The Prancing Tarantula

Setting the Thermal Mass in ProMash

2009-08-08T12:28:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I did Brew 39, my golden brew (I'm 39 this year). I'll write more about that in a few days, once I verify that fermentation has started. Today I'm going to talk about Pro Mash. This is the first brew that I've done using Pro Mash, and I have to say, I'm pleased with the software. After calibrating my equipment, it gave me spot-on temperatures and quantities to get the infusions I needed.

Now, about calibrating equipment. One of the things you will see is a strike temperature calculator. It will want to know the thermal mass of your mash tun. When you pour hot water into your mash tun, the tun itself will cool the water down (unless, of course, you happen to have pre-heated your mash tun to about 170 degrees. Most people don't do that with Rubbermaid Cooler based mash tuns, though.) How much? That's where the thermal mass comes in. I heated three gallons of water to 188 degrees and poured it into the tun. Then I measured the temperature of the water after a minute or two. It was 182 degrees. Go to the Strike Temperature calculator, tell it you are putting in 0.001 pounds of grain (it won't let you enter zero), and that 182 is the desired strike temperature. Finally, play with the thermal mass setting until you have 188 as the Initial Strike Water Temperature. Mine came out as 0.165.

Once you have that, you'll want Pro Mash to remember your setting. Go to menu item Options / System Settings, and select Mash System. Among the entries will be a setting for thermal mass. Enter that, and hit Ok. You're done! Next time you brew, the mash schedule will automatically determine for you the temperature the water needs to be to get the right temperature.

Pro Mash and Wine

2009-07-30T08:49:00.003-05:00

I'm talking about Wine, the software, not wine, the beverage.

I have long wanted to try Pro Mash, but I run Linux (currently the Ubuntu flavor). Whenever I would use Wine, the windows compatibility layer, to run it, the icons would not show up on the screen.

One day I discovered by accident that Wine is not set to XP by default; I changed it and now all is well.

So I got my copy of Pro Mash, and will try a real brew with it in the next few days.

Since the last post, I've only done two beer brews. And faithfully read Hunahpu's blog.

The first thing I need to do is calibrate the thermal mass setting. I'll explain in my next post how to do that.

One Year of Driving

2008-03-09T01:18:00.002-06:00

One year ago today I got a car, the first time I've owned one in 14 years. Here are some interesting statistics I collected.

Miles driven: 12148
Gallons of Gas: 400, total cost $1343.00
Tons of CO2 produced: 4.0
Rides given: too many to count
Insurance cost: $670
Repairs $173
Taxes: $160
Other: $759 (Car washes, parking, new tires)
Car payments: $3600

Parking at work costs $40/month; my commute to work is half the time now (25-30 minutes, rather than an hour).

I like having a car now, it really helps me to do a lot of things, and help a lot of people. But I do miss the hole that it put into my budget, too! I think that the decision to get one was good.

Enabling multicore/dual-core support with Ubuntu Gutsy

2008-01-15T15:44:00.000-06:00

I have a dual-core computer, and have been able to take advantage of both cores with Ubuntu for quite some time. At one point, I think when I upgraded to Gutsy, it stopped. It took a long time to figure out why... most of the pages the Google brings up refer to an older version, and they all tell you to install the -smp versions of the kernel. But Gutsy no longer has those.

There was one page that has the trick you need, but it's way at the bottom, so I'm writing it up here.

Here's the trick: the -generic versions of the kernel are the ones that support SMP. The -386 do not.

To fix it, you need to do two things. First, you need to run

apt-get install linux-generic

This gets the generic kernel on your system, and makes sure it stays up to date when things get upgraded. Chances are it's already there. Next, you have to edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file to make sure it will boot from the generic kernel and not the 386 kernel. The grub program will put the 386 kernels ahead of the generic ones in the boot list. On my system, once I verified that the generic kernel would boot, I deleted all the 386 kernels. That should show them! I also had to remove and reinstall the linux-restricted-modules to get the nvidia drivers working again.

Pimlico

2007-11-19T23:06:00.001-06:00

I was just discussing this passage with a friend; it's from G.K.Chesterton's book Orthodoxy.

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.

Brew 33: Winter Warmer

2007-11-17T18:11:00.000-06:00

I have not been brewing much lately, an error I hope to fix this week. The first brew is a Winter Warmer, like Brew 26. This brew was the most smoothly executing brew I can remember. Strangely, the O.G. is closer to 1.050 than 1.060, so it will be less potent.

Anyway, here's the recipe....

Date of Brew: November 17, 2007
Ingredients

Grains
11.5 lbs Crisp Maris Otter
1 lb Simpson's Crystal
0.25 lbs Simpon's Chocolate
Hops
1 oz Northern Brewer (60 mins)
1 oz Fuggle (30 mins)
1 oz Kent Goldings (1 min)
Yeast
Wyeast #1728 Scottish Ale Yeast #1014295
Additives
1 tsp Irish Moss

Mash
4 gallons, 153 F for 60 min.

Number of Gallons in Boil: 6
Boil Time: 60 mins
Gallons in Fermenter: 5

Brew 32: Oatmeal Stout

2007-09-08T16:50:00.000-05:00

This brew is in honor of the late Michael Jackson, the ``Beer Hunter'' who passed away last week. This style is one he popularized; this batch is a kit from Northern Brewer.

Some notes: this time I tried doing a two stage mash, holding the temperature at 153F for one hour, then 170F for ten minutes. To do this, I kept the mash in the kettle on the stove. This did not work as well as I hoped. The thermometer, a probe type, fluctuated wildly as the probe moved around, and it took forever to figure out if I had reached a target temperature or not. Time to get a real thermometer I suppose. The final gravity was low, but within the style guidelines, so I think it will be okay. Other than that, the brew went very very well. Each time I do a brew, it seems more streamlined than before.

Here are the notes.

Northern Brewer Oatmeal Stout

Brew Type: All Grain	Date: 9/8/2007
Style: Oatmeal Stout	Brewer: Mattox Beckman
Batch Size: 5.00 gal	Assistant Brewer: John and Heidi Fisher
Boil Volume: 5.77 gal	Boil Time: 65 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 57.6 %	Equipment: My Equipment
Actual Efficiency: 57.6 %

Taste Rating (50 possible points): 0.0

**Ingredients**
Amount	Item	Type	% or IBU
6.50 lb	Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)	Grain	72.2 %
1.00 lb	Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM)	Grain	11.1 %
0.50 lb	Caramel/Crystal Malt - 80L (80.0 SRM)	Grain	5.6 %
0.50 lb	Chocolate Malt (450.0 SRM)	Grain	5.6 %
0.50 lb	Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM)	Grain	5.6 %
1.00 oz	Chinook [13.00%] (60 min)	Hops	52.2 IBU
1 Pkgs	Irish Ale (Wyeast Labs #1084)	Yeast-Ale

**Beer Profile**
Estimated Original Gravity: 1.038 SG (1.035-1.060 SG)	Measured Original Gravity: 1.038 SG
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.010 SG (1.010-1.018 SG)	Measured Final Gravity: 1.005 SG
Estimated Color: 32.0 SRM (35.0-200.0 SRM)	Color [Color]
Bitterness: 52.2 IBU (20.0-50.0 IBU)	Alpha Acid Units: 2.6 AAU
Estimated Alcohol by Volume: 3.7 % (3.3-6.0 %)	Actual Alcohol by Volume: 4.3 %
Actual Calories: 163 cal/pint

**Mash Profile**
Name: My Mash	Mash Tun Weight: 0.00 lb
Mash Grain Weight: 9.00 lb	Mash PH: 5.4 PH
Grain Temperature: 72.0 F	Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F
Sparge Water: 3.93 gal	Adjust Temp for Equipment: FALSE

Name	Description	Step Temp	Step Time
Dough In	Add 11.70 qt of water at 164.4 F	153.0 F	60 min
Mash Out	Heat to 170.0 F over 2 min	170.0 F	10 min

**Carbonation and Storage**
Carbonation Type: Corn Sugar	Carbonation Volumes: 2.4 (1.8-2.4 vols)
Estimated Priming Weight: 3.8 oz	Temperature at Bottling: 60.0 F
Primer Used: -	Age for: 4.0 Weeks
Storage Temperature: 52.0 F

Goodbye, Beer Hunter

2007-08-30T23:52:00.000-05:00

I received word via hunahpu's blog that Micheal Jackson, the author of many wonderful books and articles about beer, has passed away. I am planning to brew something in the next week; I absolutely will have to brew something in his honor.

Connecting to AT&T DSL with the Encore ENDSL-AR DSL Modem

2007-08-30T16:14:00.000-05:00

This post is updated: the modem doesn't quite work yet.

After the burglars stole my 2wire modem, I picked up an AT&T / 2Wire 2700HG-B from Best Buy. It works okay, except that it has a highly annoying habit of rebooting itself randomly, several times a day. It always seems to know when you're in the middle of a 10 hour backup operation, or need to download a lecture slide in the next two minutes.

So I decided it was time to get a new modem, and pick up some flashable WRT54GL routers. I found a modem at NewEgg.com that got good reviews, the Encore ENDSL-AR.

AT&T was mildly helpful in getting it connected. After being on hold, listening to a sales pitch for their cell phone service, and being transfered twice, telling the computerized operator my phone number three times only to have the techs ask again, I got just enough info to figure the rest out through trial and error. This hold system definitely fails the ``don't look stupid'' test.

Anyway, enough complaining. Here's part of what you need to do... or at least, what I needed to do. First, plug everything in, and browse to http://10.0.0.2/, which is where the setup page lives. Go to the WAN Configuration page (Of course, you realize, if you need these instructions, you aren't going to be able to access my blog. Save this entry to your hard drive first.) It will ask you which adapter, I told it Pvc 0. Next, you'll get a screen for the WAN configuration. Here are the settings I needed, a * indicates that this was the default setting:

Virtual Circuit: Enabled *
Bridge: Disabled *
IGMP: Disabled *
Encapsulation: PPPoE LLC
DHCP Client: Disabled *
Static IP Address: 0.0.0.0
Username: username@sbcglobal.net (of course, put your own AT&T/SBC email address here)
Password: ***** (I think you know what goes here.)

I didn't change any of the other settings.

You need to hit the submit button, and then click on the save configuration link, then tell it to save and reboot.

You're not quite done yet. Next, you need to bring up the WAN page again, and select Advanced PPP Configuration. From there, go to PPP Account Configuration (the link is at the bottom of the page). You will need to type in the account name in the table below (on mine it was ``'') into the Acct ID field, and reinput your username and password. Don't forget the ``@sbcglobal.net'' part, or whatever yours should be.

Save and reboot again, and this time you should be connected. Good luck!

Now, the only problem is this: I can get out just fine, but none of my incoming connections work. I've tried setting a DMZ host, and playing with some of the other settings, but nothing seems to be working. It's labor day now, so I'll have to wait before calling tech support.

A Change of Focus

2007-07-14T20:00:00.000-05:00

I have decided to change my research focus. I am now going to pursue Machine Learning.

This has been coming for a while now. I have not been truly excited about a programming language research project in a long long time. While much of research is drudgery, you do have to have some moments of inspiration to keep going. Those simply haven't been happening.

On Monday I sat down and took stock of my situation. What is it that I really like to do with computer science? Given some free time (or just when procrastinating), what do I do? I have long wished that my field required the use of statistics: I love using data to try to tease out correlations and probabilities. I also like experiments, databases, and I am absolutely fascinated by genetic and evolutionary computing---it's like playing with God's toolbox. From languages I have learned about types, functions, representations, and models. I've been programming databases, playing with genetic algorithms, and studying statistics on the side. Put all these things together, and what emerges is machine learning: it covers all of these things.

On Wednesday I went to visit a good friend Bill Hsu, who has been in this field for quite some time. I did not realize when we made our appointment that I would be making this decision, but it was certainly a nice coinciding. He gave me a quick introduction, took me to the closing ceremony of a machine learning summer school his students were attending, and gave me a list of books to read to get started.

One great thing about being an academic is that by saying the word, I can change my job description. Instead of feeling like I'm procrastinating when I write a simulation, now all of a sudden, I'm being productive!

So where to go from here. I'm now reading Machine Learning, by Tom Mitchell, and have three more books in queue. I estimate it will take a number of months to read them and start to get up to speed. After (or during, more likely) reading those, I will be able to start reading current publication, playing with my own experiments and simulations, and seeing where the open problems are. The fact that my school has quite a few faculty already in this area should be a great asset.

This is the first time in a very long time I've felt excited about doing research.

Brew 30 and 31

2007-05-22T18:32:00.000-05:00

Brew #30, a Gewürztraminer, is finally bottled. This one contained elderflowers. There was a near-disaster when I transfered to secondary because the flowers clogged the port. I was able to save 5 of the six gallons, and half a gallon got used to make sangria, so things turned out well anyway.

Yesterday I started brew #31, an Australian Grenache/Mourvèdre. The initial gravity on this one was 1.106, and it had tons of oak to put into it. I tasted the sample for the specific gravity. Pretty good, I'm betting on lots of tannins.

Lovena Peng Loo 1972--2007

2007-05-22T10:13:00.000-05:00

It's been a very sad few days. A friend of mine was senselessly murdered by burglars this past weekend.

