Cumol is the slickest ‘skian to ever grace this site.

Don’t @ me.

RIP the West.

Moving in two weeks. Excited to be not living with my roommate anymore who doesn't know how to clean up any common area but can also clean his bathroom damn near weekly. Also excited to not be living with him because he makes a very hostile living area by just not saying anything which always makes me feel like I pissed him off somehow. Like dude we live together say hi or something. I can go weeks without talking with the guy. Much less excited to be moving back in with my parents, but the saving grace is I know it's very short-term. Not going to rent for a few months it's time to save like there's no tomorrow because I'm going to be heavily in debt in a year so now's the time to save. Gotta break the eggs to make the omelette. So that's the sacrifice I'm making.

Also, if y'all didn't see, I set up a NCAA March Madness bracket for full bragging rights if anyone chooses to join. Looks like we did one successfully 9 years ago and there was an attempt 8 years ago that was unsuccessful to get people to sign up, and nothing since. I'd say y'all are going down, but I'm guessing just as much as y'all are.

For Cumol

It's a two part recipe. Fancy up tahini and the actual hummus. Tahini will be first, followed by the hummus. I tried to find it online but all of them were ever so slightly off in one way or another. This is what the book says, plus the little changes I make.

Yield 4 cups, which is about double what you need for the hummus recipe, so I always halve this part.

1 head garlic

3/4 cup lemon juice (~3 lemons)

1 1/2 tsp kosher salt

2 generous cups tahini (Find super high-quality stuff, I got a dude near me that uses his parents' sesame crusher from Syria and stuff is phenomenal)

1/2 tsp ground cumin

Ice water -- variable amount

Don't peel the garlic, just rip the cloves apart and throw that, the lemon juice, and 1/2 tsp salt (other full tsp will be used later) into a blender. Blend it so the garlic is broken into a coarse puree. Only takes a few seconds. Then let that rest for like 10 minutes or so, allowing the garlic to mellow.

While that's sitting for 10 minutes, in a bowl throw together the tahini, rest of the salt, and cumin. Once the lemon garlic is done with its ten minute rest, get a very fine mesh strainer, and pour the lemon juice through it into the bowl with the tahini. Press down on the garlic chunks to get as much of the liquid out as you can.

With a good whisk (I've broken crappy whisks before doing this) start mixing that like there's no tomorrow. It's going to get really tough. As it thickens and toughens up, add ice water bit my bit (per the book ~1 1/2 cups, but I never measure I just keep adding until it's right. And it'd be 3/4 since I halve it, but again, you do you). Keep adding until it's super smooth. It'll lighten up in color and when I say super smooth I really do mean it. It'll be smooth and creamy and you'll have to stop yourself eating it all with a spoon and actually putting it in the hummus as it's supposed to be.

So now that we're done with that, we got the hummus recipe. I don't follow it perfectly because I think there's one step that's unnecessary but again, you do you.

1 cup dried chickpeas

2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 cups tahini from above

1 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp ground cumin

Okay so here's where dude gets crazy. He wants you to soak a cup of dried chickpeas and one of the two tsp of baking soda in a bowl covered with at least 2 inches of water overnight.That's what I feel is unnecessary. I just use a can because it's damn near the same quantity and then I don't have to actually plan ahead. Idk can size in Europe, but over here a can of chickpeas is 15.5 oz and that size works perfectly.

So then he has you throw the chickpeas into a pot with the other one tsp of baking soda and bring it to a boil, then cover and lower to a simmer for an hour. I've forgotten the baking soda before, don't do that. It helps the skins all fall off in some magic science way. So as all that is simmering for an hour, skim the skins off every once in a while. Make sure they're all covered in water the whole time. And if they go longer that's totally fine the goal is to really cook them through and make them very tender and damn near fall apart. You'll probably have some fall apart that's fine.

While all that's boiling, put the tahini, salt, and cumin in a food processor. I use all the tahini not just 1 1/2 cups, not worth keeping that extra bit I wouldn't use it for anything, though I'm sure it'd have plenty of good uses, like a salad dressing or something, or just a straight spoon. Once the chickpeas are done boiling and you've skimmed off a good portion of those skins, dump them in a strainer to drain them, and then throw the cooked chickpeas in the food processor with the other stuff. Turn that on and let it run and run and run. I let it go for a few minutes just really make sure it's all really super smooth. And then, since you were boiling the chickpeas, it's still nice and warm at this point and you should really just eat it all in one sitting :)

Digging this electronic piece:

I'm really glad you reached out to me! The final chart is impressively clean and easy on the eyes, especially compared to the original. I'm also quite proud of you for being able to take my design tips, which were pretty high level rather than "make this cell this color and this cell that", and action them. Keep up the great work and thank you so much for sharing the final!

For those who would like to also go to the insom school of design, here's the exact message I sent Cumol:

Alright so there are three things that will dramatically improve this: whitespace, color, and typography.

