Dallas Camera Club Scavenger Hunt 2004

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

The Dallas Camera Club had its annual photography scavenger hunt about a month ago and I’ve uploaded my images. I took 76 images and I’ve posted 8 of those in the Gallery. Like any scavenger hunt, there are items that need to be found; but, in this case, participants are awarded based on the categories found along with the quality of their images.

The categories this year were: “An Old Building”, “A Modern Structure”, “The Color Red”, “A Statue”, “A Reflection”, and “Lines of Perspective”. We started at 9am and met back up for lunch, so we had around three hours to get all the shots. The extent of my knowledge on Dallas is largely limited to how to get to work downtown; so, I mostly just wandered around.

This isn’t my first scavenger hunt with the Dallas Camera Club — I also went last year — but I really enjoyed myself. I found that walking through Dallas has a much different perspective than driving through it and Dallas can be a surprisingly photogenic city at times. The hardest category for me was probably “Lines of Perspective”. I ended up going with a long shot down a street and I’m curious whether heavier traffic may have improved the shot.

Standard photo-entry text: All my photos are released under a Creative Commons license which roughly states that you’re free to “copy, distribute, display, and perform the work”. Also, I’ve resized all the images to 1024-width before uploading them as it can be a bit hard to get your head around a full 5 MP image. However, if you want the full-resolution version of any images, just ask.

New Job: RD2

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I’ve been working for RD2 as a contractor since the beginning of the year. They’re a small design shop on North Hall St, just off Blackburn & 75. The contractor arrangement with them was working out fine, but I got a call in late June from another company that was interested in interviewing me for a full-time position.

These guys were looking for a client-side specialist and that’s exactly the kind of position I was looking for. After two rounds of interviews (including a two-hour session of technical questions), they offered me the job. I was particularly impressed with the technical component of the interview process — though they were designed to test me, the questions themselves allowed me to learn more about the company as well.

I initially accepted their offer and went to go talk with RD2 about it. As it turns out, RD2 returned with a more compelling offer. Above all, I was drawn to RD2’s design-focused approach to web development. Working for them, I’d have the chance to work with many different designs over the course of a year (and not just a single company’s branding). In any case, I started with RD2 last Tuesday (after the Independence Day weekend) and I can see myself staying there for a while.

Recipe: Thick and Chewy Triple-Chocolate Cookies

Ashley Bischoff11 Comments

I brought along some chocolate chocolate-chip cookies to the Independence Day party on Sunday and I thought I’d share the recipe here. Back when I first received the Evite to the party, I noticed the request for desserts and side dishes and I immediately began to ponder what I could bake.

Being the chocolate nut that I am, I decided fairly early on to go with something chocolate-based, but it was only after watching some TiVod episodes of America’s Test Kitchen that I happened upon the idea of chocolate chocolate-chip cookies. (For those not aware, America’s Test Kitchen is a cooking show on PBS which goes through dozens of iterations for each dish before publishing the recipe that works best).

Fortunately, their recipes are also online (for the recent couple seasons, anyway). And, while the as-televised recipe is for Double-Choclate Cookies, their site also lists a varation which I could not ignore: Triple-Chocolate Cookies. For those keeping score, the double chocolate cookies include Dutch-processed cocoa along with a pound of melted bittersweet chocolate. The triple chocolate cookies include those ingredients plus chocolate chips. Well, on to the recipe:

Double-Chocolate Cookies, Thick and Chewy Cookies

Makes about 3 ½ dozen cookies

To melt the chocolate in a microwave, heat it at 50 percent power for 2 minutes, stir it, then continue heating it at 50 percent power for 1 more minute. If it’s not completely melted, heat it for an another 30 to 45 seconds at 50 percent power. We recommend using a spring-loaded ice cream scoop to scoop the dough. Resist the urge to bake the cookies longer than indicated; they may appear underbaked at first, but they’ll firm up as they cool.

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups (10 ounces / 284 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
  • ½ cup (56 grams) Dutch-processed cocoa powder

    Some—but not all—supermarkets carry Dutch-processed cocoa. If your local supermarket doesn’t have it, one place where you can definitely find it is at Penzeys Spices, including their store just off Preston & 635.

  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt (or 1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt)
  • 16 ounces (454 grams) semisweet chocolate, chopped
  • 4 large eggs (Or for a vegan version, I’ve had success with Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer, which I found at Target.)
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2 teaspoons instant coffee or espresso powder
  • 10 tablespoons (1 ¼ sticks / 140 grams) unsalted butter, softened (Or for a vegan version, I’ve had success with Miyoko’s Vegan Butter, which I found at Target.)
  • 1 ½ cups packed (10 ½ ounces / 297 grams) light brown sugar
  • ½ cup (3 ½ ounces / 99 grams) granulated sugar

Directions:

  1. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt in a medium-sized bowl; set that aside.

