Begin the evacuation

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

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!

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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....

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

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

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

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.