Tag: viola

Banana Ice Cream

On By Michel McDonaldIn Diet, Food, Health, Noom, Recipes, WeightLeave a comment

banana ice cream

How many calories are in 1 serving of ice cream?  I looked up Häagen Dazs® Banana Split ice cream and it has 270 calories for 1/2 a cup.  HALF A CUP has 270 calories?  Well, how would you feel if I told you that 1 cup of banana ice cream only has 116 calories if you make it yourself?

It’s really simple.  I found this recipe on Facebook of all places.  All you do is slice up 1 banana, freeze it for about 2 or 3 hours, put it in a food processor or a blender with a dash of non-fat milk until it’s the consistency of ice cream, scoop it into a bowl and viola, banana ice cream.  It’s more like soft serve, and technically it’s not ice cream, it’s just pureed frozen fruit, but still, it’s like ice cream.

What makes this healthy is that you are eating fruit not ice cream, but it tastes and looks like ice cream so you are fooling your brain into thinking you are being bad, but really you are just eating a banana.

Say you don’t like bananas, well you could try this with a cantaloupe or honeydew melon, I have even read that you could make this with watermelon, but I haven’t tried it yet.  I’m going to when they are at the grocery store though, so stay tuned for that.

The Noom app that I am using says that any green fruit like banana, cantaloupe and watermelon is 25 calories for 1/3 of a cup, 50 calories for 2/3 of a cup, 100 calories for 1 1/4 cup and 150 calories for 2 cups.  The SparkPeople recipe page says it’s 116 calories for 1 medium banana.  I’d rather go with Noom’s calories because 100 calories is better lol.  Any way you slice it, it’s better for you than ice cream that you buy at the grocery store and you can eat more of it, guilt free.

Facebook Timeline Fun

On By Michel McDonaldIn FacebookLeave a comment

I have been having way too much fun in Facebook lately with their timeline images.  I play a game called EverQuest and EverQuest 2, well actually to be honest I play a lot of games lol.  I’ve been taking screen shots from the game so that I can make a banner and an icon that blends together perfectly.  It gives the illusion that the picture of me in the icon is floating on the banner, or at least I think so.  Take a look at this one of my half-elf from EverQuest 2 on one of my Facebook profile.  Of course last night I changed it so it’s my image, but doesn’t that blend together nicely?

I actually got the idea to do this from the Sears Facebook page.  I’m sure other pages are doing the same thing, but I haven’t seen a lot of them.

It took some trial and error, but I figured it out.  I have a template that I use where I put in the background image under the frame, then I select the banner and hide the frame then copy and paste the banner into a new image.  Then I show the frame again so I can copy the icon and I paste that into a new image and then add my character (or my real picture which I cropped out the background) and viola, icon that blends with the banner.

I think this is so cool, I wish my Blog had this feature lol.

My Cromebook WiFi Works Again

On By Michel McDonaldIn CR-48Leave a comment

I believe it was in mid January when I started having connection issues with my Cromebook (CR48) and couldn’t fix it.  I’m still not sure what happened but I was very frustrated that I couldn’t use it anymore.  It became a paper weight on my desk.  The 3G worked, but the WiFi kept disconnecting.

This is what happened.  I would be typing (as I am doing now) and suddenly lost my connection.  I noticed that my words weren’t coming out right, instead other words were being selected and deleted with every key I hit.  I would look over at the WiFi icon next to the clock and it showed that it was trying to connect, then I’d see an X.  The only way I was able to continue with my blog post, tweet, Facebook update or IM conversation was to turn 3G on.  I’d have to save my work or put the person I was talking to on hold and reboot.  At first rebooting helped, but it would disconnect again.  I got to the point that I just stopped turning it on.

What happened today was I went to play with my PSP and wondered if there was an update available.  I tried to log in to my network and it wouldn’t let me.  I noticed that it said my network was not compatible.  That didn’t make sense since Chips iPhone and my Nook haven’t had any issue logging into the network.  I loaded the Linksys EasyLink Advisor program and went into the security settings and it gave me an error.  I starting thinking that maybe that was the reason I was having issues, so I reinstalled the WPA security and viola, my Chromebook is online with no issues.

I have typed this entire post on my Chromebook without one disconnect.  Before that would have been impossible since as soon as I started typing the WiFi would disconnect.  The problem has been solved and I hope someone who is also having issues might see this and check their own network security settings.  Good luck!

Reading My Book On An iPhone/iPod

On By Michel McDonaldIn Autobiography, BooksLeave a comment

Want to read my new book “Diary of a Gay Nerd: Life After Child Abuse, It Gets Better!” but don’t have a Nook or a Kindle but have an iPhone or an iPod?  Not to worry, that is why I published my book with RainboweBooks.com.

You actually don’t have to have a Kindle to be able to buy Amazon ebooks, or a Nook to buy Barnes & Noble ebooks.  You can download the app for your phone and create an account and start buying ebooks.  That way if you decide later that you want to buy a Nook or a Kindle, you already have an account and books in your library.  But if that is not what you want then you can also use iBooks from the app store.

What you do is simply download iBooks from the app store and install it.  Now go to RainboweBooks.com on your computer and buy my book.  Now download it in .epub format.  Open iTunes and drag the file from your computer into iTunes and a new item will show up called Books.  Plug your iPhone or iPod into your computer via the USB cable.  When iTunes finds your device, simply drag the book file to the device and it will upload it.  Disconnect from the USB and open the iBooks app and viola it’s in your bookshelf.  Open, read and enjoy.

You may notice that the book is going to be well over 1000 pages, but that is because it only shows one or two paragraphs.  The book is actually only 296 pages in e-book format but the iPhone/iPod cannot show the full page and if it did you would need a microscope to read it.