I got to know Peng over a few days when I was in Malaysia. We both stood in Ian and Julianne's wedding. It was my first time in Malaysia. Peng would look after me, teaching me bits of Cantonese so I could understand better when people spoke "chinglish". She even gave me a Cantonese name, which she used over the years as we kept up over gmail and IM.

I've been rereading those conversations. She would check up on me when she found out I had a cold, teach me Cantonese phrases, and talk about career searching. She was so willing to serve God with the gifts she had, and so intent on hearing from Him about that. I told her that the most important aspect of her job would probably not be the activity, but the people she would minister to. That's just the kind of person she was....

We always thought it was great that even though our Meyer Briggs personality types were exact opposites, and that we lived literally a world apart, we would talk and keep up with each other.

I will really miss her.

Now we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we believe that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep as Christians. (NET) I Thes 4:13

What Computers were Meant to Be

2007-05-01T22:47:00.000-05:00

Today I got the new version of Mathematica. I first learned to use this in 1989 when I took a class from Dan Greyson as a freshman at UIUC. The first example they showed was to type in some function and take its derivative. Seeing the answer pop up on the screen, my reaction was "this is what computers were meant to be."

Now we're at version 6. There are many new features. Many. The things that will catch your attention when you look at the web page will be all the fancy presentation abilities, but there are other nice things as well. One that I particularly like is the "curated information": databases of all kinds of information about chemicals, cities, stocks.... Imagine your almanac was embedded into Mathematica. The command

ChemicalData["Caffeine", "MoleculePlot"]

brings up a (interactive!) picture of one of my favorite molecules:

Here's another feature that will be handy for investment research. This command brings up a nice visual to illustrate a certain banking decision I made last month.

DateListPlot[FinancialData["NTBK", All]]

One of the first of my own programs was to make a picture of a fractal called the Sierpinski Gasket.

I have a lot of ideas for how I'm going to use this. It's interesting in its own right, since I am a programming language professor, and this is a very interesting programming language. But it will also help with administration: I've been collecting exam score data for years now, and I've really been wanting to do some statistical analysis to see how effective various teaching techniques will be. It will be much easier to do that now.

I should have gotten this a long time ago.

AMB-0: On Dijkstra and Writing

2007-04-21T21:58:00.000-05:00

I have long admired E.W. Dijkstra for his contributions to computer science, and his very precise thinking and communication. I discovered the other day through a colleague's blog[3] that Dijkstra's works are all online.

I found that he had a habit that will benefit me in two ways. The habit was to write a series of papers called ``EWD's'' which often were unpublished, but instead were circulated to various colleagues. Some of these writings were theorems, some became full-blown papers, some were just refections on things he had seen recently. It reminds me of a blog, except that many of them were hand-written.

Dijkstra explained the benefit he derived from doing this in his thousandth entry[2].

On a more contented note: I am reasonably pleased with life, about as pleased as we poor mortals may be allowed to be, and in this contentment the EWD-series plays a major role. If there is one ``scientific'' discovery I am proud of, it is the discovery of the habit of writing without publication in mind. I experience it as a liberating habit: without it, doing the work becomes one thing and writing it down becomes another one, which is often viewed as an unpleasant burden. When working and writing have merged, that burden has been taken away.

The habit is also liberating in a much more profound sense. I consider, for instance, EWD975[1] on the Theorem of Pythagoras--of all theorems!--a major achievement of the last semester. It was an unadulterated pleasure to write it; one of its recipients called it ``absolutely bloody marvellous.'' Had I only written with publication in mind, it would never have seen the light of day. Not only would aforementioned recipient have been denied his enjoyment, I would have been so too: what I sent out was Sunday's version, which I could only write after the discovery that I could still improve on Saturday's version, The only way to discover that a neglected or ignored topic is worth writing about is to write about it.

The first benefit I will gain from this series is that I now have a mentor. A long time ago I learned that if one wanted to learn to write well, then one should read things that were written well. I now have a large collection of well-written essays to read. Further, the topics themselves are very interesting in their own right (such as the above-mentioned Theorem of Pythagoras)!

The second benefit is that I can emulate this habit. I have thought before that writing without regard to publication was an important habit, but rarely had I seen it done before now. With this encouragement, I will start my own series. This will help me sharpen my thinking and communicate my ideas with my colleagues.

Bibliography

1: Edsger W. Dijkstra.
On the theorem of Pythagoras (EWD 975).
circulated privately, 1986.
2: Edsger W. Dijkstra.
Twenty-eight years (EWD 1000).
circulated privately, January 1987.
3: Joel F Klein.
Jfk bits: Dijkstra computer inversion quotes, April 2007.
http://jfkbits.blogspot.com/2007/04/dijkstra-computer-inversion-quotes.html.

Begin the evacuation

2007-03-28T21:45:00.000-05:00

I've been a bit frustrated with my bank, Netbank, for a while now. Last year they sent out a notice that they were lowering their checking interest rates. I was pretty annoyed. Didn't anyone tell them that every other bank on the planet was raising their rates? I began looking half-heartedly for alternatives, but since most of my savings were in the likes of Ing and Emigrant Direct anyway, it didn't seem too urgent.

This past week, I've been looking at various stock prices, setting up the Magic Formula account I wrote about in a previous post. I happened to look at NetBank's financials. I was pretty shocked. As of this writing, their stock prices are $2.26. They've been losing money three years in a row now, and dropping services like crazy. One of the latest to go was their quickpost deposit option...

For a good contrast, click on any of the other banking sites you see, such as Citibank, Ing, Bank of America....

Ing has just opened a new all-internet checking account. So, I've decided to jump ship. NetBank's insured, so if they do manage to kill themselves off you shouldn't lose any money (so please don't start a run on the bank and say it was my fault!), but I'm tired of getting less service when everyone else is tripping over themselves for my business.

Oh, and if you do decide to go with Ing, let me know. We each get a referral bonus if I refer you. :-)

The Spring Forward Fairy

2007-03-09T09:14:00.000-06:00

Hey Kids,

Now is that special time of year when the Spring Forward Fairy gives us an extra hour of daylight at the end of the day. She does this at 2:00am by magically making it become 3:00am instantaneously. This sets us free from the land of Winter, where it's always cold and never daylight. She even does this even if you were bad this year, unlike a certain other rather judgmental character from somewhere near Canada. All she asks is that you lose an hour of sleep. The combined sleep gives her the power to make this change.

You do need to know that this year is special. She's coming out early this year. So, you will feel sleepy *this* Sunday morning. You might want to go to bed early or something to get ready.

This next part is difficult, but I think you're old enough to know. There is no Spring Forward Fairy. She's really just our personification of an energy policy set by the faceless U.S. Bureaucracy. Not only has a cherished childhood fantasy been ruined, but you've probably worked out that if the Spring Forward Fairy isn't changing the clocks for us, then that means we have to do it ourselves.

So, don't forget to do that.

There are two ways to go about it though. If you still want to believe in the magic and insist that the spirit of Spring Forward Fairy is real, even if the persona is metaphorical, then you can stay up until 2:00am and make the change right then, keeping with tradition. You might want to have a few close friends on hand in case you have more than one clock, so that you can change them all simultaneously. Or, if you find yourself rather jaded by this whole experience you might want to do the more practical thing that most grown-ups do and just set the clocks forward by one hour just before you go to bed.

Think about it. If she were *really* magic, she would have figured out a way to do this without making us lose sleep.

Adventures on the CTA: Free Coffee!

2007-02-04T22:51:00.000-06:00

Yesterday when I got on the bus, I was the only one on it. The bus driver said that she was at the stop early and we had to wait a few minutes. Since we were outside of the 7-11, and since it was nothing degrees F outside, she went in for some coffee. And she gave me a coupon for a free coffee!!

That totally made my day.

Today I brought some of Brew 28 to the Superbowl party. Everyone really liked the beer. The first five minutes of the game was really good too.

Brew #29: India Pale Ale

2007-02-03T18:29:00.000-06:00

Today I brewed another Northern Brewer recipe, this one is an India Pale Ale.

This time I tried a few new things. First, I used some software to manage my brew. I purchased the Beer Smith package. Very easy to use, and can even be run under Wine if you don't want to use a Windows machine. The software was especially helpful in doing the multi-stage infusion. It calculated the amount and temperature of water I would need for each step.

This enabled me to do a two stage infusion. The first was at 151 degrees, the second at 165 degrees. I undershot a little, because when I did the first stage, I didn't wait long before taking the temperature. It was 161 F, so I added 2 quarts of cold water. This dropped it considerably, so I'm thinking the temperature was okay after all, but just needed a minute to transfer the heat from the water to the grains.

Beersmith also generates an HTML brew sheet, so I'm going to paste that in here.

#29: Northern Brewer India Pale Ale

Brew Type: All Grain	Date: 2/3/2007
Style: English IPA	Brewer: Mattox Beckman
Batch Size: 5.00 gal	Assistant Brewer:
Boil Volume: 6.00 gal	Boil Time: 60 min
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.0 %	Equipment: My Equipment
Actual Efficiency: 55.4 %

Taste Rating (50 possible points): 35.0

**Ingredients**
Amount	Item	Type	% or IBU
11.50 lb	Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)	Grain	92.0 %
1.00 lb	Carafoam (2.0 SRM)	Grain	8.0 %
1.00 oz	Nugget [13.00%] (60 min)	Hops	42.9 IBU
1.00 oz	Fuggles [4.50%] (30 min)	Hops	11.4 IBU
1.00 oz	Fuggles [4.50%] (1 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)	Hops	-
1.00 oz	Goldings, East Kent [5.00%] (10 min) (Aroma Hop-Steep)	Hops	-
1 Pkgs	Thames Valley Ale (Wyeast Labs #1275)	Yeast-Ale

**Beer Profile**
Estimated Original Gravity: 1.066 SG (1.050-1.075 SG)	Measured Original Gravity: 1.052 SG
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.016 SG (1.010-1.018 SG)	Measured Final Gravity: 1.005 SG
Estimated Color: 5.8 SRM (8.0-14.0 SRM)	Color [Color]
Bitterness: 54.3 IBU (40.0-60.0 IBU)	Alpha Acid Units: 3.5 AAU
Estimated Alcohol by Volume: 6.5 % (5.0-7.5 %)	Actual Alcohol by Volume: 6.1 %
Actual Calories: 226 cal/pint

**Mash Profile**
Name: Double Infusion, Medium Body	Mash Tun Weight: 9.00 lb
Mash Grain Weight: 12.50 lb	Mash PH: 5.4 PH
Grain Temperature: 72.0 F	Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F
Sparge Water: 1.81 gal	Adjust Temp for Equipment: TRUE

Name	Description	Step Temp	Step Time
Saccrification	Add 15.00 qt of water at 169.4 F	153.0 F	60 min
Mash Out	Add 8.75 qt of water at 205.7 F	170.0 F	10 min

Mash Notes
Double step infusion - for medium body beers requiring a protein rest. Used primarily in beers high in unmodified grains or adjuncts.

Spiders on the Train!

2007-02-01T18:14:00.000-06:00

Normal people, when they go shopping, end up buying shoes or gadgets or cars. Today I bought a tarantula. She's a Pinktoe (Avicularia avicularia) from the look of her, but then she is only six to eight months old. She could turn out to be a he, or she could also turn out to be a Peruvian Pinktoe (Avicularia urticans). Time will tell.

In any event, she's beautiful. Here's a picture:

The photo really does not do justice to the colors. Her abdomen is a reddish purple, her carapace is has a blue metallic tint. And of course, she has pink toes.

One of the attractions of this species is that they are very docile. None of the other four spiders in my collection are handleable, so it's nice to have one that I can bring out. I've also been wanting to learn a few techniques for picking up a tarantula that would work on even more aggressive species, but you need to practice on one that's more compliant. I hope she doesn't mind.

The guy working at the petstore was not too happy when I wanted to look at her. He got the kind of look... well, okay, he got the kind of look most people, including many of my dear friends and family reading this, would get if someone asked them to hold a "giant" spider. (Come on, she's only the size of two quarters end to end. Let me go to my room and get you a real giant spider....) The lady behind the counter who carried herself as a proprietor would had to get it out for him.

Of course, I took her on the train home. This time is was the metra. No constipated people yelling "Yummy yummy!" today. I had to put her in my coat sleeve, a trick I learned from Mrs. Snake the last time I had an adventure in animal transport. Note: she was in a "to-go"-like container. I don't think I would keep a loose spider in my sleeve. Not that I would mind the spider, it's just that it would get out.

She does seem docile when I held her; but she did one surprising thing. Most tarantulas, when they get to the end of your hand, turn around and try the other direction, or else they feel over the edge until they find your other hand waiting for them. This one jumped! Very luckily, I caught her. Definitely will want to keep her over the wood floor or a blanket next time I take her out.

If there is a next time.... One problem is that I have actually managed to develop an allergy to certain kinds of spiders...! I hope she is not one of them.

Nine Rules for Eating Well

2007-01-30T22:45:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite bloggers whom I don't know, Maki of I was Just Really Very Hungry, posted a link to an essay called Unhappy Meals, which talks a lot about how to eat well, and be healthy from your food. The article is 12 pages long, and very interesting. Of course, I read Just Hungry because I like how Maki thinks about food, and she posted this link because she liked how Michael Pollan wrote about food. So, by the transitive property, you would expect me to like it too.

