Mystic Pizza

I made some pizzas using crusts I made using Martha Stewart's recipe from Everyday Food. I topped them with mozzarella cheese, tomato slices and basil. I used too much cheese and when the crusts rose and the cheese melted everything slid off the crust onto the pan. Charred cheese is a treat so it wasn't a disaster.

It looked like a time-lapse movie subject.

So I made pizzas again and used too much cheese so it would all slide off the crust. I put the convection oven on the counter and set up the camera and recorded the cheeseslide.

The sun was coming in through the kitchen window and lighting everything up. The reflections on the door of the oven make things kind of hard to see well. You get to see me reflected in the door now and then.

So I did it again some time later. This time I waited till the sun wasn't going to light things up and I hung a dark towel in the area the oven's door was going to be reflecting. We can see into the oven a bit better this time. I baked two pizzas this time. Mine is on top with the bonus cheese. Jerry's is on the bottom with enough cheese for the pizza without making a mess.

The mess is what all this was about.

I had the camera snap away at one frame per second and I play them back at 24 frames per second. We see the pizzas bake in less than 45 seconds.

Short Ride in a Fast Machine III

Here's another view of my commute. I wanted to see what my drive to work looks like sped up.

Every morning I get to wait in a line of cars that are mostly moms taking their kids to an elementary school and a middle school that are next door to each other. There are lots of cars and only one lane for most of the time. Traffic backs up. I like the cloud action when stopped. And the clouds swinging around as the road bends are fun, too.

Since I had the equipment set up, I recorded the return trip and made a movie of my round trip. The drive home had some more sitting and waiting after I got off the freeway. The evening commute didn't have as much light so the exposures were longer and have dramatic blurring (that's more visible in the stills). This probably makes the action look smoother. No clouds on the way home.

I took pictures at a rate of one per second and played them back at 15 frames per second.