Monday, March 18, 2024

Lunapic

I recently had the need to create softer borders on some pictures and found Lunapic, a free (I love free) online tool that has a crazy number of image editing options.  I used their "edge fade border" to round and soften the photo below, a picture of yours truly signing American Pie with The Fries band many years ago.  Discover the Lunapic tool at the link below.




Friday, March 15, 2024

Pico De Gallo

Chef Elaine and I made the fresh Pico De Gallo (Spanish translation: Rooster´s Beak) shown below during our shore excursion in Cozumel.  We chopped up Roma tomatoes and white onion then finely diced a serrano pepper and cilantro.  That was combined with some lime juice and salt to make a tangy, delicious salsa.  Later we added some of this to a rough-smashed avocado to make a binge-worthy chip-dipper.




Thursday, March 14, 2024

Miami Vice

The Miami Vice is one of my favorite frozen cocktails.  It's one or more layers of Frozen Strawberry Daiquiri and Frozen Piña Colada with the sweetness of the strawberry nicely offset by the coconut taste of the colada.  It's a bit of work doing at home to get a single drink, so it's better suited for a party of four or more.  However, when I'm on a cruise ship, I don't hesitate to order a single like I did to snap the picture below.




Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Confirmation Receipt

Gmail is usually pretty good about catching on to spam emails, but for months I've been getting spam with the subject line beginning with C𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 R𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐩𝐭.  This odd bolding made me look for its cause and I started by using the ASCII Text to Hex Code Converter found at the link below.  I pasted the text and clicked convert, which led to the string of characters seen at the bottom of the screenshot.  It was then obvious the 5-digit codes were the cause of the bolding. I did a Google search on the first one (1D428) and found it's part of Unicode's Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols Block.  I eliminated this spam by creating a Gmail filter using C𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 R𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐩𝐭 as the subject and directly deleting them.




Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Silent Disco

This crowd below gathered around at The Grand Plaza on the Celebrity Ascent cruise ship late one evening to participate in a Silent Disco.  This involved everyone getting a set of headphones and listening to one of three music streams based on their personal preferences.  With the headphones blasting away you can't hear anything else, but remove them and get treated to people singing their hearts out.  I didn't expect this would be as much fun as it was.




Monday, March 11, 2024

Cozumel Time Zone

I was surprised that during our Western Caribbean cruise, my Pixel 7 phone never changed from the Eastern to the Central time zone, even when we traveled to Cozumel.  As you can see from the map below, the entire Mexican state of Quintana Roo (the green slice in Mexico), which includes Cozumel, uses Eastern Daylight Time (all year round), even though the rest of Mexico and most of Central America use Central Time.  It helped make sure we got back to the ship in time, although when Eastern Savings Time begins in March, I assume ship time will be an hour ahead of Cozumel time, making getting back to the ship on time a little trickier.






Friday, March 8, 2024

Garden Benedict

Chef Elaine ordered the Garden Benedict shown below at The Garden Table, a cute restaurant in the Broad Ripple neighborhood of Indianapolis.  It consisted of mashed avocado on semolina toast, topped with poached eggs, basil hollandaise sauce, $4 worth of bacon (yes, really), and some fancy sprigs of green and purple things.  I could do without those fancy things, but the rest is mighty appealing.




Thursday, March 7, 2024

Tamarind Daiquiri

One of the drinks offered on our excursion in Cozumel was the Tamarind Daiquiri shown below.  Having no idea what it would taste like I, of course, had to try it out.  The tamarind tree produces brown, pod-like fruits ranging from sour to sweet depending on their ripeness and this drink uses simple syrup to elevate the sweetness.  The daiquiri was good, but I'm at a loss to describe the taste as I have nothing to relate it to, however, if you want to try to recreate it, Amazon (among others) sells tamarind syrup at the link below.




Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Goodr

I picked up the wild-looking pair of sunglasses at our local Up and Running store.  They are meant for runners and joggers as they're non-slip and don't fog up, but I bought them because they look cool and cost only $25.  These are polarized sunglasses meaning they help reduce glare from reflecting surfaces such as water, snow, and glass.  I'll be styling next to the pool this summer.




Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Cay

The picture below is Royal Caribbean's private island, CocoCay, also known as Little Stirrup Cay.  The linguistic lesson for today is that Cay is not pronounced as it looks.  Rather, it's most often pronounced the same as the word Key, like in Key West.  So CocoCay is pronounced Coco Key.  A little more info can be found at the link below.