Wednesday 15 October 2008

When Physicist's fall in love. Maths geekcake

On my previous post (Monday of this week) I showcased a marvellous graph geekcake.

Today I'd like to share with you a jaw droppingly cute wedding geekcake. Originally featured over at Symmetry magazine. Symmetrymagazine.org Symmetry is an online, and paper magazine about particle physics and its connections to other aspects of life and science, from interdisciplinary collaborations to policy to culture.

Jason Rieger married Leah Welty, in August of 2004. Below is a picture of their cake.

symmetrymagazine_org_pyhsics_wedding_geekcake

Original photo taken by: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab

Unfortunately I don't know physics from a poke in the eye so I have no idea what the equations relate to.

See you on Friday!

Monday 13 October 2008

Graphs + cake = brilliant geekcakes!

A bashful woman called Jennifer Harris sent me an email which read thus:

I thought I'd send you some pics of a geeky cake I did for my college's Economics Liaison bake sale. Every year when the Simmons College Economics Liaison has a bake sale they like to have a supply and demand graph cake. This is the cake from the year. I headed up the bake sale. It's not as fancy as some of the cakes you've featured on your blog, but it will certainly supply anyone's demand for cake!



I wonder what quantities P and Q represent?

I would just like to say that I think Jennifer's geekcake is fantastic. The passion and creativity and geek charm of a cake's topic, are just as important as the finished product.

Jennifer I salute you and your most delicious looking cake!

See you all on Wednesday.

Wednesday 8 October 2008

Dem Bones, Dem bones*, Dice and wonderful Geekcakes

Dice.

Any table top RPG geek will always have a healthy collection of all shapes and sizes of dice.

The oldest known recorded reference to dice, is Sophocles the Greek writer. Sopocles lived between 496-406 BC, and being Greek, he claimed that the Greek invented dice, but there is no way to verify his claim. I'm not saying they didn't invent them, just that the Ancient Romans and Greeks do want to seem to take the creadit for inventing almost *everything*.

Apparently, before standard cubical dice became common, ancient peoples would use fruit stones, sets of flat sticks, sea shells, nut shells or even marked pebbles to get random results for games. Hmm. Fruit and Nut. Which leads me neatly to my favourite subject - of cake.

The cake pictured below is fashioned after the ever plentiful D20 - the twenty sided die. Every table top gamer I have ever met owns at least ten of these babies.

Used in numerous systems from original D&D to Warhammer, to World of Darkness to GURPS, dice are the universal RPG signature accessory.


rpgdigest_dice_geekcake_top

Doesn't it look magnificently delicious?

rpgdigest_dice_geekcake_side
I love the fact that the cake looks HUGE!

Original images, can be found at: RPGdigest, the blog of Bob Younce - a hobbiest gamer since 1979!

Thanks for reading.

See you all again on Friday!

[*At various points in history, small animal bones were used as dice. Playing with dice is still sometimes known as "rolling the bones".]

Monday 6 October 2008

Academic Geekcake: The wonders of Chemistry

Lori over at the Clever Cake Studio blog, loves to experiment with the art of cake making:

"Since March 2008, I've been doing a cake almost every week to practice, learn, cry, recover, learn more, and make local supply shops rich. Here you'll find the results of each week's cake project as my little portfolio builds. Share in my relief and amazement each time a cake works out, and witness just how damn clever I have to force myself to be if things don't quite go as planned. "

Chemistry_geekcake_by_Lori


Lori goes into detail on the cake creation:


"The book is supposed to be reminiscent of the CRC Handbook for Chem and Physics (87th Edition). It is for the birthday of an awesome chemical engineer at Nintendo.It’s made with white cake and chocolate filling. The red Erlenmeyer flash is raspberry with some raspberry liquor in the cake and preserves between the layers. The yellow acid bottle is, naturally, lemon cake with lemon curd filling. They are all covered in buttercream and fondant, and yes, the stopper in the acid bottle is a separate piece and can be lifted out."

Be sure to check out Lori's full gallery here, for plenty more fantastic (though not necessarily geeky) cakes.

I wish more cakes referenced textbook editions as inspiration. A true academia geekcake. Sounds delicious too.

See you Wednesday.

Wednesday 1 October 2008

Annakin Lego Minifig GIANT geekcake

A quick one tonight.

Geeks seem to love Lego. I think it's the building combination possibilities.

Geeks feel passionate about the Star Wars universe. Even if you don't love it , I know, that you know, a geek who does.

So it is with great pleasure I present to you a giant, geekcake, Lego minifig, Chocolate, Anakin!


Anakin_Lego_minifig_starwars_geekcake
Original source is over at the Gamespot blog.

Apparently the entire thing is only chocolate cake and icing (excluding the lightsaber).
Whomever it was made for is one mighty luckiy eight year old !

See you Friday !

Monday 29 September 2008

xkcd on a cake! xkcd geekcake!

Ahh, the humble web-comic. Although some are geekier than others, anyone who spends any significant amount of time online has a favourite one.

According to Wikipeda, the medium has only been around since the late 1980's. I'm not so sure about that, but I do know that one of the most fondly regarded web-comics currently in existence is (probably) xkcd.

It's uber geek (and proud of it), and mixes biting sarcasm with multi layered humour about high level maths, academia, physics, all thinks geek, and the authors musings on life, love and what it is to be human.

As you may have gathered I'm a little bit of a fan.

So I was delighted when I stumbled across a gorgeously iced xkcd cake which recreated an entire comic, over at the Google-centric blog Googlified.

xkcd_Google-hq_geekcake

Unfortunately this is the biggest picture I can find. Original comic link here:


[If you have any more info, about the creation of this iced gem, please do drop me an email at my gmail address]

That's it for tonight. See you Wednesday !

Saturday 27 September 2008

Come to the Darkside, we have CAKE! Darth Vader Geekcake!

I have featured Star Wars Geekcake creations before. Star Wars themed cakes and Dr Who themed cakes are probably the most popular geekcake creations.

The ultimate villain of the Star Wars universe is Darth Vader. The original Trilogy made his ultimate evil very clear. The 'Prequel trilogies' muddied the moral waters a little - Darth Vader as sympathetic character doesn't work for me but I admit it is utterly subjective. Your mileage may vary.

What I do know for sure is that I can't find any Annakin Skywalker cakes, but I can find Darth Vader cakes aplenty!

So here, are four of the best Vader cakes I have found to date.


Over at carolynssweettooth site, is this marvellous piped icing rendition of Vader. Unfortunately I don't have any creation details.

Carolynsweettooth_Vader_Geekcake

Original source here.



Discovered on Flickr, Jen of Jen's Creations shared her black and red icing version of Vader.

Flickr_Jens-creations_Vader_Geekcake

Unfortunately I do not have any creation details for this one either, but it sure looks tasty to me!



An entirely different Jen over at Layersoflove.com, created this buttercream tribute to Lord Vader:

layersoflove_Vader_geekcake



And finally (again over at Flickr) we have Vader atop a flaming platform of icing:

Flickr_JaneBK_Vader_geekcake

Jane BK describes a little bit behind the creation of the fiery set piece:
Chocolate buttermilk cake with chocolate SMBC filling and covered in fondant. Darth is just regular fondant/gum-tex modeling paste.



See you Monday!