Tags: General
The Teapot
July 1st, 2005, by Rich.
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I’m well known for enjoying tea in superhuman quantities. When working at home I often nip to the kitchen and make a pot of tea, then add milk and sugar directly to the pot, before snugly refitting the tea-cosy and resuming work: this gives me approximately 120 minutes of mind-focusing brain juice. This is one of the reasons for the inclusion of a picture of a teapot on this site, the other reason is more technical.
When I was an undergraduate in Plymouth, back in 1991, the course members were asked to present posters on any aspect of computing that interested them, but which they’d not had a chance to study in detail before that point. It was a rather good first assignment because it got everybody using the university’s research facilities on a personal-interest topic. My three A1 posters were an overview of the maths behind photo-realistic computer graphics, and specifically an introduction to a technique called ray-tracing.
This is where the teapot comes in. The teapot that adorns every page of this site is a photograph of a real teapot that was part of a tea service that was bought from a Utah department store in the mid 70’s. At that time computer generated imaging was in it’s infancy and the majority of pictures demonstrated either simple surfaces or the five platonic solids.
This “Utah Teapot”, as it is most commonly known, was digitally modelled by Martin Newell circa 1974 and was the first model to use bezier curves to form sculptured surfaces rather than being composed of a set of interlocking polygons. In the picture here, the teapot can be seen suspended within it’s bezier control frame.
A curiosity of the teapot is that the digital model is most commonly rendered at two thirds of it’s real height because when it was originally modelled computer monitor pixels were rectangular, not square - so digital versions appear more squat than the original teapot.
The digital model, which is affectionately and humourously considered to be the sixth platonic solid (and often referred to as the Teapotahedron) has become one of the most rendered objects in history. The original teapot now lives in Silicon Valley and is on display in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, though I question the wisdom of storing such a historical piece of crockery so close to the San Andreas fault.
Rendering the Utah Teapot
If you’d like to render this scene for yourself; here it is.
July 4th, 2005 at 9:42 am
“More tea, Vicar ?”
February 3rd, 2006 at 7:07 pm
I’ll have to admit I share your superhuman passion for tea. 120 minutes also is a good estimation and why fumbling around on your desk with sugar and milk ? It is just more efficient to set up a teapot, three big spoons of sugar then boiling water through some tasty first flush darjeeling. after three minutes add some milk ( non-fat-free of course ) and stir it with the same spoon you added the sugar with.
This is just perfect, doesn’t make your stomach sour like coffee does and keeps you creative and focused for hours.
March 4th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
Absolutely, there’s never any mess if all the sugaring is done in advance.
This method is not without it’s concerns however, and I am mid-way through a long running debate with my sister in law concerning exactly how much sugar is absorbed by the tea bags: as a result I cannot make a pot without wondering what amount of sugar is absorbed and how different the tea would taste if the preparation method were to differ slightly. I therefore consider this several times every day.
I have resolved, one day, to perform a some kind of a combustion experiment on the dried teabags in order to know this categorically. Perhaps this is a job for Hugo and his tea experiments.
March 5th, 2006 at 8:34 am
Do the tea bags end up in the wormery?
Are you exposing your poor little worms to the risk of developing diabetes?
Have you considered giving up sugar?
On the other hand, you could just use the juice produced by your worms to grow lots of Sweet Williams
March 5th, 2006 at 10:15 am
Indeed they do, and I’ve noticed some confusion over EU reg’s regarding “not composting tea bags” which has caused a bit of an urban myth to spring up.
The regs cover waste which is collected, composted and sold-on to the public, so it’s a sensible precaution given the foot and mouth outbreak of five years ago. They do not prohibit, or even advise against personal composting of kitchen waste.
I do have to wonder why I’d be able to buy anything that’s contaminated with foot and mouth in the first place, but then, that’s the nature of precautions.
As for giving up sugar: Yes, I’ve considered it, but the nato standard says one sugar and I’m already pushing my luck by using the unrefined stuff.
March 5th, 2006 at 10:32 am
As I understood the ruling, it referred to T bags which had been in along with the milk (as in your method) because it is the milk that causes the problem. We certainly compost our millions of T bags ( its a family thing!) but we remove them from the liquid before adding milk, otherwise you can’t see them and you get a mouthful of tea bag at the end!
Cheers!
April 3rd, 2007 at 9:11 am
I was looking for the definitive definition of ‘NATO standard tea’ but your page was far more interesting. Thank you.
April 19th, 2007 at 11:00 am
After 20 years in the Royal Navy as a Marine Engineer (dedicated to
tea drinking), I believe that:
NATO Standard - white 2 (milk & 2 sugars)
Julie Andrews - white nun (milk, no sugar)
Whoopi Goldberg - black nun (no milk, no sugar)
Michael Barrymore - wight one (milk, one sugar)
I stumbled onto your page looking for eglus! I was hooked by the tea references….
January 5th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Beautiful Teapot , ) Tea is instant wisdom - just add water! ~Astrid Alauda