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Monthly Archives: July 2011

Lasertomato (Part 1): The origins

Remember my post about the Pomodoro Technique?  I have been using it on and off.  The other day I decided to look for another timer app to use for the technique.  (ASIDE: I have a Samsung Focus which runs Windows Phone 7.  A lot of the following links will open the Zune software but will be marked as such.)  I had found one (opens Zune) dedicated to the Pomodoro Technique before, but it wasn’t really what I wanted.  I really just want a tomato timer that would tick.  This was a tomato timer that didn’t tick and had a bunch of other entry fields to put down what your current task was and stuff.  I ended up deleting it and going with a generic timer (opens Zune).

The generic timer worked well.  But…it is a generic timer and I really wanted a tomato timer app that ticked.  I would have liked a real tomato timer, but the constant ticking sound probaby would bother everyone else around me.  With a tomato timer app, I can either mute the ticking sound or just put headphones on.  Anyway, I did find one (opens Zune) eventually and I rather like it, but I also found others…including this one (opens Zune) that had this ridiculous tagline “become laser focused like a tomato!”  Um…what?  Maybe the author meant “become laser focused with a tomato”?  That latter would make more sense since pomodoro means “tomato” in Italian and the Pomodoro Technique is a productivity tool helping to become focused on your tasks.  Even then, it sounds kind of stupid.

But…what if it was an inadvertent slip?  I think there’s something here.  I think we may have stumbled upon a government conspiracy trying to befuddle and confuse the relationship between lasers and tomatoes.  The person who wrote the little blurb describing the app probably let something slip that he shouldn’t have.  My MLC and I speculated some about the lasertomato on twitter.  Here are some highlights:

MoosePhysh: Improperly made marinara sauce can treat you to an impromptu laser light show. #lasertomato

cherriebb515: Tomatoes belong to the nightshade family. They eventually rebelled against their family and turned to lasers. #lasertomato

MoosePhysh: Cherry and grape tomatoes are utilized to make laser pointers. #lasertomato

cherriebb515: Lightsabers are not made with the use of tomatoes because lightsabers aren’t lasers. #lasertomato

More on the conspiracy on Wednesday.

And here’s a doodle of a romantic spaghetti dinner gone wrong.

Shut up. I drew it on my phone. You're lucky it looks as good as it does.

Those suncatcher thingies

A few weeks ago, I decided to go through a trial run of crafts I was planning on doing with the kids (grades 3-6) in my church group.  I had never done them before, so I thought I’d test them out on the older kids (jr. high and high school) first.  Plus, we needed an activity for our Friday night time, and I didn’t have the energy or time (or motivation) to prepare something else.  So, enter these Creatology Makit & Bakit Suncatcher kits.

Basically, all you need to do is place the metal frame on a baking sheet, fill the spaces with the plastic beads included in the kit, and then bake at 375 degrees F for 15-25 minutes.  I didn’t think it was that hard.  But I heard so many complaints over the course of about 30 min while two jr. highers, a college student, and two other counselors (of sorts) were doing the craft.  I was going to make one too, but I ended up helping out with some wedding place cards that had to be finished up, so I couldn’t really attest to how it was going.  The suncatchers turned out ok, but there were some uneven portions and there were some random holes where the plastic didn’t melt into the area.

Based on their complaints and the results of the batch, I thought maybe it would not be a good activity for 3-6 graders.  But, just in case, I made one of the leftover ones myself (the ape you see above, if you didn’t figure it out already).

I put mine on a foil covered pie tin because I didn’t want to use a whole sheet pan for something that was only 3 inches tall.  I filled the empty spaces with beads, except for the hanger hole, and stuck it in the oven.

Not the best picture, sorry. It's hard to take pictures of things on foil with your phone.

First off, they tell you to pile the beads high in the center and even with the edge.  From the test results, I realized that if you didn’t have enough beads, the end product would have weird holes.  So I piled in the beads and hoped that they wouldn’t overflow as they melted.  Oh, and you see some colors that weren’t included in my kit because I had SO. MANY. BEADS. left over from the test batch so I just picked beads from my leftovers.

And here are my results.  You can see that there are some holes despite what I thought was a generous amount of beads, especially around the edges of the frame.  There was also a weird hole in the right foot.  So, they weren’t kidding.  You really need to pile in the beads.  The chest region came out nicely filled, but a bit lumpy.  The whole thing was rather lumpy.  The instructions in the back say that it should be a smooth, glass-like finish.  Well, it was definitely smooth, and I guess it would be glass-like if you were the worst glass-blower in history.  This was after 25 minutes in the oven too, the upper limit of their suggested baking time.

So lumpy! So hole-y!

To see what I could do to combat this, I decided to fill in the holes with more beads (tweezers were very useful for this) and I stuck it in the oven for almost another 25 minutes.  The results turned out much more to my liking.  There were fewer lumps from uneven melting and all the holes had been filled in.  And no, nothing caught on fire.

Less lumpy! Less hole-y! The line you see on the right side is from a crease in the foil.

So, I’ve decided that this would be a decent activity for younger kids, especially since you see that it’s advertised for kids 6 and older.  But, when you do them, be prepared to supply tweezers (my test group didn’t have any, which probably let to some of the complaints, but you can safely ignore the suggestion to provide straws or spoons) and be prepared to bake the suncatchers twice.  After the first time you’ll see where you didn’t have enough beads and you can fill in the holes.  Twenty-five minutes in the oven is too short, if you’re only going to bake them once, and nothing is harmed if you keep them in longer.  Just don’t forget them in the oven, obviously.

In the end, I didn’t use the suction cup they provided, and just strung my suncatcher on some invisible thread and strung it over my rear view mirror.  Huzzah!

Hang!