So. If you like how I think about food, then you'll probably like how Maki thinks about food, and you'll therefore probably like how Michael Pollan thinks about food, and will therefore enjoy the article. Give it a read!

Or, if you're in a hurry, the quick summary is "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants."

Brew #28 Belgian Dubbel: Bottled

2007-01-20T16:33:00.000-06:00

Brew #28, the Belgian Dubbel, is now bottled. Of course I tried some of the green beer, it definitely has a Belgian character to it, it reminds me a lot of Chimay's Brown Label.

I bottled 21 beer bottles of various sizes, and also one champagne bottle just to see what would happen. I'm hoping to save it for something like a year to see how the character of this beer changes over time. I put about 2.5 gallons of it in a keg, partly because bottling is pretty tedious, and partly because I'm afraid I'm going to run out of the Irish Red that's on tap now, and partly as yet another an experiment to see how bottling and kegging affect the taste. Officially, I should wait until February to start in on it... "Ready in Two Months" was the tag line in the instructions. I'm looking forward to this one!

Final gravity: 1.006. This gives an ABV of 5.7%. A tad lower than is typical, I think because there was extra water in the kettle when I added the spargings. But that's fine.

The Carmenere/Cabernet-Sauvignon is also ready to bottle, I'll probably do that in the next day or two.

Getting Postfix to work on Ubuntu with Gmail

2007-01-04T19:11:00.000-06:00

Here's what I want to do. I have an Ubuntu box (Edgy-Eft) at home, and I want to be able to send out email, and I want to use gmail as my relayhost. There are several sites online that explain bits of how to do this, and Mike Chirico's is particularly good. I used his tutorial as a starting point, but I noticed I had to do a few things differently to get it working on my own system, so I'm documenting the differences.

Differences

Disclaimer: Different about my setup is that I am using the Ubuntu packages, whereas Chirico's tutorial has you compile the packages yourself. There's nothing wrong with doing that, in fact, it's probably good for your soul, but I'd prefer to make use of the Ubuntu package manager as much as possible. Further, I'm not interested in using fetchmail, so I've done nothing with that.

Installing Postfix

The first thing I did was install postfix.

# apt-get install postfix

I told the configuration script that I was installing for an internet site. Happily, debian/ubuntu's postfix comes with TLS and SASL compiled in.

Generate Your Certificates

In order to connect to gmail, you need a certificate. Here's what happened when I generated my certificate.

# /usr/lib/ssl/misc/CA.pl -newca
CA certificate filename (or enter to create)

Making CA certificate ...
Generating a 1024 bit RSA private key
.....................++++++
.........................++++++
writing new private key to './demoCA/private/cakey.pem'
Enter PEM pass phrase:
Verifying - Enter PEM pass phrase:
-----
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:Illinois
Locality Name (eg, city) []:Chicago
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Prancing Tarantula
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:
Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:Mattox Beckman
Email Address []:mattoxbeckman@gmail.com

Please enter the following 'extra' attributes
to be sent with your certificate request
A challenge password []:
An optional company name []:
Using configuration from /usr/lib/ssl/openssl.cnf
Enter pass phrase for ./demoCA/private/cakey.pem:
Check that the request matches the signature
Signature ok
Certificate Details:
        Serial Number:
            d5:0c:4b:bb:48:17:c3:b0
        Validity
            Not Before: Jan  4 22:42:34 2007 GMT
            Not After : Jan  3 22:42:34 2010 GMT
        Subject:
            countryName               = US
            stateOrProvinceName       = Illinois
            organizationName          = Prancing Tarantula
            commonName                = Mattox Beckman
            emailAddress              = mattoxbeckman@gmail.com
        X509v3 extensions:
            X509v3 Subject Key Identifier: 
                33:0A:41:44:07:7D:0F:4C:10:B8:8C:4A:89:8C:CC:0E:18:EF:CA:92
            X509v3 Authority Key Identifier: 
                keyid:33:0A:41:44:07:7D:0F:4C:10:B8:8C:4A:89:8C:CC:0E:18:EF:CA:92
                DirName:/C=US/ST=Illinois/O=Prancing Tarantula/CN=Mattox
Beckman/emailAddress=mattoxbeckman@gmail.com
                serial:D5:0C:4B:BB:48:17:C3:B0

            X509v3 Basic Constraints: 
                CA:TRUE
Certificate is to be certified until Jan  3 22:42:34 2010 GMT (1095 days)

Write out database with 1 new entries
Data Base Updated

Now generate a private key...

# openssl req -new -nodes -subj '/CN=prancingtarantula.net/O=Prancing Tarantula/C=US/ST=Illinois/L=Chicago/emailAddress=mattoxbeckman@gmail.com' -keyout FOO-key.pem -out FOO-req.pem -days 3650
Generating a 1024 bit RSA private key
.........................................++++++
....++++++
writing new private key to 'FOO-key.pem'
-----

And sign it...

# openssl ca -out FOO-cert.pem -infiles FOO-req.pem
Using configuration from
/usr/lib/ssl/openssl.cnf
Enter pass phrase for ./demoCA/private/cakey.pem:
Check that the request matches the signature
Signature ok
Certificate Details:
        Serial Number:
            d5:0c:4b:bb:48:17:c3:b1
        Validity
            Not Before: Jan  4 22:48:47 2007 GMT
            Not After : Jan  4 22:48:47 2008 GMT
        Subject:
            countryName               = US
            stateOrProvinceName       = Illinois
            organizationName          = Prancing Tarantula
            commonName                = prancingtarantula.net
            emailAddress              = mattoxbeckman@gmail.com
        X509v3 extensions:
            X509v3 Basic Constraints: 
                CA:FALSE
            Netscape Comment: 
                OpenSSL Generated Certificate
            X509v3 Subject Key Identifier: 
                16:B2:33:D3:E7:E9:4D:2B:76:71:5D:D7:EC:AF:47:22:FA:38:AB:54
            X509v3 Authority Key Identifier: 
                keyid:33:0A:41:44:07:7D:0F:4C:10:B8:8C:4A:89:8C:CC:0E:18:EF:CA:92

Certificate is to be certified until Jan  4 22:48:47 2008 GMT (365 days)
Sign the certificate? [y/n]:y


1 out of 1 certificate requests certified, commit? [y/n]y
Write out database with 1 new entries
Data Base Updated

Now I copied them to the /etc/postfix directory.

# cp demoCA/cacert.pem FOO-key.pem FOO-cert.pem /etc/postfix
# chmod 644 /etc/postfix/FOO-cert.pem /etc/postfix/cacert.pem
# chmod 400 /etc/postfix/FOO-key.pem

One difference from the tutorial: when running postfix, you may get warnings like this one:

Jan  4 17:21:59 calvin postfix/smtp[28881]: setting up TLS connection to
smtp.gmail.com
Jan  4 17:21:59 calvin postfix/smtp[28881]: certificate verification failed
for smtp.gmail.com: num=20:unable to get local issuer certificate
Jan  4 17:21:59 calvin postfix/smtp[28881]: SSL_connect error to
smtp.gmail.com: -1

I've copied them in so people searching for them will find this. These warnings are because postfix doesn't know where to find the Thawte certificate that gmail used to sign its own certificate. Ubuntu includes it in its ssl package. You need to append it to the cacert.pem file you generated earlier.

cat /etc/ssl/certs/Thawte_Premium_Server_CA.pem >> cacert.pem

Transport

To cause the mail to be routed, you need a transport file. Here's mine:

# Contents of /etc/postfix/transport
#
# This sends mail to Gmail
*               smtp:[smtp.gmail.com]:587

Different from the tutorial is the specification of port 587. If you leave that off, postfix will attempt to connect to port 25, which is blocked by many ISPs now. If you get a timeout error in your log file, that's what's happening. The Gmail help pages say you should be able to use port 465 also, but that times out for me as well. You'll have to add another line if you expect to receive mail at your machine.

SASL

You now need to set the SASL passwords. My file looks like this one:

# Contents of sasl_passwd
#
[smtp.gmail.com]:587             mattoxbeckman@gmail.com:password

Of course, replace password and the email address with something appropriate for your system. Again, note the 587... if you leave that off, you will get very confusing log messages like this one:

Jan  4 18:20:30 calvin postfix/smtp[31770]: 49D438A6F: 
to=, orig_to=, 
relay=smtp.gmail.com[64.233.163.109]:587, delay=7661, 
delays=7660/0.1/0.19/0.03, dsn=5.5.1, status=bounced 
(host smtp.gmail.com[64.233.163.109] said: 
530 5.5.1 Authentication Required 16sm56842404nzo 
(in reply to MAIL FROM command))

This will be very frustrating because you will see the passwords are there, but they just aren't being used. Be sure to hash the files:

# postmap sasl_passwd
# postmap transport

Wrapup

The lines in tls_per_site, main.cf and master.cf are like the tutorial. Just paste them into your own versions, and you should be good to go.

Brew #28 Belgian Dubbel

2006-12-18T08:48:00.000-06:00

The other day (December 16) I brewed a Belgian Dubbel all-grain kit from Northern Brewer. It was a real party, as Heidi, John, Sylvia, and Steve came over to hang out, watch, help brew, and help drink the Irish Red (#25) that was on tap. (The Winter Warmer (#26), incidentally, ran out yesterday.)

Fermentables

10 lbs Dingemans Pale Ale
0.5 lbs Dingemans Caramunich
0.25 lbs Dingemans Special B
1 lb Dark Belgian Candi Sugar

Hops

1 oz Hersbrucker (60 min)
1 oz Saaz (1 min)

Mash Schedule

60 mins at 153 degrees.

Production

Volume of Wort: 5.5 gal
Treatment: Oxygenated for one minute
Yeast: Wyeast #1214 Begian Ale Yeast
O.G.: 1.050

The actual mash schedule given in the recipe is more complex, but I wasn't sure how to go about that, so I used the simpler one above. I used 13 quarts of water to the 11 lbs of grain for the strike water. The temperature in the pot was 180F, which yielded a strike temperature of 154F. I was very happy to have gotten the temperature so close to where I wanted it.

I made 5.5 gal of sparge water, also heated it to 180F, and collected 6 gal of wort for the boil. There was maybe half a gallon of water left in the pot when I poured the wort into it; I think that helps explain the low specific gravity.

I did get a yeast scare. The kit was sent to me during a cold snap, and while we all thought the Wyeast package swelled a little bit, 24 hours later there was no fermentation visible. That was the case as of 2:00am this morning! I was all ready to make a trip to the local homebrew shop for an emergency replacement today, but this morning at 8:00 there was a beautiful creamy foam on the top. The wee yeasties had decided to make a useful contribution to the universe after all! So, we have a lag time of 36 hours...!

Possible reasons: it may be that the yeast was damaged in transit by the cold. (There is a "DO NOT FREEZE" warning on it.) It could be that the yeast had not warmed sufficiently and merely got shocked when I added it to the fermenter. I will try to remember to take it out earlier next time.

I'm expecting this will be a lower-alcohol brew. That's fine by me, as long as the flavor is nice. The Irish Red was also lower alcohol, and it was nice to have that around because we could all have more of it than would have been wise had it been a higher alcohol version.

Mean People Suck

2006-12-13T23:28:00.000-06:00

Monday was a very very full day. I gave two final exams, and received a nice surprise at the department holiday party: I'd been selected for the Teacher of the Year award for the department! It is nice to feel like people appreciate what you do.

My web server went down at about noon though, and I could tell by the way it went down that it involved files missing. When I got home, I discovered it wasn't just files missing. Someone had broken into my apartment and stolen my computer! And right during finals week, when my students need to be accessing the course materials I have posted online.... They also got my digital cameras.

It could have been worse. I wasn't home when they entered: surprised burglars are bad news. They don't appear to have taken any of my financial stuff; a ziplock bag full of credit cards was tossed to the side where they took the computer, and all the quarters were still in the drawer. And they did do me one favor, unintentional though it may be: they left my backup device. With that I was able to get things back running again relatively quickly. Without it, it would have taken several years to recover from the damage. I'm setting up an off-site backup solution now. As the proverbs goes, "trust God, but tie up your mule".

How they broke in was surprising. I've known for a while that the window is usually the point of entry. There is a window by the back steps. It had some hooks on it so that it would not open more than four inches. What they did was take the top window and pull it down very hard, busting the hooks off. They then climbed over the window and into the apartment. The police advised me to get some bars for the window, install them, and worry about how the landlord feels later. Probably not a bad idea....

We'll see how the State Farm people handle this. The cameras and the old cell phone were insured with a no-deductible replacement policy. Hopefully the policy is worth it....

Brew 27: Carmenere/Cabernet Sauvignon

2006-12-01T09:48:00.000-06:00

This is another Wine Expert Limited Edition kit. The grapes were from Chile, Maipo Valley. Brew #24 is still in the V-Vessel, and will be bottled Real Soon Now, so I tried an experiment; I ordered some Better Bottles with ports, racking adapters, and high-flow valves. Those adapters are expensive! I think it's because they use a special plastic for it. All I know is, I'm really looking forward to not having to siphon, or worry about sanitizing when I want to draw a sample.

This wine comes with a lot of oak, and some bentonite. It was the bentonite that made me think of using the Better Bottles to begin with. Bentonite is a clay, and in the past it had clogged up my v-vessel. So I tried using a 6-gallon Better Bottle as a primary fermenter.

