After many days of heavy rain, the sun finally came out. I parked my car in front of a fence and noticed animals peering from the soaked fence.
Bear
Deer
Do you think the home owner would let me cut them from the wood?
Last one, eye.
Do You See?
Audiobook Recommendation – May 2019
It has been seven months since I’ve updated my audiobook recommendation list. Most of the books I have listened to during that time were written by Dakota Krout. If you like RPG books, you will enjoy these books. So, a shout goes out to Dakota Krout for a job well done, okay six jobs well done. My only dilemma is where to put them in the list, and which series was better. I love the Bobiverse series and the Magic 2.0 series.
Below is my updated list of book recommendations.
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel – Neil Gaiman
- We Are Legion (We Are Bob), Bobiverse, Book 1 – Dennis Taylor
- For We Are Many, Bobiverse, Book 2 – Dennis Taylor
- All These Worlds, Bobiverse, Book 3 – Dennis Taylor
- Mogworld – Yahtzee Croshaw
- 14 – Peter Clines
- The Fold – Peter Clines
- Paradox Bound – Peter Clines
- Differently Morphous – Yahtzee Croshaw
- The Authorities – Scott Meyer
- Run Program – Scott Meyer
- Ritualist: Completionist Chronicles, Book 1 – Dakota Krout
- Regicide: The Completionist Chronicles Series, Book 2 – Dakota Krout
- Off To Be a Wizard: Magic 2.0 – Scott Meyer
- Hacker, The Outlaw Chronicles – Ted Dekker
- Spell or High Water: Magic 2.0, Book 2 – Scott Meyer
- An Unwelcome Quest: Magic 2.0, Book 3 – Scott Meyer
- Fight and Flight: Magic 2.0, Book 4 – Scott Meyer
- Out of Spite, Out of Mind: Magic 2.0, Book 5 – Scott Meyer
- Dungeon Born: Divine Dungeon Series, Book 1 – Dakota Krout
- Dungeon Madness: Divine Dungeon Series, Book 2 – Dakota Krout
- Dungeon Calamity: Divine Dungeon Series, Book 3 – Dakota Krout
- Dungeon Desolation: Divine Dungeon Series, Book 4 – Dakota Krout
- The Passage, Book 1 – Justin Cronin
- The Twelve (The Passage Trilogy), Book 2 – Justin Cronin
- The City of Mirrors (The Passage Trilogy), Book 3 – Justin Cronin
- Anansi Boys – Neil Gaiman
- Master of Formalities – Scott Meyer
- The Graveyard – Neil Gaiman
- Will Save the Galaxy for Food – Yahtzee Croshaw
- Jam – Yahtzee Croshaw
- The Time Keeper – Mitch Albom
- Forbidden, The Book of Mortal, Book 1 – Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee
- Mortal, The Book of Mortal, Book 2 – Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee
- Sovereign, The Book of Mortal, Book 3 – Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee
- Run Program – Scott Meyer
- Black: Book One, The Birth of Evil – Ted Dekker
- Red: Book Two, The Heroic Rescue – Ted Dekker
- White: Book Three, The Great Pursuit – Ted Dekker
- The Junkie Quatrain – Peter Clines
- Dead Men Can’t Complain and Other Stories – Peter Clines
- I Can Only Imagine: A Memior – Bart Millard
Sorry, Neil Gaiman but Good Omens will not be making on this list. The book failed to hold my attention. I kept getting distracted by other things like traffic lights. However, I will watch the TV series when it comes out.
Sand Hill Crane
March and April it is prime time to view Sand Hill Cranes in Nebraska. The best viewing time is early morning or evening. In Nebraska, at that time of year it is cold and it can be very cold, and windy – really windy. I cannot envision me taking that particular adventure because I like warm weather and sunshine.
However, when walking through a Mall I will walk through there free display recognizing the Sand Hill Cranes.
My Low-carb Cheesecake Recipe
Here is my recipe for my low-carb (no-sugar) Cheesecake. Several people have asked me to make this for their birthday.
Ingredients:
Crust:
1 Cup Chopped Walnuts
1 Cup Splenda for Baking
2 tablespoons Ground Cinnamon
Filling:
5 pkg. (8 oz. each) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened
1 pint Sour Cream
5 eggs at room temperature (3 whole eggs and 2 egg yokes)
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Cup Splenda for Baking
Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Spray the springform pan with cooking spray. I like Pam from Baking.
Mixed the Walnuts, Splenda, and Cinnamon together and pour into the springform pan. Gently shake pan to level the crust ingredients.
Place the Cream Cheese and vanilla into a mixing bowl and beat on medium speed until it is combined. Add the 1 cup of Splenda to the mixture and beat on medium speed until it is combined. Beat in one egg at a time to the mixture, until all three eggs and two egg yokes are added. Make sure you are scraping the sides of the bowl while adding everything to make the filing.
Add one pint of Sour Cream to the mixture and beat on low speed until sour cream is blended into the filing.
Pour filing into springform pan over the top of the crust. Make sure the filing is level inside with pan.
