A video generated by the program
I wrote Utopia/Dystopia at Brown in 2012. The video is generated via a program in which each pixel is a cellular automaton. Normally, cells assume the average color of their neighbors. When a cell's neighbors are all white, though, the cell explodes in a flash of color. The program is inspired by Zamyatin's We.
Demonstration video: a time-lapse video of the Boston skyline
I created Reactor 1 in Fall 2010 as my final project for Interrogating the Digital Archive at RISD. Reactor is a Max/MSP program that generates an ambient soundtrack for a video feed in real time. The program responds to sunrise and sunset by changing the tone of the music: as the screen gets brighter, the music increases in pitch and moves faster. The program responds to sudden movement on the screen with flourishes of high-pitched notes.
I wrote Shipwrite for Mozilla's Game On 2010 competition. The player draws ships with the mouse, then commands them around the screen to fight off waves of enemies. Depending on the shape drawn, the ship will have different properties: small ships are cheap, big ships are powerful, sleek ships are fast, and jagged ships can carry more weaponry.
Presenting for 800 people at New York Tech Meetup
Touch Tone Tanks was a 24-hour hack that I worked on with David Trejo and Justin Ardini for HackNY Fall 2010, at which we won second place. The game itself is loaded in a browser window visible to all players. Players use their personal phones to call a specified number, and each phone's keypad functions as a game controller for an onscreen tank avatar. Because people bring their own controllers, the game supports up to 26 players, although things get confusing after about 10. The game works with smartphones, dumb phones, Google Voice, and land lines, although we never quite figured out how to play on the CS Department fax machine. I built the gameplay and the graphics.
The game itself is written using node.js on the back end and Javascript on the front end, using the HTML5 canvas for rendering. We use Twilio to capture the users' keypresses and send them back to our server, where node.js relays them to the front end via web sockets. The total latency when using this method is usually less than 500ms, although land lines are often faster and smartphones are sometimes slower. All of the game logic is done on the front end so information about the game state doesn't ever need to be sent to the server.
The game's trailer
Robots Are People Too, or RAPT, is a two-player cooperative platformer written in C++. The game includes 15 different enemies, optional rewards, a level editor. I made it with Evan Wallace, Justin Ardini, and Kayle Gishen during our sophomore year for Brown's CS032. I built the physics engine and player movement, helped with networking, and did plenty of odd jobs.
Later, the other three members of the team ported it to Javascript and won the "Most Fun" award at Mozilla's Game On 2010 games competition.
Space Duel was an Asteroids-style multiplayer game that I made in 9th and 10th grade. The game has a reasonably good AI to play against, customizable ships and weapons, and a lot of particle effects. The game was written in Visual Basic 6, and it used DirectX 8 for graphics and for keyboard and game controller input. Each different kind of game controller had a configuration text file, so I could add more controllers without changing any code. Weapons and ships were also loaded solely from text files and bitmaps so that my friends and I could easily design custom ships and weapons.
Two-ingredient cocktails. If you had any fewer you'd be drinking gin from a bottle, or maybe just grapefruit juice. From a logistical standpoint, two-ingredient cocktails are great because you don't need to hunt down an endless list of liqueurs. From a sipping standpoint, it's easy to adjust the ratio of the ingredients to your liking, and simple to add a third ingredient without being overwhelmed.
Drinks made from fermented sugarcane have been around for thousands of years, beginning with the cultivation of sugarcane in southern Asia and spreading with it from there. During the 17th century, some enterprising Caribbean plantation owners first distilled this sugarcane wine into a much stronger liquor, which an English traveler referred to as "That cursed liquor rhum, rumbullion, or kill-devil." Rum weighed less and sold for more than weaker beverages, and it didn't go bad on long voyages, making it ideal for shipping overseas. Rum was an important component in the Atlantic slave trade in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, where it was shipped from Caribbean plantations to European ports.
When the Royal Navy captured Jamaica in 1655, they began giving their sailors a ration of Jamaican rum rather than French brandy. In 1740, to prevent sailors from stockpiling their rum rations and then drinking them all at once, Admiral Edward "Old Grog" Vernon decreed that the rum should be watered down with citrus juice, thereby creating the legendary "grog" and also accidentally preventing scurvy.
Before the proliferation of American whiskey, rum enjoyed a long streak of popularity in colonial America. George Washington was a rum enthusiast, known for garnering votes by means of liberal distribution of "bombo," a mixture of rum, water, sugar and nutmeg. For his inauguration in 1789, he ordered that a barrel of rum be specially imported from Barbados.
Although there is no canonical categorization scheme for rums, rums can generally be broken into a few categories:
Presently, ginger beer is a ginger-flavored carbonated soda with citrus flavoring, usually produced in Australia or the Caribbean. If you can find them, you can save a lot of money by buying 2-liter bottles for $2 each instead of 12-oz cans or bottles for $1 each.
Besides the Dark 'n' Stormy, the only other drink I've ever made with ginger beer is the Moscow Mule. I don't see why anyone would need a third.
Infusing vodka lets you experiment with different flavors on the cheap. Fruits, vegetables, herbs, spice, candy, bacon, you name it! At least for chili vodka, a cheap vodka works just fine. Put in as many chilis as you dare (I used dried ones), let your mixture sit for at least a week, and serve. As might be expected, the flavor will continue to intensify over time unless you remove the chilis. As a bonus, you'll also have a ready supply of preserved chilis for cooking with.
A Dark 'n' Stormy requires two things: dark rum and ginger beer. I like Kraken and D&G, respectively. Usually you put in more ginger beer than dark rum, but the exact ratio is up to you. Many people like to add lime juice. We like to add chili vodka. If there's something else you think might be good, give it a shot!
The Alien Brain Hemorrhage is an exercise in both spelling and layering. This drink relies on the differing densities of its ingredients in order to produce a stunning visual effect. As such, it's essential that it be prepared in a clear shot glass.
A liqueur is an alcoholic beverage that has been flavored with fruit, herbs, nuts, spices, flowers, or cream and bottled with added sugar. Liqueurs are often sweet and flavorful, making them useful for mixing. Often liqueurs are between 15% and 30% ABV. Liqueurs should not be confused with liquors, which are stronger distilled beverages like vodka or tequila.
In general, liquids with higher alcohol content will float above those with lower alcohol content, but there are exceptions to this rule.
The word "Schnapps" originates from the Low German "Schnaps," meaning "to swallow." American Schnapps are made by infusing fruit flavors into grain alcohol, then diluting and sweetening. The result is a sweet, fruity liqueur that most people find easy to drink.
Bailey's is the grandfather of Irish Creams, with a lineage dating all the way back to 1971, when it was conjured out of thin air by a group of distillery executives, not by made-up persons R&A Bailey as the Bailey's website would have you believe. Bailey's deserves recognition for both the quality of their product and the subtlety of their faux-authentic branding. Since its release in 1974, the brand has spawned a multitude of knockoffs, some of which are decent and some of which are not. As with all drinks, buying things that come in a glass bottle is usually a better bet than going with plastic.
Irish creams are made of whiskey mixed with cream, emulsified so they don't separate out into their component parts. Sugar and spices such as chocolate, vanilla, and coffee are added to this mixture to give the drink a decidedly confectionary flavor.
Blue curacao adds a little orange flavor and a lot of blue color to a drink. It can sometimes be substituted for Cointreau or Triple Sec in a drink recipe.
Many establishments use the term "martini" to refer to any drink served in a martini glass (appletini, flirtini, velociraptini, and so on). These are not martinis, in the same way that tomatoes are technically fruits. So, maybe not the best conversation starter? A martini is gin, dry vermouth and olives. Or a lemon peel, actually, but let's just stick with the olives for now.
In the mid 1600s, a Dutch physician named Franciscus Sylvius developed a spirit called jenever by distilling malt wine and then adding juniper berries to mask the incredibly horrible flavor. A little later, in England, the rules of succession had brought James II, a Catholic, to the throne. Soon, in 1688, the mostly Protestant English parliament got so fed up with James' Catholicism that they decided that even a Dutch king would be preferable, so they threw a little coup and replaced him with William of Orange. William was so kind as to bring some jenever across the channel with him, where it spread profusely and became known as gin. London Dry Gin, the English style, is made from grain alcohol infused with juniper berries and other herbs, giving it a cleaner taste than the Dutch variety.
I recommend New Amsterdam Gin. It's quite versatile and for only $18 per handle it's a great buy.
Vermouth, from the German "Wermut" for wormwood, is a fortified grape wine infused with herbs, roots, and barks. Historically, not all sweet vermouths were red and not all dry vermouths were clear, but modern vermouth comes in two types:
First produced by Frenchman Joseph Noilly in the early 1800's, this is the kind of vermouth for martinis.
Modern red vermouth was invented by Antonio Benedetto Carpano for the court of Turin in 1786. It's probably worth mentioning that this doesn't go into modern martinis. Sweet vermouth is notably used in the Manhattan.
Noilly Prat is the best brand of dry vermouth to buy, and the Martini brand is also good, especially for sweet vermouth. A little goes a long way, so I'd actually recommend going for the name brands in this case. Vermouth is probably not the best place to cut corners.
The martini allegedly spawned from a drink called the Martinez during San Francisco's Barbary Coast days. The Martinez contained gin, sweet vermouth, bitters, and some other stuff. Developed around the turn of the century, the original martini contained a 1:1 ratio of gin to vermouth. Over time, dry vermouth replaced sweet vermouth and the bitters disappeared, leaving the the modern martini. Since the inception of the martini, there's been a one-upsmanship battle over who can tolerate the driest martini, culminating in a collection of semi-funny bartender jokes, such as the Churchill martini: pour out a glass of gin, bow in the direction of France, garnish, and serve.
The cocktail glass, or martini glass, is almost certainly what you'll think of when you picture a cocktail. The proper size for a cocktail glass is 4 oz., but the default in restaurants these days is more or less the size of a floor lamp. Instead of that, how about a wine glass?
Do this:
There are a whole lot of ways to fiddle with the martini. Here are a few:
A martini is made with gin, although sometimes people refer to vodka martinis as "martinis." If you really want to impress your friends with your unbearableness, use the original term for a vodka martini -- the Kangaroo. Many people like vodka better (or dislike gin more?), including James Bond, who drank 18.75% more vodka martinis than gin.
The term "dry" in general refers to a lack of sugar. In the context of a martini, it means less vermouth. FDR preferred two parts gin to one part vermouth, whereas Ernest Hemingway took his martinis 15:1.
A "dirty" martini is one with olive juice in it.
James Bond is famous for ordering his martinis "shaken, not stirred." Nowadays the default is that martinis be shaken in a cocktail shaker with ice cubes rather than stirred, crippling this classic line. Shaking mixes the drink more evenly, waters it down a little, and aerates it (old men call this "bruising the gin"), none of which are great. Shaking cocktails is a pain, so I just keep my gin in the freezer and stir.
A martini is garnished with cocktail olives, which are green and come in a jar. Usually, they're stuffed with pimentos, but blue cheese-stuffed olives are great too. For those, make sure to rinse the oil off first.
If you substitute pickled onions for olives, you have a Gibson.
The Cosmo isn't really a classic cocktail, since it was invented in the late 1980's and popularized by Sex and the City. Which, well, er, okay, just read the post, all right?
The word "vodka" was first recorded in Poland in 1405, where it referred to a medicinal or cleaning alcohol (is there even a difference in Poland?). Vodka was made by distilling fermented grain. Like almost all spirits, vodka was originally used for medicinal purposes. In 1534, physician Stefan Falimierz claimed that vodka could "increase fertility and awaken lust," which kinda makes sense if you think about it.
Before 1940, vodka was a rarity to Americans, who preferred gin and whiskey. When World War II rolled around, almost all American whiskey producers converted their distilleries to produce industrial alcohol for smokeless gun powder and synthetic rubber. After the war, Americans were all ready to get back to their drinking, but the whiskey industry wasn't because you can't drink industrial alcohol (again, possible exception for Poland). Vodka to the rescue! Instead of being aged for several years in a barrel, vodka is filtered for several hours through charcoal, which is why it's clear rather than golden. This means Americans didn't need to wait until 1948 to start drinking again. Thanks to its lack of flavor, vodka became the go-to liquor for people who didn't want their alcohol to taste. Today, vodka is the most popular spirit in the world.
Luksusova is fantastic. It's a potato vodka, so it has a more neutral flavor than grain vodkas. This can be an asset when mixing it.
New Amsterdam makes a pretty good grain vodka for the same price.
For Cointreau, we'll begin with a trip to the Caribbean island of Curaçao. The soil composition here is a little different than in Spain. Why is this important? Instead of making oranges, orange trees brought over by the Spanish yielded bitter, degenerate fruits now called Laharas. Although the Lahara is inedible, its peel can be infused into spirits to give them an orange flavor. These liqueurs are called curaçaos, obviously after the island. The most common kind of curaçao is triple sec, which is possibly French for "triple dry."
Cointreau is a brand name of triple sec Curaçao, but it's super expensive and I'd recommend a substitution. How expensive? Patrón makes a cheaper equivalent. Drinks blog Oh Gosh! likes the Bols range of orange liqueurs. In this case, Bols Dry Orange would be the appropriate replacement. Although Cointreau is technically a triple sec, it's about 80 proof, whereas most triple secs on the market are sweeter and cheaper, around 50 proof. This means that recipes will often call for triple sec for the sweeter version and Cointreau for the 80 proof version. Also worth mentioning is Gran Marnier, which is similar to Cointreau but uses brandy as its base.
The Cosmopolitan should be shaken because it contains ingredients with strongly distinct flavors. At a bar, your drink would be made in a cocktail shaker, but that's not an incredibly practical investment; shaking cocktails is a pain and you won't want to do it often. A water bottle, jar, or tupperware container is less flashy but works just as well or even better.
The Cosmo has a reputation as a "girly drink" - vodka-based, sweet, and without a strong taste of alcohol. This is in contrast to "manly drinks," which are stronger and drier. I encourage you to treat this categorization with a complete lack of respect. Just follow your taste buds.
Vodka's neutral flavor makes it easy to blend with almost anything. Bloody Mary's, Sexes on the Beaches, White Russians, and Appletinis run the gamut from sweet to salty to creamy, so extra vodka shouldn't be too hard to take care of.
Using up that extra triple sec might be a little trickier. Try these:
Anyone can tell you how to make cocktails, but why? Well, you can:
Although cocktails have a reputation as a rich man's drink, you can make many classic cocktails for less than a dollar. So what's the catch? Unlike flipping the tab on a can of beer, mixing a cocktail takes preparation, knowledge, and just a little work. The world of affordable cocktails goes far beyond sorority girls pouring grape Kool-Aid into their Smirnoff, and it's worth a try if you're interested in expanding your drinking horizons without trashing your wallet.
What's a fancy drink without some historical trivia to drunkenly shout at your dinner guests?
In 1825 America, a "cock tail" was a mixed drink made with liquor (generally whiskey or gin), sugar, water, and bitters. If you wanted something else, you'd ask for a sour, a sling, a fruit cup, or whatever. In the late 1800s, as the term "cocktail" came to refer to any mixed drink, people began to call the original version the "Old Fashioned cocktail." Over the past century, the definition has crystallized to specify whiskey as the liquor and Angostura as the bitters.
For our point of comparison, let's choose Budweiser, which costs $19 per 30-rack, or 63¢ per can. How does an Old Fashioned compare?
A total of 52-62¢ per drink. For less than the price of a Bud, you can make a cocktail that is superior in every respect. Including, by the way, alcohol content. You won't get as good a deal if you buy in smaller quantities, but you can't really buy a single Bud for 63¢ either.
For the record, all of these prices come from Yankee Spirits, just outside of Providence. Your mileage may vary.
Things to buy at a liquor store:
Things not to buy at a liquor store:
Since they know you want a one-stop shop for all your drink mixing needs, they'll gouge you on limes, coke, and especially simple syrup.
This drink belongs in an Old Fashioned glass, also called a lowball glass. This is a low-volume drink, and if the glass is too tall or too thin, you'll tilt it up to drink and then all the ice will hit you in the nose, which will make you real mad. You're probably thinking, "well I'm not made out of exotic drinkware over here," in which case you can use the plastic cups they give you on airplanes; they're just the right size and they look great. If you're drinking alone, a coffee cup is good too.
The word "whiskey" originally comes from the Gaelic "uisge," meaning "water." The Scottish and Irish instead made barley beer by mashing up grain and allowing it to ferment. The introduction of the distillation process allowed them to turn this mash into whiskey, which was for some reason prized for its medicinal virtues. After the unification of England and Scotland, the English placed increasingly heavy excise taxes on whiskey, driving many distilleries underground. These distilleries would operate by moonlight to conceal smoke from the authorities, leading to the term "moonshine."
When the Scottish and Irish came to America, you can bet they didn't give up whiskey-making. They just switched from barley to corn, which grew better in America. Before railroads, there was no good way for farmers to transport their corn to distant markets. Instead, they distilled it into whiskey, which fit into a much smaller space and didn't go bad. It was even used as a substitute for money in some places, so when Alexander Hamilton passed an excise tax on whiskey to help pay off the national debt, the farmers of western Pennsylvania took up their muskets and started tarring and feathering tax collectors. Obviously, you can't do that, so President Washington raised a militia to suppress the rebellion. In the end, the rebellion was resolved with only about three intentional deaths. In a heartwarming affirmation of the power of the democratic system, Thomas Jefferson took over from John Adams and his Federalist cronies in the election of 1800 and repealed the excise tax.
Meanwhile, in Kentucky, nobody was even trying to enforce the whiskey excise tax, and a few farmers living around Bourbon County decided that it was high time to invent bourbon. Around 1840, a Scot with a medical degree, Dr. James C. Crow, developed the sour mash process, in which mash from previous batches of whiskey is included in the next batch to stabilize the acidity and flavor. Nowadays, bourbon is made from about 70% corn, and it's aged in charred-oak barrels. Compared to rye whiskeys, corn whiskeys are usually sweeter and a little less harsh. For an Old Fashioned, I like bourbon, but any American whiskey will do.
If you read any recipe book for anything ever, the author will probably mention that using only the best ingredients is absolutely crucial. Of course, the more you spend on your whiskey, the better your drink will taste, but I'm not here to tell you that; I'm here to tell you what you can get away with and still have a great drink. In general, you probably want to stay away from heavily marketed, brand name liquors. They often cost more than they're worth.
Some cocktail manuals recommend that you place loose sugar or a sugar cube onto the bottom of the glass, wet it, and then muddle it. Although I like silly old traditions as much as the next guy, this approach just won't work with ordinary household sugar. Even if you mix it for a few minutes, the sugar will quickly sink back to the bottom of the glass and you'll get angry. This works only with superfine sugar, which is impossible to find.
Simple syrup to the rescue! This incredibly boring mixture of sugar and water will revolutionize your cocktail making experience. Instead of retreating to the bottom of your cup, the syrup will mix right in. There are two ways to get simple syrup: you can buy it for way too much money, or you can make it yourself.
Heat up some water to near its boiling point. Pour in your sugar gradually, stirring as you go. You probably want about a 2:1 ratio of sugar to water for a thicker syrup. Don't forget to allow the syrup some time to cool before you put it into your drink.
A bitters is an alcoholic beverage strongly flavored with herbal essences. In the days of early America, each tavern would make its own distinctive bitters. In 1824, Dr. JGB Siegert developed a new bitters as a cure for stomach maladies using local ingredients from near the Venezuelan town of Angostura. Siegert's company was one of the only bitters companies to survive prohibition, and since then Angostura bitters have become standard in the Old Fashioned.
Liquor stores almost always have bitters, and supermarkets sometimes carry them as well despite the alcohol content. A single bottle of bitters might cost from $6-$9, and it'll be good for a couple hundred drinks, so better get started now! Angostura bitters are often used in the Old Fashioned.
A cocktail isn't a cocktail without some silly fruits, so grab a jar of Maraschino cherries and an orange. If you want to skip out on the orange, you may, but an orange slice on the rim of your glass can be the difference between trashy and classy. If you're really bored or you own a lemon farm or something, you can use a knife or a peeler to make some lemon twists to throw on top. Technically, they should be there, but it doesn't change the taste of the drink.
If you're only making a few drinks, your ice cube tray will be fine. If you're having a party, or alcoholism, you can grab a bag of ice from a big box store or a liquor store for a little more than a dollar. Before opening your bag of ice, hit it for a while with something heavy and metal (I use the back of a meat cleaver) to break up the larger chunks. Throwing the bag onto the floor can also work well; you'll end up with bigger cubes that way. Either way, it'll be much harder to break up the chunks once the bag is opened.
The International Bar Association provides "official" recipes for many well-known cocktails, but these are by no means definitive. As far as that goes, I say there's no single right way to make an Old Fashioned: sugar vs. syrup, bourbon vs. rye, muddled-fruit vs. whole-fruit vs. no-fruit, and probably many more controversies rage to this day. Technically speaking, the only permissible way to resolve these disputes is via a musket duel. People have been tweaking these recipes for hundreds of years, so why stop now?
Instead of trying to cover all the bases, I'll provide the recipe that I think is simplest and most practical:
Don't forget to stir it up. If it's too rough, add some simple syrup. It's your drink, after all.
What can you do with all that extra bourbon?
Max: just look at those photos, seriously...
Adrian
My mom! For the agricultural history.