Dammit, I missed the Christmas-post. But it wasn't really my fault because my hoster made some changes to their environment which caused my blogging software to refuse any connection-attempt. But after a support-ticket they quickly resolved my issue, sadly it was to late for my Christmas-post.
So I hope you all had a nice Christmas.
Ok, as promised here I'm presenting pictures from our kitchen after it has arrived. These were taken on October 6th, immediately after the carpenters have finished their last screw. Even dust particles are still floating around and visible on the images. The cables for light installations are still hanging out and only a few sockets are already mounted.
As you can see we chose maple colors and modern looking handholds on the front surfaces. Overall the quality of everything is quite high, there is storage possibility on almost every place and the whole assembly has some neat functions here and there. For example:
On then, some comments to each photo:
On the first one (kitchen_left) you see the left side of the room starring the cooking and baking area. Nice feature of the stove are an alarm and automatic turn-off timer as well as sliding arms for the baking trays. The ceramic stove top is incredible. The hot plates are hot after three seconds latest, timed with my (afterwards burnt) palm. The hood is also equipped with auto-turnoff-timers. The sink is nothing special, perhaps to note that it's an enlarged corner-sink. Below the sink is a rotateable waste- cleaning-stuff-storage system with several pull-out buckets for separating waste and keeping cleaning equipment together.
The middle part (kitchen_middle) features the AAA dishwasher and a customized shelf handmade by our carpenters. The diswasher is again equipped with all sorts of automatic stuff like start-timer, electronic measurements of salt- and rinse aid-status and automatic detection of how dirty the dishes are (including clean-water recycling from the last run). As said above the surface on this side has extended depth and the drawers are jumbo-sized too. The drawer on the right bottom can hold more than two trays of beer.
And on the right side (kitchen_right) there is our star: a full-sized pull-out pantry. This one commonly causes "Wow"s from visitors. Next to it the fridge and freezer. Nothing very special there, only automatic de-iceing and antibacterial surface-coating inside. On the very right border of the image there are a few milimeters of the window visible. We had to cut the window sill on the left side so that the cabinet for fridge and freezer could be placed flat on the wall. Just a few moments of fun with the angle grinder.
Well that's been the look from late October. Today it looks even better since almost all furniture is ready and the other equipment is there.
CookingByNumbers.com is finally something I've been searching for for ages. Well, at least since we have our own kitchen ready.
And while I'm at it I noticed that I didn't post when our kitchen was finally finished. I did post when we had painted the room but never when everything was installed. I'll put that on my todo-list.
This weekend I enjoyed a quite entertaining evening. Since it had been much fun I'd like to share the recipe for that:
Take care, that you choose a girl which only sporadically shows her 'love' to the boyfriend when people are around. The boy should be one of those who are 'orbiting' around their girlfriend most of the time. It also aids the fun if both of them are a bit stubborn.
Mix all of them together in an environment of a mead tasting event and let them rest for a few hours. You'll notice that after some time the mixture begins to sparkle and fizzle around. Dark thunder-clouds can appear on opposing sides of the bunch and somehow a strange separation of the ingredients occours. This can either be followed by a series of small explosions or a surprising silence and peaceful reunification of the trimmings. The later the evening and the higher the alcohol-niveau the faster and reactive the reactions become.
Take care, that under no circumstances you end up between two or more of the parts. Always secure your neutral position! Stay out of range!
The joy in the whole procedure lies not in waiting for the final result, at least not only, but in trying to predict the upcoming actions and reactions of the different parts. It's also possible to initiate some betting if you have some additional surveyors with you. It can be much fun too discussing why somebody has reacted to something in the way he or she did.
From time to time there will be periods of silence or peace, but if the ingredients are well-chosen, reactions will spontaneously re-initiate on their own. In the meantime you'll have to have fun in another way but that shouldn't be a large problem.
Later in the evening (perhaps even the next morning is approaching) if the steady flow of alcoholic fluids has sustained reactions will become more uncoordinated and sometimes people will not even react to actions. The whole thing gets more unpredictable and attacks have probability to jump over from the vocal to the physical stage.
For some people this level is also entertaining but for this is the time when I begin to take some care and keep an eye on the parts to keep them from hurting themselves or creating too much damage. It's not uncommon for me to jump the train at this stage and bring the evening to a nice ending. Well, nice at least for me when I have the confidence that no one was physically hurt and everyone is safe for the rest of the night. Sometimes somebody escapes and vanishes in the night. This is annoying but unchangeable and surely something I can live with. After all, everyone is responsible for his own actions even if I'm trying to take some care on them.
According to this article on CNet News.com some recent events and discoveries around and inside the Wikipedia have forced the founder Jimmy Wales to change some of the basic handling flow of the whole engine. Until now it was possible to create and edit all articles anonymously. But Wikipedia is now big enough and so commonly known and accepted that the personal thoughts and impressions which sometimes are hard to keep out are the cause for conflicts with almost political influence.
So it was decided to disallow posting and editing for anonymous users although most changes and edits already originate from registered people.
I personally think that this is a bit a sad step but a necessary one.
So, there you have it. Now I'm also present on Flickr.
Well, I already thought about entering Flickr on a few occassions when I saw something funny and thought that these impressions would be worth sharing with the world.
This image is one of those moments in life when you think "What the...?!?". This was captured somewhen in summer 2002 on our parking site. And I don't know, how the car-owners resolved their conflicting positions :)
