Category: food

Fun Day

Published July 5, 2008

Today has been a fun day. First the bike ride, then hanging out with #mi2600 folks and going to see the Clawson fireworks. Now Danielle will be here soon and I can get snuggley hugs. Yay!

The only thing I didn’t do well today was eat. After the bike ride food I ended up eating a large fry from Wendy’s, then a bunch of random junk at the party. Tomorrow I definitely have to eat something more in line with what I normally consume. Curry and rice should be on the menu, if possible. For now, though: bed. I’m profanely tired.

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Work is 15.4 Miles Away via Bike

Published July 4, 2008

On the Fourth of July I rode to work, then up to Lake Orion, then back home. Total of about 56.5 miles. Since Google Earth would only save this as a blank black image I had to take a screenshot instead.

I’ve been curious how far it is to work via the safe route (no riding on high speed roads), so today I tried it and found out: 15.4 miles.

After getting to work I used the bathroom, refilled one water bottle, ate a food bar, then rode up Squirrel to Tienken, down to the Paint Creek Trail, up to Lake Orion, then back home. Google Earth (even the latest version as of today) wouldn’t save the displayed route out as an image, so what you see above is a screenshot.

If you’d like to see this route for yourself, here is 04-Jul-2008.kmz and here it is in Google Maps. There is an odd mis-track there, which I don’t quite understand, but it seems that my GPS occasionally figures itself to be somewhere it isn’t.

Total food consumed before and during the ride was:

· 1 each GU Energy Gel in Chocolate Outrage and Lemon Sublime flavors. The Chocolate Outrage and Vanilla Bean (both with 100mg caffeine) are my preferred flavors of these.
· Approx. 1 cup of mixed golden raisins and raw almonds.
· Vegan Organic Food Bar (These are very, very good. Sort of like a nut and fruit smoothie paste in a bar.)
· Four hard boiled egg whites, some overly salty hot smoked salmon, vanilla yogurt with granola, an english muffin with olive oil and black pepper, and a pint of coffee (this was the before-ride breakfast).

The stats for today’s ride are, per the bike computer:

Total Distance: 56.55 Miles
Moving Average Speed: 13.3 MPH
Maximum Speed: 25.9 MPH
Moving Time: 4:13’54

This is the longest ride I’ve been on, particularly if one figures during my last 50 mile ride I stopped at home, ate a pile of leftover Thai food, packed some stuff up for shipping at the post office, then set out again. The only time I stopped for a period of time today was at work (~10 minutes) and to sit in downtown Lake Orion in a park and eat nuts and raisins (~15 minutes).

Now to shower, eat something, and figure out where I’m going to end up this evening. Party invitations are three deep, and all sound very good. I’ll consult with Danielle (who is at her house at one of the parties) first.

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New Coffee Cup

Published June 29, 2008

Bodum 16 oz Travel Mug, part number 10659-01B (left) to replace my aging, older Bodum travel mug which has developed leaks between the insulating walls.

Almost every morning I grind some coffee then brew it using an Aerobie Aeropress (photo of mine here). Back in 2000 (or so) I purchased an interesting tea press / travel mug at a Starbucks, made by Bodum in Switzerland, and the cup from this is what I use to carry the coffee with me to work or whatnot. (When drinking the coffee at home I just use a pint glass with an insulating cardboard ring around it.) After all the use the Bodum travel cup has received the seal between the two walls have stared to fail and, as can be seen above coffee, has begun slowly seeping in.

A couple weeks back I finally ordered a replacement cup, and that’s the new Bodum 16 oz Travel Mug seen above. I’m a bit disappointed that it feels to be of cheaper construction than the current one, and I can’t help but correlate it’s Chinese origins with the cheap feeling of the cup, especially when feeling the older (but failing) cup’s construction and reading the now-rare MADE IN SWITZERLAND stamp on the bottom.

Overall the design of the cup seems a bit better, with a nicer gasket system along the top and a more positive screw-close mechanism. Hopefully it’ll work well.

New to this mug is the ability to insert stuff between the walls, as demonstrated by the Bodum-logo’d paper currently inserted there. I think I’m going to duplicate this, but instead of photos I’ll do something interesting with transparency. It will be a bit complicated because the top and bottom are curved slightly, but hopefully I’ll be able to pull some geometry out of the air and properly duplicate it.

As part of this new artwork I think I’ll incorporate a solid band to ensure that when the cup is placed in the Flavia machine at work that its IR sensor can see that my cup is there. (Normally it just sees through clear cups and fails to dispense, so I have to hold my thumb over the sensor.) I think some sort of caffeine-based theme could be interesting as well, including graduating the cup with markings indicating how much caffeine is present in the remaining beverage, based on the presumption that there is 150mg of caffeine in 8 oz of coffee. Or… maybe something else. I’m not sure yet.

Tomorrow morning I’ll give the cup its first go, and hopefully piece together some manner of artwork sometime later this week. I’m really sleepy, so I think that for now I’ll just take out the trash and go to bed.

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New Belgium’s 1554

Published June 17, 2008

Tonight’s beer is New Belgium’s 1554, which is listed as an “Enlightened Black Ale”. It’s made by the same company which makes the oft-mentioned (and overhyped, I’ve been told) Fat Tire.

This beer is quite good once appropriately chilled, and if I could get it in Michigan I’d probably buy it again. For now I’ll just enjoy this last glass of it figuring I won’t be getting more any time soon. (For reference, this was purchased at Cub Foods in Peoria, IL on Saturday night, along with some Soy Sauce, locally made crispy cheesey junk food things, an apple, and some muffins.)

