I’ve owned PhotoShop for more than a year, but never had the gumption to climb its steeply ascending learning curve. That expression has always confused me because a curve is horizontal, yet everybody speaks of the learning curve like it's vertical. You’d think “slope” would be more descriptive. Some people speak of the “slope” of the learning curve, but a slope would be a straight line, you’d think, like on an x=y graph. To get a curve, you need something like x2+y2=1, which would give you a circle. This should give you an idea how difficult it is to learn PhotoShop.
I’ve been going around in circles all week with Adobe products, but I have made some progress, though I’m not sure if it’s linear or random. Audition 1.5 has a powerful feature that came to my attention this week. You can separate an input audio file into discrete frequency bands, let’s call ‘em bass, midrange, and treble so I don’t have to type in a whole bunch of numbers, and then manipulate each range independently of the others. While this does not give you the power of having all the individual tracks to mix, it does give you a lot of options to clean up old recordings. Audition also allows you to output surround sound files, so you can put the extreme bass (lower than 40Hz) on a subwoofer, put some of the highs behind you (mimicking reflected sound), and keep the midrange on the left and right stereo speakers. With the proper software (such as the Minnetonka SurCode DVD DTS), you can mix 6.1 sound to a single wave file that will play on a DTS-enabled DVD player when you burn it to a CD. For me, this is the best of nerdy fun.
But you get hungry even when you’re having fun, so I bought one of those folding omelet pans like the one in the PhotoShop picture. Don’t you wish Adobe used standard Windows help files instead of that klutzy browser interface? Either way, the bill comes from Bill. The directions on the omelet pan box tell you to make it on one side and then flip it over. This is really my second omelet pan, the first came without the bolt to fasten on the handle, but the live humans at KitchenWares nicely replaced it without even looking at the receipt because they remembered me. I made the first couple omelets using the box instructions, but last night put 2/3 of the beaten eggs into one side, let it get set a bit one the burner, then put the other 1/3 eggs into the second side before merging them. This is messy and hot, and I suggest using an ‘Ove’ Glove if you’re gonna try it, but the end result eventually was like a folded omelet.
I see some other possibilities for this pan, so it’s probably worth the $14.95. For one, you could put batter (like pancakes or even yeast-based, not sweet) in the halves and bake up some nifty fillings in the spirit of a Cornish Pasty. Any results from those experiments, success or failure, will be posted exclusively on this blog.
I started a batch of beef jerky yesterday especially for my nephew who recently expressed his enthusiasm for it. It’s about five pounds of eye of round cut into ¼“ slices and marinated in soy, Worcestershire, onion and garlic powder, kosher salt, black pepper, garam masala, and just a wink of Tabasco. It’s about ready to jump into the dehydrator right now, so I better quit typing so I can watch.
11:39:07 AM 
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