Tag Archives: spider

Eat Your Undertale Obsession: Spider Cider

Still salivating for Undertale, but don’t want to jump on the Genocide bandwagon? Maybe you can whet your appetite through foodstuffs. Yes, it’s another recipe from the amazing Toby Fox game, Undertale. If you haven’t yet played this wonderful game, be aware there are spoilers in this post.

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I’ve had my share of apple ciders before, so I know the recipe isn’t difficult. But 9999 gold? Come on Muffet. That’s price gouging. You know we all scrounged to pay for it, just to avoid having to fight you. And for the record, I never stepped on any spiders.

Most cider recipes are pretty basic. Apple cider (or apple juice) jazzed up with some spices. I like this recipe by Pretty Cake Machine because she adds an amazing sugar spiderweb to the top of her spider ciders. Check it out:

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All right, because I love these cider webs so much, I’m going to give you the recipe for the cider here, but you’ll have to go to Pretty Cake Machine for the instructions on how to make the webs.

SPIDER CIDER

  • 1 quart apple cider
  • 2 cinnamon sticks
  • 5 allspice berries
  • 10 cloves
  • 1 small orange, slices
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
  1. In a large saucepan, combine the first group of ingredients. Heat on low for 30-40 minutes or until steaming nicely; do not bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and strain the cider to remove all the spices.
  2. In a small saucepan, combine the berries and sugar with 2 tbsp of the mulled cider and bring to a boil. Boil for about 3 minutes, stirring regularly, until the berries have broken down. Mash the berries thoroughly, then run the syrup through a sieve to remove the berry skins. Stir the blueberry syrup into the mulled cider.

Enjoy,

Tim Kane

 

 

Eat Your Undertale Obsession: Spider Cider Doughnuts

I’ve spent the past month playing through Toby Fox’s Undertale. Twice. If you’ve never heard of the game, go check it out. It’s amazingly addictive.

Be aware. If you haven’t played Undertale yet, they may be some minor spoilers in this post.

Anyway, I played with my daughter (she actually did all the work). We ran the neutral route first, not knowing that you could spare people. We ended up killing Toriel, which haunted us for weeks. Finally, we restarted and ran a pacifist route.

On our second try at the game, I noticed how many food items were scattered around the Underground. Of course, we snatched up as many as possible to be able to survive some of those boss fights. (Ahh Mettaton!)

Then I discovered that recipes for these foodstuffs exist all over the Internet. So I thought I’d collect them here.

First off, we have Muffet’s Spider Cider doughnuts

Muffet

Muffet

We never got a chance to try these because we only encountered them outside of Muffit’s lair. If you’ve played the game, you know that here they cost 9999 gold. Too rich for my blood.

Spider Cider Doughnuts

Spider Cider Doughnuts

I found this recipe on Jaybug Jimmie’s Web but the recipe is originally from toxiccaves. The recipe is shown below. I added the salt because, as a home baker, I know salt enhances the flavor of the other ingredients.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups of flour
  • 1/3 cup of sugar
  • Pinch of salt
  • 2 teaspoons of baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons of apple sauce
  • 4 tablespoons of apple cider
  • 1/2 cup of milk
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
  • 4 teaspoons of vegetable oil
  • Purple food coloring (a mix of red and blue)
  • Sprinkles

Directions

  1. Preheat your oven to 325° F.
  2. Mix together the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking soda, salt.
  3. Mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl: applesauce, apple cider, milk, oil, and vanilla extract.
  4. Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ones, and mix. Once thoroughly blended together, add a few drops of purple food coloring until the batter is the right shade of purple.
  5. Pour the batter into a donut pan, (or a muffin tray is a fine substitute) and then pop it in the oven for about 10-15 minutes, or until a toothpick test comes out clean.
  6. Once they are done and have cooled down, roll them in a cinnamon sugar, or a glaze (made of powdered sugar and water).
  7. To decorate, look for spider-shaped sprinkles (best available at Halloween time), or use black and purple ones. Black sugar crystals will melt into the donuts a bit and make it look like you have tiny spiders baked into the dough.

You can choose to sell your spider cider doughnuts in the ruins for a reasonable price, or jack it up just outside Muffet’s lair. Stay tuned for a Spider Cider recipe.

Tim Kane

Do You Want Your Fashion to Interact with the World?

Imagine a dress that would react to people around you. Lash out if you felt threatened. Light up if you were happy? Sound like something from Bladerunner? Think again. These dresses have become reality, thanks to Dutch fashiontech designer Anouk Wipprecht.