First observation: there is a reason they say in the instructions to use a container that can hold 8 gallons for your primary. There is not much room left over once all the stuff is added. I placed a carboy hood on it and left if for the next day.

This morning, I took a look at things and noticed that there didn't seem to be that much activity. I pulled the stopper from the carboy hood and it was like opening a coke---a huge amount of pressure had built up! I'm glad I checked it; had I left it for the day it likely would have popped the hood, or worse. Once nice benefit though; with all that pressure, I have good verification that the racking adapter and valve assembly is sound.

So, stats on the wine: I took a S.G. reading, it was as 1.120. In one week I will need to rack this to the V-Vessel.

Google Toolbar for Ubuntu Edgy Firefox

2006-11-24T22:04:00.000-06:00

I installed ubuntu's Edgy-Eft distribution early this month. I'm very happy with it. But... the Google toolbar wouldn't install in the firefox version that came with the distribution. Firefox would tell me that it wanted plugins compatible with linux-gnu_x86-gcc3.

Happily, it's easy to fix. First, you download the .xpi file. Despite the extension, it's in zip format. Unzip it, and open the file install.rdf and look for where it says

<em:targetPlatform>Linux</em:targetPlatform>

and replace it with

<em:targetPlatform>linux-gnu_x86-gcc3</em:targetPlatform>.

This package is signed, so you also have to delete the signatures for firefox to take it. Just delete the directory called META-INF to erase the signatures.

Finally, zip the contents back into your .xpi file, and point your browser at it. It should install without a problem.

Of course, I disclaim all liability for anything that might happen if there are problems... and while I don't thing the nice people at Google will have a problem with you doing this, I expect they'll also prefer that you keep the modified package to yourself.

I was able to get the Mozex plugin working using a similar method (tell it that it is, in fact, compatible with firefox 2.0.*).

Happy hacking!

Adventures on the CTA: Snakes on the Train!

2006-11-22T15:40:00.000-06:00

I got a new pet yesterday!

Her name is "Mrs. Snake", a seven year old albino corn snake. She is about four feet long, and likes to be worn around people's necks.

I got her from a friend Sylvia who lives in town. I had brought a pillowcase in which to transport her, but Mrs. Snake had climbed into my my shirt when it was time to leave, so I just put on my jacket and headed back to the El.

Walking over to the train, Mrs. Snake started to wonder what was up, so she climbed into my coat sleeve and poked her head out to investigate. It was chilly out, so she didn't to much more than that. I made her go back in when I got on the El, since I wasn't sure what the CTA people would have to say about this. (I did see a guy wearing a ferret in his jacket before, though....)

On the car were a bunch of girls all talking simultaneously on their cell phones, a few people heading back from a late night at work, and some vaguely european-looking guy staring across the car yelling "yummy! yummy!" like he was constipated. (No, I don't know what yelling constipated people sound like. But if you were to tell me that he was constipated, and that that was why he was yelling "yummy! yummy!" on the train, I would admit that this is how I would expect such a person to sound.) The girls on their cell phones would glance his way periodically to make sure that he was content to stay in his own seat while yelling "yummy yummy".

I started to wonder what would happen if Mrs. Snake chose that particular moment to become curious of her surroundings. I decided it would be best not to find out, and made sure she stayed in my coat sleeve for the rest of the ride home. But imagining the scene was a lot of fun.

For her cage, I repaired the cage that G'Kar used to have (G'Kar was my old corn snake, who escaped during my move to Chicago, and is probably now in the sewers, and will grow to be 100 feet long and start eating tourists in Lincoln Park) with the help of some Gorilla Glue ("The strongest glue on the planet!"), and put in some coconut shavings as substrate. She seemed to like the coconut substrate, and burrowed into in almost immediately. I was glad to see that; I want her to like her new home.

Accent

2006-11-07T08:50:00.001-06:00

It's official...

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The Northeast
The Inland North
The South
Philadelphia
The West
Boston
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Looks like they forgot to put the CSS in the "cut this and paste it" part, but basically, the top three bars should be red nearly 3/4 the way across, and all the same length. The rest drop off quite a bit after that. And yes, for those who wondered, I told them that "pin" and "pen" sound the same! :-)

Brew 26 -- Winter Warmer

2006-10-08T22:50:00.000-05:00

Yep, the second brew in as many weeks. This time it's a Northern Brewer all-grain kit called Winter Warmer. It's supposed to be a higher-alcohol kit, and the 1.060 original gravity seems to confirm that. :-) This time I had much better results with the mash temperature; I heated the water to 180 degrees, added it directly to the mash-tun, and then added the grains, all in one go. I had 4 gallons of water, and just over 12 lbs of grain. The temperature after all that was about 156F, so I added some cold water to bring the temperature down. Next time I will use a 1:1 ratio instead of 1.33 qt H20 : 1 lb grain. Anyway, here's the recipe....
Date of Brew: October 7, 2006
Date of Bottling: Not yet!
Ingredients

Grains
11.5 lbs Crisp Maris Otter
1 lb Simpson's Crystal
0.25 lbs Simpon's Chocolate
Hops
1 oz Northern Brewer (60 mins)
1 oz Fuggle (30 mins)
1 oz Kent Goldings (1 min)
Yeast
Wyeast #1728 Scottish Ale Yeast #1145261

Mash
4 gallons, 153 F for 60 min.
There was supposed to be a 170 F for 10 min, but I couldn't get the water temperature to budge, because there was too much thermal inertia from the initial four gallons.
Number of Gallons in Boil: 6
Boil Time: 60 mins
Gallons in Fermenter: 5

Brew 25 -- Irish Red Ale

2006-09-30T18:24:00.000-05:00

This brew is dedicated to Hunahpu, the All Grain Evangelist, for encouraging me via his blog to start all-grain brewing.

Yes, this is my very first all-grain brew. I learned a lot from this; perhaps the most important thing I learned is that it's easier than it sounds from the instructions.

Special notes: I was unable to get the mash temperature to 150; I got it to 145F, but by then there was so much water that it was hard to get it to budge. So, I expect that this is why my original gravity is so low (1.042). I suspect this will result in a dry, perhaps cloudy (I didn't have any idodine to check for starches. I have no idea what happened in there....!) beer. But, the next batch will be a very high-gravity Christmas beer, so it's just fine by me that this one is more of a "session" beer. (I hope I'm using that term correctly. I *think* it means that the alcohol content is low, so it's fine to quaff a few in one go.)

Also, this is my first time using Wyeast. I have to say, I do like the "smack pack"... instead of a vial, the yeast comes in a mylar like package. Inside is a pack of nutrients. You smack the package, the nutrient pack busts open, and the yeast gets jumpstarted. You can then see from the package swelling that the yeast is alive and active. The last two yeast vials I got from White Labs/ morebeer were DOA. Not their fault really---I placed the order in the summertime, and during the 5 day trip from LA I'm sure they got baked. I'll have to be more careful next time. This batch came from Northern Brewer, located in Minnesota.

Date of Brew: September 30, 2006
Ingredients

Malt Extracts
None! It's an all-grain!
Grains
9lbs 2-Row
1lb Crystal 120L
8oz Aromatic
8oz Caramunich
2oz Black Roasted
2oz Special B
Hops
1oz Magnum Hops (60 min boil)
2oz Willamette Hops (5 min boil)
Water Treatments
1 tablet Whirfloc (20 min boil)
Oxygen, after adding to carboy

Number of Gallons in Boil: 6.5
Boil Time: 60 mins
Original Specific Gravity: 1.042
Expected Final Specific Gravity: 1.02
Expected Alcohol Content: 2.8%
Gallons in Fermenter: 5
Temperature of Wort at Pitching of Yeast: 75F
Yeast: Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale (Pkg #1517256)
Quantity: 125mL, 100B cells
Time of Pitching: 17:50

It got out....

2006-09-23T13:13:00.000-05:00

From the title of the blog, you might suspect that this whole blog is about tarantulas. It is true, I do own five of them right now, but I haven't been writing much about them. I have had one of them for over 13 years now. The reason I haven't written more is, well, they're kind of boring. Don't get me wrong, I love looking at them and watching their individual behaviors, learning the nuances of each different species and each different animal. But it usually doesn't make good blogging material.

Until one gets loose.

About two weeks ago, right before my California trip, I went to add water to the cages, and noticed that one of the cages was empty. Uhoh.... This particular cage has a lid that's not immediately obvious when it hasn't been secured. But the spider (this was the Zebra Knee) occasionally tests the perimeter, much like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, and this time her persistence paid off.

I had no idea how long she had been gone.

I spent a few days looking in all the spots I could imagine going if I were a tarantula, and hoping that I found it before a neighbor or a visitor did. I wasn't too worried; they are scary looking if you're not used to them, but this particular one is quite unlikely to hurt someone... the bite does have venom, but nothing more serious than a bee sting, and it would not try to do that anyway unless someone cornered it and started poking at it to provoke it. But I was worried that I'd hear a scream from one of the other apartments, followed by a *whump* sound, and know that there was one less tarantula in the world and one more stained Chicago phone book to take its place.

It all ended well, though. Wednesday morning I got a call from my new neighbor across the hall. "I just found this huge tarantula in the hallway. Do you know anyone here who has one? I'm not sure what to do with it!" She had the presence of mind to get a shoe box, catch it, tape the box shut, and even added some air holes. I'm thankful to have friendly, understanding neighbors! :-) So, the spider is safely back home. Hopefully now we can go back to our normal boring routine!

Brew 24: Italian Piedmont Nebbiolo d"Alba

2006-09-16T16:06:00.000-05:00

I wanted to do an all-grain brew today, but I think that will take six hours, and I have too much work to do, so I decided to do a wine instead. This batch, brew 24, is the Selection Limited Edition Italian Piedmont Nebbiolo d'Alba. The initial gravity was 1.094, at the high end of the acceptable range for this variety. There's only 5 bottles left of Brew 19, so I really need to get with it if I'm going to have that nice four batch queue like I wanted.

In other brewing news, Heidi and John's wedding was a blast! I had made some sparkling wine for the wedding, and the response was very favorable. I had pressurized it to 10psi, and that made it very subtly bubbly; I think next time I'll try 20 or 30psi. There are still four bottles left; we had just the right amount at the wedding itself.

Oh, yeah, the wedding itself was great, too! :-) The weather was perfect, the food was excellent, and I got to spend time with a lot of friends. It was great watching Heidi's younger relatives working the dance floor, too!

Swapping Caps_Lock and Escape

2006-08-24T11:29:00.000-05:00

Since I recently "switched religions"---i.e., I use vim now instead of xemacs, I find that I need to hit the escape key quite a bit more frequently for some reason. :-) Now, one of the major advantages of the vi-class editors is that you don't need to move your hands from the home row that often. If you happen to know how to touch-type, then this is a major advantage.

On my keyboard, the escape key is located way at the top. This is inefficient. Insprired by a recent discussion on slashdot, I decided to swap the escape and caps-lock keys. The slashdot people helped get me started by reminding me of xmodmap, but the poster was trying to remove capslock altogether. Acutally, I do use capslock on occasion. (I touchtype....)

I used xev to figure out the keycodes for the keys that I wanted to remap. Just run xev and hit the key you want. When I hit Escape, here's what it printed out:

KeyPress event, serial 29, synthetic NO, window 0x2600001,
    root 0x4c, subw 0x0, time 1088941543, (43,83), root:(594,518),
    state 0x0, keycode 9 (keysym 0xff1b, Escape), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (1b) "
    XmbLookupString gives 1 bytes: (1b) "
    XFilterEvent returns: False

The "keycode 9" is the part you want. A similar action shows you that capslock is keycode 66.

Now you are ready to write your .xmodmap file. Here is mine:

remove Lock = Caps_Lock
keycode 0x42 = Escape
keycode 0x09 = Caps_Lock
add Lock = Caps_Lock

First, it removes the "lock" functionality from the capslock key. Then I tell it that key 66 (0x42 is hexadecimal for 66) is now the escape key, and that key 09 (the old escape key) is now capslock. Finally, I add the Lock functionality back to the new capslock.

It works very well. Typing in vim is much faster, since I can switch modes with the same ease that I can shift letters. And if I do decide to use capslock, it is still there, not that far away. Now that I've reprogrammed my keyboard, all I have to do is reprogram my hands....

The Mother of All Blenders

2006-08-17T19:47:00.000-05:00

I've been making my own soymilk for a while now, but the filter in my SoyaJoy finally wore out. I started making soymilk with my blender, and discovered that it was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Until the magic smoke started coming out of the blender. It seems that grinding soybeans is very hard on a blender.

I'd wanted one for years, and now I had the perfect excuse. It Was Time.

I got the vitamix blender.

Imagine, if you will, a blender with settings from 1 to 10, and High. You then notice that 3 is labelled "liquidate". It's like in spinal tap where the amp can go up to 11, but in this case, it's more like 30.

The nice thing about this machine is that it can turn a vegetable into a juice (albeit a thick one) easily. It obliterates anything you put in there. The advantage is that you end up eating the whole fruit, skin, seeds, fiber, and all. Much better for you.

Other tricks it can do: ice and strawberries become icecream if you leave it in there for about 60 seconds. A blend left in there for 4-5 minutes will become soup, the friction heats it to boiling. It also can grind wheat berries into flour.

