| Friday, March 9th, 2012 |
| 11:07 am |
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| Monday, December 19th, 2011 |
| 8:54 pm |
Sous Vide Cooker
 I finally put together the pieces I had bought late last month and built myself a sous vide cooker. I based it largely on this project. I've done a couple of simple experiments in sous vide cooking by just using a cooler and maintaining temperature by adding small amounts of boiling water as necessary. This is tedious and difficult to maintain precise temperature, but it worked well enough that I decided that it was worth pursuing further. I am very happy with the results that I got today; a simple chuck roast cooked for about 20 hours at 57°C followed by 10 minutes in a 500°F oven ( Some people swear by 48 hours and I could imagine that being good). The cooker itself is made from the following: - a cooler
- a temperature controller
- a waterproof pt100 thermister
- a 300w immersion heater
- a small fountain pump
- and ancillary components like wire nuts, an acrylic project box and some aluminum bits to build a frame to mount parts to in the cooler
Including shipping costs, all of these components can be had for about $75-100. Given my results today I'll likely be using this regularly. Sadly I have no images of the roast but I give you my word that it was quite tasty and did not survive long in the face of my family. |
| Monday, November 28th, 2011 |
| 9:37 pm |
Kennedy Space Center
On reading the (fairly expensive) ticket to get into the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, I noticed the statement: "KSC Visitor Complex is entirely supported by its visitors. No tax dollars are used to fund the facilities, staff or operations." Maybe this makes me a socialist or something, but I find this to be utterly abhorrent. According to the article above, it is operated by a private entity, Delaware North Companies. Basically we're putting a lot of US history and (taxpayer funded) spacecraft behind a substantial, privately owned, paywall. |
| 11:49 am |
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| Wednesday, November 16th, 2011 |
| 7:37 pm |
I find it disturbingly ironic that the Occupy UC Berkeley protest was violently put down by UC Police last week in the location the university eventually dedicated to Mario Savio for his speech on that spot in 1964 advocating civil disobedience in support of the free speech movement. Of course at the time the school was strongly opposed, similar to how they now seem to be opposed to the occupy movement. |
| Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 |
| 8:58 pm |
Juggling Image
So apparently people seem to like the picture that ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7) perspicuity took of me some years back juggling torches at an End of Summer tm party. To the point that a google image search for "juggling torches" currently shows it in position two and it's in the top twenty on a search for "juggling". So people see it and hot link to it. Or make a copy of it. Of course they're using the large version of the image even though they might only be using it for a thumbnail. Presumably people have been using this image for a while if it's where it is in the search engines. I'm seriously considering making a referrer rule for the cracked web page and have people who view the image there see something else. Otherwise I'm not really sure what to think of this. |
| Sunday, October 9th, 2011 |
| 11:07 pm |
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| Monday, September 26th, 2011 |
| 8:04 am |
I can count on one hand the number of times I've gone out running since elementary school, including today(yesterday, a glass of wine was spilled into my laptop while this was being edited, thus this posting was postponed for a few hours) when I ran the 5K version of Pittsburgh's "The Great Race". I think I could have run farther but I don't think I could have managed the 10K without walking some of it. I managed a time of 27:04 or 8:40/mile for just over 3 miles which seems decent enough. |
| Tuesday, September 6th, 2011 |
| 9:54 am |
I'm getting really depressed about seeing "Never Forget" being plastered everywhere. Holding grudges (especially when it becomes a national policy) gets us nowhere. |
| Thursday, August 11th, 2011 |
| 9:08 pm |
 Click image to embiggenThese are three sizes of the same wrench purchased over the last 15 years. I'm amused how the logoing and the finish has changed. The top one is just a chrome finish, the bottom two have different variations on a bead blasted finish. I think I bought the top one about 15 years ago, the middle, probably 6-8 years ago and I bought the bottom one today. I think I like the logoing on the middle one best. |
| Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 |
| 11:24 am |
 (edited to use a smaller image since some people objected to one that was slightly larger) |
| Wednesday, May 18th, 2011 |
| 3:14 pm |
Scripts Page
As someone who has programmed for most of his life, I've generated lots of short scripts and small programs that I've found useful in my day to day world. I've long had a small programming page where I put a few of my projects but it never held much. In the past couple of months I've started adding lots of the smaller scripts that I use regularly. Most of them I think very little of as far as programming goes but they're useful to me and so who knows, they might be useful to other people. The page itself can be found here: http://xuth.net/programming/Most are probably not useful for the non-technical user though many could probably be set up for one. Most at least require Perl but that isn't such a huge barrier to entry. Two that I know other people have found useful are running and can be used through my web server: I don't know how much the rest of these would be useful to most people but I'd be curious to hear from you if they are. |
| Friday, February 11th, 2011 |
| 11:36 am |
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| Sunday, February 6th, 2011 |
| 10:45 pm |
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| Saturday, January 22nd, 2011 |
| 11:41 pm |
I've always known that having an ice cream maker wasn't going to save me any money when it came to having ice cream. But it's disheartening when I calculate that it costs $4 to make a quart of chocolate ice cream (prorated buying cream at costco and chocolate at TJ's). On the other hand prior to making this recipe, I didn't like chocolate ice cream. |
| Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 |
| 2:20 pm |
Right now, I'm jealous of the many people on my friends list who are really good with a sewing machine. Just saying. |
| Sunday, January 9th, 2011 |
| 10:53 pm |
Here's a page of a bunch of stereo images I took at Hocking Hills when I was there over christmas. It was very nice to get away from the world over both christmas and new years. |
| Saturday, January 8th, 2011 |
| 1:55 pm |
Pocket Belt
 I made this for blk as a (somewhat late) christmas present. The main pockets have magnetic "clasps" and under the green strip at the top is a zipper into the backing where there are pockets. On one the back pocket is shallow for keys/credit cards/money etc. The other is intended to be large enough to hold a 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" booklet but that's a bit tight. |
| Tuesday, January 4th, 2011 |
| 3:41 pm |
 Inspecting the ice under the waterfall at Ash Cave. On Saturday when this was taken the temperatures had reached the upper 50's and the snow and ice was melting quite fast. |
| Monday, January 3rd, 2011 |
| 9:11 pm |
I decided to experiment with an HDR panographic image of Rock Bridge. It's not a great image but it's still pretty neat.  For a sense of scale, it is about 50 feet across underneath and large enough that there is something of a trail across it. |
