bookofjoe

Kristy Sellars goes Extra-Dimensional on 'America's Got Talent'

[via swissmiss]

Purple Bell Pepper Time-Lapse: 93 days in 93 seconds

YouTube description: "I'm not sure, but I might have overwatered it slightly in the beginning, I have to pay more attention in the future. But it recovered and made some beautiful fruits :)"

DIY Gummy Candy Kit

From websites:

This sweet assembly set is a do-it-yourself candy adventure that comes with everything you need to cook up delicious gummy creations in your kitchen.

Pop open your package to reveal the contents, and start pouring your color packets into the numbered tray positions.

Next, add some water to mix in with the colored powder and use the dropper to mix the red, yellow, and blue hues into exciting new colors.

Pour and flatten the gummy powder in the large rectangular part of the tray and get ready for the fun to begin!

Choose a mold to make your gummy shape, then pour the colored water in, wait a minute and remove — now you've got your very own gummy masterpiece!

Now the only question is, do you eat it, or sell it to a gummy museum?

Features and Details:

• Includes molds, tray, 4 packets of powder, 1 fork, 1 dropper

• Lemon, grape, and soda flavors

• Net weight: 0.95 oz. (27 g)

$7.95.

Experts' Expert: Prepping a pomegranate to eat

The Future of Cut/Copy & Paste

WANT.

Add a Tile locator to your cat's collar

Several readers emailed to ask for information about the device my five-month-old Calico cat named Vanta sported in her collar in the video in last Monday's post extolling my flat spork.

Your wish is my demand.

It's a Bluetooth locator made by Tile which fits perfectly into a plastic adapter.

Why not just use an AirTag like everybody else, joe?

I knew you'd ask: I mean, I asked!

The reason I've so far not opted in to AirTags is because Apple requires that you first set up Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) on your phone.

I'm afraid that if I do that it'll make my TechnoDolt©® life more difficult by forcing me to take an extra step to use my phone.

The main reason I won't do it, however, is this: if you set up 2FA, you have two weeks to try it out, after which you cannot remove it.

That scares me.

Like Jeff Bezos, I know a one-way door when I see one.

But I digress.

Here are the components to build one a nifty collar like mine if you want to be like me & Vanta:

• Tile Sticker (I paid $29.99 a month ago; it's now $19.99)

• Tile collar adapter  (2 for $8.99)

• Personalized breakaway collar ($7.99)

You download the Tile app for your phone and it's easy-peasy (trust me of all peeps on this) to set it up.

The Tile Sticker is said to have a 250-foot range.

As long as Vanta's breakaway collar stays on, I'll have a fighting chance of locating her.

If not, I just have to hope whoever finds her is savvy enough to palpate the back of her neck/upper back to see if there's a embedded chip (which she has).

Up top, a video I made demonstrating the components discussed above.

Below,

a demonstration of the Tile Sticker collar in action.

As promised, I went outside and measured the Tile's range.

Alas, it came up WAY short of what's advertised (250 feet): the maximum distance from the Tile to activate it with the "Find my Tile" app was around 50 (fifty) feet.

Even then, I had to listen really hard in a relatively quiet place to even hear the faint beeps at that distance.

If Vanta bolts through a briefly opened door, I'd better hope she doesn't wander too far from home during her explorations.

Most popular browsers in different countries in 2012 and 2022

I wonder how come Safari now rules in Greenland.

Inuk?

Malu?

Bueller?

Anyone?

Fastest way to empty a bottle

SweeTango — 'World's Best Apple'

Hey, don't shoot the messenger.

From Apple Rankings:

Selectively bred to snap like a sweet piece of celery, this apple, available only in September and October (if we're lucky) in certain supermarkets is the best apple ever to grace the world of Gods and men.

A gifted child of the spectacular Honeycrisp and elusive Zestar, this nearly immaculate treasure was blessed with the greatest qualities of both its parents, but manages to avoid any of their unfortunate flaws.

If this was the apple that tempted Eve in the garden of Eden I wouldn't blame her; for the taste of just one SweeTango is worth living through a thousand painful childbirths.

The one downside of the SweeTango — other than needlessly lopping off the "T" from "Sweet” to form the repulsively frolicsome word "Swee" — is its paltry robustness.

Get these before November 1 or you'll be cursing my name as you bite into a hollowed out balloon of an apple.

And, if in the Western Hemisphere, don't be fooled into buying New Zealand SweeTangos in the winter — they can't handle the trip. 

But wait — there's more!

