I will probably use this recipe to introduce variations on the theme.

Ingredients:

• 5 eggs, large
• 1 cup sugar
• 1.75 cups flour, sifted
• 2 tablespoons of honey (I substituted with maple syrup from the get-go)
• 0.25 cups milk

Steps

1. Coat the inner pot with vegetable oil or non-stick cooking spray.
2. Mix honey (maple syrup in my case) and milk, set aside.
3. Soak eggs in warm water for approximately 5 minutes, set aside. (I’ve skipped this step from the get-go.)
4. In large mixing bowl, beat eggs and sugar on high speed.
5. When the eggs get soft and foamy, add honey/milk (maple syrup/milk) mixture. Continue to beat until the mixture forms the hard peaks. (never understood what “hard peaks” meant)
6. Add flour. Stir gently until ingredients are evenly mixed.
7. Transfer mixture into the inner pot and close the lid.
8. Press the “cake” setting to start the cooking process.
9. The rice cooker will shut off automatically after approximately 55 minutes.
10. Let stand 5 minutes. Remove cake by turning it upside down onto cooling rack. Cool and serve.

For boxed cake mix: Any brand of boxed cake mix sold in the U.S. can be baked in this rice cooker. Follow the instructions on the package.

With all that said, I also gotta say, the SANYO ECJ-M100S rice cooker is really, really versatile! I’ve used it for making rice, soups, porridge, and now cakes too. At $60 when I bought it, it was and still is definitely a steal.

Congratulations to CloudTop for topping the tables at the BPC Finale yesterday night, taking home the Robert P. Goldberg grand prize worth $100,000!

As for myself, I was involved as part of the Audio/Visual crew running the show. It was a really cool experience, starting from setup to getting the headsets to communicate with each other on the A/V crew. We had a run-through, in which we were basically rehearsing the back-stage elements to control music playback, following which we had a high-energy, clearly communicated and well-coordinated actual run. It was tense at times – changing orders, or adding/cutting music where not previously rehearsed – but kudos to the team for keeping in communication all the way! I also didn’t expect the applause after the 2nd video I had produced, and I thought that was a small pleasant validation of my ability to produce videos.

Can’t wait for the post-mortem meeting. 1 year with the $100K – it’s been a blast!

I’ve been inspired recently by the notion that I should be underloading, not overloading, on my schedule, to keep things as free and empty as possible, so that I can have the space to explore, one-by-one, new opportunities that come up in a linear – not parallel – fashion. To keep the stress level low, and not high. Today was a classic example of how things ought to be.

/eom

That aside, I managed to catch up with him. The last time we chatted, he was looking towards new challenges when his current project is over. This time round, I shared a bit about what grad school has been like, and the many lessons I’ve been learning.

Having cancelled all experiments this week to take a step back and think a bit, I realized I’m probably a little stretched out too thin on my workload. For me, research work demands a lot of “continuous time”, and being involved in the $100K, THRA, class work, service in church in many different ways takes up a lot of fragments of time scattered throughout each day, and it takes effort to resume. Now I understand when Chris said he prefers to be booked for 1-hour blocks rather than 15-minute blocks, even if we only need 15 minutes with him.

Also, he shared an aspect about reading and catching up on information. Taking notes – and I think in my case, it means copious notes – while reading, highlighting important methods, facts and logical flows, and identifying the flaws and weaknesses in the papers. Skills I haven’t developed well-enough just yet.

Much to learn!

Writing is really tiring. I think I haven’t had enough rigorous training in writing to fully appreciate how to do academic or business writing.

But spending two or three days writing out my thoughts really helps me check the ideas I have, especially when I am planning it for future experiments.

I think that’s a habit I will have to start cultivating. But reading first, not writing.

A paper-hunting technique Paul taught me once: Take a seminal paper or review, backward cite it in a few tree branches, and forward cite it a few tree branches, to get a feel for how the field has been impacted by the history and where the trajectories are going forward.

And then borrowing from Cal Newport’s Study Hacks blog, relentlessly figure out and master the information contained in the important nodes in the trees, the ones that have been cited many times over, and the most recent ones that are pushing the boundaries of the field. This should help me dig down on the fundamentals of the field, and prevent me from entertaining ideas that have already been tested.

As I’m a synthetic biologist building machines with parts, I should probably also bring up papers surrounding the biological parts that I’m dealing with. Simply touching on the one paper that I had in my current Papers library might not necessarily be enough. So, that would involve the Cph1 red light sensor, the Omp promoter, the CcaS green light sensor, GFP, RFP, cI repressor, lycopene and violacein production pathways etc…

As I’m in the biological sciences, I should probably also be relentlessly mastering new techniques. I have circuit assembly and design started, qPCR started, and flow cytometry started, but it may be a few years of relentless study before I fully-master them.

In terms of motivating myself to read, I think I will start writing my thesis research proposal for real, not unlike the one I’m writing for 20.440. The idea I’ve proposed is sort of a side-project that I’d try if I have time, and I think I will start dropping outside activities in order to make time. But my actual research project, that’s going to be a fun one to try making!

• Minimal Genome*
• Bacterial Two-Component Systems***
• Antisense RNA**

I’ve got a number of these stored in my Papers library. It’s usually hard to keep up with the reading list of topics, but I’m not going to start ambitious. asRNA and two-component systems are going to be my first priorities, with two-component signalling the first priority.

1. Transforming the wrong plasmid into the correct strain.
2. Using the wrong antibiotic selection.

Recently, I’ve been making too many novice experimental mistakes. Somewhere around 4 mistakes in a week, including poor planning, is my threshold. I think it means it’s time for me to take a step back from doing experiments, take some time to write up where I am w.r.t. each project I’ve been working on, and get my thoughts back in order.

• No more minipreps in buffer EB! It’ll all be done in deionized water.