never really taken any music theory or composition classes before. Surprising, considering that I write electronic music. I have lately taken an interest in playing my clarinet more, beyond just the once a week band rehearsal that I go to. I have found though that it is near impossible to find some good solo books or pieces to just play for fun. Everything that is out there seems to be geared towards beginners, not advanced players. 

I was posting around over on the /r/clarinet sub over on Reddit (yeah, it exists) asking for some suggestions and someone stated that I should just start transcribing my music. I brushed that comment off at first as a sort of "jackass" comment, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. 

There is a fantastic free and open source music notation software out there called Musescore. If you haven't checked it out, you really should, if you have any interest at all notation or writing. I downloaded it yesterday and within about an hour I was up and inputting notes into my first transcription. 

Right now I am taking a piece from our band repertoire that we are working on that features the clarinet section heavily. I feel this is a good piece that I can transcribe to a solo clarinet piece rather easily. It also helps that the original score is in the public domain and can be found over http://imslp.org. If you haven't heard of that place, it is basically a repository for public domain sheet music. I am sure it will be a great resource as I move forward with this. 

I have a screenshot up above of the piece I am working on. Can anyone guess what it is?

Well it looks like Goodreads.com has a cool "My Year in Books" feature which gives a summary of all of the books you read over the past year. I never noticed this until now. It is a cool feature and in fact some of the books on that list I have no recollection of reading.

My Year in Books - 2015

The winter is always a good time to sit-down and find some books to read. Some people think summer is to time to read, but for me that is the time to get outside and do something active. The winter weather though is a great excuse to read some good books. 

As I previously mentioned, Megan bought me a Kindle Voyage for my birthday and I have had a great time reading some books on it over the past few months. 

I was able to finally polish off "Toll the Hounds" which was the eighth book in Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen Series.  As I have noted a few times before, those books are huge. This one in particular was 800+ pages and it took me a better part of 2015 to get through. It was difficult in part because I just wasn't that into the book. I am going to continue to soldier on through though and finish that series here in 2016. There are only two books left to go.

Once I finished that I needed to find something that was a little bit lighter in reading. I picked up "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" from the Kindle Lending Library to read over the Thanksgiving and winter holiday. No surprise, I loved the book as I have with all of the Harry Potter books I have read thus far. At the same time I also picked up an audio book from Librivox to listen to.  That book was "The Double Traitor" by E. Phillips Oppenheim. This was a nice, low key spy novel. It didn't have much action in it, but it was more about deception and double-crossing by the characters. There was a lot of exposition in it, but it worked out in the end as a good book. 

I am now working on another "light" novel and reading the "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes". This is a great book so far. Very light stories and this particular novel is a collection of short stories. I didn't realize that it was actually the third Holmes book, so I will have to definitely pickup the other two. These books are all in the public domain so you can get them for free over at Project Gutenberg or on most of your ebook reader stores.