Limoncello, Part 2

Oh noes! Yesterday I learned that I never posted the followup photos to my Limoncello experiment a few months ago! Sorry about that. Here it goes!

A few weeks after preparing the lemon zest and Everclear concoction for the steeping, I got it back out of the basement:

Meanwhile, I had obtained and cleaned some small, reclosable lemonade bottles (after drinking their content, of course):

Straining the zest from the concentrated lemon extract reveals that it has transferred virtually all its color into the liquid and is now almost white. Fun!

Prepared some simple syrup (same amount as the lemon extract, i.e., about half a liter) in a pot and stirred it in. As you may have noticed, this changed the tint of the liquid a little: I used raw cane sugar, which unlike refined white sugar has a little bit of a color of its own. But hey! Trading color for flavor is fine by me.

Stirred it good, funneled into the bottles!

Finally, off into the freezer, and after a few hours... Prost! http://www.flickr.com/photos/freeed/6847676614/in/set-72157629612992683/

April 03, 2011Fred Wenzel

Day 93 - Giant Fox

Today, a bunch of Mozillians made a trip to Great America. The rides were sooo much fun! And then, at some ring-throwing game, Dustin scored and got a giant fox. In the picture: Les, pretending to be the CEO of ~~Firefox~~ Mozilla.

April 02, 2011Fred Wenzel

Day 92 - Blossoms

Now that monsoon season has passed, plants are blossoming everywhere, and even the East Bay hills, which aren't far from here, are getting greener and greener. Very pretty! It's time for some hiking again, soon!

March 31, 2011Fred Wenzel

Day 90 - San Franciscan Seagull

This is my first bird photo in Project 365, and a "portrait", no less! Taken during a cruise in the San Francisco Bay, the Seagull was flying along with the boat, probably to get any scraps that these odd humans might have to spare.

In the background, you see the skyline of the City of San Francisco. The most notable landmark in the picture is probably the Transamerica Pyramid on the far left. I really like how this photo turned out. It might look like it's photoshopped, but rest assured it's not ;)

March 30, 2011Fred Wenzel

Day 89 - Ze Hibernation

Today, I had a quick appointment at Mercedes Benz Research and Development in Palo Alto, and this is what I was greeted with in the parking lot: (Presumably) research vehicles, hibernating in a protective "sock". Considering the tree branches on top of the left one, looks like the cars haven't been moved in a while. Still, they look pretty cool, with their star on the front, as if they want to say, make no mistake, this sock puppet has a German accent. :)

March 24, 2011Fred Wenzel

Day 83 - Orefornia

A view of Mountain View's Castro Street this morning. All of Northern California is spending these weeks under a deeply dark cloud of constant rain and windstorms, with such fun events as (according to last night's news), flood warnings for all counties except Santa Clara (phew, at least we dodged that bullet).

When I moved here they told me, the weather is always nice in the Bay Area. They tricked me! What is this, Oregon? ;)

March 22, 2011Fred Wenzel

The Return of "From Redmond with Love"

It has been a tradition ever since Firefox 2: Whenever we ship a major Firefox release, the Microsoft Internet Explorer team sends us a congratulatory cake.

This is a fine gesture. Hat tip to our fellow browser makers in Redmond. Remember: Competition is good for business. :)

Feel free to tweet or "like" this, if you're so inclined:

March 21, 2011Fred Wenzel

Day 80 - Almost Springtime

If one ignores the cold, ugly rainstorms that we've had every weekend for a while now, it's starting to get springy in the Bay Area! These pretty trees grow nearby and have apparently decided that it's about time to start blooming. Very pretty!

March 08, 2011Fred Wenzel

Day 67 - Coffee Roaster

This is a tiny little coffee roaster on display at Dana Street Coffee in Mountain View. Dana Street is a locally-owned local coffee roaster that I enjoy going to much more than the omnipresent Starbucks. For their excellent coffee as much as their hand-drawn signs everywhere. And besides this little roaster, they also have a full-blown one (with an exhaust through the ceiling), right in the middle of the place, next to all the tables and plenty of coffee bags. Very charming.

The roaster itself is apparently an AJ Deer Company "Royal No. 4" coffee roaster, could well be over a hundred years old. You can guess what kind of gem this is when you see that a (restored) one of these roasters was on sale here for almost 10,000 dollars. Awesome!

March 06, 2011Fred Wenzel

Day 65 - Futon

This week we bought an Ikea futon for the guest room, which I finally built today. All future guests of ours will be happy to know the odds of not having to sleep on the floor have just dramatically increased :).

The photo is a 14mm wide angle shot with flash, both of which explain the vignetting. I also raised the contrast a bit to make the squares on the futon cover stand out more.