  2. Melt the chocolate in medium heatproof bowl set over a pan of almost-simmering water, stirring once or twice, until smooth; remove from the heat. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and vanilla lightly with a fork, sprinkle the coffee powder over to dissolve it, and set that aside.

  3. In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until it’s smooth and creamy, about 5 seconds. Beat in the sugars until they’re combined, about 45 seconds; the mixture will look granular. Reduce the speed to low and gradually beat in the egg mixture until it’s incorporated, about 45 seconds. Add the chocolate in a steady stream and beat until it’s combined, about 40 seconds.

  4. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. With your mixer at low speed, add the dry ingredients and mix until they’re just combined. Do not overbeat. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it stand at room temperature until the consistency is scoopable and fudgelike, about 30 minutes.

  5. Meanwhile, adjust oven racks to upper-middle and lower-middle positions and heat oven to 350°. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Leaving about 1 ½ inches between each ball, scoop the dough onto parchment-lined cookie sheets with a 1 ¾-inch ice-cream scoop.

  6. Bake, reversing position of baking sheets halfway through baking (from top to bottom and front to back), until the edges of cookies have just begun to set but their centers are still very soft, about 10 minutes. Cool the cookies on sheets for about 10 minutes, slide the parchment with the cookies onto wire racks, and let them cool to room temperature.

  7. Cover one baking sheet with a new piece of parchment paper. Scoop the remaining dough onto the parchment-lined sheet, bake, and cool as directed. Remove the cooled cookies from the parchment with a wide metal spatula and serve.

Variation — Thick and Chewy Triple-Chocolate Cookies:

If you like bursts of warm melted chocolate in your cookies [and who doesn’t? —A], include chocolate chips in the batter. The addition of chips will slightly increase the yield of the cookies.

Follow the recipe for Thick and Chewy Double-Chocolate Cookies, adding 12 ounces (about 2 cups or 340 grams) of semisweet chocolate chips to the batter after the dry ingredients are incorporated in step 4.

The only downside to the recipe is that it can take longer than other cookie recipes (especially including the 30-minute wait-time after mixing the dough). All the same, I was really pleased with the results and I think these Triple-Chocolate Cookies may be my new favorite cookie :).

Might go See Super Size Me Tomorrow

Ashley Bischoff7 Comments

I seem to be the only one here in Dallas who hasn’t seen Super Size Me yet, but I think I may go see it tomorrow at The Inwood. In case you’ve been living in a cave, Super Size Me is a documentary where one guy ate every meal over the course of 30 days at McDonald’s (all while having doctors monitor his health). You can probably guess what happens to this guy.

Its aggregate score at Metacritic is positive (68) and, in particular, all the critics that I trust liked it. Pete Vonder Haar at Film Threat calls it a “Hilarious and often terrifying look at the effects of fast food on the human body.” And, Stephanie Zacharek over at Salon says that “Super Size Me is exploratory, as opposed to being just numbingly didactic, and that’s what makes it so engaging.”

Perhaps ironically, I'm giving some serious thought to grabbing dinner at Fuddruckers beforehand. It’s been a couple months since I’ve been there and I can’t pass up a good hamburger. If you'd like to join me (for Super Size Me or Fuddruckers), just let me know.

A Korean’s View of America

Ashley Bischoff5 Comments

I found this article written for JoongAng Daily (a Korean newspaper, I’m guessing) with a list of “You know you’ve been in the United States too long when…”. I found it amusing but in some ways unusual at the same time. I expected some of the items:

  • You wear sneakers and carry a backpack when dressed in a business suit.
  • You look forward to Monday Night Football.
  • You order a supersized Big Mac with a Diet Coke.
  • […]

But some of them left me scratching my head. For instance, “Sheer blue eyes no longer frighten you” — are blue eyes so rare in Korea as to be frightening? I mean, I wouldn’t mind meeting someone with purple eyes (though orange eyes might creep me out a bit).

And then there’s “You feel no guilt over trying on a dozen pairs of pants and not buying any of them.” Whenever I’m buying clothes, I make sure to try them on first; and, if they don’t fit, I put them back on the rack. Is it the dozen-pairs-of-pants part that Koreans find most odd or the putting-them-all-back that they’re not used to?