Sunday, March 27, 2011

The Lovecraftsman: 6 ways to turn Cthulhu into an emoticon

The Lovecraftsman: 6 ways to turn Cthulhu into an emoticon: "If you're like me, from time to time you'll suddenly find yourself needing to use a Cthulhu emoticon. Okay, you probably won't need to, bu..."

Monday, March 14, 2011

Pi Day (3.14@1:59)

So, it's Pi Day... I had a "donut offence" that I have to pay anyway (don't ask), and Pi Day was coming up. Perfect opportunity to combine the two! I'm thinking Pi-can pie (pecan), in the shape of Pi. Hmmm... First step:  I had to get the correct volume of pi insert (consisting of pecans, sugar, more suger, butter, fat, love, etc.)

Figure 1: Equation of a frustum of a cone, two bases known

Figure 2:  Known (measured) parameters of the frustum, completed cone for reference

Table 1:  Values used in volume equation

So now that I have the correct volume of pie filling, I need to construct a pie form in the shape of pi with the 98.4 in^3 volume. Using some stupid, gawd-awful French CAD software I won't name, I designed a pi-pie form.

Figure 3:  Pi-pie form with frustum of cone pie tin overlaid for reference

Well... things didn't go as planed... see, I've never actually made a pie before, let alone a pecan pie, not to mention one in *THE EFFING SHAPE OF PI*. Let's just say, the bottom crust is more trouble than it's worth to make from scratch, so I ended up using the nice, uniform, perfect ratio of ingredients, frozen pie crust. Four of them, to be exact. Yeah, they're not exactly made for non-circular pie tins. Oh, and since I had to form the pi by hand, it didn't exactly rest flat on the baking sheet, so all the liquid part of the filling ran out the bottom. Luckily, Tina saw the trouble I was having and made a frustum-of-a-cone shaped pie (thank the gods that I bought the ingredients in bulk from Costco). Now, I'm taking both pies to work... that is, if we don't eat one first ;) OMG, they smell sooooo good! Nom!!

Figure 4:  Finished Pi-can pies looks good enough to eat!

So what do you think? Here's the link to all the photos, including the under construction stuff: