I was on a business trip this week, which took care of most of my meals. Even so, here are the totals:

Quite a few snacks. However, I couldn’t exactly bake a batch of cookies in my hotel room, so I was limited there.

$70 of this week’s expenditure was parking at the airport, which I’ll get back, so really I only spent $159.70. Huzzah!

I definitely think that just keeping track of my expenditures has made me subconsciously spend less.

Just finished this book, and while it’s probably more appropriate for Otaku, No Video, I wanted to gush about it here.

God of Manga is a book about Osamu Tezuka, a man who basically created both modern manga (Japanese comics) and anime (Japanese animation). There was a ton of manga before Tezuka; he established that the artform could tell stories appropriate for a wide range of ages. He then took his most popular creation and made a TV animation, Astro Boy, which defined a great deal of the anime’s eventual look-and-feel.

God of Manga is 3 things, really:

• A biography of Tezuka
• An analysis of Tezuka’s works, including common themes
• An overview of the manga field throughout Tezuka’s life

Tons of great insights, particularly involving Tezuka’s “Star System” and repeated gags. The man was an absolute genius, and this is a great testament to his abilities and influence.

I’m at a conference this week, for work. I didn’t particularly want to be here. The content (thus far) looks to be of limited use at work (our customers don’t want a lot of the features being presented), and I can’t do fun stuff at home this week.

But I’m very glad I came.

Because of the people. I see how others are using their systems, and I see how productive and charged and successful they are. And I don’t mean “success” in the phony sense of charging down hallways while gripping a binder.

Folks are doing useful things with their software and systems. I want to be like them. I’ve now got pages of scribbled notes, full of neat ideas for things we can do with our software. I’ve also got the email addresses of helpful people.

The same is true of most conferences and conventions I’ve attended. They’re worth attending for reasons completely separate from the actual content of the events.

Shop Class as Soulcraft is an important book.

It has flaws—significant flaws—but Matthew Crawford’s overall themes deserve wide attention.

Shop Class as Soulcraft concerns itself with the dignity of manual labor. It makes a case for the importance of work that repairs and maintains our world, from plumbing to car repair. It defends the kind of knowledge gained through practical experience and apprenticeship, compared to that learned through rote memorization and following “idiot-proof” processes.

This leads to my main beef with the book: he glorifies practical experience and blue-collar work as inherently superior to other kinds. I had moments where I had to put down the book and walk away, I was so frustrated by his insistence that white collar work is inherently inferior to blue collar.

They’re important in different ways.

But Crawford’s voice needs to be heard. Well worth a read.

Okay, now that I’m back to regularly tracking my expenses, let’s see how I did:

Not only are these fairly minimal expenses (and mostly due to $50 worth of Halloween party ingredients on Friday), I’m particularly proud of spending no money for three days. I didn’t intend it; I just noticed on Monday that I’d spent nothing the day before, and wondered how long I could last. I ended the run with a delicious Rueben and hot tea at a local cafe Wednesday night.

And this is one of the hidden utilities of tracking my expenses: I find unexpected ways to save money. I become much more conscious of my spending. A few months ago, I simply never would have been aware of how much I’d been spending in the previous few days.

Time for a rant.

I was struck recently by the number of pundits who confidently attempt to predict the future.

This is often in small ways: How Amazon’s Kindle Will Kill the Paperback or Why Company X is Doomed. Most of us are savvy enough to cast a suspicious eye at big claims about the death or supremacy of any commonplace thing in life.

Even the smaller-scaled predictions have insufficient respect for social inertia.

Books are a great example. I love my Amazon Kindle, and I use it almost every day. But I don’t believe books are going to go away any time soon. This is not a complaint about Kindle; it’s an observation about how many books there are.

The rise of cell phones didn’t cause everyone to rip out their landline phones. The internet hasn’t killed physical libraries.