I've eaten more vegetables today than I usually do in a week. I had two carrot juices (one with a tomato and some ginger, one with some lemon); a soymilk and strawberry smoothy, a bowl of soup (carrots, tomato, potato, celery, etc.) which was very filling, and I made some lemonade. Of course, I also got to make my soymilk, which was the stated purpose of getting this in the first place.

I've been wanting to go more "whole food" for a while, this sure makes it easier.

Brew 23 -- Orange Blossom Spice Mead

2006-08-05T18:35:00.000-05:00

This is an old favorite of mine. The spices and the orange blossom honey make a great Christmas mead. Further, since this is National Mead Brewing Day, I decided to take lots of pictures. They're at the bottom.

First, here's the recipe I used:
Date of Brew: August 5, 2006
Date of Bottling: Not yet!
Ingredients

Honey
6lbs Orange Blossom Honey
Spices
2T freshly crushed allspice
1t freshly ground ginger
0.5C golden raisins
Water Treatments
2 Gal Water
Oxygenated

Number of Gallons: 2.5
Original Specific Gravity: 1.085
Expected Final Specific Gravity: 1.0
Expected Alcohol Content: 11.3\%
Yeast: White Labs Champaign Yeast, which didn't work (It was past the expiry date, I think that's what went wrong), and Red Star Bread Yeast, which started fermentation very quickly.
Quantity: 5mL of White Labs, 2 T of Red Star
Time of Pitching: 18:15

How to Make Mead

Making mead is very easy. If you are thinking about getting into brewing, and are concerned about the complexity, this is the easiest starting point.

You will need, at a minimum...

a fermenter, such as a 3 gallon carboy.
an airlock and stopper,
honey,
something to use for yeast nutrient
sanitizing fluid,
and yeast.

Life is easier if you also have...

a hygrometer, to measure the specific gravity of the brew. This allows you to tell how much alcohol is in your final product. This, of course, is optional. If you like how it tastes, you've done what you set out to do!
oxygenation equipment, to oxygenate the must (unfermented honey solution). You could just shake up the fermenter after you add everything; that will probably be enough. Using an oxygenation system will lower the risk of contamination, and take less time.

First, you need to get out your equipment. Here is the fermenter, (a three gallon carboy), 6 lbs of Orange Blossom Honey, and the yeast.

You also want some sanitizing fluid. Really, the only two non-negotiables in homebrewing are 1. start with good ingredients, and 2. cleanliness is Godliness. Any bacteria that get into your must/wort is going to have a party, so make sure not too many get in there.

Now, add the honey to the fermenter.

You may want to rinse out the honey jar to get the remaining bits.

Next, take a sample. You need to measure the specific gravity to know how much alcohol is in the final product. Don't worry if you don't have the equipment for this; it will still taste just fine.

Here I am reading the hygrometer. It's at 1.085. You should drink the sample, or throw it out. Never return a sample to an unfermented wort; you risk contamination that way.

After adding other ingredients, I added the yeast.

Then I forced oxygen through the must to give oxygen to the yeast cells. You usually don't really have to do this, but it helps the yeast.

Finally, you add an airlock. You want the carbon dioxide to get out, but you don't want anything outside (oxygen, which will spoil the mead once it has fermented; and bacteria) to get in. I'm putting Soju in it, a kind of Korean vodka. It's sterile, and if some of it accidentally gets inside the mead nothing bad will happen.

Now all I need to do is wait....

End of the Summer

2006-08-02T22:37:00.000-05:00

The summer semester is finally over. Teaching two courses over the summer is a lot of work! Especially when one is a new prep. I have about three weeks before the next classes start. I have a few projects in mind....

Course development! No, I'm not a workaholic. I just don't want to stop.... I have three courses next semester. Two of them are well-prepped, but a course (if you care about it) is like a book or a painting---you never really finish it. If you have a passion for anything creative, you know what I mean.
One thing I want to work on is my Question Database. That came in really handy this semester; the text book had very little in the way of examples (not the authors' fault--it's still in progress), so the ability to post many examples with solutions really helped the students out.
I'm thinking about making some more web pages for my course, especially data-structures and programming languages. I was inspired by this Biology text. Tons of extra content on the web... I'd like my courses to have stuff like that. Hm... pod-casts about lambda calculus? Maybe not. But there have been some very interesting posts about Java, the antifunctional programming language, and a related post about fold and map, two higher order functions, and how they are used by Google to get real work done. As a specialist in functional programming languages, I have to say I approve.
Learning Statistics and the R programming language. This language reminds me of APL. I love collecting data, but don't have much reason to do so, except analyzing exam scores. Next semester I am going to start taking attendance and correlate those with exam grades. It would be nice to have some data about how much attendance affects learning outcomes.
Rewrite my file cabinet software. I put a number on each file in the cabinet, and put a description in a searchable database. Pretty obvious really, except hardly anyone ever does it. You can find something in the cabinet in about 5 seconds or so if you do it right. Oh, bad things happen if you lose that database though....
I hosed my computer this summer, and ended up installing xubuntu, the XFCE version. I didn't want to reinstall mod_python, so I'll have to redo the pages in ruby.
Brew some Mead. August 5 is National Mead Brewing day. I also recently got an All Grain brewing kit, so I'll try that out once the temperatures reach something approaching reasonable. And I have two wine kits I need to get started....
Weddings! I have five of them to go to in the next two months! I got a good deal on a car rental, though, with I-go cars, a car-sharing network in Chicago. For $60/day, you get a car and 200 miles. This includes gas and insurance! (If you sign up, let them know you heard about it from me, okay? I get a referral credit!)
I'm starting to do research again, too....

Another busy vacation...

The Kegerator

2006-07-06T22:40:00.000-05:00

I finally got the tower installed on my kegerator!

I got a power tool just for this project, called the Rotozip. It's a spiral saw; I'd never heard of one of these things before. It looks like (and apparently can be used as) a router. Very good control, once you get used to it. I'm sure I'll have many other uses for this thing.

I've also posted an album of the construction process.

The first beer on tap is an Extra Special Bitter.

Sick and Sushi

2006-06-02T22:09:00.000-05:00

I've been sick the last few days. The first day, Tuesday, was the worst. I spent most of the day in bed with a 103 fever. Or at least, it would have been, except that the times I wasn't in bed I was getting up to drink fluids and eat Ibuprofen. That Ibuprofen stuff is wonderful. The next few days the fever stayed at or below 100. The only realy problem is at night my throat gets dry and tickles, so I can't sleep because I'm coughing.

I'm mostly better now, I think my immune system has almost finished off the last pockets of resistance. Nothing too uncomfortable, but I find it nearly impossible to concentrate when I have a fever. So it ended up being a forced vacation. Hopefully tonight I will be able to sleep okay.

Yesterday, I decided to learn how to cook some new dishes. I like gormet cooking, and I've decided that I need to do a lot more of it, even if it takes a little more time, since I end up eating food that's a lot healthier than what is available quickly.

I learned how to make Dashi stock, thanks to a blog about Japanese food, and in particular this post. I used it to make miso soup with udon noodles. It's suprisingly easy to make!

The next day, I got some nori, made some sushi-rice, and made some kim-bop (that's Korean for "maki" or "sushi rolls", I think), and some sushi with smoked salmon. Note, you need a really sharp knife to cut kim-bop. Here's the result:

Note to parents: no, this fish is not raw, it's smoked.

I'll use raw fish next time. :-)

AJAX and mod_ruby

2006-05-08T19:12:00.000-05:00

I decided to take advantage of the fact that my colleague's computer was down to rewrite the question database that I maintain for my students. Since it was going to be work moving it to my home machine anyway, I may as well enable ajax on it, right?

The process went smoothly for the most part. One snag was that the server often choked on an include file. Once every 7 or 8 loads it would complain that a method was not found.

It turns out that the problem was the way apache and mod_ruby cache ruby code. The require command apparently doesn't cache the code for each of the running subprocesses for apache. When you hit one of the non-cached ones, you get trouble. The solution is to replace "require" with "load".

Thanks to Tim Bates for posting a message about how to fix it. His post is here.

The Kegerator, Part 1

2006-04-25T14:17:00.000-05:00

One of my hobbies has taken a new twist: I have decided to go to a draft system. Homebrewing has taught me a very interesting principle: don't buy a tool until you understand why you need it. This saves you money, and it also teaches you how to proceed if the tool suddenly becomes unavailable.

My last wine #19 got exposed to a bit too much oxygen in the last stages of the fermentation. Not a big deal; the flavor changed, but if I merely pretend that's what I was going for then nothing bad happens. The brew is still good, just not what I was shooting for. But... if I had a CO2 tank handy, then I could have gotten closer to my target. Also, not having central air, it distresses me about the temperature fluctuations under which my brew is stored. Finally, I need to make some champagne. It would seem that force-carbonating is the way to go, this time at least. Clearly, it is time to go to a draft system.

The first parts arrived today. I got a Fridgidaire 7 cu ft. freezer chest, and a thermostat from morebeer.com. Here's a picture of the freezer. It should fit four kegs inside it, not that I plan to have that much on tap at once, but my bottled stuff will fit in there nicely.

On Thursday, the keg and CO2 tank should arrive....

Book Review: The Little Book that Beats the Market

2006-04-04T23:11:00.000-05:00

One of my hobbies is stock market investing. You learn a lot about how businesses work, how the economy works, and you even can make a bit of money if you can keep your head when the market drops.

When I started, I gave myself three years to figure it out. If I didn't do well, I figured I would just buy an index fund and forget about it. With a lot of help from The Motley Fool, I've been able to learn quite a bit. And, it's nice to have a hobby that gives you money rather than takes it away. Not that I have put a lot in yet... and I still have tons to learn.

Anyway, the Motley Fool sent me this book. It was written by an analyst who wanted to explain investing to his kids, and he figured that if he could do that then he could explain it to adults as well.

This is a dangerous activity. The danger is that you could simplify things so much that the kids understand it only because there is no content, and make it inane and boring for the adults; or else you will simply fail, lose both the kids and the adults, and end up saying things that ought not be said, like "but the strike price of an option is obvious!".

This author succeeded, however. This is one of the most interesting investing books I've read. It's very short, and it explains a pretty simple strategy for building a portfolio that consistently beats the market over time. They explain the concepts very well, and very clearly. It was fun just to sit down and read it. Here's a bit of how their system works.

They use two criteria to pick stocks. The first is return on capital. A company that spends $1,000,000 on a store, then earns $500,000 has a 50% return on capital. They sort all the companies based on who has the best ROC, the top one gets a ranking of one, etc.

The second is earnings over price. If a company made $5/share, and a share costs $25, then the E/P ratio is 0.2 (which is actually pretty good). Again, the companies are sorted and ranked.

Then, they take the company's ROC score and add it to the E/P score. Sort again. Out of the 4000+ companies that you run this sort of analysis for, pick a bunch from the top 50 and buy them. What you will have purchased are companies that are able to make lots of money with their business (good performance), and companies that earn a lot of money compared to the price you have to pay for them (good price).

There's a bit more. They spend some time answering the obvious question "if this is so good, why doesn't everybody do it?", and give instructions for how to get started.

I'd say, if you wanted to own stocks in order to get a good return, had a 3-5 year investment horizon, then I highly recommend this book, especially if you don't have much time on your hands to do lots of research. And, if you do want to do further research, then the technique they publish will give you a lot of ideas of companies to investigate.

Brew #19 Bottled!

2006-03-09T15:23:00.000-06:00

I bottled the Woodbridge Cabernet Sauvignon today. The yield was 24 bottles, or 18 L. It should be "ready" to drink around May, and should be good for 2-5 years.

Some notes:

I did not add water to the fermentation at any time (other than the initial mixing). This should concentrate the flavor and decrease the yield, I expect.
I used a bare minimum of sulfite. We'll have to see if that causes problems with oxidation or not.
The V-Vessel seemed to work well, for the most part. The sediment ball was half full of sediment, but there was still a good bit in the fermenter itself. I think next time I will do some regular stirrings to make sure things settle into the ball.
To prepare the bottles, I have a three part regimen:
- After a bottle is empty, rinse it out, and place it in the "labeled bottles" pile.
- When you have about six of these, soak them overnight. Some labels will peel off, other will need your fingernails, many will need a copper wool scrubber (those are fantastic!). If there is sticky stuff left over after the paper is gone, regular dish soap and a scrubby sponge seem to get it off.
- When ready to bottle, stick them in the dishwasher and use Powder Brew Wash as a detergent. I used one tablespoon (15mL) this time. Put the dishwasher on heat dry. This should clean any last remaining bits, and sanitize as well.
Did I mention, there was a lot of sediment?

The next brews will be a white wine that will be champagnified for a certain special party, and an extra special bitter. The ESP is also special because it will be my last regularly scheduled extract brew! After that, I'm going get the equipment for allgrain brewing. Hunaphu, you've done your job!

How Can They Be Jamming Us If They Don't Know We're Coming? The Sears Tower, a Router, a LinkSys WPC54G, and LVM.

2006-03-08T16:32:00.000-06:00

It all started when I moved the router in my office to get a better signal in the lecture room. I put it on top of the monitor of the computer next to where I set, so that my Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop could load a web page from across the building. That worked just fine. Except....

