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Pacman Cookie Recipe!
November 13th, 2009 by Josh

At iD Tech Camps our students learn how to make video games.  But today, I’m going to teach you how to make cookies, based on video games.  Specifically, Pacman cookies.  This post will be a step-by-step tutorial of how to make Pacman themed cookies.

pm20 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

First, do not attempt to cook or use the oven without an adult present!!!!!  As I am no exception to this rule,  I asked my adult friend Charlie to come supervise me.

pm1 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

Before getting your hands dirty, you are going to need the proper cookie cutters to make the shapes.  Unfortunately, actual Pacman cookie cutters do not exist so you’ll need to improvise.  There are two different shapes you need to create, the “ghost” shape and the “Pacman” shape.

For the ghost shape, simply find a tulip shaped cookie cutter and rotate it 180 degrees (or just turn it upside down).  Charlie demonstrates:

pm2 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

For the Pacman shape you will start with a simple circle shape and then use any “V” shaped cookie cutter to subtract a portion of the dough.  For those of you learning 3D modeling, this is very similar to “subtractive modeling” when working with polygons.  I found that this “house” shape worked nicely:

pm3 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

Once you have the cookie cutters gathered you will need the following cooking supplies;

Sugar Cookies:

3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon milk
Powdered sugar, for rolling out dough

Icing:

1 egg white
2 cups powdered sugar
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon light corn syrup
Various food paste colors
Mini chocolate chips

Tools:
Plastic bags
Baking Tray
Scissors
Spray-Oil
Butter Knife

Or you can just cheat on the sugar cookies (like I did) and buy some pre-made dough.  Once the dough is ready, lay it out and begin to make shapes;

pm4 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

I found that transferring the shapes from the cutting board to the baking tray was very difficult, so you are best off creating the shapes directly on the baking tray.  Make sure to spray it down with oil first.  I recommend removing the excess dough while the stencil is still applied, as demonstrated below.

pm5 Pacman Cookie Recipe!And time for Pacman:

pm6 435x1024 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

Well done!  These are all the shapes we need for representing the characters of Pacman:

pm9 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

Now it is time to bake the cookies.  Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees and cook for about 10-12 minutes, check frequently as cooking time can vary.  While you are waiting try and partake in something productive, such as playing music:

pm7 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

Now the cookies are baked.

pm8 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

Next up is making the icing.  Combine 1 egg white, 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, 1 teaspoon of corn syrup and powdered sugar and give a good stir.

pm10 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

Once the texture is consistent we are ready to add the color.  There are 5 colors you’ll need for the characters.  Between a set of “regular” and “neon” food coloring dyes, we had almost all the colors we needed, here is the breakdown:

pm11 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

Combine red and yellow to create orange, don’t forget to save some icing for the color white.

To mix the color in, we will spoon parts of the icing into plastic bags, about 2-3 heaping spoonfuls should do for each color, make sure to ration properly so you don’t run out.  Once in the bag, add drops of food coloring and kneed the icing within the bag until the color is even.  I found that bold colors such as red required many drops, whereas lighter ones like blue and pink required few.

pm12 Pacman Cookie Recipe!pm13 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

Once your colors are ready, cut small (like REALLY small) holes in the corner of each bag:

pm141 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

Then drizzle the icing over the cookie.  Go very light on the icing and use a butter knife or spoon to spread it out.   Start off EXTREMELY light, I can’t stress this enough.

pm15 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

Next up we will have to make the eyes for the ghosts, but we need to let this icing dry first.  Put a few dabs of icing on the plate and test with your finger as a reference for whether or not the cookie icing is dry.  While waiting, you should probably exercise a bit as you are about to eat some cookies:

pm16 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

Now that the icing is dry it is time for the eyes.  The whites of the eyes will simply be some left-over uncolored icing (make sure to save some) and the pupils will be chocolate chips.   You’ll want to offset the position of the “whites of the eye” and compliment them by where you position the chocolate chips.  Remember go light on the icing, when you press down the chocolate chip, you will spread out the white icing:

pm17 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

All done!  Have a little fun with it!  We made a maze with the leftover icing!

pm18 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

BIG UPS to Helvetica from http://www.snackordie.com for the original recipe.   Tune in next week for Ms. Pac-Man Pizza!!!!!!

pm19 Pacman Cookie Recipe!

