Wizard World Chicago 2008

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From Wizard World …

I haven’t written much here about my visits to Wizard World Chicago conventions, but I have nevertheless gone annually for going on ten years now.  I haven’t been motivated to write about it at all over the last few years because about 5 years it started to go down hill, while things like Comicon in San Diego (which I have had the pleasure of attending twice, in 2004 and 2005) only seem to get better every year.  Wizard World Chicago was very early this year landing in the last weekend of June, when it is normally in the middle of August.

How one defines the success of such an event can certainly vary from person to person.  For me, the availability of exhibitors, the quality of the panels, and the management of crowds and lines are probably the top three aspects of any convention which features media and mainstream aspects.  These were, of course, the things that only seemed to become lower in quality as the years passed for Wizard World and only seem to rise in quality for Comicon.  Comicon crowds are rather ridiculous in size, but they still somehow managed to provide places for everyone to go and had very aggressive crowd handlers to make sure human nature didn’t get the best of anyone.  Wizard World crowds are nothing to sneeze at but year after year lately, the crowd handlers have become meeker and meeker, if they were even present.

It looks like the bottom was hit last year, because this is the first year in a while at Wizard World where I have noticed a slight upswing in two out of the three categories.  The panels finally included some interesting Q&A sessions, this year specifically Lou Ferigno discussing reaction to the new HULK movie, two half-way decent movie trailer sessions, and a very well handled Q&A with Missy Peregrym from REAPER, HEROES, and STICK IT to name a few.

As a vegan, finding food at these type of events is always a bit of an issue.  Bringing my own food is usually the solution, which is certainly a way to save some money while I’m at it.  Regardless, this year also featured a fairly decent food court of sorts which was another nice way to deal with crowds and give them a place to eat.  Kudos to the Wizard World staff for this area and here’s to hoping it is still around next year along with continuing improvements, especially in the one area that continues to spiral downwards: the exhibitor area.

I don’t blame Wizard World 100% for the downward path of exhibitor number and quality.  The economy is certainly down and getting people to come to Chicago with the price of gas and the quality of airline travel is probably not as easy as it once was.  I can see how Comicon San Diego will continue to shine in this area with such easy access to Los Angeles and an ideal place to visit.  The success that Comicon continues to have is actually a downside in my book with too much to choose from, it becomes painful sometimes to pick among all the goodness.  Not that I won’t be greedily consuming all information that comes out of Comicon, but in some ways I can find some small consolation in the tiny upswing being witnessed in our own local con.

Adventures in Homemade Vegan Chocolate Ice Cream

Using the recipe from Veganomicon, I’ve been trying to make some homemade vegan ice cream over the last few months.

So far, the things that one might not have on hand to try this: an ice cream maker (duh), a food processor or blender, and access to coconut milk (fortunately cans of it have always been in stock at any grocery store near me).

I’ve had a food processor for years if not decades. I didn’t use for much until I realized how easy and yummy making my own hummus would be, so that requirement was already satisfied. The Ice Cream Maker took some research. I pretty quickly decided I didn’t want to deal with rock salt, so the Cuisinart models started calling my name. Finding the Cuisinart 2 quart model at Sam’s Club for $50 clinched the deal.

What have I learned? Well, the recipe is made for a smaller size ice cream maker. Doubling the recipe overwhelmed my food processor basin, so I’ve come to a nice middle ground at 1 1/2 size measurements for the silken tofu, coconut milk cream, raw sugar, vanilla extract, melted chocolate, and soy milk.

Having made several batches of varying sizes, I can make the following recommendations. Finding the right amount of ingredients to properly fit your maker seems to affect the end result’s creaminess. Making sure to fully melt and properly blend the melted chocolate is key to nice smooth chocolate flavor. Using non-vacuum sealed silken tofu seems to make a huge difference to the texture. Also, using fresh (as opposed to frozen and then thawed) tofu seems ideal, as well.

Since Equal objects to being used in baking, I thought it might be ideal for ice cream, since only freezing is involved. The results have been less than satisfying on the first two sugar free batches I tried so some local diabetics could join in. I had not worked out some of the other issues, however, so maybe one more try is in the cards. So far, the results are very chalky and just seem to be missing the overall creamy quality the sugar filled recipe seems to create. I also tried one of the batches with baker’s unsweeted chocolate which probably also added to the problems. I’m thinking of a peanut butter version for the next try, since the added variables in the chocolate are making it hard to decide if Equal is the culprit. The peanut butter ice cream sure won’t be low in fat, but this is ice cream we’re making here, after all.

I’ll try to follow up with some pictures and results of the latest Equal challenge once I muster up the courage to give it another go.

There is this another recipe I found on Post Punk Kitchen. I haven’t tried it yet. It doesn’t use coconut milk cream at all, but rather goes with mostly tofu for the body. I’m not sure I would like it, but it might work if I’ve run out of coco milk. Another nice tip I might try from this recipe is to use maple syrup instead of turbinado sugar.

I’ve eaten, as I’m sure most vegans have, the store bought vegan ice cream, but it always seemed off somehow to me. With ice cream, the well worn motivation for homemade food certainly applies. Knowing exactly what went into the ice cream makes it taste better for some perfectly good reason.

My mouth is watering for a cone right now. See ya.

Missing the Strangest of Things

I missed Twitter over the weekend. I’ve barely been using it for two weeks and when it’s not working, I’m sad. It looks like it is finally almost working again, but I don’t want to get too attached or it will go away again. The RSS to the right of this post that has my Tweets in it just started double posting, so things aren’t fully righted quite yet, it seems. This doubling might be Twitter’s fault, or it might be mine because I changed the theme of my blog, but in both cases the services are free to me so I can’t really complain, so I won’t. This is not a complaining post, but rather just an observation of humans interacting.

Tonight is a big night for Barack Obama supporters. I don’t think we actually expect him to win outright in Pennsylvania. We know better than to hope for that, but if he comes close at all to victory, then it should be over for Hillary. She will probably hang on until the end, but I think we all know that this would be one of those blows that results in internal bleeding which really should be looked at by a doctor as opposed to trying to fight on.

How does this apply to Twitter? Well, because events/happenings like tonight or what sounds like happened at SXSW earlier this year are what Twitter seems perfect for. Maybe Twitter was fixed just in time, maybe not. For a site which has no visible business model, we can be thankful it exists at all. Twitter is a strange beast, but even people’s reaction, or lack thereof, to it being wonky, has been the most fascinating part of all.

Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies Revisited

Long ago I mentioned the glory that is a vegan chocolate chip cookie and detailed a very un-detailed, and mostly useless, recipe here. Nowadays, with the amazing cookbooks that are appearing for vegans, it is not hard to find a recipe to try, but this one, which has been posted to the world by the author on her blog, amazed me so much that I had to write about it.

I am here today to tell you, in greater, and hopefully more useful, detail about this recipe that so far has been impossible for me to goof up and with one minor modification makes pretty much the best cookies, eating preferences notwithstanding, I think I have ever eaten, let alone am able to make whenever I want.

Many of you probably already know about this recipe but, for those of you who don’t, the original recipe I have fallen in love with is here, from Dreena Burton’s blog thoughtfully posted from her Vive Le Vegan cookbook.

The variation I have learned to go with, which she mentions later in her post, is to use whole wheat pastry flour, instead of all-purpose, which seems to make all the difference and elevates these cookies to greatness. It gives the overall taste of the cookie that little kick that every good cookie needs to satisfy you, make you want to always come back for more, but so satisfying that eating just one can be soooo good as to keep you from wanting or needing to eat the whole batch in one sitting. Having another cookie to look forward to can become almost zen-like in its motivation with these lovelies. I made a batch with all purpose flour and they just didn’t have that same internal combustion going on.

Besides the whole wheat pastry flour, having molasses (I’ve actually been using bead molasses instead of blackstrap because that’s all I’ve managed to find so far) and pure maple syrup are the only relatively challenging ingredients to acquire.