Bake until the Cheesecake appears to be firm and set on the outer 2″ rim of the cake. The center of the cake will still appear to be soft. The baking time is approximately 1 hour – check cake after 40 minutes and then every 10 minutes. Do not stick a toothpick or knife into the cake to check for doneness.
Let cool and refrigerate it.
There are some people that can’t wait to eat it and eat it warm.
Mandala’s on Black
Here are a few of my more recent drawings. I think I have develop an addiction. I love filling in the drawings will just simple lines.
The Spiral Puzzle drawing below was a big puzzle trying to figure out where the spirals overlapped.
Spiral Puzzle
Another drawing celebrating the month of Love.
Spiral of Love
Half way through drawing the mandala below I noticed that I messed up the pattern. Instead of tossing it in the garbage and starting over, I came up with a solution.
Autoplay Videos – Argh
I can read faster than I can watch a video. There are numerous sites where the video automatically start playing – first the ad then the video. I can read usually read an article in the 20 to 30 seconds duration of the advertisement. However, if I try to read the article, the video seems to act like a little child saying “No, no watch me! Watch me!”
I have learned how to disable the auto play of videos.
Microsoft Edge:
- Launch Microsoft Edge
- Click the three dots in top right corner or press Alt+X
- Click Settings
- Click Advanced
- Under Media autoplay select your preference from the drop down box.
- If you select Block, it will warn you “Some sites might not work as expected.” This will prevent the videos from autoplaying. You will need to click the video to play it.
Chrome:
The Chrome browser settings did not have an option to turn off autoplay. It is done on their “flags” page.
- Launch Google Chrome
- In the address bar type: chrome://flags/#autoplay-policy and press Enter.
- The flags screen will be displayed with Autoplay policy at the top of the screen.
- Under the dropdown list, select your preference. To stop autoplay, select “Document User Activation is Required”. The video on a website will not play unless it is clicked.
- Click “RELAUNCH NOW”
What I did not test was, if I was logged onto my Google or Microsoft account, if changing these settings would propagate across all devices.
Hearts Mandala
I created the mandala below for the month of February. What happens is February, beside National Pizza Day, Ferris Wheel Day, Chinese New Year (wait, I could have easy created a mandala for these days)? It is the month that Valentine’s Day is observed.
A PDF of this mandala is available on my coloring page, for anyone to download.
It was created and colored in CorelDraw.
Sarah’s Roomba
In 2011, I created a Facebook page for my Roomba. My Roomba has many adventures, most about getting trap under furniture and shut inside rooms. The page had many post for a few years, but alas things happens; Roomba gets put in a box, taken out, and ignored.
A few weeks ago, I cleaned my Roomba’s brushes and changed its batteries. Now the daily adventures with the Roomba continues. Most of the adventure involve blocking it’s access or getting it unstuck. Still, you have to enjoy the moments, even if it is with a small robot.
King Cake Addict
Here is the link to follow the Roomba’s Adventure: Sarah’s Roomba Page
Now, I just need to work on the robot that daily goes from room to room cleaning the toilets.
Experiment: Epson Fine Art Paper
As soon as I felt the Epson Fine Art Paper, I wondered if I could use it for some of my coloring page. Over the last week, I have experimented with the paper.
This is the drawing I decided to use for the experiment. It was designed using CorelDraw.
It is also one of the first of my coloring pages I printed. It was printed using my Epson printer, on Epson Fine Art paper, with the thick-paper setting turned on. It printed nicely, but I did notice the lines in the middle were very close together.
I thought my first attempt to color it would be with color pencils; instead, I used watercolor pencils, with a water brush, and a light touch. The black line appeared to bleed a little, but I kind of liked that effect. The more color I added to the paper, the less the black lines appeared to bleed. The paper did really well with the water, there was minimum wrapping of the paper. Below is the results:
My testing of the color pencils did not go well. The color went on the paper like I expected, nice blending was accomplished. However, when you apply multiple layers of color with the pencil, wax bloom happens. Little specks from the color pencils gets all over the drawing. One method to get rid these little specks, is to use a kneed eraser.
The Fine Art paper, absorbed the gray color from the kneed eraser. It also absorbed the pink from the pink eraser and any color left from previous erasing off of a white eraser. There are two ways I can see to get rid of these little specks for future projects when using this paper: first, to clean the white eraser every time before touching it to this paper; or use can air to blow the specks off the paper. I am will probably go with the can of air.
Since I created the drawing in CorelDraw, I had to color it in CorelDraw. When I saved it out as a JPEG file, I though the background provided additional shine to the colors. Below is the piece of art.
It you would like to color this design, I have posted a PDF of it on my coloring page.
Flowers on Bamboo
Below is a drawing I did by hand with Derwent Inktense Pencils and Watercolor pencils on 9″ x 12″ watercolor paper.
After I finished the drawing, I thought it would be a fun page to color. So, I recreated the drawing in CoralDraw. This version was created for letter size paper, therefore the flowers are spaces .75″ apart, instead of the 1″ spacing used on the hand drawing.
I created a black and white version that is available for download on my Coloring Page.