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This is Anouk’s Spider Dress 2.0. The spider leg epaulettes on each shoulder are actually tiny robots. They link to proximity sensors and a respiration sensor. This means that if someone moves aggressively towards you, and you don’t like it, your increase in respiration will trigger the mechanical legs to move up and into an attack position. Additionally the black LED shells stationed along the garment, meant to  resemble spider eyes, automatically flash in warning when someone gets near you.

Robotic Spider Dress [Intel Edison based] // 2015 teaser from Anouk Wipprecht on Vimeo.

Anouk’s original Spider Dress (designed in collaboration with engineer Daniel Schatzmayr) shows the sinister robotic spider legs. These legs also extend, but won’t react to the proximity of others. It was simply meant as a performance art piece about personal space.

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Although the Spider Dress is Anouk’s most recent project, he has experimented with interactive clothing for a while. Take the Smoke Dress, which covers the wearer with fog as soon as people approach. The Smoke Dress functions as a protective shield, the designer says, “just like an octopus in self-defense” envelops itself in clouds of ink.”

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Interactive Smoke Dress @ AUTODESK Gallery pop up Paris from Anouk Wipprecht on Vimeo.

Anouk also created her Synapse Dress which reads the wear’s thoughts. When the person is excited about something, this triggers the LED lights in the dress to glow. It creates a sense of vulnerability because everyone around you will know what you are thinking.

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Much of the interactivity in Anouk’s fashion are thanks to an Intel chip called Edison. Watch the micro-documentary about how the chip helps the clothes sense the users thoughts.

Interactive Intel-Edison based Synapse dress by Dutch fashion-tech designer reveals wearers metal states from Anouk Wipprecht on Vimeo.

One of Anouk’s earliest fashion and tech mashups looks like it came straight out of a Steampunk novel. The Faraday Dress lights up when exposed to the power of high-voltage, low-current, high-frequency, alternating-current electricity. That forking lightning you see in the picture is real. 94 metal panels comprised the outfit, cut out of a sheet of metal using the water jet.

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In this making of video you can see a hesitant model wearing the dress as the faraday device launches arcs of electricity at the dress.

Anouk Wipprecht lives and works in San Francisco. She strives to create fashion that will connect the body and the clothing. She began combining fashion and technology three years ago. A one year sting to Sweden offered her a chance to study “body, fashion & technology” at the Malmo university. There she worked on Arduino-based application possibilities and smart fabric concepting.

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Tim Kane

Genetically Engineered Animals for the Future

Scientists will always tinker. While they mostly seek to improve the world, some scientists stray into Frankenstein category. Now that the genome has been hacked open, also sorts of possibilities pop up, from the useful to the ridiculous.

Say you often can’t find your cat when she wanders around the house at night. Problem solved. Get a glow in the dark cat.

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Yes, it’s true. South Korean scientists meshed a cat’s DNA with a red fluorescent protein. Why did they want glowing kitties? Just because.

Although some of the genetic engineering works around possibility for science’s sake. Not everyone needs a glowing cat. But what about a dinosaur? Look at a modified Umbuku Lizard.

umbukulizard

Those wings aren’t glued on. They were dormant in the lizard’s genes. A little tinkering brought them out. Scientists believe that this lizard is a descendent of the Pterodactyl, which lost its ability to fly some millions of years ago. To date only 6 of these flying Umbuku have been produced and they are kept seperate from the natural Umbuku due the risk of cross breeding.

Some genetic tinkering can produce results we can all use. Consider the fact that nearly all paper comes from wood pulp. However, you have to kill the tree to make the paper. What if you didn’t? Trees produce leaves every season. A Swiss-based company saw the possibilities. They engineered a tree whose leaves look like sheets of paper. That’s right. Just pluck a sheet and get writing. Bonus, the tree lives.

papertree

Up to this point, scientists have combined like items (plant with plant or animal with animal). Here comes the fern spider.

fernspider

This is one of the first animal/plant hybrids. The Italian Wolf spider (Lycosa tarantula) was crossed with a ponga fern (Cyathea dealbata) to test the survival rates of creatures with camouflage.

Finally, this tinkering can be simply for the purpose of beauty.

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The Japanese company, Suntory, managed to create a blue rose called “Applause.” Blue roses don’t exist in nature. Many horticulturalists strive for this coveted goal. The company mixed rose genes (Old Garden ‘Cardinal de Richelieu’) with a delphinidin-producing gene from a pansy.

The future certainly looks strange. I don’t know how I’ll use my glowing cat, but at least I can pull a sheet of paper from my tree. Alas, if only it grew money.
Tim Kane