Sunday, January 22, 2012

Making Hal 9000 – Part 3: Open the Pod Bay Doors, Hal.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of the Hal 9000 Cake Project

As you can see in the picture, the set up on the scoops isn’t very solid. I needed a way to make them as level as possible while the candy cooled and hardened, so I put them on top of two bowls. As I stuck the red eye into the candy goo from the second batch, the scoop tipped, pouring molten candy over my cupboard. Speaking in tongues, I worked as fast as I could to pour more candy in the scoop and move the red light piece back to the center without burning myself. This worked great until pushing things around upended the ice cream scoop, dumping more candy.

The third time was not the charm. This time I tipped it over trying to clean up the candy that had spilled. It was like a little kid. Get something clean just in time for the kid to make another mess.

Finally I got things settled, with the red light buried much deeper than I’d hoped. By that time I was tired of it, though. Sometimes projects aren’t finished so much as they are abandoned. I would live with whatever the result was, or trash the candy eye altogether. Hal would not get the best of me any more than he did David Bowmen.

If that had been the only problem, I might not have lost my mind.

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