People, as a collective, are slow to change. That’s just reality. And it’s okay; it’s good, in fact. Science fiction literature is practically one big warning to slow down and think, so we don’t en masse implement a disastrous change.

About six months ago, I stepped away from my novel series, Giant Armors. I couldn’t see a way forwards, and worried that I was pushing forward on a stale idea. These things can die.

I spent the past six months concentrating on other things. I knew that I needed time for my brain to breathe, to work on different problems, so it could approach Giant Armors again with a fresh perspective.

I looked back at the series a week ago, and discovered—to my considerable surprise and relief—that I still have the same passion for it that I had while writing Book 0 years ago. I love it, and I want to continue it.

Problem: I’ve half-published book 0 online, and am stuck on book 1. What to do?

Thanks to a video by Chris Brogan, of all things, I figured out what I need to do:

1. Finish publishing book 0 online.
2. Create a contest, viral if possible, that will get folks to read book 0.
3. Re-read book 1, re-writing it from scratch if it needs that.

So I’m back to publishing chapters of book 0 on giantarmors.com every week. I’ve been re-reading book 1, and discovering that while it needs major surgery, it can be fixed.

So, the six month Sabbatical was worth it. I have a path forward.

Now to follow it and see where it leads.

My Mom still fills a Christmas stocking for me every year. It’s the same stocking I’ve had since I was little, one that she knitted for me herself (and it’s the biggest one, of course). Every years, she fills it with candy, bags of tea, and goofy little things. Last year, one of the things in it was a box of gingerbread hot cocoa mix.

It was delicious. I wanted more, and while my first impulse was to head online to buy it, I thankfully stopped and remembered that I make my own regular hot cocoa mix, so why not try to replicate this deliciousness myself?

I flipped over the container to the ingredients list. Besides the cocoa, sugar, and multi-syllabic wonders of modern chemistry listed, I discovered the two magic seasonings: ginger and cinnamon.

Well. That made sense.

So, here’s a recipe for gingerbread hot cocoa mix. Dump all of the following into a container and shake, shake, shake:

• 2 ½ cups powdered milk
• 2 cups confectioner’s sugar
• 1 cup cocoa powder (Dutch-processed, if possible)
• 1 tsp salt (fine-grained, if you can)
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ½ tsp ginger

Note that you may have to use a whisk or something similar to break down clumps of the confectioner’s sugar. Just look at the mix for clumps; if you see any, whisk away.

To make normal hot cocoa mix, skip the last two ingredients and add a little cayenne pepper.

May it comfort you on a cold day.

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. It was an overcast day, which is never ideal for photos, but here they are:

The big excitement of the day: I had my first deep-fried Snickers bar. Sure enough, it was delicious: a melted chocolate bar surrounded by a donut.

Quite a few more photos on my Flickr photo stream for the festival.

I’ve blogged before about my nascent bakery business and the process for putting ingredients in a bread machine. Now I’m going to share the secret formula for bread.

Really.

It’s 3 parts water, 5 parts flour, a little yeast, and a little salt.

That’s it.

What about the punching down and the rising and all that? That’s easy: 2–400. Mix it, let it rise, then “punch it down” (push it into itself). Do this a total of 2 times. Then put it into a 400° F oven until it’s golden brown and delicious.

You now know the Secret Formula. Use small amounts of water and flour for a small loaf, or a lot of water and flour for a large loaf. How much yeast is “a little”? Oh, maybe 2 teaspoons for a large-sized loaf. But it doesn’t really matter that much.

That’s part of the secret: Bread really isn’t as finicky as most people suggest. Keep to that formula, and you’ll have great bread.

What about variations? Fine; just add them to that formula, or replace if it’s similar to an existing item. So, if you want whole wheat bread, just replace some of the flour with whole wheat flour. If you’re adding lemon juice or syrup, count that as part of the water. But if you’re adding seeds or raisins or whatever…just add ‘em.

Hey! You can now bake all kinds of bread. Congratulations!

I’m always here to answer any questions you may have, too.