Two days later, I noticed two people with an oscilloscope and radar dish going up and down the hallway. "I wonder what that is?" I thought. A few hours later, one of them rolled it up to my door, knocked, and asked "Do you have anything in here emitting a 2.6 GHz signal?" as if it were a perfectly natural thing to ask and the most people would know the answer off the top of their head.

I mentioned that I was running a wireless router, a piece of junk from Hawking Technology that has been nothing but trouble ever since I got it. The network connection has always been flaky. My visitor mentions that such things run on a 2.4 GHz frequency, and should not be a problem. Wanting to be helpful, I offered to unplug it for him, to verify whether or not it was the source of the rogue signal. Sure enough, it was.

As it happens, IIT broadcasts their online courses from a dish on top of my building to another antenna on top of the Sears Tower. The signal is at 2.6 GHz. My router was causing all kinds of interference, and they had spent the last two days trying to hunt it down. Wow... I'm responsible for a signal being jammed at the source! Last time I saw a signal jammed at the source, it was the fault of some people who went to Ceti Alpha 5 and got eels put down their ears. Fortunately, that didn't happen to me. But in any event, that router is an FCC violation and can no longer be used.

A true hacker is happy when equipment breaks, because it's an excuse to buy new equipment. I went to the office supply store and picked up a new LinkSys WRK54G wireless router with a bundled WPC54G v.4 PCMCIA card. I got the extra card because I had wanted to replace my Orinoco card for a long time now with something that supported the 802.11g protocol, and that could scan for available networks (for some reason, my Orinoco card can't do that).

LinkSys routers are pretty solid. I haven't even tested it yet, feeling pretty confident that when I get to the office I can plug it in and it will Just Work with a minimum of configuration. The network card, on the other hand, would require some tinkering. For some reason, most wireless network card manufacturers hate Linux users. Or perhaps they simply can't be bothered with us, because very few will actually release drivers for their cards.

My new card's model is INPROCOMM IPN2220. Doing a quick Google search, I discovered two choices: either use the freeware ndiswrapper utility, or else use the Linuxant driverloader, which costs $20 for a license. The ndiswrapper didn't work at all, so I took Linuxant up on their offer of a free 30-day evaluation license. The basic idea is that these utilities load the Windows drivers and make a compatibility interface for Linux.

With the Linuxant driver I had partial success... the card was recognized, but it wouldn't connect to my router. The installer said that Windows uses a 12k stack, but my kernel was compiled with a 4k stack, and warned that this could cause problems. So, I recompiled my kernel for 8k stacks to see if it changed anything.

It did.

The kernel wouldn't boot anymore.

The LVM (Linux Volume Manager) software that manages the partitions on the hard drive wouldn't run anymore. No hard drive manager means no using the hard drive. The computer is not very useful without one of those. Ironically enough, about an hour before this I had helped someone set up a wireless network over the phone. That's the problem with being a computer guru. If someone else's computer breaks, they can call you. But if your computer breaks, you don't have anyone to call.

The next morning, I tried a few different things to fix the computer. The backup kernel (always keep an older kernel as a backup!) worked just fine, but the new one didn't, so I tried recompiling and reinstalling a few times. This didn't work. I tried rebuilding the LVM program, and noticed that at the end of the build process it reran the ldconfig program. Aha! LVM needs the kernel modules, and when I changed them, it broke LVM! Rebooting confirmed the suspicion; the machine would boot now. Moral: if you recompile the LVM kernel modules (ds and md_mod), make sure you relink your LVM utilities.

Now I could focus on the original task: to get wireless working. Note, I'm using a Gentoo distribution. I tried iwlist scan and was able to get a list of the networks. I used iwconfig to set the essid, nickname, and WEP key. But dhcp still would not connect.

It seemed that everything was set properly, but it still would not find the access point. I tried using iwconfig eth0 ap XXXXXX (where the Xs are my router's address), and it connected! This is somewhat annoying... I would have expected the connection to happen automatically. But at least I have a working internet connection now.

There's still a bit of work to do. The Gentoo network script needs to be made to handle this automatically. When I plug in the card, it sets the nickname to be what the essid should be (I don't get why it's doing that), and at boot time it no longer starts the PCMCIA utilities (though it thinks it's doing it). But at least the computer works again, and maybe this writeup will help someone else in the same situation.

Brew #20; Bottled!

2006-02-11T15:14:00.000-06:00

I decided it was time to bottle Brew #20, the Blackberry Honey and Cherry mead. Of course, I made sure to sample some. It's a cloudy yellow color, it actually looks quite like a belgian beer, because I didn't have any bentonite and didn't care too much what it looked like. :-) It has cherries on the nose and finish. It tastes like there is just a hint of carbonation, but it's only there if you look for it. Here is the final chart.
Date of Mixing: November 30, 2005
Date of Bottling: February 11, 2006
Ingredients

Honey
6lb Blackberry Honey
Fruit
2.2 oz dried Cherries
Water
circa 2 gallons
Other
About 2t Yeast Nutrient

Original Specific Gravity: 1.082 (quite low)
Expected Final Specific Gravity: 0.998
Expected Alcohol Content: 12%
Gallons in Fermenter: about 3 gallons
Yeast: Red Star dried Champaign yeast
Quantity: 900mL
Time of Pitching: 23:00
Lag Time: < 1 day
Number of Days in Fermenter: 73
Final Gravity: 0.998
Alcohol Content: 12%
Yield: 2.5 gallons

Black Bean Burgers

2006-01-31T17:34:00.000-06:00

I've decided to try developing a recipe for black bean burgers. Here's my first go at it.
Ingredients:

12 oz dried black beans; or 4.5 C soaked beans.
1 onion
1 bunch of celery
1 large carrot
3 t soy sauce
3 t garlic juice (or 3 cloves of garlic)
2 t cumin
0.5 C pinot noir, or other red wine
3.5 C minute oatmeal

Instructions

If starting from dried beans, soak overnight. Discard the soaking water, or else these burgers will be the gift that keeps on giving.

Put beans in a large pot, cover in water; you should use about twice as much water as there are beans. Bring to a boil for 10 minutes, then simmer covered for two hours.

Chop the onions and celeries, shred the carrot in a food processor, and fry in a pan with olive oil.

When the onions, celery, and carrots are done, puree them in the food processor.

In a large container (a kitchenaid mixer bowl is best!) add the puree, and then add the beans, reserving the boiling water.

Add cumin, garlic, wine, soysauce, and oatmeal. Mix with a mixing paddle until it all clumps together. Add more oatmeal if needed.

Let it rest for a while, maybe 15 minutes to an hour, so that it sets.

Shape into patties, and fry on a lightly oiled pan. Makes about 12 burgers.
Notes

The cumin was just right. They taste like they could use more salt, so next time I'll increase the amount of soy sauce. If you serve with ketchup the flavors blend very nicely, though, so salt would not be necessary. Also, next time I will not puree the carrots; I think it will look better to see the shreddings in the burger.

Genesis 3:6

2006-01-27T22:11:00.000-06:00

She took...and she ate: so simple the act, so hard its undoing. God will taste poverty and death before `take and eat' become verbs of salvation.

-- Derek Kidner, Tyndale Old Testament Commentary on Genesis

Stardust@Home - pre-registration

2006-01-16T16:43:00.000-06:00

Stardust@Home - pre-registration Many of you have probably heard of the probe that returned to earth the other day containing comet samples. That probe also contains (we think!) interstellar dust. But the estimate is that there will be about 40 grains.... so the UCB people are calling for volunteers to look at the scanned images of the aerogel returned from the probe to help them hunt for the grains. So if you've always wanted to do some NASA science, here's your big chance!

Brewing Report

2005-12-14T19:07:00.000-06:00

Did some brewing maintenance today.
Here are my notes for Brew 19: Cabernet Sauvignon

2005-11-13 SG Reading 1.102 Brewing Day
2005-11-15 SG Reading 1.042 Those yeasties work fast!
2005-11-17 SG Reading 1.026
2005-11-19 SG Reading 1.012
2005-11-19 SG Reading 1.004 It's tasting like a beaujolais nouveau, and I can taste the CO2 dissolved in it. Tastes good so far.
Racked. Actually, just removed the v-vessel ball and reattached it. It's now officially in secondary fermentation stage. In 10 days it will be time to stabilize.
2005-12-14 SG Reading 0.096 Stage 3. Added 4g Potassium Metabisulphite and 5.5g Potassium sorbate, stirred vigorously, added 2 packs of Chitosan. Removed the oak bag. Really starting to taste more like Cabernet now. This was about 10 days later than I expected, I noticed when I stirred it that it had considerably less outgassing than the last wine I made. I wonder if this represents an advantage to having a busy schedule. In 10 more days it will be time for the clarification stage.

Here are notes for Brew 20; the Blackberry Honey and Cherry mead.

2005-11-30 SG Reading 1.082 Brewing Day
2005-12-07 SG Reading 1.065
2005-12-14 SG Reading 1.036 Still bubbling, but starting to slow down. This is really good. The honey and the cherry flavors seem nicely in balance.

I'm looking forward to the finished products!

Brew 20 -- Blackberry Honey and Cherry Mead

2005-11-30T23:10:00.000-06:00

This was a completely unmeasured, throw things together and see what happens kind of mead. I took 6lbs of Blackberry honey, about 2.5 gallons of water, a handful of dried cherries I nuked in the microwave, a very generous pinch of yeast nutrients, and some dried champaign yeast from which I made a starter the day before. If it's good, well, I'll probably never be able to make it quite the same again!

Date of Mixing: November 30, 2005
Ingredients

Honey: 6lb Blackberry Honey
Fruit: 2.2 oz dried Cherries
Water: circa 2 gallons
Other:About 2t Yeast Nutrient

Original Specific Gravity: 1.082 (quite low)
Expected Final Specific Gravity: 0.998
Expected Alcohol Content: 12%
Gallons in Fermenter: about 3 gallons
Yeast: Red Star dried Champaign yeast
Quantity: 900mL
Time of Pitching: 23:00

Beer cures cancer!

2005-11-27T09:44:00.000-06:00

According to this article, there's a nutrient in hops which helps prevent cancer. In the interest of overhyping, please ignore the scientist in the article who says "We can't say that drinking beer will help prevent cancer". He's clearly just being modest.

Goodbye Treo, part I : the Palm TX

2005-11-22T10:54:00.000-06:00

My Treo 600, for the most part a wonderful device, is starting to die on me. At least, it sure seems that way. The phone starts buzzing a lot once the battery gets low, where low is defined as "less than 70% capacity left". You'll note that this is not the usual definition of low.

The problem is that T-Mobile doesn't support the 650, and I'd rather not get a windows phone. So, I decided it's time to separate functionality. Perhaps, if the pda and the phone can connect via bluetooth, then the effect will be almost the same as an all in one device, without the comforting "all your eggs in one basket" feeling.

I decided on the Palm TX for the PDA. It's a little bit larger than the treo, but has a beautiful 320x480 screen, about 100 megs of ram on board (pause to contemplate the 16k memory on my first computer), and built-in WIFI and bluetooth.

So far I've been pretty happy with it. The WIFI had one problem: The symptom was that the web browser would say that "page cannot be found". The router confirmed that it had given it an ip address though. I tried the usual connectivity check: I put the IP address of google.com in it and that worked just fine!

So for some reason my router was not serving domain names to the pilot. I checked the status of the connection on the pilot, and it confirmed that the proper DNS entry was there. Doing a bit more searching I saw a post where someone suggested overriding the DNS entry. I put in SBC's DNS server, since I use their DSL. This worked just fine.

It is nice having a machine that will hotsync now. The network sync over t-mobile's internet service was dreadfully slow... on the order of 150 bytes per second. And I could never get the usb cable to work with it either. Syncing over 802.11, on the other hand is wonderful.

So that's one half of the story. The other half, hopefully, will arrive tomorrow.

Other notes:

The address book has been expanded. It now stores a small thumbnail photo of the contact if you like, and many more entries such as birthday (doesn't seem to be any good way to select the year, though... you have to scroll back year by year), IM address, web page. There's also an option to "tap to connect", to activate a bluetooth phone or the versa mail client.
The versa mail client that is included has a gmail setting included, which is nice, but I had to override the outgoing SMTP port. It was set to port 25, but it should be 587. It occurs to me that downloading all my mail, composing replies on the El when I go to work, and uploading the changes when I reach the office could be a good use of time.
The package came with three screen protectors, which seem to be very good quality, and a hard case cover. Nice touch.

Brew 19 --- Woodbridge Ranch 11 Cabernet Sauvignon

2005-11-12T14:57:00.000-06:00

Today I started Brew 19. It's a Cabernet Sauvignon kit, from Wine Expert's Selection Estate Series. The last kit I bought from them made excellent wine, so I decided to get more. This is a 16 liter kit. Specs:

Serial Number: 0406705 (in case something goes wrong and I need to call the company later)
Grape: 16L Cabernet Sauvignon
Water: 3L
Additions: Benotite, Oak
Yeast: Lalvin Bourgovin RC 212, 5g powder

I put the oak in a cheesecloth bag, sewed it shut, sprayed it with Sodium Metabisulphite to make sure it was sanitized, and put it in the juice. Hopefully that will prevent it from clogging up the collection bottle.