SweeTango even has its own blog.

You could look it up.

Octopuses Gone Wild

[Octopuses caught on video throwing silt and shells around themselves and at each other.]

YouTube description: "Octopuses appear to deliberately throw debris, sometimes directed at other octopuses, according to a study published November 9, 2022 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE."

Darren Incorvaia, in a New York Times story published that same day, offered an entertaining perspective on the scientists' findings as well as commentary by octopus authorities not involved in the work.

Find the 12 differences

Original photo on the left.

Altered image on the right.

Answers here.

Production notes: I've been trying to figure out how to return this quite popular boj feature, for years appearing on Sunday morning.

Once I abandoned posting photos as a result of the near-fatal hairball Typepad coughed up recently, featuring nothing but broken photo links if anything at all appeared, and moved on to 100% YouTube videos for graphic content, I pretty much thought that was the end for "Find the 12 differences."

As any fool can plainly see, it's back.

What I did was place the two images side by side on my MacBook Pro 16" screen, then put my iPhone on my fancypants new tripod and frame and light the image as best I could, then hit "Record" on the video camera.

Only after the colorful flowers onscreen defaulted to my screen saver setting (note to self: disable screen saver for the next episode) did I see myself reflected in the screen for the 8 seconds it took me to realize what had happened.

Lucky I had pants on!

My TechnoDolt©® video editing skilz are nonexistent, as is appropriate for such a designation, and thus I do not dare try to edit the video and eliminate my cameo lest I erase the whole thing.

So have at it!

You will be glad to know that I tried and succeeded in finding the 11 of the 12 differences using ONLY the video you see up top, blown up to full screen.

Pro Tip: Pause the video and you won't have to keep replaying it while you attempt to find the differences.

It's important here in Podunk Valley to eat your own dog food, what?

One more thing: I'm aware that the lighting is uneven, brighter in the center than the sides; I will use better lighting  for the next episode.

Stay tuned!

'How We Make Jacker Snacks'

It first glance I thought this was a clever riff but upon further inspection my Crackerjack Research Team©® assured me it was no humbug.

CB's Nuts makes Robust Roast Peanuts in the Shell that are almost always sold out.

I know why: it's because they're sooooo good.

I visited their online shop to see if perhaps they were back in stock but alas you have to buy a bulk 12-pound box.

That's nuts.

However, browsing the store I happened on Jacker Snacks, new since my last visit: tell you what, they had me in an upscale minute.

I wonder how long till Cracker Jack's parent company sends them a cease-and-desist.

I'm not waiting to find out.

$10.

JenniCam — On April 3, 1996 Jennifer Ringley went where no one had gone before

Long story short: That day, 19-year-old Jennifer Ringley — a junior at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania — turned on a webcam in her college dorm room and began livestreaming her life to anyone who cared to watch.

Above, Episode 1 of her 43-episode run.

My livestreaming efforts stand squarely atop her bold shoulders.

'Deadwind' — Season 3

This excellent series set in contemporary Finland requires subtitles unless you understand Finnish.

It's a crime thriller with a great cast, as usual with Netflix's foreign-made productions featuring actors I'd never seen nor heard of before watching.

The show features Helsinki to its best advantage and ventures out into the spectacular countryside.

Spend six hours in Finland without leaving home: that's a pretty good deal IMHO.

I like very much that Netflix posts all series episodes at once rather than doling out one per week for months, which is how Prime Video and Apple do it.

Sure, I'd love to start Season 2 of Apple TV's "The Mosquito Coast," which just appeared — but the final episode won't air until January 23, 2023.

FAIL.

The best cheese knife for Bayley Hazen blue

It's the one I demonstrate in the video above.

Do you like my original 1967 Formica countertop?

Classic pattern.

But I digress.

All blue cheeses are problematic when it comes to cutting them: if you've allowed an hour or two to come to room temperature, as recommended by experts, these cheeses find themselves in a kind of textural no-man's land — too soft to slice neatly with most hard cheese knives yet too hard to cut neatly with a soft cheese knife.

Yes, specialized knives exist for different firmnesses.

But I digress.

Bayley Hazen blue cheese is made by Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont, and can be oftimes found in good supermarket cheese departments.

You can buy it online ($21.99/half-pound) but fair warning: shipping and handling costs for cheese are often astronomically high, sometimes more than the cost of the cheese itself.

My Bayley Hazen blue cheese knife costs $18.

Not sure?

Here's a video

from Rada Cutlery, which makes my favorite Bayley Hazen knife.