I've never foodblogged before, but today I am compelled to start. For today is Morgan's 25th birthday, and in honor of that I've created something so delicious it must be shared with the world. Behold:

Morgan's favorite tea is Celestial Seasoning's Vanilla Strawberry Rose Ceylon Black Tea. Also, Morgan alleges that her "favorite food group is cookies". (I'm pretty sure she's confused, as last time I'd checked cookies weren't a food group, but I guess I won't argue the point on her birthday.) I figured that a good gift this year would be to combine her two favorite tea with her favorite, *ahem*, food group. The result? Strawberry vanilla rose black tea cookies!

I adapted the recipe from the recipe for shortbread cookies from the excellent Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar's shortbread cookie recipe (so yes, these cookies are vegan too). I'm actually no good at baking, but these came out perfect, even despite the fact that I accidentally spilled a little bit of water into the dough (I had to bake them for a few minutes longer and I added about two tablespoons more flour to the mix, but they turned out just fine). I'm going to assume you aren't going to spill water into your cookies, so here's the recipe without that detail. (A good portion of the text is from VCIYCJ, which is a good book so far and is really what makes the recipe so awesome and idiot-proof.)

Strawberry Vanilla Rose Black Tea Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup non-hydrogenated margarine, slightly softened
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoons rose water
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup cornstarch
• 1/4 cup dried strawberries, chopped, plus a dozen or so whole ones for decorating
• 1/4 cup loose black Ceylon tea (or 1/3 cup if you want a stronger tea flavor)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a large cookie sheet.
2. In a small bowl, sift together flour and cornstarch. Set aside.
3. In a spice mill or small coffee grinder, grind the tea until it becomes a fine powder.
4. In a large bowl, beat the margarine and sugar together with an electric beater or even a standing electric mixer. Scrape the sides of the bowl frequently with a rubber spatula and beat the mixture until very light and creamy, about 5 minutes. Stir in the vanilla and rose water.
5. Add half of the sifted flour and cornstarch to the beaten margarine mixture, using the rubber spatula to fold in the flour first so that it doesn't fly all over the place when using the mixer beaters. Beat until mostly combined, then add the rest of the flour mixture along with the tea powder and chopped strawberries, using the spatula as before. Continue to stir until all the flour and cornstarch are absorbed and dough is crumbly yet soft and moist.
6. Knead dough together with hands for about one minute. Roll golf ball sized portions of the dough in your hands. Put a whole strawberry on top of each and press gently with your hand onto the greased cookie sheet.
7. Bake for about 10-14 minutes, until the shortbread begins to puff and the edges begin to turn a golden color.
8. Remove from oven and allow to cool on cookie sheet for about 5 minutes. Then use a spatula to transfer cookies to cooling rack to complete the cooling process.

And you're done! Delicious cookies await!

So, it's a bit strange writing about this since the film I'm about to talk about has been out for two months. I'm talking about Patent Absurdity, directed by Luca Lucarni, sponsored by the Free Software Foundation and with animations by... me!

Actually, it's kind of surprising that I haven't written about this sooner, considering the first several months of the year this is mostly what I did in my non-work hours. Unfortunately I sustained a wrist injury right around the release that stopped me from doing any typing outside of work hours up until just a couple of weeks ago (it's healing but I still need to wear braces). Anyway, that's a separate story, probably worth its own post.

The film gives what I think is a really solid and enjoyable to watch introduction to what software patents are, their history, and the dangers they pose to the entire software ecosystem. It elicited a very positive response when released at Libre Planet 2010, and everyone I know who has watched to it has spoken highly of it. It could be that sample's response has to do with the type of people I tend to associate with, but anyway... I'm convinced that it's a good and fairly accessible film (accessibility being something something that these kinds of productions don't always end up being).

So there actually four types of animations in the film. There are some very simple graph animations, a moving timeline of software patent history, a "wargames"-type animation (what's featured on that poster there), and an ending sequence that I won't spoil here. Of all of these the wargames sequence seemed to elicit the strongest reaction from people, which is good because that's also the piece that involved the most effort. All of the animations involved Inkscape and Blender in some form, but the wargames animation also made use of Blender's new Python API, which is awesome.

In fact, just this thursday I gave a talk on Blender and Python in Patent Absurdity at ChiPy. (Thanks to Carl Karsten for doing awesome video recording, as usual. :)) Giving a talk on the Python API in Blender at ChiPy is something I've wanted to do for a couple of years, so it was great to finally do it. And the audience reaction was very positive. As you can see in the video, there were a lot of questions, and I got a lot of positive feedback (and even more questions) after the talk ended. Suffice to say I'm rather happy with things.

Oh yeah, and I've also released the Patent Absurdity animation sources along with a full README (HTML export here). While Patent Absurdity is released as CC BY-ND 3.0, I've released all the data (including the Blender and Inkscape files) for the animations as free culture under CC BY-SA 3.0 and the Python files as free software under the GNU GPLv3. So in case you wanted to see how those things work, you are fully free to modify, distribute and tinker with them... free as in freedom. :)