When developing for the HoloLens, keeping a constant 60 fps (frames per second) while making things look beautiful is a challenge. Balancing the processing power to display complex models and keeping the frame rate where it needs is just a straight up painful process, but a solution seems to be on the horizon.
People have been transforming mud into art, aka pottery, for thousands of years. This is not a new phenomenon, but often the finished product has a certain utilitarian aesthetic, such as a bowl or vase.
Fondant looks pretty, but man, it sure does taste weird. Don't Miss:
Let's talk for a second about compound butter. No, scratch that, let's not. Because compound butters are too much work. You have to shape them and roll them and tie them and cut them... no thank you.
When it comes to a perfect summertime dessert, lemon meringue pie is the ideal contender with its rich lemon filling and light-as-air meringue topping. In my humble opinion, the meringue is the true star of the dessert, instantly elevating what is simply a lemon pie to something more elegant and certainly more decadent.
A whole grilled pineapple is the perfect party dessert. It's beautiful, provides a natural centerpiece before you eat it, and can be sliced right on the spot and served with a dollop of ice cream. (Fresh mint leaves and a splash of liqueur on top taste pretty good, too.)
If you love sitting poolside with a slice of watermelon, then I've got a real treat for you. Picture yourself cooling off with a slice of juicy watermelon topped with fresh ingredients like soft cheeses, herbs, and fresh summer fruits. Watermelon pizza is a wondrous thing—a creative take on the classic watermelon salad, only pizza-fied!
No summer season would be complete without potato salad, an essential side dish. The flavors and textures of a simple potato salad can be totally satisfying as is, but add in a few items and you can have a dish that is absolutely extraordinary.
Sprinkles are a gateway to excitement, whether it's a birthday party with friends or an ice cream sundae by yourself. It may seem like these colorful creations can only come from the grocery store, but it's actually pretty easy to make beautiful sprinkles in your own kitchen.
Android's main UI is looking so good these days that you hardly ever see developers spend time creating themes anymore. But even with the beauty of Material Design working in our favor now, there's always room for improvement, right?
Who doesn't love the world of Game of Thrones? Whether you're a fan of the hit HBO show, or can't wait for George R. R. Martin's next novel installment, it's a story loved by nearly everyone. It's an excellent source of inspiration for Halloween costumes too, ranging from the disturbed to the beautiful. Lady Stoneheart, Catelyn Stark risen from the dead, is the perfect scary choice—bloodied, battered, and carrying a desire for vengeance.
Lemons, limes, and even oranges compliment a wide variety of both food and drink: gin and tonic, poached salmon, shrimp cocktails, fajitas, and so on. And you can easily step up your hosting game by making citrus garnishes: a presentation that is both elegant and interesting.
Surprise desserts (aka peekaboo desserts) are a gorgeous way to celebrate anything, whether it's a birthday, new baby, or just a brand new day. You can pretty much hide anything you want inside: candy, a cool design, and even other desserts. To help inspire you, try one of these fun-filled desserts out for a special, photo-worthy occasion. Then get creative and try out your own ideas (and make sure to share them with us when you're done).
When I was a little kid, my parents often eschewed cakes for my birthday parties, and instead opted for ice cream sundaes and banana splits. It made perfect sense: ice cream is so easy, and you can get multiple flavors to ensure that everyone is happy.
Baking used to be a fun, relaxing hobby and a way to make treats for friends and family. These days, this hobby has become a creative battleground among out-of-work graphic designers with Pinterest accounts. People everywhere are now upping their baking game by adding interesting ingredients or daring designs. Presentation has become just as important as taste.
At first glance, the Big Green Egg looks like it was created by Dr. Seuss or some other whimsy-driven being, like Zooey Deschanel. And while this earthenware cooker may look cute, it produces serious results that can rival the best barbecue or grill. In fact, it's got quite a large cult following. Entrepreneur and former Navy serviceman Ed Fisher fell in love with the taste of food cooked in kamodos (traditional domed, covered earthenware vessels in Japan) and began to import them for sale in...
Baking a cake is relatively easy... if you happen to have a cookbook or some boxed cake mix nearby. And though you can use the internet or your favorite cooking app, it can be nice to just cook without a recipe. That seems impossible with baking, which is such an exact science, but it's actually relatively easy.
Amazingly enough, some of us still have to worry about exceeding our monthly mobile data limits. You'd figure carriers would have given the customers what they want by now by offering truly unlimited plans, but with two conglomerates sitting atop the U.S. cellular market with fat pocketbooks that make for limitless lobbying, they can basically do whatever they want.
Sony's Xperia line of smartphones are beautifully crafted and have many great features. But considering the fact that Sony has evolved into a media company over the last two decades, it's their media-related apps that stand out the most.
