Corel Painter 9.5 experiments

Thanks for all the birthday greetings, everyone! Jeff and I had dinner at Centro
(2472 Yonge St., Toronto, ON M4P 2H5 Tel: (416) 483-2211). It's become an annual tradition: once a year, I pick a top-end restaurant in Toronto for dinner. I ordered ostrich just because I've never tried it. It was good, more like beef than chicken, but not as tender as I had hoped. I loved how the desserts are offered: in tiny sample sizes ($4 each). We shared a mini banana split which looked nothing like a traditional banana split as well as very decadent chocolate croquettes which were served with a lemon custard. Yum. The restaurant was also GREAT for people-watching. :-)

My Corel Painter 9.5 arrived yesterday, a birthday gift from Jeff! I'm super-pleased with the improved brush response...much smoother and quicker. The boxed upgrade also came with two DVDs of training videos from Lynda.com, an online software training site that I've used before. And new user manuals, yay!

Because of work and FKO prep, I haven't had much time to read the manuals or play with the program yet, but I've posted a few of the quick experiments I've done so far. The picture at the top of this page was done using the new Image Hose elements in Corel Painter 9.5 and was the first image I created with my new software.

This was my second, an experiment with the Digital Watercolors:



The Digital Watercolors now allow the user to keep the layers "wet" between sessions, and you can even specify how much of a wet "fringe" you'd like.

I also knew that Corel Painter 9.5 had a new Artists' Oils set of brushes, so tried these out while doing a quick sketch of some gorgeous tulips that Ruth brought me for my birthday:



I used the Eyedropper tool to pick up colours from a photograph I took a few minutes before. I love the way the paints mix on the "paper"...much more like the real thing than previous versions. You can, of course, control almost every aspect of the brushes AND paints, including how they interact with each other. Looking forward to doing more experimenting with these virtual oil paints!

But now I have to finish some work and packing, because I'm leaving for FilKONtario today. Have a great weekend, everyone!

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Making onigiri

Hey, it's my birthday today! And my friend Katy's, too! My sister's taking me out for dim sum today, yum. Jeff and I are going out for dinner this evening.

Logged onto my e-mail this morning to find an early morning birthday greeting from my father as well as a notice from Livejournal saying that Allison had sent me a virtual gift. The latter told me to check my LJ User Profile, which made me curious. I checked my page, and was surprised to find a virtual bouquet of colourful balloons waiting for me. Thanks for the morning smile, Allison! :-D

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated. In addition to the new comic, I have a column about writing collaboration with a profile of Chery O'Donovan and Tom Wolferman, the co-authors of The Estrogen Underground ("subversive humor for the woman over forty").



I spoke too soon when I said I wasn't all that sore after my first run. Yesterday afternoon I felt like I had just leg-wrestled with a crazed Thighmaster. Despite the soreness and the fact that I felt more like napping instead of exercising after work, I went running again. Yes, I'm nuts, but the weather was too great to pass up. Still sore this morning, but not as much as yesterday.

While browsing Sanko's with Ray and Jeff on the weekend, I bought a package of pickled plums. My mom used to make onigiri (rice balls) with pickled plums (umeboshi) when I was a child, so I decided to see if I could recreate one of my favourite childhood snacks.

Historically, onigiri was used as a quick meal and used to be a simple ball of rice flavoured with salt. Nori wasn't used until later (Meiji period), when the process of nori farming and sheet-making became more widespread. Many samurai apparently stored rice balls wrapped in bamboo leaves as a quick lunchtime meal at war. The word onigiri, meaning rice ball, comes from nigiru, a verb meaning "to grasp or grip". Nowadays, onigiri is still a popular snack in Japan and can be found in local convenience stores and train stations. Here's a page with photos of various convenience store onigiri.

I've also noticed a growing interest in onigiri because of its frequent appearance in anime series. Here's an amusing (and informative!) report of someone who tried making onigiri for this reason.

For more historical info about onigiri, see this Wikipedia entry.

Here's my rice cooker, which was a gift from my parents when I first moved out:



While I waited for the cooked rice to cool just enough to handle, I removed the pits from a few of these pickled plums and then chopped up the fruit:



I only used a few, but the helpful guy at Sanko (730 Queen St. W, Toronto, ON, M6J 1E8 Tel: (416) 703-4550) told me that these will keep in the refrigerator a couple of months.

I had some nori left over from a sushi-making session:



I used a clean pair of scissors to cut a few pieces off. I'm sure purists would be horrified at my technique but hey, it worked for me. :-)

I filled a small bowl with cold water and added some salt. I used this salted water to dip my hands into during the shaping process, so the rice wouldn't stick to my hands. Some recipes recommend sprinkling salt on one's hands first, but I think this would make the onigiri too salty for me.

Here's a good photo description of how to shape rice balls. I made a couple of triangles and some cylinders. For each, I poked a hole in the center, stuffed a bit of a pickled plum, covered the hole with rice. Then I wrapped the shaped rice in a piece of nori. Here are a couple of my finished creations:



If I had more time and patience, I would have toasted some sesame seeds or bought black sesame seeds as garnish. You can also use other fillings, like salmon, eel or pickled vegetables.

Here's a recipe for how to make onigiri, with photos. Note that you need to use Japanese rice, or the rice won't stick properly. I also opt to put salt into the water rather than by itself because I don't like my onigiri too salty.

And of course after writing this entry, I'm hungry. I think it might be time to make myself some birthday onigiri. If you use a rice maker, the process really doesn't take all that long. Even with my fumbling newbie skills, it only took me about 20 minutes. I'm sure I could cut that time down with practice.

I leave for FilKONtario tomorrow!

