Silicon Valley Redneck

Avian entertainment

Tinga seems to need a more stimulating environment.

In a new effort to make her life more interesting, in a way that doesn't involve having her cling to my shirt while I'm trying to work, I decided to repurpose the Chumby from alarm clock to bird entertainer.

OK, so look for something to put on the screen.  How about this one: "Neotropical Birds."  Sounds good, even if the picture are mostly of little tweety birds.

Now for some audio.  Main reason for using the Chumby is that classical radio has become unavailable around here, so for a classical station one must resort to internet radio.  Lessee... Shoutcast... "Venice Classic Radio" sounds like a good one to try.  Set it up, hit play, and hear the middle of something by Respighi.

No prize for guessing which piece by Respighi... think I picked the right channel?

Anyway, we shall see if that keeps her amused at all.  Maybe eventually I'll set up a cage-mountable peckscreen computer and let her change the channel, play video games, etc.

(Might actually be a good use for one of those crappy-cheap Android mini-tablets.  I'm not sure a capacitive touchscreen would work with a beak anyway, and it's not like she's going to use multitouch, so the resistive sensor might even be advantageous.  Just so she doesn't spend her days playing Nyancat.)

Goofy ideas, tossed out

Idea #1: we've all heard of the old-time traveling medicine show.  Imagine, if you will, a traveling forensic medicine show.

Idea #2: for the neighbor who has a disgustingly flat lawn that could pass for a duckweed-covered pond, a novelty item: the eyes and snout of an alligator to poke above the surface.

 

Sometimes, it's worth trying stupid stuff.

I've finally gotten around to rummaging through my copy of The Lost Art of Real Cooking.

The material on yeast, and the differing strains thereof, set me a-thinkin'.  Catching and taming wild yeasts, as suggested in the book, seemed a bit much work, and I wasn't quite ready to try using probiotic pills as leavening (apparently some of the bacteria in those might be appropriate), but I figured a stop at a brewers' supply store might yield interesting material, both yeast strains and fermentibles.

So, having errands to the north this morning, I swung by More Beer! in Los Altos.

The salesman insisted that beer yeasts are as inappropriate for bread as bread yeasts are for beer, and that I wouldn't like the results.  Still, I bought a couple of packets of different varieties of dry yeast.

Home again, and experiment at making a mini-loaf of Boring White Bread with ale yeast.  (I'd expect to use it in Interesting Mutigrain Bread, but wanted to find out what flavor it would bring.)

So: warm water, bit of sugar, sprinkling of yeast, stir, add white whole wheat flour until it starts getting doughy, spritz canola oil over the top, leave it sitting someplace warm for a while.  OK, seems to be rising a bit.  Add a bit of salt and some more canola oil, stir well, dump into a mini-loaf pan.  Let rise for, I guess, an hour and a half.  Bake.

The top of the loaf collapsed.  Well, I had taken the incredibly-lazy approach; it wasn't even remotely properly kneaded.

Let cool a bit, slice, sniff.  Smells OK, not like white bread, but certainly like a fermented grain product, and not disgusting like beer.  Apply butter and eat.  Yum.

So:

• Ale yeast does in fact work for making bread.
• The resulting bread has more character than the other ingredients would account for.
• It doesn't come out tasting like beer.
• It does come out tasting like unusual, but good, bread.

Maybe tomorrow I'll make a proper loaf of interesting bread.

(Bread: it's like solid beer!)

Footnote: Joy says it smells like beer, and doesn't want to taste it.

Footnote 2: small doses. I don't think all the, er, volatile organic compounds cooked out of this stuff.  "We never eat bread, for they make it with yeast, and one little bite turns a man to a beast.  Oh, can you imagine a sadder disgrace than a man in the gutter with crumbs on his face?"

Update: solid beer, yeah.  I dunno what the actual VOC content of that stuff was, but I had a long afternoon nap, then stayed up late, then had a largely sleepless night with my brain whirring randomly.  Not my normal reaction to a small dose of alcohol, and there's no way it was really a large dose, so I suppose there must have been some other post-Thanksgiving metabolic weirdness enhancing the effects.

I think I need to change the process in various ways next time I try that.  Notably: more exposed surface area while baking.

 

Handy workshop tip

Having done a lot of tapping (i.e.: threading the insides of holes) the past couple of weeks, and still not having gotten around to acquiring a tapping head so's I could mechanize the process, I was developing a case of sore wrist muscles.

Inspiration struck!  I grabbed my handy VSR drill-driver, set the overload clutch sort of low-ish, stuck the tap in the chuck (with vigorous tightening), and hey presto!  Forward, bzzint, reverse, bzzout, done!  Sometimes takes a couple of reversals and restarts when working with thick material.

Seems to work fine for #4-40 through #10-32.  Probably good for a size or two larger or smaller, though for #0-80 I think I'd stick with the manual tap wrench unless I had a lot of holes to deal with.  I'm guessing ¼ NPT would probably overwhelm the typical home-workshop drill, besides not fitting in the chuck (minor detail, that).

 

How to save President Beeblebrox's re-election prospects

Really, it's all about the jobs, innit?

So what can the President do to create new jobs for Americans, and to bring back the jobs that have long since gone overseas?

Simple: start a land war in Asia.

