I've been browsing the internet looking for inspiration for birthday cakes. One of the websites I quite like is leisure-cat.com, which has a lot of 'Hong-Kong style' recipes. As such though, everything is in Chinese, and although I can read Chinese, it takes me a long time to do so - I find English much easier. I also find it difficult to work out what certain ingredients are, as the Chinese terms are unfamiliar. I decided to let Google translate some of the pages into English for me, with comical results.
The chinese for gelatine (魚膠片) was literally translated into 'Fish film', and that for white chocolate (白古力) was 'Gu Li Bai' (the recipe has shortened the term for chocolate, using a widely accepted less formal term, but the Google dictionary was therefore unable to find a translation, giving the phonetics of the phrase instead).
As for the actual instructions - instead of 'beat the egg yolks with an eggbeater. Then add the milk and beat well', Google got 'eggbeater playing with egg yolk, adding fresh milk again'.
Similarly, 'beat the cream until peaks form' (將淡忌廉打至8成企身 - which is a rather cryptic way of putting it), become the even more cryptic 'Will be light cream into a fight to 8 who are standing', whilst 'pour the mousse into the mould on top of the cake already placed inside and solidify in the fridge' is now 'Qing has been placed into the mold piece of cake into the refrigerator to snow solidification'.
But I particularly liked the last phrase on the page - '為食貓有野講', a very colloquial phrase that would probably only make sense to Hong Kong Chinese. To Google, it reads as 'There are wild cats for food talk'.
2008年9月27日
2008年9月13日
UFV (Unclassified flying virus)
The European Space Authority (ESA) has a new programme - 'Fly your thesis'. University students, mainly graduates, are invited to design experiments to be carried out on a Zero-G (ie. microgravity) aircraft.
I'm currently trying to think of something I can submit that would be a) interesting and b) meaningful - not necessarily the same thing. Whilst it would be rather cool to have green glowing plants floating around like little aliens, at a time when politicians and policy-makers are muttering about reducing carbon footprints, low carbon emissions and fuel-conservation, I suspect sending weird virally-infected plants into free-fall for the hell of it would be rather missing the point. And no, the viruses are not from outer space and therefore putting them a simulation of that environment would not be meaningful.
But in case anyone does have an idea that would actually be relevant for the project, here's the link ^_^.
I'm currently trying to think of something I can submit that would be a) interesting and b) meaningful - not necessarily the same thing. Whilst it would be rather cool to have green glowing plants floating around like little aliens, at a time when politicians and policy-makers are muttering about reducing carbon footprints, low carbon emissions and fuel-conservation, I suspect sending weird virally-infected plants into free-fall for the hell of it would be rather missing the point. And no, the viruses are not from outer space and therefore putting them a simulation of that environment would not be meaningful.
But in case anyone does have an idea that would actually be relevant for the project, here's the link ^_^.
2008年9月9日
more confocal images
I'm using a 'new' GFP construct! It's not newly made, but it's one I haven't used for microscope work before.
2008年9月8日
2008年9月6日
Birthday wish-list
1) A multi-channel pipette
2) A vibratome
3) Three more months of the confocal working and not breaking down
4) An automatic plant potting machine
5) An automatic tissue sample homogeniser (for 0.1g samples)
6) Someone who's solely here to help me get through my work (For this one item I will forego items 1, 4 and 5)
7) A life. Preferably mine own.
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