The only other strange thing I’ve encountered is that the amount of chips in the recipe may be high, because I always have some trying to escape the batter. For a double batch (which is almost mandatory for such a good recipe) the only thing I might change is to use a heaping half cup of chips, rather than 2/3rds of a cup.

What are you waiting for? Bake some of these up now and spread the love.

Run free, little mouse, run free!

The place was infested with mice. What, oh what, to do?

There are several options out there, few of them humane, for trying to deal with little visitors.

A company called Greenfeet has come up with a nifty solution that has worked well for me, at least.

Here is what it looks like in action:

From Flora and Fauna

The little mouse can’t get to the cracker until you let him and ideally you reveal the bait outside far from your home. So far, the mice I have caught haven’t been the smartest ones ever, or were scared out of their minds as mice like to get, and I had to remove the cracker every time before they would leave the green house. They are supposed to chew their way through the cracker when you reveal the exit and run away, or as they seem to around here, hop like miniature kangaroos.  The menagerie gathered so far is up on Picasa.  I sure hope they aren’t all the same mouse!

So, if you don’t like the idea of filling up the landfills with dead mice, then you might want to give this device a try. It takes a little extra work and attention than the other options out there, but the exercise gotten when freeing the little buggers is certainly worth something.

TFTF Resurrection

Took me long enough, but the blog is finally back up.  Perhaps the inevitable springing of spring after the snowiest winter I’ve experienced in a long while has gotten my butt in gear.

I’m just scratching the surface of what is available here on this free hosted solution, but I like what I see so far.  Took less than 5 minutes to sign up and import the old posts.  Certainly wasn’t painful.

Also, went insane the other day and joined twitter for anyone who wants to follow or be followed: my twitter home.

Uninterruptible Indeed

Thunderstorms begat a series of power outages which led me to belatedly put a UPS in place for the web server which houses these files. The mighty fine UPS has been “in place” next to a dead server for quite a few weeks now.

After the latest outage (which lasted all of 500 milliseconds) the poor thing didn’t want to boot all the way with fsck literally getting zapped. School took over all of my time unfortunately right about then, but now in the summer terms, a tiny bit of freedom has been afforded me.

An interesting series of Ubuntu installation and Knoppix live-CD’s later, the result is the words you are currently reading. NOTE TO SELF: if system says it can’t find fsck and you can’t find fsck then it’s NOT there. Trying simply putting a viable fsck in /sbin with the straggling remnants and everything might be OK.

Barring some network slowness, everything is coming back to life. Next task in line is to get the server migrated to a more easily updated installation…

Wish me luck!

As The Beast Would Say

Some time in the next couple of weeks, I will be moving back to the place of my birth, the Chicagoland area. My apartment lease is up at the end of June and I plan to be all packed and on the road during the last week of the month.

This blog, as much as I haven’t been updating it over the last year and a half will remain alive, but it may disappear for a few days. Please do not distress.

With any luck, the changes I am making in my life will allow me to pay more attention to this piece of me.

I will be attending DePaul University as close to as full time as possible in the Fall having been accepted to their School for New Learning. I will be pursuing a second bachelor’s degree in Computing.

You may or may not have noticed that the escrow closing portion of my blog blurb has disappeared. I will be doing everything possible to keep it disappeared as my life moves forward.

GOODBYE SEATTLE! For now.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2005

Okay, I ask the same question every year, but where the hell did 2004 go?

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HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

Merry Holidays to All

Christmas 2004 has come and gone.

Happy Holidays to all and to all a good night.

Tried the Tofurky Vegetarian Feast for the first time ever. The roast filled with stuffing was excellent. Screwed up the potato dumplings, so they turned out just ok. The gravy was yummy. Next time, probably next Thanksgiving, we’ll see if we can’t make the dumplings turn out well.

We watched the first DVD of the Return of the King extended version. Boy, it sure would have been nice if they did the Kill Bill thing with all three installments and bit the bullet time wise to include all this juicy extra stuff the first time through. So good and every minute of it makes the movies better for their intended use (copious unabashed worship of the LOTR universe).