 

November 13th, 2009 | Tags: , ,
Posted in iD Tech Bloggers

 

Halloween Fun at iD Tech Camps!
November 9th, 2009 by Josh

Anyone knows that at iD Tech Camps our camp staff is all about having fun, and our corporate staff is no exception!  Every year Halloween is a big event in our main office and throughout our nationwide satellite offices. Here are some highlights of our costumes:

It’s me as the Big Bad Wolf!11855 1297032184560 1193021902 30925335 1155598 n1 Halloween Fun at iD Tech Camps!

The Ingram-Cauchi family (our founders!) as Little Bo Peep and her Flock of Sheep09B 2465 Halloween Fun at iD Tech Camps!

Patrick from Client Services as a Karate Master!16031 161724008423 546373423 2937022 5094624 n1 Halloween Fun at iD Tech Camps!

Joy and her family as a Star Wars menagerie including Luke (in-Jedi-training), Yoda, Princess Leia and an adorable Jawa16169 1198193848343 1633413430 495362 4819757 n Halloween Fun at iD Tech Camps!

Jimmy from the Web Dept. as Fred Flintstone!16031 161950263423 546373423 2938862 7369050 n Halloween Fun at iD Tech Camps!

Dwayne from Client Services as “Gumdrop Head”!16169 1198179127975 1633413430 495234 2572743 n Halloween Fun at iD Tech Camps!

Brother-sister duo Kate from Human Resourses and Dylan from Field Support as 50’s Girl and Roger Rabbit Halloween Fun at iD Tech Camps!

Nova from Administrative Services as a Peacock!16169 1198179767991 1633413430 495249 3832829 n Halloween Fun at iD Tech Camps!

And I just can’t get enough of myself!11855 1297033344589 1193021902 30925344 6416220 n Halloween Fun at iD Tech Camps!

That does it for Halloween ‘09.  I can’t wait for next year!

 

November 9th, 2009 | Tags: ,
Posted in iD Tech Bloggers

 

Tilt-Shift Photography, or How to Make Everything Look Tiny
October 27th, 2009 by Justin

This is a large format camera:

2007121011125669551 200x300 Tilt Shift Photography, or How to Make Everything Look Tiny

Unlike your digital camera (which most likely doesn’t even need you to focus), or an old-school SLR film camera (which only needs focus, shutter speed, and aperture), a large format camera has a lot of controls. Check out how each piece moves in 3 dimensions in the picture below:

MTclassic Image2 300x225 Tilt Shift Photography, or How to Make Everything Look Tiny

2 of the adjustments you can make are called tilt and shift. Without getting TOO technical, what you’re doing is moving different focus planes to interact with each other in a way that you can’t really do with other cameras, thus selecting a certain region of the film to be in focus. There are modern tools that can do this on modern cameras (even digital!) – for example, lensbaby.com offers a lens that can make those adjustments. What will this do for you? You may remember this picture from a previous blog entry:

gaussian 300x225 Tilt Shift Photography, or How to Make Everything Look Tiny

So, if you don’t have an extra $350 to spend on a lens (ok, let’s face it, you’re going to use it to buy video games and Mt. Dew), you can still acheive this same effect with a Gaussian Blur. It’s a great effect. You take a picture of normal sized people and magically they become miniatures!

Select a round (circular or oval-shaped) selection around the center, in focus, portion of your photo. Invert your selection and feather it by a lot. 100 pixels isn’t too many. Select Gaussian Blur from the filters section and experiment with settings. Can you make a photo look like these?

4033190375 610a9e3bf8 300x225 Tilt Shift Photography, or How to Make Everything Look Tiny

4033916953 7f1b9d9521 300x200 Tilt Shift Photography, or How to Make Everything Look Tiny

Email me *your* contributions at justin(at)internaldrive.com (@ symbol left out intentionally to prevent robotic spam crawling!) and I’ll post the best ones in a future entry.

