Electric Signs

Today my friend Brian invited me over to help put together an electric sign. It consists of 800 christmas lights (all red) and some vinyl roofing material - about 18ft by 30 inches. The project -which he started a few weeks ago - takes a lot of time but here's the jist.

• Mark out the shapes you want on the roofing material.


• Poke holes with an awl (front to back on the material).


• Turn the roofing over and poke the christmas lights through.

Your best bet is to start at the same end with all the light strings cuz this puts all the plugs at the same end of the sign. Also, light strands come in 50 or 100ft lengths so you may need to stash some extra bulbs behind the sign - the strands really can't be longer than or shorter than multiples of 50 ft (if you start with a 50 or 100ft strand, that is).

Anywho, when it's all done and thumb blisters have all healed, you'll get a sign that looks like a giant lite-brite.

Here's a fun video of the one we made together.

Running for the Actors

A friend called me last month and asked if I wanted to run in the Boston Marathon. I told her that I'd love to! Her friend was looking for a runner to collect funds for her theater and I jumped at the chance.

I've been running several times a week for about 5 years and it's been quite a rush. Given the opportunity to raise some money for the Enter Stage Left Theater and run another marathon - how can I lose?

The theater is located in Hopkinton MA - just a few blocks from the start of the marathon - and they have been doing coffee houses and small-venue plays for the past 24 years! They have a great local following and offer loads of classes from Acting and TV production to inverviewing skills.

Check out their web site and let me know if you'd like to sponsor my run.

Mobile Phone Apps

My Motorola SLVR phone can load Java Apps. Cool, I said, so now the question is how?

Three steps:

1. Get a USB Cable
2. Install MotoMidMan (download)
3. Connect and download

It must be that simple, even though it took me several hours to get the recipe right!

Also, if you want to author your own Java apps, use NetBeans 6.0 it really makes things easy!

Pizza Time!

I've been making pizza at home for about 10 years now. It's been a long learning process and it goes like this:

1. make dough
2. roll out dough
3. top the dough
4. cook
5. eat

The only tricky part is the dough. Of course you want the oven to be the right temperature and you want the dough to taste right and you want the sauce to be to-your-liking but those are details.

Here's how to make the dough.

• 2 cups water
• 2 teaspoons salt (if you like salt)
• 2 tablespoons of yeast
• 1/3 cup whole wheat flour
• 5-6 cups white flour
• mix

I basically mix everything but the white flour in a stand mixer with the dough hook for about a minute before adding the flour. If you want to do this by hand a wooden spoon and a big bowl will do just fine.

Add the white flour about 1 cup at a time until the dough starts to thicken. Then cut back to about 1/3 cup at a time. If you add to much flour, the dough will lose sticky-ness and fall apart while you mix it. If you don't add enough it will be wet and stick to the bowl and be hard to mix.

The texture of the dough is likely the hardest part. It has taken me years to get it right, you may learn faster though!

Next hardest is the cooking. I like to cook on a pizza stone with the oven around 500 degrees F. If you don't have a pizza stone, search Google and get one - they are worth it. We got ours from Pampered Chef.

With the oven at the right temperature and the pizza stone on a rack near the top of the oven, put the dough on the stone. This can be tricky. My favorite technique is to sprinkle a little flour on a pizza paddle (also well worth the cost), assemble the pizza while it's on the paddle, and slide it into the oven from there. One tip here is to make sure you don't push down too hard while making the pizza. A pizza that gets stuck to the paddle can make a big mess when you try to stuff it into the oven.

Now it's almost getting easy. If you want to keep it simple, set a timer for 3 minutes and close the oven. Then, once the timer goes off, take the pizza out when the cheese starts to bubble. If you want to be tricky and get a slightly crisper crust, move the pizza to another rack - one without the pizza stone - and let it cook for another minute or two.

The eating part is fun and the pizzas freeze and refrigerate well for several days.

Enjoy!