Furniture gets beat up—it's a fact of life. Your beautiful tables will end up scratched, the legs of your chairs will grow nicked, and you'll find interesting dents and damage in other places around the house, too. Yet if most of your furniture is made of wood, you don't have to live with unsightly scratches. In fact, you can remove years of damage with a simple snack food: nuts.
Lettuce is not just for salads, it's a versatile green that you can use in hundreds of different ways. So many people in America toss their lettuce when it starts to wilt, thinking that it's too far gone to make a nice, crisp salad. But you can cook with lettuce like you would any other green, and the French and Chinese have been doing it forever.
Samsung's got a pair of beautiful new flagship devices coming out this spring that will surely top the sales charts. The Galaxy S5's successor is truly worthy of that title, but a second variant with a curved display turned heads at Mobile World Congress this weekend.
One of the best things about talking to other people who love food is that they point you to weirdly beautiful ingredients, like this: No, that's not an escapee from Middle Earth you're seeing. It's one of Mother Nature's best attempts at making fractals come alive into a golden spiral: the Romanesco (sometimes called fractal broccoli, broccoflower, or Romanesque cauliflower). Here's another view: So Just What Is It & What Does It Taste Like?
With Mobile World Congress right around the corner, we're all left to patiently await the unveiling of two Android flagship smartphones—HTC's One M9 and Samsung's Galaxy S6.
With the new year just around the corner, it's a time we all reminisce about the year that was. In the midst of families fighting over white elephant presents and the financial stress that comes with holiday gifting, you may also be dealing with the stress of hosting parties and get-togethers as well as the decorating that goes with it.
Tagine is both the name of a cooking vessel and also the dish that is cooked within it. In fact, some might say tagines are the national dish of Morocco. These slow-cooked stews and braises, often combining meat, vegetables, spices, and dried fruits, have a character unlike anything I've ever eaten.
It's been a long time coming, but Google's Calendar app for Android has finally received a visual makeover. In the spirit of Android Lollipop, Google's new Material Design permeates throughout the update.
Android 5.0's Material Design is truly a sight to behold. With beautiful transition animations and brand new system menus, Android has never looked better.
I think it's safe to assume that most of us appreciate a little privacy and security when it comes to our mobile devices, which is exactly why we have lock screens that require unique passwords, patterns, or PINs. Although someone can discretely peer over your shoulder to see what your password is, it's much more difficult for them to duplicate your face to unlock the device.
Google's got a hit on its hands with this one. Android 5.0—AKA "Lollipop"—will be making its official debut next month, but a new preview build has given us a glimpse into the future, which looks brighter than ever.
The origins of vodka are shrouded in mystery, with both Russia and Poland laying claim to its invention. Some say Genovese merchants brought vodka (then known as aqua vitae, or the water of life) in the late fourteenth century to Russia. For many years, vodka wasn't just an alcoholic beverage: it was also consumed as medicine.
I'm an impulsive baker, which means that the instructions to "bring ingredients to room temperature" make me want to kick myself for not thinking ahead. Sure, some ingredients like milk or water you can heat up, but that means messing up an extra pot or pan.
How many times have you witnessed a beautiful moment that you would have loved to capture on film, only to watch it slip away as you struggled to unlock your phone and open your camera app?
It's universally known that broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and all cruciferous vegetables (also known as brassicas) are good for you—but you probably don't know exactly how good they really are.
There have been countless times where I'd be racking my brain over the name of a movie I saw, and I don't like giving up. Usually, a few specifics can be remembered, but not enough to come up with a title on my own.
Copy and paste keyboard shortcuts are beautiful gifts from the gods, and any website that blocks such an offering can burn in hell. But really, Cmd+C and Cmd+V (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V for Windows folks) are second nature to most of us, so it's very frustrating when sites like PayPal don't let us use them.
When Google first introduced Android 4.4, the most glaring user-facing change was a new trend towards transparency. The stock launcher, originally exclusive to the Nexus 5, had transparent status and navigation bars and its app drawer added a touch of transparency.
HTC pulled out all the stops when designing the HTC One M8. From it's sleek body, to it's incredible sound quality, this thing just oozes sophistication. While all of these add-ons are great, they can be incredibly taxing on the CPU, in turn causing some serious lag.
When the Nexus 5 was released, a new version of Android came along with it called KitKat. In the 4.4 update were some fancy new UI elements, one of the most noticeable being the translucent decor. By that, I mean the status and navigation bars being semi-transparent.
The recently released HTC One M8 and the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5 are both boasting selective focus features for their camera apps, but with a 13 megapixel camera, the GS4 can take some pretty stellar pictures, too.