I feel so productive this week. I’ve posted the review of Michalko’s Thinkpak. Upcoming: reviews of the King Arthur Flour Multigrain Baking Cookbook and Tony Ballantyne’s “Recursion.” I’m also halfway through an ARC of “Grammar & Style at Your Fingertips,” from Alpha Books’ upcoming new series.

In unrelated news, if you’re a LotRO fan, check out Foton’s new character (mildly maybe-NSFW). He seems to have decided to explore Hobbits & hunters in a rather unusual way. I never thought of Hobbits that way before, but hey. Keep an open mind, right? …Right?

Erm, uh, I’ll be going now…

I’ve posted my review of Michael Michalko’s Thinkertoys, Second Edition, and I’m tentatively planning to review his “Thinkpak” later today or tomorrow. While these tools are aimed at businesspeople, they have a lot to offer nearly any type of creative. The thing that struck me as most useful was the combination of linear and intuitive exercises–most books present one or the other, depending on their audience.

I’ve also read a novel (gasp!)–my first in a couple of months–called “Recursion,” by Tony Ballantyne. It requires mulling over as it’s rather a complex book, but I do intend to review it as well.

I’m sure there was something else I was going to say, but it escapes me at the moment. Perhaps later I’ll edit and add it if I remember. Having a sore throat for a week really knocks me out. By the way, check out Errant Epiphanies if you haven’t lately–there’s a slew of new exercises there from the last week. Oh, and I must direct you to a lovely sentiment over at Dragon Writing Prompts while I’m at it.

Aha! I bought myself enough time to remember what else I was going to say (I think I need more sleep, glurgh). We’re getting closer and closer to having the new site completely ready for rollover. We’re still customizing the links directory and finishing up little things like that, but we’re almost done. Redirects from the old site to come soon!

“I went to Outland and all I got was this lousy–OMG look at the loot!”
Shirts, mugs, more

Last night we did a bit of cooking. We started using a new cookbook that we’ll review sometime soon, the King Arthur Flour Company Cookie Companion, which produced some absolutely stupendous cheesecake bars. I’d been looking for a good way to make cheesecake such that we could freeze and subsequently thaw small amounts of it, so we could enjoy it even while trying to eat reasonably well, and bar “cookies” seem like they’ll work well.

We had some beets and carrots in the house, so we also improvised a cinnamon beets and carrots dish. Here’s a rough recipe for you:

Ingredients

• Two large beets (or several smaller)
• A bunch of carrots
• 1 tablespon butter
• 1/4 cup all-fruit apricot jam (or other mild flavor of your choice)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon white pepper (optional)

Cook the beets until they’re just on the firm side of tender, peel, and slice into bite-sized pieces. Peel the carrots, chop into bite-sized pieces, and cook just until they’re on the firm side of tender. Use whatever cooking method you like best–microwave, steaming, etc.

Melt the butter over medium heat in a large saucepan capable of holding all of the ingredients. Add the jam and stir until it melts. Add the cinnamon, salt, and white pepper and stir until the mixture bubbles up. Add beets and carrots and gently fold and stir until all vegetables are coated and glazed; serve.

For another wonderful-looking beet recipe, check out Salmon with Beets and Lentils. I haven’t tried it, but I think I’ll have to!

I happened to go to the doctor’s this weekend, and one of the things we talked about was weight; like most people I’d prefer to lose a few pounds. I mentioned that we were finally getting back to the gym, and here’s how the rest of that conversation went (wording approximated):

Doctor: You can do all the exercising you want, but ultimately I think the only thing that really works for losing weight is horrible, horrible self-deprivation.

Me, thought: Good lord, I need a new doctor.

Me, said: Gee, you’re so motivating.

Doctor: (Obliviously continues ranting about the wonders of self-deprivation)

In happy news: We’ve moved the reviews over to Errant Dreams Reviews! In honor of this, I’ve posted the first new review since the move; technically I’ve had it written for about a week, but I wanted to wait to post it until we were all moved over. Here it is: Secrets of a Jewish Baker, Revised, by George Greenstein. It is an absolutely fantastic book. The bran bread and cracked wheat bread blew me away, and I never expected to hear myself say that. In particular I love his “programs” of baking, which interleave the instructions for a handful of recipes so you can do a week’s worth of baking in one morning. We took whole loaves of the cracked wheat, Irish raisin and cheese breads to a cookout and they were a big hit.

Come Monday you should see the review of Michael Michalko’s “Thinkertoys,” to be followed shortly thereafter by his “Thinkpak.”

In the meantime we’re working on the final piece of the old site yet to be moved over: the links directory!

We’ve moved the writers’ and creativity exercises blog over to Errant Epiphanies and it’s off to a good (re)start. I’m reading a creativity book for review right now, which has me all inspired, so you can probably expect a slew of good exercises for a while. I’m also filling out the blogroll a bit with other prompt sites.

We’re in the middle of moving the reviews over to Errant Dreams Reviews. We have a little more to do before I can post (a couple of minor glitches), but the old reviews should all be there. I think that husband of mine did an awesome job with that header image. You’ll note you can now easily find directions for asking for a review in the static pages listed at the upper right on the main page.

I’m just finishing up my read of Michalko’s second edition of “Thinkertoys” for review, and starting in on an uncorrected ARC of “Grammar & Style at Your Fingertips”–one of the first offerings from Alpha Books’ new line (they make the Complete Idiot’s Guides) coming out in July. I also have Michalko’s “Thinkpak” cards to play with and review. All coming soon!