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The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Above: Jeff and our friend Ray, in Sugar Cafe (942 Queen St. W. 416.532.5088) Sunday morning.

Went for my first run of the season! I LOVE running in this neighbourhood. No inhaling of exhaust fumes from traffic under the Gardiner Expressway. Trees and houses instead of skyscrapers and concrete. And no more dodging of cigarette smoke as I run past clusters of smokers frantically getting in a few puffs during their sidewalk breaks during the day. It's also much hillier than my old neighbourhood; I could feel it in my calves this morning. I wasn't nearly as sore as I expected, though, so I guess all the power walking I did during the winter paid off. :-)

Looks like spring's on its way! Check out the new sedum in our garden:



And buds on our white lilac tree:



This time last year, we had signed the papers for the house but still didn't have possession yet. We had two official "visits" to the house for measuring, etc., and each time I remember walking around the garden, drinking in as much as I could so I could take the memory back with me to our condo.



So last night I read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane which was written by Kate Dicamillo (author of Because of Winn-Dixie) and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline, a book lent to my one of my nieces. I had seen the book in The Flying Dragon bookshop but wasn't that intrigued. The premise, after all, sounded cliched and uninteresting: a toy rabbit gets lost and has adventures.

When I started reading it, however, I was immediately captured by the author's lyrical style. Then I got pulled in by the story and especially by the main character. Yes, the rabbit.

Warning: this is not a particularly happy book, and I would hesitate about recommending it to very young children. It's the type of book that would appeal to an adult on a far different and potentially deeper level than it would to a child (though my 11-year-old niece quite enjoyed it as well).

I found the writing is so beautiful and story so compelling that I enjoyed this book much more than I expected. Something about the characters and the truths discovered by the rabbit in the story affected me pretty deeply; I found myself crying (and I mean crying, not just getting teary-eyed) by the end. A friend of mine read the book, however, and wasn't all that moved; clearly the story will affect people in different ways.

A SURVEY: Has a book ever made you cry? If so, what was the last book you read that made you cry?

Three days until FilKONtario!

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My talented photographer friends

The photos above were taken by my friend Ray Van Kleef when he, Jeff and I were having brunch at Sugar Cafe (942 Queen St. W. 416.532.5088) yesterday morning.

I've always seen good portrait photography as being a combination of technical knowledge and the ability to capture the essence, but mainly the latter. I don't have the technical know-how so usually aim at the latter. Ray is good at both.

Ray Van Kleef

You can see some of Ray's other photos here. Just a few of my favourite Ray photos:

Bee: Ray took this photo in our garden.

No Joy: I was amused/horrified by the implied story in this photo.

Canoe Lake sunrise

Self-portrait

Beckett Gladney

Another of my friends with amazing photography skills is Beckett Gladney, and you can see her photos here. And here's an interview with Beckett on Utata.

Just a few of my favourite Beckett photos:

Paul and Riley

Alisa and Gracie

The view out the porthole

Saying good-bye

Self-portrait

Dave Huth

I met Dave Huth through my friend Rand. Here's a link to my Blathering about Dave, in case you missed it. I especially enjoyed a recent entry in 90 Seconds of Dave called "Where Does Laughter Come From?" which does a great job at capture the essence of "little kid humour." :-)

Dave is also a gifted portrait photographer, as you can see from this photo collage he did of Rand in his Dave's Friends & Family Photoblog.

Craig White

You should also check out my friend Craig White's Flickr set. Craig focuses more on landscapes and urban settings than people; his TTC shots have been getting a great deal of attention in the past year. This photo, for example, hit #1 on Flickr's "Most Interesting" page. One of my Craig photo favourites is this photo, which also made Flickr's Most Interesting page.

Craig is the editor of MapArt, a company which makes the best maps in the world.

Four more days until FilKONtario.

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Sibylle visit

Had a great time with Sibylle and Allison yesterday; you can see Allison's LJ report here. Found out, by the way, that her name is pronounced with a slight emphasis on the second syllable AND you pronounced the "e" at the end, sort of like "sih-BILL-eh." But again...she says she's fine with just "Sib."

Here are a few pics from the day...

Sib helps with dinner, a recipe from my Sofra Cookbook (Modern Turkish & Middle-Eastern Cookery) consisting of chicken, tomatoes, honey, almonds and cinnamon:



Notice the towel over the shoulder in the photo above. This is EXACTLY what Jeff does when he's cooking, and the same shoulder, too! Jeff and Sibylle got along scarily well during yesterday's visit. :-)

For dessert, we had baked pastry shells filled with fresh raspberries, drizzled with Devon Cream as well as a Ben & Jerry's peanut butter and chocolate cookie dough ice cream that Sib bought for us. Yummmm....

Sib signs our graffiti book while Cora observes from above and Allison looks on in amusement:



Jeff offers Sibylle tips on where to go in Toronto:



Sib sings her Evil Eyeball Song:



One of things we all talked about yesterday was the whole Livejournal phenomenon. If it wasn't for LJ, for example, I would likely never have known that Sibylle was coming to Toronto a week before FilKONtario and therefore wouldn't have approached her about getting together. I'm not able to keep up with my LJ Friends list regularly anymore, but I happily did see an early entry of Sibylle's announcing her intention to visit Toronto.

And of course we wouldn't have been on each other's LJ friends' lists at all were it not for Filkcontinental, the convention in Germany where we met. I'm still amazed (and immensely grateful) for all the friends we've made and music we've discovered as a result of that convention.

Anyway, I -loved- the fact that Sibylle took pictures in our local grocery store; this is so much the kind of thing I like to do in a foreign country. In fact, during the past couple of days I've discovered that Sibylle and I are alike in many ways; I'm very glad we were able to get together during her visit.

Only five days until FilKONtario!

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