Funny post by Khoi Vinh! The post itself isn't particularly good (though funny), but the comments section is very long, and has some real gems.
Since I'm now working on enterprise software, it's suddenly really, really easy to tell from the comments, who's actually been there and done that, too.
The dynamics of power when it comes to the users vs purchasers of enterprise software was one of the hardest things for me to adjust to initially, when coming from B2C agencyland, as it were.
These two comments really stood out for me, but if you bother to trawl through the whole lot, there are a couple more good ones. :)
If you've worked on enterprise software at all, your head will be nodding and nodding like one of those bobbly dogs...
After years of resisting PWE's blandishments, and never, ever using real money to buy fashion, I have been seduced by Tera instead.
Behold, the first digital fashion thingie I have *ever* used my Real Moneh for. And out of a loot box to boot lol.
Undone by cats. =O.o=
Mew!
I think I'm beginning to get the hang of this icing thing...
AKA if at first you don't succeed, try something easier. XD
This was only a partial success though. And by partial, I mean... 10%. >.>
See, from sheer luck, I didn't have that much batter left in the last one. Plus I didn't stuff it with salted caramel.
As a result, that's the only kitteh with a nice, smooth surface. XD
So! Only fill the cups to half AT MOST for a nice smooth surface. And resist the urge to stuff the kitteh or the stuffing may leak, and result in very mutant kittehs.
That whole plate in the background? Mutant kittehs.
But hey, at least now I know what NOT to do!
SCIENCE!!!!
Now, I'm sure someone who can actually use icing properly would get a better result... but these can be a proof of concept! XD
So come forth, O you icing people! Make better ones!
The usual disclaimer: I don't really measure stuff very exactly. I tend to eyeball, and go by ratio. What this means is if you have a bit more or less of any one part, as long as it's reasonably close, everything should be fine. I'm using grams, but really... if you look at it, it's parts vs parts. XD
Note that because I'm lazy, and made equal batches of white and brown bits, there will be about 4-5 cupmuffins that are just dark brown left over. I stuffed cherry jam and a frozen cherry into those... but they're fine plain, too!
Ingredients
Makes about 12 cupcakes... but it's a bit weird. More on that in the actual recipe below...
For the white bits...
200g cake flour
25g sugar
50g butter
1 tsp baking powder
Vanilla essence
125ml milk
For the brown bits
200g cake flour
25g cocoa powder
25g sugar
50g butter
1 tsp baking powder
Vanilla essence
115ml milk
10ml very dark strong coffeefeefee
For the face bits
Pink icing (nose and mouth)
White icing (Eye whites)
Brown / chocolate icing (for sticking on the ears)
Mini chocolate chips (Irises)
Chocolate Melts, cut into quarters (1 chocolate melt = 4 ears)
Craft the kittehs!
Preheat oven (non fan-forced) to 180C.
White bits
- Dump dry ingredients in food processor
- Whir around in food processor for a bit, if you're too lazy to sift. I never sift. XD
- Cut the butter into vaguely cuboidal shapes
- Dump butter into food processor too
- Whir stuff around in food processor until the mix looks kinda coarse and you mostly can't see any butter lumps anymore
- Dump white bits in a bowl
- Make a well in the white bit dry ingredients
- Dump vanilla essence into milk, stir until you can't see the essence anymore
- Dump vanilla-essence-milk into well you made in white bit dry ingredients
- Fold white bits into milk stuff until just combined. The consistency you want is thick, almost-becoming-liquid paste, sort of like a very rich, thick shake. The kind that is a bit of work to suck through the straw. So add milk until you get that consistency. 125ml is just an eyeballing figure...
Brown bits
Really, this is the same as white bits except that you have the coffee. XD
- Dump dry ingredients in food processor
- Whir around in food processor for a bit, if you're too lazy to sift. I never sift. XD
- Cut the butter into vaguely cuboidal shapes
- Dump butter into food processor too
- Whir stuff around in food processor until the mix looks kinda coarse and you mostly can't see any butter lumps anymore
- Dump brown bits in a bowl
- Make a well in the brown bit dry ingredients
- Dump coffee and vanilla essence into milk, stir until you can't see the essence anymore
- Dump coffee-vanilla-essence-milk into well you made in brown bit dry ingredients
- Fold brown bits into milk stuff until just combined. The consistency you want is thick, almost-becoming-liquid paste, sort of like a very rich, thick shake. The kind that is a bit of work to suck through the straw. So add milk until you get that consistency. 125ml is just an eyeballing figure...
Assemble the face-base
- Fill half the cupcake cups (around 9 of them) with white bits. If you have more left over after 9, by all means fill more... but I didn't.
- Use a teaspoon (or something else small) to get the brown bits that will be behind the grumpy eyes. Use a smaller blob than you think will be needed, as it'll spread a bit when baking.
- Plop vaguely semicircular brown bits side by side onto the white face base.
- Repeat until you run out of white face bases.
- Plop leftover brown bits into the other cupcake cups. You should have something like 5 brown cupcakes, and 7 catcakes. The catcakes will be smaller than the browncakes.
- For the pure choc cupcakes, I filled half the cup with the batter, plopped some jam in the middle (about half a teaspoon), plopped a frozen cherry on top of that, and then covered it with the other half of the batter.
- Shove in oven and bake for 25m or so. Or until the usual stab it with a toothpick and the toothpick comes out clean happens.
Put the face on the base
- Let the face bases cool for about 30min or so - you can eat the pure chocolate ones first though! ;) There's a reason they don't even show up in these photos...
- Pipe the nose and mouth with pink icing - I used the normal 'line' type nozzle.
- Pipe the eyes with white icing using the ummm 'flat' type nozzle. Hopefully better than I did...
- Stick a mini chocolate chip into each white icing eyeball to make the iris.
- Cut a chocolate melt into 4 quarters - I used a butter knife.
- Pipe some chocolate icing (again using the 'line' type nozzle) on each side of the face, roughly where you think ears should be, and of roughly that length. This is the 'glue' for your chocolate melt ears.
- Stick chocolate melt quarter onto the chocolate icing... ears!
That's about it really.
The rest is optional, and involves cackling, and pretending to be a zombie, and making cats say sad things as you eat off bits of their heads...
ヽ(”`▽´)ﾉ
The image says it all!
Get it here.
Roman Shamin, you are teh awesum! :)
(Also works in Photoshop CS6.)
It's not perfect (it's actually pretty racist... but let's not go into that here), but it's very versatile!
Some faces get better results than others though. Those with very distinctive mouth shapes, for instance... :( Don't really come across well.
Can you tell who these toons are based on? >.>
So far I've only made females! But I think I'm going to try some males next!
It's also made me realise that many of our celebrity faces are really... well... uniform and average. OTOH we are sort of trained to find 'average' faces attractive, so that's not that surprising!
A random user generator! It's a really nice idea / tool! Except the execution is slightly disturbing.
- Both male and female are apparently male, since male is the default
- But look! Anton Andrews, presumably male male... he likes creating stuff! He makes 'fun and creative' things!
- Now look at Katie McCoy, presumably (fe)male... (s)he likes consuming things. And also running. Work? Why would a (fe)male worry their pretty little head on something like that, when (s)he can have chocolates and then run them off? With puppy love too! Cause that's just what a warm, nurturing (fe)male type wants, together with the chocolates, and the running...
._.