The specific gravity was 1.102. The wine will probably be 13% ABV when the time comes.

I ordered two more kits from Northern Brewer. A Chilean Carmenere/Cabernet, and a Nebbiolo d'Alba. These two are limited edition specials. They release four a year, once a month, from January to April. Northern Brewer has a special where they will send it with free shipping if you preorder the kit. This is important, because my normal supplier, Morebeer.com doesn't ship the 16L wine kits for free anymore. (Not that I blame them, those are 40 pound kits!) Free shipping on these two kits will save $65.

One problem with these kits: it's best if you let the wine sit in the bottles for 6 months before opening. My first batch didn't last that long. It was very good. :-) I think the only solution is to make lots of it to start with, and count on buying wine for the next six months. Once the "pipeline" is established, it will be a lot easier, since there will be stuff that's "ready" while the new stuff is sitting around getting good. The downside: 1. waiting is not one of the American virtues, and 2. I figure I'm going to need at least 120 empty bottles in order to get up to capacity. I have 30 now. Needless to say, I'm starting to encourage my friends to save their bottles for me.

While I'm at it, there is sad news to report about Brew 18... some uninvited molds had a party and drank it all. I suspect it was the problem with the oxygenation---I forgot to oxygenate the wort until three days later when I noticed there was no fermentation going. Live and learn.

Adventures on the CTA: Having a Louis Moment

2005-11-04T23:29:00.000-06:00

Last night, at about 10:30, I was on the El platform when someone yelled "Matt!" from behind. It was Jenny G., a good friend I had not seen in 12 years. We were mutually impressed that we recognized and remembered each other.

And to think, this kind of thing happens to Louis all the time....

Sony vs. their customers

2005-11-03T15:27:00.000-06:00

Apparently Sony has been caught selling a CD that will put a trojan program on your computer if you play it on your CD. From the reports, it appears the program was badly written: it uses up 2% of your CPU time, whether you are playing the CD or not. (Two percent isn't so bad. Unless you get a different version of this software each time you put a Sony CD in your drive. Can you imagine 10 different versions of this running at the same time?)

If you try to remove the software, it disables your CD Rom Drive. And worse, it's written in such a way that if anyone else wants to put a virus or spyware on your computer, they can use Sony's software to hide themselves from the spyware removal programs you should be running.

Without question this is incredibly unethical, and it is also most likely illegal. Sony has gone on record (ha! I didn't even mean that pun!) saying that they feel they have the right to do this.

Of course, I use Linux, so this doesn't affect me. Well, at least not until my windows using friends need me to take this off their computer. But until Sony issues a statement apologizing and promising never to do this again, I will never buy any music from them again. Or their computers for that matter. I suggest you seriously think about taking the same stance.

The real pity of this is that the only people inconvenienced by this are the people who purchase Sony's music legally. If you steal this off the net, you won't have any problem---at least, not with Sony's malware. The blots on your soul and other hazards of online theft are yours to keep. But if Sony is so worried about people stealing their music, breaking the computers of people who buy their music legally seems counter-productive somehow. I feel badly for the artists affected by this....

Blocking Script Kiddies

2005-11-02T11:36:00.000-06:00

When you administer your own unix box, one of the things you find out (if you pay attention to the log files) is just how often someone tries to break in. Lately there have been tons of people using secure shell to do a "brute-force" attack: try all the usernames and passwords you can think of an hope one matches. It uses up a lot of CPU time because they try sometimes a couple of hundred connections before giving up.
I decided I was sick of it, so I wrote a script to monitor the log and block the IP address of anyone who tries more than 5 times to connect.

#!/usr/bin/ruby

p = IO.popen("tail -f #{ARGV[0]}")
#p = IO.popen("cat #{ARGV[0]}")

$bad = {}

def log(ip)
   if $bad[ip] == nil then
      $bad[ip] = 1
   else
      $bad[ip] = $bad[ip] + 1
   end

   if $bad[ip] > 5 then
      system("/usr/local/sbin/ipdrop #{ip} on")
      m = IO.popen("/usr/bin/mutt -s 'Dropped IP #{ip}' mattoxbeckman@-----.com","w")
      m.write("IP address #{ip} has been blocked for excessive ssh failures.\n")
      m.close
      print "Blocking IP #{ip}\n"
   end
end

p.each { |x|
   if x =~ /.*sshd.*Invalid user.*from ([0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+)/ then
      log($1)
   end
}

This morning after I got back from teaching I found an email in my box; some script kiddie at 211.22.84.102 got blocked! I checked the logs and found this.

Nov  2 10:26:22 calvin sshd[22502]: Did not receive identification string from 211.22.84.102
Nov  2 10:30:01 calvin cron[22507]: (root) CMD (test -x /usr/sbin/run-crons && /usr/sbin/run-crons )
Nov  2 10:31:07 calvin sshd[22523]: Invalid user test from 211.22.84.102
Nov  2 10:31:09 calvin sshd[22528]: Invalid user test from 211.22.84.102
Nov  2 10:31:11 calvin sshd[22533]: Invalid user test from 211.22.84.102
Nov  2 10:31:13 calvin sshd[22538]: Invalid user test from 211.22.84.102
Nov  2 10:31:15 calvin sshd[22543]: User guest not allowed because shell /dev/null is not executable
Nov  2 10:31:22 calvin sshd[22558]: Invalid user prova from 211.22.84.102
Nov  2 10:31:24 calvin sshd[22563]: Invalid user prueba from 211.22.84.102
Nov  2 10:33:25 calvin sshd[22568]: fatal: Timeout before authentication for 211.22.84.102

After the fifth attempt, my log watcher ran the command to block the IP. During that time, our kiddie initiated a sixth attempt (for prueba). The last line is fun. The IP got blocked before they could try a password. :-)
Okay, so I'm a geek. But a pretty satisfied one.

Couches!

2005-10-31T10:13:00.000-06:00

A friend of a friend was giving away couches. Thanks to Jon and Jonathan who helped me get them up the stairs! Another picture can be found on my gallery.

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later.

2005-10-23T01:45:00.000-05:00

Some poor kid got named google.

Arm Photon Torpedoes

2005-10-20T11:45:00.000-05:00

So, it's been 75+ days, and I still have not gotten back my security deposit from my former landlord. Chicago gives them 45 days, after which I can sue for double + legal expenses. I've called several times and gotten a different excuse each time, so the other day I sent a nastygram. Very polite, very professional, with a complete log of our communications (cell phones are cool!) and a Final Deadline. I gave him until the end of the month. If I don't have the check by then, it will be time to start asking my lawyer friends for a referral. I'd rather not have to go that route; it's nasty and time consuming. But I can't let this behavior continue, either.... Update: The deposit just showed up! It was two days after I mailed the other one, so he could have gotten that in time. Or maybe he sent it a bit earlier. There's no postmark on the envelope (weird) so I can't tell. I called to tell him that I received it. Moral: if you're going to do business, be organized. Not fulfilling terms of a contract looks the same whether it's by disorganization or malice.

Calling

2005-10-15T00:10:00.000-05:00

A friend recently asked about my sense of calling. Here's my reply. Wesley once said that if God would give him 100 people fully committed to following Him, then Wesley could change England. God did, and so he did. My pastor has a similar vision for Chicago. Whether or not he ends up being a Weslian figure, I want to be one of the 100. How that plays out is not all that specific. All I know (or think I know) is that I'm supposed to be in Chicago, and that I'm supposed to be me... striving always to be more like Christ and impact my surroundings by being more like Christ.

An old favorite

2005-10-13T15:29:00.000-05:00

I just discovered this link to the audio of the infamous WKRP Turkey Drop!

Three more years!

2005-09-02T14:51:00.000-05:00

Good news: I just got word that my contract has been renewed for another three years!

Modding the Kitchen, part 1

2005-08-30T19:35:00.000-05:00

About the only bad thing about my kitchen was the refrigerator. There's only one spot where it will really fit, which is fine---it's a good spot---but the hinges were on the wrong side of the door, so the opening of the door faced the wall. Very inconvenient, to say the least. One friend made a comment that the hinges can be reverse, though, so after some looking at the fridge, I decided to spend some quality time with my Craftsman tools. It took about 30 minutes, most of that was on one part. There were a lot of plastic screw-like thing that went in the ``other'' side. I pulled them out, and remounted the hinges there. The plastic things were a pain, because they clearly were meant to be inserted and never removed, so a couple of them got destroyed in the process. I don't think it will matter though; you wouldn't really notice unless you were looking for it. So now my fridge opens ``correctly''. And I have a few leftover fridge parts that I'm wondering what to do with. Next project: modding the coffee maker.

Brew 18 --- Irish Red

2005-08-19T17:46:00.000-05:00

First brew in the new apartment!

This is a standard from morebeer.com. Usually I add some red pepper and oak to turn it into a Burning Forest, but I decided to do something more normal this time. Yeah, I know. I'll be feeling better soon. John came over to watch, he's getting into the hobby soon.

I decided to try the V-Vessel for beer this time. It seems to be working, mostly. There seems to be a cone of sediment forming that didn't make it into the little ball at the bottom. I will probably try pushing it through with a wine paddle and see what happens.

One scare: I forgot to oxygenate the wort. After about 48 hours with no sign of fermentation, I decided that desperate times called for desperate measures, and oxygenated the wort. Fermentation started within an hour. Note that times are given in terms of time remaining for a 60 minute boil. Date of Brew: Saturday, August 13, 2005 Date of Bottling: Not yet! Ingredients

Malt Extracts 7 lbs Ultralight
Grains 1 lb Crystal 120L 8 oz Aromatic 8 oz Caramanich 2 oz Black Roasted Barley 2 oz Special 13
Hops 1 oz Magnum (Bittering, -60 mins) 2 oz Willamette (Flavoring, -5 mins)
Water Treatments Whirfloc (1)

Number of Gallons in Boil: 5 Boil Time: 60 mins Gallons in Fermenter: 4.5 Yeast: White Labs Clifornia Ale Quantity: 35 mL

The Move

2005-08-05T06:08:00.000-05:00

The Move is finally completed. Well, there's still a bucket of cleaning stuff at the old place, and I need to drop by there to give it a once-over before I hand in my keys. But all the stuff is in the new place. I hired movers this time. The new apartment is on the forth floor (SBC thinks it's the third floor; it must be one of those first floor/ground floor things) and I thought it would be much better to pay someone else to sweat and risk injury than to ask friends to do it. My friends all thought this a very good idea. I hired King David Moving and Storage, partly because of the cool name, partly because their rates seemed reasonable, partly because one of their competitors "forgot" to tell a friend that furniture wrapping would be an extra $120. They sent four guys over, who did an excellent job; they only took 3 hours to do everything. I learned a lot of neat tricks for moving by watching them, too... especially about how you can use tape to do move just about anything. Later when it was time to move the plants (I thought it best to move the plants myself), we bubble-wrapped the Cactus of Doom and put it into a granny cart. So to all of those who wondered how I was ever going to move the cactus, there's your answer. The new apartment is very nice. I just got the office and computer set up, and will be trying to get the bedroom and kitchen set up today. Well, at least started....

The New Building Owner

2005-07-20T13:40:00.000-05:00

Well, the new building owner just knocked on my door, and gave me his address. Turns out that he is not planning to condoify the building! I wish he'd said something earlier; I would have been able to stay here. Oh well, it seems this is what's meant to be. I am really looking forward to being in the new place, though, and having a real kitchen for once!

Ruby on Rails with Postgresql

2005-07-16T00:46:00.000-05:00

I've been learning a new system called Ruby on Rails; it's a pure object-oriented programming language with a web application interface. It is supposed to be able to do the kinds of things you get with all the cool google web applications like gmail and google maps. I was following the instructions on http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/01/20/rails.html and having a difficult time getting it to work, since the instructions are written for MySQL, and not Postgresql. It would come back with an error about column id not honoring the not null constraint. After playing around for a bit, I discovered the solution. Postgres needs to be given a sequence first in order to automatically fill in the id numbers. Here's the SQL code I used to create the database:

create sequence recipes_id_seq start 1;

create table recipes (
  id int primary key default nextval('recipes_id_seq'),
  title varchar(255),
  date date,
  instructions text);

This causes the ID numbers to be inserted correctly.

Brew 16 Bottled

2005-07-13T16:48:00.000-05:00

Brew #16 has been bottled! I got 27 bottles of Cabernet/Shiraz blend, (and one 500mL bottle) which should be "ready" in 1-3 months. I tried some; right now it tastes something like a Beaujolais Nouveau. The bottling and corking went very smoothly except for the little filler thingy; a couple times it got stuck---in the open position! Fortunately not much wine was lost. I'm not sure if it's the sediment that got stuck, or the divot in the bottom of the wine bottle, which caused the problem. I might use a Phil's Filler that I inherited when a friend left the hobby next time.

Found a new place!