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Flowers for 2008

Published May 23, 2008

Since the weather is finally consistently nice, while out shipping Ivan’s P3 back to him Danielle and I stopped off at Deneweth’s and I picked up some celosia, coleus, and three kinds of chilis. These have been planted out front along with last year’s rosemary plant, which was kept indoors during the winter.

Instead of salvia, as I’ve normally placed in the rectangular concrete boxes along the edge of the porch, I put some nice, furry red celosia. The area around the tree has two colors of coleus in it, and the skinny plastic box along the edge of the porch has three different kinds of chilis, all of which I hope to eventually add to the garlic / chili / salt fermented concoction that I’ve had living in the pantry.

I then washed the chairs and table on the porch and rinsed the dust / poop / seeds / whatever off the porch, so it’s nice and clean and ready for summer.

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Colin Fraser Saves The Day

Published May 14, 2008

R20 replaced with a 10K part, per Colin Fraser's suggestion, in an attempt to alleviate the issues with the LCD.

When I woke this morning I had received a response from Colin Fraser in regards to the problem mentioned in this post. He mentioned two things: the issue isn’t likely to be caused by timing because he specifically checks for the LCD to be available before writing to it, and that he has seen an issue where the transistor which enables the R/W line of the LCD doesn’t have enough gain. To increase this gain he suggested replacing the 22K resistor at R20 with a 10K part.

I did so as can be seen above and this is the result: a P3 displaying things properly. Thanks, Colin!

Now I just have to do a little bit more testing (I’m paranoid about these things), then I can pack up the P3 and send it back to Ivan. Of course, that will come after dinner. Danielle is in the kitchen with where they are making making naan and Mattar Paneer with this recipe from Manjula’s Kitchen. I’m looking forward to a very tasty dinner.

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La Jalisciense Corn Tortillas

Published May 7, 2008

A fresh corn tortilla from La Jalisciense in Detroit cooking on the stove with some shredded cheese on it. What a wonderful dinner / snack.

On Monday Danielle was in Detroit while her mom was having some stuff done at the hospital, so she swung by Mexicantown and picked up some La Jalisciense flour and corn tortillas.

One of these corn tortillas toasted on the stove, with a bit of cheese, makes for an absolutely wonderful late dinner / evening snack. I can’t stop eating them. Now to go make more, except this next one will be flour, I think…

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Flat New Holland Beer: The Poet

Published May 6, 2008

Yesterday while Danielle was over I picked up a six pack of New Holland’s beer The Poet. I’m happy because Meijer is now carrying it, which makes it easy to pick up for enjoying with dinner. Unfortunately, all but one or two bottles of this beer seem to be as flat as you can see up above. There’s just no head / foam on it at all.

After finding the contact page on New Holland’s site I emailed Isaac Hartman, who is listed as the Ambassador of Great Beer (Sales). Hopefully he’ll respond and, at the very least, do what he can to ensure that their beer at Meijer is better in the future.

As this beer tastes pretty sweet, I’m figuring that it didn’t bottle condition right. Maybe New Holland gave Meijer a few cases of them expecting them to age a bit in the store room or on the shelf and instead they just went into refrigeration. Or… who knows. It’s definitely not right, though.

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Southern Tier’s Back Burner

Published April 29, 2008

Souther Tier's Back Burner Barley Wine poured into a glass.

Things have been a bit boring around here lately, with me working at my job, working on the new server, riding my bike, and trying to relax a bit, so I just thought I’d post this photo of Souther Tier‘s Back Burner, a decent (and quite hoppy) barleywine which I drank while watching The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou with Danielle on Sunday night.

Today I got GEOM-based disk mirroring working on banstyle.nuxx.net, but in doing so I realized that the on-board SiI3114 controller only supports SATA/150 (aka SATA I) and thusly no NCQ, which disappointed me. To remedy this I ordered part number N82E16816104007 from Newegg.com, a Koutech PSA421 4-Channel Serial ATA & Serial ATA II 64-bit PCI Host Controller which appears to be a reference (or very standard) implementation of the SiI3124 PCI/PCI-X to 4 Port SATA300 chipset. This should fit in the one usable slot in the case and provide the SATA interface that I really want. I just wish it’d arrive sooner.

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/mode +w #beer

Published April 23, 2008

Victory's Hop Wallop poured into a glass. It's a somewhat syrupy, very hoppy beer. I like it.

Tonight I ended up staying at work until about 8:20pm helping a coworker out with something. It’s not set and he’s on vacation tomorrow, so I’ll end up working on it too. Ah well.

Since I got home too late to go ride my bike I ended up boxing up Ivan’s P3, making a frozen pizza, then watching some TiVo’d stuff and WTVS-HD before wandering back up here to my computer. So, why did I box up the P3? Well, remember the failing PLED post? Yep, it’s bad. While the first one didn’t display very well, the second doesn’t display at all.

I had actually emailed the pictures of the questionable display (1, 2) to the tech support people at Crystalfontz to see if what I was seeing really is indicative of a failing PLED. One of the tech support people replied, confirming that it is what I thought, and suggesting a replacement display. If you’d like to read the whole thread between the tech support person and I, it’s archived as a PNG here.

So, now Ivan is sorting out grabbing a new LCD and then I’ll get back to work on his P3. For now I’ve boxed it up and it’s sitting in a safe place, above ground level, not below any water pipes.

My next (current?) project is now a set of PCBs similar to the RS232 to Eaton Leonard Level Shifter boards which I did last year, but instead accepting ~7VDC – ~40VDC (or straight 5VDC) for the power, with the conversion being handled by a reference implementation of a switching supply. (This is the supply whose ripple is shown here.) The parts are ordered for the first run of them, I just need to wait until they arrive, confirm the footprints, order the PCBs, test, and build.

But for now? I rest.

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