Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Three Things I Learned Today

Three Things I Learned Today

This was inspired by Arya’s training to be an assassin in A Song of Ice and Fire. I’m tempted to publish it online somewhere, but that also seems kind of vain. Does anyone really care what I learned today? I guess I'll find out if anyone comments.

July 15 2011

  • Alan Verasko now claims he is working for his father and was underpaid for his work on the crawlspace.
  • [jobnumber];l[linenumber] displays a page at a time when viewing Tandem spooler output.
  • http://wallbase.cc/start/ is a great place to look for interesting digital images.

July 16 2011

  • Inverted round maile becomes much more stable when you trap rings in it every so often.
  • Nurse Naniko is really only worth watching for the fan service scenes.
  • In the Philipines, a fat gecko might fetch over $1000 for use in folk medicine.

July 17 2011

  • Michael Pollan has a variety of tomato named after him.
  • The “side” of my crawlspace facing the back yard is pretty flimsy.
  • Zooey Deschanel sings in the new Winnie the Pooh movie.

July 18 2011

  • British PM wants to convene a special sitting of Parliament on Wed July 20 to issue a statement about the phone hacking scandal.
  • Clarks are having their last swim meet of the summer tonight.
  • Apparently it’s not only annoying that my gutters didn’t get put back up, it’s against the law.

July 19 2011

  • Cornell physicists have demonstrated a temporal cloak, which can hide short duration events from the rest of the universe. (Short is currently 110 nano seconds.)
  • Somewhere between 2 and 15% of women have an extra type of cone in their eyes for detecting colors.
  • The band Vampire Weekend was sued over their use of the photo on the album Contra.

July 20 2011

  • Google can detect one particular type of malware that intercepts google results and warn infected users.
  • Borders liquidating all stores. :-(
  • The Latin word for meat really means the meat of mammals and birds, which is why Catholics can eat fish on Friday. (Along with amphibians, reptiles, and insects.)

July 21 2011

  • Lytro is making a camera that captures enough spatial information to refocus the image at different points after the shot is taken.
  • Rhubarb is very sour, kind of like a sweet tart without the sweet. (Unless you dip it in sugar first.)
  • There is still extensive road construction on 71N in Northern KY.

July 22 2011

  • Oracle and Google are in court over use of Java in Android phones.
  • There was a terror attack in Norway
  • The left hand keyboard part of Break on Through is the rhythm and the right hand part tracks the lyrics.

July 23 2011

  • Celuose Gum is another term for wood pulp in a food label.
  • You can get a pretty good photo of a helicoptor at 300mm zoom.
  • Amy Winehouse was found dead today in London.

July 24 2011

  • Parent’s AC went out.
  • Getting off at exit 191 is a good way to get to Dan’s house in the event of bad traffic on 71/75 S.
  • Tilted Kilt’s Boddington’s is now functional.

July 25 2011

  • Parent’s replaced their AC with Bryant. (Same company that tried to sell the Fritsches on new units when they didn’t need them.)
  • I’ll be shooting pool with Stephen, Bobby, and Katy on Sundays at Bank Shot.
  • WASPI is an open source security project.

July 26 2011

  • It was a neighbor who complained about the weeds in my yard.
  • Drilling into masonry by eye to try to match previous holes is a bad idea.
  • The plastic things for attaching downspouts to the house must come in at least 2 different sizes. (Maybe I should have stuck to aluminium bands, but the one on the left front of the house worked so well.)

July 27

  • Courtny Farms discontinuing A la carte program (too error prone and time consuming)
  • Gallup poll shows congressional approval rating lowest ever recorded.
  • Running a gcc compiler on AIX might be a short term solution, but is hardly ideal since the default AIX make command doesn’t understand gcc make files.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Five Movies that Have Very Little in Common

The last five movies I've seen, working forward are:

Monsters Inc. - The first time I saw it, I thought it was good, but a little sub-par for Pixar. However, watching it a second time with Blake and Regan I've decided that Pixar has nothing to be ashamed of in this film.

Kung Fu Hustle - If you don't like martial arts movies, you should stay away. However, if you do like martial arts movies you really need to check this out. The escalating weirdness straddles the line between humor and action without ever loosing its balance.

Green Lantern - Somehow they spent $200 million making this. I thought CGI had gotten cheaper. Anyway, a decent superhero flick, but if you've got a HDTV and a surround sound, you can certainly wait for the bluray.

X-Men first class - There's a lot to like here. I think there maybe should have been one fewer mutant on each side of the battle. Also, I looked up some of the characters, and the ones whose powers I thought I had seen before were relatives of those characters from earlier movies. I thought the payoff at the end of the film was the best part of the movie, and since I think the hardest thing to do when telling a story is to end it well, I think that's high praise.

Black Swan - The was without a doubt an interesting and well made film. However, the story is only shown through the eyes of one character, and you can't always trust what you see. The one thing I had heard from everyone I knew who had seen it was that it was disturbing, but it didn't really bother me. I might watch it again to see how things seen now that I know how it goes.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Rye Bread

Rye Bread without caraway seeds is like Batman without Robin. Well, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight both did just fine without Robin.

Steak without potatoes. (Why does the plural of potato need an "es"?) Actually, steak is pretty tasty on its own. Sure, it's better with a potato, but it's still steak without one.

Barbie and Ken. That's no good. Toy Story III revealed that Ken is narcissistic and treacherous.

The point is, rye bread, even if it's made with 100% whole grain rye, isn't going to taste like rye bread without caraway seeds. Why is this the case? I don't know, but having made a loaf of rye bread without caraway seeds, I know it to be true.

I made a batch with caraway seeds this week, and it turned out to be one of the better breads I've baked. I'm wondering if it was because I was being too inconsistent with my treatment of my bread starter my first time around. I would feed it, then rush it back to the fridge as soon as I had made the dough. This time around I've been leaving the starter out for a full 24 hours to let the microbes really work before making dough.

I've also been trying to be more scientific in how long I give the stand mixer to use the bread hook on the dough. 4 minutes from the time the ingredients start to pull away from the side of the bowl seems to be working well. The texture of the last few loaves I've made had been very good.

At any rate, I even attempted a marbled rye this week. I mixed half the dough with 1/3 rye and the other half with 2/3 rye. The color difference was most noticible when it was first out of the oven, so I think I would save this for special ocasions. However it's nice to know that works.

Bacon without eggs...oh I give up.