In completely unrelated news (well, almost–it does relate to writing and creativity), Wil Wheaton and George Takei (two of my favorite folks associated with the Trek franchise) are hosting a contest for Trekkies. Read Wil’s sample bit of fiction; it’s entertaining enough to actually kind of get me back in the mood for Trek-stuff, and it’s been a long while since I could say that! If you enjoy writing fanfic, you must check out this contest.

There’ve been some changes over at Gamers’ Heaven and Caffeinated Chicanery that I wanted to bring you up to date on. Although we haven’t had a chance to introduce new designs over the last month due to being rather busy with web stuff, we have taken the time to update old designs with the newest rounds of merchandise available from CafePress. The most recent addition to their lineup consists of light and dark maternity shirts, and some of our oldest designs hadn’t yet had a few other shirts added either: women’s plus size and v-neck shirts in light and dark colors.

We’ve also put handful of old designs on clearance (marked by a nice handy “CLEARANCE” note at the beginning of a sub-section name), so if you’re looking for a good deal, take a peek through before the end of the month!

Finally, according to CafePress:

We’ve had lower than acceptable customer satisfaction on the Value T-Shirt. We look at many factors when determining overall customer satisfaction on products. This includes sales rates, return rates, buyer survey scores, perceived quality, and more. Unfortunately this product routinely misses the bar.

As a result, they’re making the value shirt unavailable through the general marketplace as of sometime next month; it will only be available through individual stores. We really don’t like the idea of offering sub-par merchandise either, even if it is cheaper, so we’ve already gone through and removed the value shirts from all designs (except those on clearance sale). It would be one thing if we knew those ordering the cheaper value shirts were well aware of what they were getting and that the quality would be substantially lower, but we don’t want someone ordering our shirts and being unhappy with the results. We hope you’ll understand this decision.

Adventurers’ Last Words: I disbelieve!

46%
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Hmm, not so good there. Guess I’d better get in shape and stockpile the non-perishables and improvised weapons!

I started reading the patch notes for LotRO’s Shores of Evendim update and my head is swimming. I think I’ve been reading for about 20 minutes or so, only to get to the bottom of the page and discover that there are two more whole sections to the patch notes. A ton of these changes are great things that folks have been asking for–updates or bug fixes–and I can’t wait to see how they work out in practice.

Well there’s one thing I’m seriously impressed with: the quantity of changes and fixes, and the brief period of time we had to wait for them, is a vast improvement over what I’m used to seeing with Warcraft. This pace of change makes Warcraft’s look positively glacial. I hope they keep it up–particularly the trend of adding in whole new content areas complete with full quest complements. I’m off to read the other two-thirds of the patch notes now…

Edited to add: I absolutely love LotRO’s patch notes. They’re the most entertaining patch notes I’ve ever had to read:

Assikko, the Earth-kin tribal leader was being very crafty and selfish when he thanked you for recovering the book he requests in the Techniques of the Masters quest. He refused to return the book but ushered you on to Gondranc anyways. He has been reprimanded and will return the book as needed to advance the quest.

Oh, and of course I can’t leave out:

After an unprecedented 3 months in a prolonged abdominal crunch posture, Nathan Hodges of Amon Raith has finally assumed an upright, locked position. As a result of his amazing accomplishment he has been awarded a North Downs Abs of Steel commemorative plaque.

It seems that the further Patience got in posting the update, the punchier she got. I approve.

Edit #2: Patience is already collecting known issues with the new patch. Whooo! Thanks to Foton for the link, although I disagree with his contention that the patch notes contain no character development!

We finally completed the escort quest, after several additional complications, such as the extermination company having input the wrong zip code and ended up in Baltimore instead of Annapolis. They sprayed for the ants (I swear it looks like our entire lawn is composed of ant colonies) and dusted our four carpenter bee nests. Things seem to be much better now.

Now our road is getting ripped up again. Mind you, I’m not really complaining, since the patch job they did last week mostly turned the street from a full-bore roller coaster ride to a kiddie roller coaster ride, which was only a minor improvement. This time it looks like they’re doing the whole thing. (You think I’m kidding with that roller coaster comment? There’s a spot across the street where we’d slow down to about five miles an hour and the car would still rock back and forth like it was on hydraulics.)

In entirely different news, Shores of Evendim is coming out for LotRO today! Whooo! They’re being smart by putting out regular free content updates. They’re also being smart by making the preview server available during the downtime with a special event to keep folks entertained. I’m looking forward to playing around after the servers come back up tonight.

So, we haven’t put in redirects from the old site yet (we’ll do that after we’ve brought over the last pieces, i.e. the reviews and the link directory), but since this blog is up and running I figured I might as well start posting here. I’ve found some interesting new sites of late, which you’ll find in the blogroll–such as Van Hemlock’s erudite gaming blog, Glod’n'Epix’s academic approach to gaming, and of course some additional comics like xkcd, Three Panel Soul, and Cyanide and Happiness. I have various things I want to post about in coming weeks, and a review that’s finished and waiting for the reviews blog to move over (with another one coming up soon), so come back soon! In the meantime, if you see any rough edges do let me know–we haven’t quite finished up yet and might have missed something.

You Are 35% Left Brained, 65% Right Brained

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you’re left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet.The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you’re right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

Are You Right or Left Brained?

The only problem with this little quiz was that there were a bunch of times I wanted to say, “uh, both?” but that wasn’t an option.