Blog

  • More Yoho Hiking Photos

    These are taken with the camera phone. There was so much rain that I put the big camera in a waterproof back in the backpack. And I just carried the phone in a small plastic bag in my chest pocket, readied it while in the bag and took it out very briefly for the photos due to the heavy rain. Overcast light is always nice for portraits and great color saturation.

    19082008250

    The above photo was taken at the top of Twin Falls.

    Below is the view from top of Twin Falls towards Yoho Glacier

    View from top of Twin Falls towards Yoho Glacier

    Finally, below is a view of Takakaw Falls from the parking lot through the car windshield. It was raining fairly hard so the shot was taken between windshield wiper passes! Note the lack of tourists, though it was also about 6:00 in the evening.

    Takakkaw Falls

    Takakkaw Falls is a waterfall located in Yoho National Park, near Field, British Columbia, in Canada. Its highest point is 384 m (1260 feet), making it the second-highest officially measured waterfall in western Canada, after Della Falls on Vancouver Island. However its true “free-fall” is only 254 m. “Takakkaw” is derived from the Cree word for “it is wonderful”.

  • How to boil an egg

    In case you are wondering via Kottke:

    French cookery scientist Hervé This says that the 10-minute boiled egg is the wrong way to go about cooking your eggs. Temperature and not time is the governing factor to gloriously boiled eggs.

    Recall that when an egg cooks, its proteins first unwind and then link to form a rigidifying mesh. But not all its proteins solidify at the same temperature. Ovotransferrin, the first of the egg-white proteins to uncoil, begins to set at around 61 degrees Celsius, or 142°F. Ovalbumin, the most abundant egg-white protein, coagulates at 184°F. Yolk proteins generally fall in between, with most starting to solidify when they approach 158°F. Thus, cooking an egg at 158°F or so should achieve both a firmed-up yolk and still-tender whites, since at that low temperature only some of the egg-white proteins will have coagulated.

    “Cooking eggs is really a question of temperature, not time,” says This. To make the point, he switches on a small oven, sets the thermostat at 65°C, or 149°F, takes four eggs straight from the box, and unceremoniously places them inside. “I use an oven in the lab; it’s easier. But if the oven in your kitchen is not accurate, cook eggs in plenty of water, using a good thermometer.” About an hour later — timing isn’t critical, and the eggs can stay in the oven for hours or even overnight — he retrieves the first egg and carefully shells it. “The 65-degree egg!” he announces. The egg is unlike any I’ve eaten. The white is as delicately set and smooth as custard, and the yolk is still orange and soft.

  • Mount Rundle near Banff, Alberta

    20080820_DSC_6830
    I hiked up this mountain when I was much younger with legs of steel. It is a steep hike up the smooth side on the right (South side) with no dangers unless you have a fear of wide open spaces.

  • View from Vermillion Lakes

    20080820_DSC_6897
    Guess how I got the ripple effect in the photo?
    To find out: (more…)