 

October 27th, 2009 | Tags: , ,
Posted in iD Tech Bloggers

 

Four Online Games to Exercise Your Brain!
October 23rd, 2009 by Josh

It is well accepted that games and puzzles serve to keep ones brain sharp. In fact, there is even pending research that the kind of stimulation they provide can prevent/slow the progression of certain mental conditions such as Alzheimer’s and even improve cognition in individuals who’ve suffered head trauma. Additionally some types of games require social interaction which benefits ones social skills, especially in young adolescences as it develops the their ability to corporate (or beguile!) to achieve an objective. At the very least, games are a fun way of giving your brain a work out, which is just as important to exercise as the rest of your body.

Here are 4 very fun “brain games” that I personally frequent. They are each very different and promote very different types of cognitive skills.

1) http://games.asobrain.com/ – Xplorers

settlers Four Online Games to Exercise Your Brain!

Mental Muscles flexed:

  • Memory
  • Social Skills
  • Strategy, Planning Ahead
  • Resources Management

“Aso Brain Games” offers a view games, however I’ve chosen it for one in particular; Xplorers. Xplorers is a carbon copy of the best selling, European, tabletop board “The Settlers of Catan” by Klaus Tuber. It is a classic “German-style board” game as it encourages a very high-level of player interaction, is simple, short and highly aesthetic. In a nutshell, the game resembles a hybrid of Risk and Monopoly, minus all the boring parts (seriously when is the last time you finished either?)

2) http://www.flashbynight.com/drench/ – Drench
drench2 Four Online Games to Exercise Your Brain!
Mental Muscles flexed:

  • Visuospatial Cognition
  • Planning Ahead

The self-proclaimed “World’s Simplest Flash Game”. Players have a limited number of moves to paint a grid all one color. Moves must be planned based on the pattern of the pre-existing pixels, which is randomly generated from 6 different colors. Calling for an extremely high level of visual concentration, players will becoming increasingly adept at interpreting a seemingly chaotic grid of colors. Though very different from Chess, players must think several moves ahead, similar to Chess players. As each move yields a tree of options, players must think through as many options while they can keep track of, all the while swimming in a sea of brightly colored pixels!

3) http://www.fantasticcontraption.com/ - Fantastic Contraption

fantasticcontraption Four Online Games to Exercise Your Brain!Mental Muscles flexed:

  • Creative Problem Solving
  • Understanding of Physics and Engineering
  • Trial and Error

This game allows user to build contraptions to compete various tasks. The game is very open ended and it’s puzzles can be solved in a variety of ways, there is no one correct answer. This gives it tremendous reliability as you can revisit puzzles to try and solve them is a simpler way (or a more complicated way!). What is particular fun about this game is that one can build their own levels and share them with the community. Participants have used this to create spin-offs of the game such as “Battle Bots” in which users create contraptions which joust one another!

4) http://games.swirve.com/earth/ – Earth 2025

earth2025 Four Online Games to Exercise Your Brain!Mental Muscles flexed:

  • Resource Management
  • Long Term Strategy / Planning
  • Social Skills
  • Mathematics / Statistics

This text-based game is run tournament style in month long and two-month long installments. Hundreds of player compete in building an empire. During that time they must find ways to monetize, defend and expand their empire by employing a variety of different strategies. Seeking out alliances are needed for survival. The game allows for many different types of play; will your empire’s army brutally conquer others or will you focus on industry and grow rich through exporting goods?

What are your favorite brain games?

 

October 23rd, 2009 | Posted in iD Tech Bloggers

 

Green Blog Action Day!
October 19th, 2009 by Justin

o maybe you’ve heard of Copenhagen. No, I’m not talking about the little can, I’m talking about the UN-sponsored global summit on climate change. If you haven’t heard of it, you must not read very many blogs! October 15th is designated as “Blog Action Day,” and 20000+ different blogs mentioned the big day. One interesting thing to note is that this number, as high as it is, is only one half of 1 percent of all of the blogs that are out there.

iD Tech has been pushing green issues for years. We know that we can help save power by turning off lights, computers, and monitors when we aren’t using our labs, and that reusing cups (by putting our name on them!) helps reduce waste. Did you bring in batteries or ink cartridges last year? Maybe a used cell phone or two?

If you have any more ideas on how to improve efficiency and reduce waste at camp, we want to hear them!

reuse reduce recycle Green Blog Action Day!

 

October 19th, 2009 | Posted in iD Tech Bloggers