2005-07-08T23:40:00.000-05:00

So on Wednesday I was at Galway Arms, and complained to one of the servers (Liz) that I had to move and was trying to find a new place. "Oh, did you know that Ian (the bartender) works for Apartment People?" He took down a few bits of information and said that he could get me something like that. Jack looked at my list of "Must Haves" and said that I was asking quite a bit.... Yeah, perhaps, but for the amount of money it costs to live someplace around here, I want to really like it. Well, the first place we saw I got to meet the landlord. He owns the building, and you can tell immediately that he really cares about the place. It has a very nice courtyard, and all the wood inside has been sanded down or replaced. He replaced all the pipes, and all the wiring. The kitchen even is quite new (that's very important)! The previous tenants had stayed there for three years, and were only leaving to buy a condo---another good sign. The specs: two bedrooms, one main room, all with south facing windows. Large closets, a back porch, bathroom closet. Oh, it has a dishwasher. I've never had one before... well, I did, but all that one did was spray the food off, spray it back on, then dry it onto the dishes. So I never used it. I think this one will be better. And, there's a very large tree in front of the windows. During the summer, the light is diffuse---this will keep the building cool. During the winter, all the leaves will be gone and the light will be quite strong, right when it will be most welcome. Those of you who know me well will not be surprised to learn that it's on the fourth floor, the top one available in this building. Here are some pictures; I didn't get to take pictures of the inside. You'll just have to visit me. Oh, the punchline....the building I live in now is about a 3 minute walk away. I looked all over the city for a place, and ended up almost right where I started!

I can stop when I want to....

2005-07-08T07:41:00.000-05:00

You are a Black Coffee

At your best, you are: low maintenance, friendly, and adaptable At your worst, you are: cheap and angsty You drink coffee when: you can get your hands on it Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

Ravinia

2005-07-02T20:29:00.000-05:00

I went to Ravinia with Ji to hear music inspired by Don Qixote. The music was great, and the weather was perfect for a picnic in the park. During the picnic, she insisted that I take this picture and ask people what they think it is. :-)

Brew 17 -- Extra Special Bitter

2005-07-02T10:45:00.000-05:00

This is an morebeer.com kit for the Extra Special Bitter. No modifications were made to this recipe, mainly because the last two heavily modified versions I gave to my bartender didn't go so well. So, I decided to make something more normal that she might like. Heidi, John, and Laura came over to watch. John is starting to get into the hobby, so we were hoping to give him an idea of how to get started. The brew went very well; no surprises, no panicked contingencies. Note that times are given in terms of time remaining for a 60 minute boil. Date of Brew: July 1, 2005 Estimated Date of Bottling: July 15, 2005 Ingredients

Malt Extracts 7lbs Ultralight Malt
Grains 8 oz Crystal 40L 8 oz Honey Malt 4 oz Special Roast
Hops 1 oz Magnum Hops (-60 min, bittering) 2 oz Kent Golding Hops (-5 min, flavoring) 2 oz Kent Golding Hops (-1 min, flavoring)
Water Treatments Whirfloc (1)

Number of Gallons in Boil: 5 Boil Time: 60 mins Original Specific Gravity: 1.045 Expected Final Specific Gravity: 1.011 Expected Alcohol Content: 4.42 Gallons in Fermenter: 5 Temperature of Wort at Pitching of Yeast: Room Yeast: White Labs English Ale Yeast (#WLP002) Quantity: 35 mL Time of Pitching: 22:30

Trip Report: California 2005

2005-06-22T10:19:00.000-05:00

I went to California to attend Matt and Tina's wedding. Of course, since weddings don't actually take that long (the actual ceremony, that is--the planning is another matter, but I didn't have to do any of the planning), I spent a lot of time with other friends as well.

Adventures on the ATA: Kintergarden in the Sky

I left on Friday morning out of Midway. The plane wes full, holding about 250 people, and left at 7:00 am. From where I was sitting in the back, I could see seven little kids. I think there were more that I couldn't see. They were well organized... they took turns crying so that someone was always making sure that this important task got done. Two of the kids only knew how to communicate by screaming, so that's what they did. I didn't mind it all very much, actually, I mean, they're kind of cute... But the lady I was sitting next to had a different take on it. "I hate kids" she muttered several times. She really wanted off that plane. "Maybe if I tell them I'm a terrorist, they'll stop the plane and let me off." Okay, so maybe I should say that I saw eight children, not seven. Do people really forget that they were once kids, too?

Uncle Mattox

I was met at the airport by Jan and Jubi. Jon was at work at the time, so he met up with us later. Jubi (who just turned two) had a doctor's appointment that morning, so we went there. Jan said I could come in with them (she didn't want me to be bored in the waiting room). There was a new doctor that day; the usual doctor for Jubi was on maternity leave. She went over the growth chart, asked a bunch of "is development going smoothly" type of questions, and gave a lot of advice about things to try next. She looked at her growth chart and commented "well, she's very small, but you two are both petite so she'll probably be short for the rest of her life anyway". Neither of us bothered to correct her, so she'll be very confused when Jon comes next time. :-) After that we went to a Pho restaurant, visited their home off of a small lake, and had afternoon tea. We spent a lot of time playing with Jubi as well. For a two-year-old she has an amazing vocabulary! That evening, Jon came home and we all went out to a Malaysian restaurant called Baba Neo, in Mountainview. Their food and service is very good, I'd go there again. Conveniently, it was located just a few minutes away from Nicole and Glen's place, where I stayed during my trip.

The Wedding

The wedding was held in a beautiful church just outside San Jose. The windows are all glass, I wonder how anyone can pay attention to the service? The reception was fun. I got to see Sam Abraham, and Steve Kilgore. Nicole and Glen were there, too. Matt and Tina did a first dance that had everyone asking them for lessons.

Hakone Gardens

The next day I went to church with Nicole and Glen. After that, Nicole took me to the Hakone Gardens. In many respects it looks like many other Japanese gardens I've been to. Nice presentation, some water, tea rooms. One thing I noticed that's different about this garden is the incredible variety of bamboo they had. There were many different kinds there. We then came back, picked up Glen, and we went to a sandwich shop called Plutos, in Palo Alto. It had a very Chicago feel to it. It also had a wall with the names of all kinds of Space/Sci-Fi personalities... the kinds of names that geeks would know. Glen and I knew all but one of them, which I looked up on Google from my phone, thereby ensuring our geek status is safe. After that, we went to the Tied House in Mountainview. I got to try a small flight of their beer, and get a souvenier logo glass to take home. Glen and I agreed that their dark beers were the best.

San Francisco

The next day I took the Cal Train to San Francisco. It had a very metra-like feel to it. The ride cost $4.95, a bit more than a comparable Metra ride would have cost, I think. I met Vicki at the Sony Metreon. For the second time, I got to be Uncle Matt. We went to the Yerba Garden next door and Vicki had me ride the merry-go-round with Wesley while she took pictures. Wesley has a lot of energy. We went to Chinatown, and then Vicki and Wesley had to get home. So I stayed in Chinatown for a few more hours, had dinner at a nice but touristy restaurant. (Bad sign: almost no locals there!) Next time I'll research a bit more before coming. All in all, a fun trip!

Trip Report: Chicago 2005

2005-06-16T10:16:00.000-05:00

My parents and niece came over to visit last week! The weather was not the best---very hot and humid most of the time; but it was clear most of the time so I really can't complain. We went to the Millenium Park, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Field Museum, and one day while I was at work my parents went to a lighthouse in Evanston. My niece really loves the CTA. She drew all kinds of pictures of the Chicago El stop.

Gotta Move....

2005-06-16T10:11:00.000-05:00

Well, I got confirmation from the landlord last night; they're selling the building, so now I have to move. On the one hand, I'm bummed, because I really like my unit; not to mention that I hate moving. On the other hand, it's an opportunity. Maybe I'll get a nice veiw of the City or the Lake. Or maybe a basement in which to keep my brewing supplies or my tarantulas.

Chocolate!

2005-06-11T00:53:00.000-05:00

My friend Jane has been in town for a conference, and Heidi organized a trip to the Chocolate Bar at the Peninsula Hotel. They have an all-you-can-eat chocolate buffet. Good chocolate and good friends... hard to beat that combination!

The buffet itself had all kinds of chocolate treats... Raspberry chocolate, creme brule, hot white chocolate, chocolate covered pretzels, white chocolate chips with dried fruit, chocolate covered strawberries... I think you see the theme by now.

Adventures on the CTA #6 -- Truth in Advertising

2005-05-21T23:34:00.000-05:00

You may have heard that there's been quite a stink with the CTA lately over a lack of funding, with all kinds of dire consequences promised if they don't get more money---routes cut, all trains running on Sunday schedule, that kind of thing. Someone added some text to a sign on the Red Line poster. The text that the CTA put on it said "Learn how to cut your commuting costs by up to %40!" (by using pre-tax transit dollars from your employer). Someone taped some paper underneath that said "And we'll cut your service by up to %40!". :-/ (It would be funny, except for the minor detail that it might be true!)

Brew #16 Has Begun!

2005-05-11T17:03:00.000-05:00

I got a new toy...

It's called a V-Vessel. It's supposed to make brewing a lot simpler, because you don't have to transfer the wort from one vessel to another all the time. When you would normally have done a transfer (to move the fermenting wine/beer off the sediment) you simply remove the ball at the bottom (remember to close the valve first!!), dump it out, resanitize, and add it back in.

More pictures are on my Brew 16 Album.

Adventures on the Shangahai Transit

2005-04-10T03:42:00.000-05:00

Here's a special edition of Adventures on the CTA. I'm up late at night, absolutely wide awake because of jet lag, because of my trip to Shanghai. To pass the time I thought I'd tell a CTA like story. Here are a few pictures of the Shanghainese equivalent of the El. The first thing to notice is the TV set on the tunnel. It tells you when the next train is coming. Very cool! The subway is also very popular here. Here's a picture of what greeted my when I was about to get on the subway during rush hour. Dive in! In all, though, their system is very clean, and it only costs 2-4 RMB (25 - 50 cents!) to ride. And when it's not rush hour, it's not nearly so crowded. The other cool thing I got to do was ride the maglev train to the airport. I didn't get many pictures, but the inside looks like an airplane. It takes 7.5 minutes to get from the city to the airport. Finally, I'll leave you all with this imporant safety tip from the Shanghai public transit.

Adventures on the CTA #5 --- Perverts and Heros

2005-03-26T00:38:00.000-06:00

Wednesday I was riding back at night on the Red Line (never a dull moment, as one rider that night put it). One very foul-mothed pervert with a camera phone was trying to take pictures of this one woman, who was clearly not happy about it. The only place she could really be was by the doors, so she could at least look away from the pervert. Meanwhile, he was harassing her and swearing up a storm. My first instinct was to pray that God would thwart his plans. Within 1 second, a man with a newspaper stood up, walked to where the pervert was sitting, and stood between him and the woman, causally reading his newspaper like nothing else was going on. The pervert wasn't very happy, but it's not like he could say anything. Thought one: it's nice to see there are people who are willing to intervene. Thought two: why didn't I think of that? Next time I'll know what to do. Thought three: Praying for strangers has special rewards.

Adventures on the CTA #4 --- Not the best way to wake up.

2005-02-11T11:54:00.000-06:00

This morning I was taking a nap on the red line on the way to work. I woke up to the sound of someone puking on the floor behind me. Needless to say, I went to the other side of the car. Yuck!

Adventures on the CTA #3 -- They want me to report what?

2004-12-20T03:03:00.000-06:00

So, in a post-9/11 world, we are told to be on the alert for all kinds of things... unattended packages, for example. On the CTA busses, we are told to report to the driver if we see "anything unusual". Um... hello?.... If I said something everytime I saw something unusual on the CTA I don't think we'd be able to get very far!

Adventures on the CTA #2 -- Christmas on the CTA

2004-12-18T07:10:00.000-06:00

The other day I got on a bus that was all wrapped up inside.Â Shiny paper down the poles, gifts piled up on the side next to the door.Â The bus driver gave me a candy cane when I paid my fare.

Adventures on the CTA, Back-Issue #1 -- Stupid Robber Tricks

2004-12-01T23:07:00.000-06:00

Whenever a week goes by with no new adventures, I'll tell a story that happened in the past year. Eventually I'll run out, but that should take a while---it's the number of stories that inspired me to write this, after all. Perhaps the most disturbing thing I heard on the El was when three people got on the train and sat just behind me. The two directly behind me seemed to be a couple having quite a spat. As near as I can tell, ettiquette in these situations is to pretend not to notice. It was actually pretty annoying to have to listen to all of that, but it began to get interesting when the woman started complaining about how what they did was not how it went in the "dry run". Meanwhile the man was exasperatedly trying to explain to his lady friend that if she did not feel comfortable with things, she should have said so earlier. After a few more minutes, it starts to become clear that they are arguing over who's fault it was, exactly, that the robbery they had just committed ended up being a complete failure. Lady: Yeah, and now they have my description! Man 1: Now they have all of our descriptions! Man 2: Guys! Not on the train! I decided to get off and switch cars before they came to their senses and decided that they had to kill all the witnesses. Unfortunately, when I got off I was not in cell phone range in time to report this, but I suspect with this level of competence, they'll be caught soon enough.

Adventures on the CTA #1 -- We're All Friends Here

2004-11-23T17:27:00.000-06:00

I love riding the CTA. It's a lot cheaper than owning a car, and you get to see all kinds of strange things. Today, when I got on the Red Line and sat down, and a woman next to me said "You know, I've must have seen you on the train at least 4 times. I figure I should introduce myself. My name is V---." The funny thing is, just a few days ago I had been thinking about how someone said of New York City that you will walk by all kinds of people who you have never seen before, and would never see again. I guess Chicago is not New York.