So there are your simple instructions.  I hope you enjoy my book on your Apple product.

Nashbar Townie Basket

On By Michel McDonaldIn Bike1 Comment

Last week I bought this product for my bicycle from nashbar.com for carrying my groceries.  I got the rack for my birthday from Chips cousin and her girlfriend so all I needed was the bag.

The bag I got is called a Townie Basket and it’s small enough to carry a bag of groceries so I don’t have to keep wrapping the bags around my handlebars.  The more specific grocery I wanted to use this for was for the 2 gallons of milk I always buy because it’s cheaper to buy 2 gallons than 1 at $3.69.

So I got the bag today and put it on immediately which only took maybe a minute to figure out how it goes on.  I went to Albertson’s right away and got my 2 gallons of milk along with some other things that I needed which I ended up having to carry in my grocery bag on the handlebars… I’m gonna need another one for the other side lol.

The only problem is that with 2 heavy gallons of milk it was sagging outward.  I was petrified that they would fall out as soon as I hit a bump in the road or a pot hole, not paying attention to the road and watching the milk instead might make me accidentally hit a pot hole or a CAR lol.

Well, here are the pictures of the bag.  The first one is of the bag folded up on the rack, the 2nd one is the bag open and the 3rd one is of it with its handy dandy rain coat or as I like to call it, it’s shower cap.

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Ok, now to fix the problem with this bag sagging outward I had to think about how I was going to do this.  I remembered the metal with the holes I used to make it so the rack was secure on the bike so I grabbed the roll of that stuff and held it up then bent the top of it over then I held it on the clamp in the tool shed and cut off a piece, then I cut a 2nd piece.  Then I went back over to the patio table and started drilling holes in the hard plastic in the bag so I could screw these things in place and then I put it on the bike rack.  Viola, it doesn’t sag anymore so I don’t have to worry about anything falling out lol.  Well, for now anyway.

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It’s a really dark picture but you can see that it’s not black, it’s the silver or gray thing on the right.  Not only does it stay on the rack but because I used the pliers to curl it over the rack bar I know nobody will be able to steal it lol.  It’s too much trouble to be able to steal now.  I mean because it’s only on with bungee at the bottom in the 2nd rack hole then with the 2 metal pieces (the black one on the left) so it’s very easy to steal but not anymore.

So if I have any other problems I’m going to have to put a hole on the outside of the bag into the plastic and put a hook there so I can hook a bungee on the outside then hook the other side of the bungee cord to the other side of the rack to make damn sure nothing falls out.

Edit: While I was watching Stargate SG-1 today I was thinking of how I could make this even more secure to the rack, not so that it doesn’t make my milk fall out but secure as in security.  How do I keep people from trying to steal it?  Bracket it to the rack.  See, there are these straps at the bottom that you are supposed to put the rack through, the metal sticks that get screwed to the wheel part of the frame, those are supposed to go through these straps and you would think that those would be velcro so that just in case your rack doesn’t allow you to put them through, then you could just undo them with the velcro.  So I came up with something a little more permanent.

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This picture is taken from the inside of the wheel, as you can see the spokes on the right and left side.  I bracketed the bag to the rack so it would never be easy to separate.  Well, I mean it would if I was trying to but a thief couldn’t easily do it and the guards at the grocery store know me and my bike so they would know if someone was trying to take something off my bike anyway.  But this would definitely slow them down lol.

And to top it all off, I put an eye hook in the outside of the bag, you can see in the first 2 pictures, there is a little silver rectangle, that is the logo of the company I bought it from.  Well, I screwed the eye hook just below that logo so that I could easily attach a bungee cord to it then the other end of the bungee could attach to the other side of the rack.  This way everything will stay inside the bag and not fall out.  The neon yellow shower cap will be able to protect it with the bungee cord in place so that isn’t an issue.

Build Your Own Castle

On By Michel McDonaldIn craftsLeave a comment

Have you ever wanted to build a castle but didn’t know how?  I was doing a search on the internet for stained glass window patterns because with my new Versa-Tool I can solder and it says you can make stained glass windows.  I was thinking a regular piece of glass, maybe like from a picture frame and maybe Plexiglas or something.  Put it in a frame then make shapes with wire or something and solder it to the glass then use that gel paint to add in the colors and texture.  Viola you got stained glass.

But I found this instead.  It’s a website that has these molds you can buy or they teach you how to make your own molds.  You buy or make the molds then you pour either plaster of paris (which is cheap but chips easily) or the more recommended dental stone into the molds and you let it dry and it pops right out of the rubbery molds.  Then once you have all of your (let’s just say) bricks hardened and out of the molds, just bake it and it’s all dry and ready to build your castle.

They have detailed instructions on how to do everything like putting the bricks together to form a building and how to glue it all in place and how to paint it all with 3 different colors so it looks authentic.  There are videos too.

It’s not just castles, it’s also regular houses and space ships too.  It’s really cool.  If this is your hobby, like building little houses for your train sets and stuff (like Alec Baldwin in Beetlejuice) then you’ll love this website.  You can just use your own imagination and build whatever you want.

Their website addresses are:  www.hirstarts.com and www.castlemolds.com

The molds are not that bad in price if you think about the time it takes this guy to make the molds and the cost of the materials for the molds plus the very fact that he took the time and talent to make all the items that you make from these molds you are saving a lot by buying them from him.  I’m really thinking about buying a mold here and there as I get money for it.  Then just make tons of stuff and put them in buckets as if they are Lego’s so when I’m ready to make something I have them all ready-made.