Type is easiest. Go on google fonts and grab like Lato or Source Sans Pro or Open Sans or Fira Sans or Roboto or something. It just makes it not look like your typical sheet. Now make the line height of the rows almost twice as big as the font. Give it some room to breathe.

Color is not as easy but luckily there are a ton of people who have done the hard work for you.

http://www.colourlovers.com/ & http://flatuicolors.com/ & http://www.flatuicolorpicker.com/

http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/462628/Blazin_Jell-O_Rainbo

http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/101556/Flat

http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/434904/espresso_rainbow

http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/3635917/Rainbow_Ghost

http://paletton.com/ & https://color.adobe.com/ can be helpful for making pallets too.

Don't use black, use like dark gray: http://www.color-hex.com/color/333333

This is also a really awesome blog on how one company expanded their color pallet. I wouldn't expect you to do this, but its good to get the idea of how colors work together. Plus, their final pallet is really gorgeous and may work for you. http://viget.com/inspire/add-colors-to-your-palette-with-color-mixing

This is an exceptional post on designing presentations - for inspiration, etc. http://visage.co/downloads/Business_Guide_to_Visual_Communication_by_Visage.pdf

Here's a demo for a table I have saved. This will give you an idea of how much space your rows / columns should have in order to look prettier and have that white space I mentioned earlier. This table uses the font Lato. http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/StickyTableHeaders/

I don't know how easy it is to choose Hex colors in excel but maybe just try to get close. There may be a plugin available or something that lets you enter the Hex code.

Let me know if you need any other help or want me to take another look. I kinda just did a brain/link dump but I hope it is helpful!

Seriously - you have a remarkable ability to pick things up and make things happen with little direction (and messy direction) – that is a seriously great skill. Be proud of yourself, keep it up. I have no doubt you are going places.

Hong Kong! Really awesome. Some tips off the top of my head:

1. Walk of the Stars is like a shit version of LA. Not worth it, there are better spots for a good view of the harbor skyline. Maaybe go if you have an immense love for Bruce Lee and need to touch his statue there. But otherwise don't.

2. GET AN OCTOPUS CARD. It's one card for the subway system, which is amazing, runs like every two minutes, and has cross-platform transfers everywhere. So pretty similar to the cards in NYC and London, right? No, because you can also use this card to pay at the station shops. 90% of the time this is the 7/11, which are everywhere. If you're travelling the city all day this is a godsend, because you can grab the 7/11 half liter bottles of iced tea for just ten HK dollar ($1.30). I did this almost every day. I was there in december too, and it was t-shirt weather most of the week, so stay hydrated. You can get an Octopus card at any medium-to-large station, they have customer information, and they know English most of the time.

3. I know friends who were on the same trip as me who went to the Ten Thousand Buddhas monastery, they said it's pretty cool. Every Buddha is unique.

4. Tip for the evening: go to the Mong Kok neighbourhood. It is the densest in the world, and at night all the neon lights are fucking amazing. I mean, look at this:

5. Also in the same area, the Ladies' Market, which isn't for ladies, it's a general souvenir kinda market where you can haggle to death. Seriously, we were there and I wanted a necklace for my mother, which was advertised for HK140 ($20?). Got it for HK40. If you can't get more than 40 percent off, don't buy. That area (and Yau Ma Tei a bit more south) is also great for food.

6. You probably want to get a beautiful view of the city at the Victoria Peak. The train that goes up there is pretty touristy (read: pricey) and often has long lines. It's also not that easy to reach by subway. And what they don't tell you, however, is that at the Peak, you need to pay again to get to the observatorial deck. Protip: the mall next door has a roof terrace with the same view, for free. And you can get a cheap bus from Admiralty that will bring you directly to the Peak mall. The bus does take a bit longer.

7. The Nan Lian Garden is supposedly one of the most beautiful Asian parks in the world. It is pretty neat to wind down, and the Chi Lin monastery is right next door, which is some pretty cool Chinese temple kinda thing. It's also walking distance from Diamond Hill subway station, and it's all free.

8. Do take the Star Ferry! It is only like a dollar, you can enter with your Octopus card (amazing eh) and while it's short, you get some great views of the bay from that boat.

9. Disneyland is not different enough from the American ones to spend a day.

10. If you want to go on a tower, get to the Bank of China Tower (the one with the big triangles on the side). During office hours you can go to the 44th floor for free. Much better than the $30 ride to the top of the ICC tower, which is also harder to reach.

11. Something to combine with that: for less than a dollar you can ride the Hong Kong tram. It goes nice and slow and it's a nice ride in between the giant skyscrapers. Ride it from the BoC tower to Sheung Wan.

12. I found it nice to learn the basics of Chinese with this simple method. If you memorize the basic 9 characters, most of the Chinese signs will not look like complete gibberish to you (Most of HK is bilingual, but it's nice to recognize names faster because you recognize a character or two. It won't hurt!)

If you want to know more, lemme know! I'll respond to this post if I think of more cool things to do.

PS. dammit now I want to go back