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This spring, I’ll be teaching my age-old 2D Graphics course. Every time I teach it, I spend waaaaay too much time wondering what I should include in the course content. I change it every year.

Adobe is the go-to graphics software company, and that hasn’t changed since they bought Macromedia long ago.

I started off in 2001 with one of the best books ever written on this stuff, Luann Seymour’s Design Essentials. 

Not sure what Luann is up to these days, but it isn’t, and hasn’t been for a long time, making awesome books. Unfortunately, the text stopped updating after a few years of said awesomeness, and as much as I’d like to keep assigning it, Adobe has moved on. Last spring, I assigned the closest thing I could find to Luann’s Masterpiece, and it fell waaayyy short. My course ratings dipped lower than ever.

So I’m back to my age-old question: What are 2D Graphics? How do I teach students about 2D Graphics? What book should I assign; or do I have to write my own book?

There’s so much great music out there, but I can’t really find any. Problem is, the times in my life when I really discovered music were when I had a little peer pressure –  high school, college, working in an office – and the people around me would play stuff, make me listen to stuff, that at first sounded like dirt but after a few listens and seeing how enthusiastic the proponents were, I’d get into it and start listening on my own. Nowadays, there’s no impetus to listen to a new song more than once, even if someone suggests it on Facebook or Spotify. I need a music pusher.

I been working on my coconut shrimp:

• 1 pack 25-35 frozen shrimp, e-z-peel®™©
• 2 tb Flour/2 tsp Old Bay mixed together in a bowl
• 1 Lime
• Handful Sweet Shredded Coconut
• Handful Bread Crumbs
• pinch red hot pepper flakes
• 1/4 cup Milk/cream
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp Mayonnaise
• 3 tbsp Orange Marmalade

1. Throw frozen shrimp in some cool water for 1/2 hour or so or whatever
2. pull off the shrimp shells and chuck ’em
3. heat up pan with 1/4 inch oil on medium/high
4. dry off shrimp in some paper towels and chuck em in the flour/old bay mix and dredge those bad boyz
5. coat the dredged shrimp in a whisked mix of egg/milk/beer
6. Toss coated shrimp in the coconut/bread crumb/pepper flak mix
7. Whisk mayo/marmalade, squeeze 1/2 lime in it and whisk more
8. Throw shrimp in pan for 3-4 miutes, turn
9. Wait 3-4 minutes, place cooked shrimp on paper towels
10. When cool enough, serve with mayo/marmalade dip. Toothpicks are good to have at this point.

I borrowed heavily from a link my Brother sent me for this one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/dining/25mini.html?ref=dining

but when I tried it on the kids recently they gagged. Soon after they all got sick, really sick, and have stayed home from school most of this week.  So I tried it again with different ingredients:

3 bullion cubes (Beef, Veg, Chicken, whatever)

Bag of noodles (not Italian pasta–using that for anything non-Italian kinda grosses me out)

2 Scallions, sliced up super thin

Boil a big pot (fill halfway w/water) and a small pot (3-4 cups) of water. Add the noodles to the big pot and the builion to the small pot. Drain the noodles when they’re soft, throw them back in the big pot, pour the builion over the noodles, and dump in the scallions.

You can add more stuff if you want, but remember–gag-risk increases exponentially with number of both ingredients and kids.

2 hockey games done with, now we’re reading counterpane fairy and playing perfection.