I had the idea, early in his term, that he'd eventually launch a war of conquest and/or plunder, but such a profitable war turns out not to be necessary.  Nor need the war be short and victorious (as the one in Libya was presumably meant to be); indeed, one that drags on interminably is best.

Think: any serious war, as opposed to a collection of small wars (or dynamic contingency operations, or whatever) creates jobs for citizens, both as cannon fodder and toiling in the factories.  It also provides cover for austerity measures: we all have to make sacrifices for the war effort, and if Lady Macbeth can give up two of her $10 million vacations this year (to areas which are now at war anyway), then Grandma can sacrifice her Social Security check, no?

And!  With trade disrupted, and China likely on the other side in the war, all the manufacturing that's moved overseas will have to come home!

Even after the war winds down, we could find ourselves back in the 1950s, with all the other industrial powers bombed back to the Stone Age and our factories largely intact.  Also, our restless, trouble-making young male population would have been conveniently thinned out.

Heck, he might even get a third term!

 

Idea!

Quoth Verity Stob:

Perhaps HP also makes fire safes. Which talk. And run WebOS. Perhaps you will soon be able to nab a cheap one in an HP fire safe fire sale.

Hmmm... has anyone made an Android safe yet?  Or an iSafe?

There would be so many ways to interact with such a thing.  Like, you need to kill the pigs in a particular order before the safe will open.  And then speak the password, in a voice it recognizes.  Or write the combination, in your own handwriting.

I should probably be putting this in a patent application rather than a blog post, but it's not like I'll have time to work on it any time soon anyway.

 

I need better tinfoil.

Another of my ideas has been Stolen Right Out Of My Very Brain!

Well, sort of.  Usually, it's a case of someone at IBM having the same idea at the same time, and having the resources to do something about it.

This time, it's the Kamikaze Drone... an idea I had back in the 90s, as a key plot element in a novel I never got around to writing, somewhat along Day of the Jackal lines.

Mine was a bit spiffier, though.  Didn't have loiter time like Aerovironment's new toy; rather, it was placed ahead of time within what would later become a secured perimeter, and operated from a location outside the perimeter, using frequencies that wouldn't be jammed (because of being used by emergency services, TV crews, etc.); flew fairly quickly to a location high above the target; and, for final attack, shed most of its wings and executed a supersonic power dive, delivering a small fragmentation warhead to explode at waist level.  Could have launched from a rooftop hangarette disguised as an air-conditioning duct, possibly using JATO (think model-rocket engines).

I think the premise was that the one used by the assassin was homebuilt, but that the government had secretly developed something almost identical, so when the hero happened to be in the right place at the right time to hear the little engine spooling up, he realized exactly what was going on.

Thing is, I didn't come up with a way for him to foil the plot once the thing launched.  That kinda gummed up the ending, which is one reason I didn't write the novel (the others being lack of time, and lack of talent).

I guess the Hollywood approach would be for the hero to use his smartphone (in the 1990s, any handy computer) to hack into the drone's guidance system.  That works, right?

 

Never need a button sewed on

Well, it looks like Ambulance Driver is getting a lot of guys to wear kilts this month.  For those on a budget, he's even gone so far as to publish helpful info on do-it-yerself kilts.

The campaign doesn't draw me in this year, though; my DIY project at the moment is made of aluminum and steel and pillow blocks and an electric motor and some electronics and firmware, and I need it for work, and I'm (at the moment) taking a break from carving the aluminum.  With business picking up again, kilt-making time (and inspiration) is like to be in short supply the next couple of months.

However, as with the foot gloves, once the ground has been more or less broken by the early adopters, I might be emboldened to go kilted next year.  Maybe.

I'm not generally one to be right in the vanguard of fashion trends, though for a while, back in the 90s, I sometimes wore a sword on dressy occasions, Just Because.

For those who do want to be ages ahead of the fashion, though, and who may wish to launch the next big trend, here's one word:

Woad.

 

Because sheep can hear a zipper a mile away

Ambulance Driver reports on his experiences in going kilted.

Jokes about "if I need to travel by air again..." aside, I've actually given some thought to the Kilt Option.  See, I mainly wear cotton shorts, and they have an annoying tendency to wear out at the crotch - maybe something to do with my walking 5-10 miles a day.  When they wear out, the rough worn-out patch starts wearing at my skin... and when this happens in the middle of a 5-mile hike, things get decidedly uncomfortable.

So, I've been considering options for hiking attire that wouldn't have the wearing-out-at-the-crotch problem.  One possibility is Lederhosen, which ought to wear out much more slowly, but taking care of leather garments is a bit of work, and besides a search for "cargo Lederhosen" turns up nothing that looks like a product (with the possible exception of vaguely Lederhosen-styled cotton cargo shorts), and I need plenty of pockets.

The other obvious option is a Utilikilt.  Abundant pockets, and no crotch to wear out at all!

And it's not like I'd suddenly look goofy.  Standard morning walkies attire consists of cowboy hat, Hawaiian shirt, tacky-khaki cargo shorts, and Five Fingerses.  (Althouse would not approve.)  How much goofier would I look with a kilt?

On the other hand... kilts are pricey, and if I spent that kind of money on one, well,  I'd be pretty much committed to actually wearing the thing, wouldn't I?  And, realistically, I'd need more than one, to allow for laundry day.

So... well... maybe.  Of course, I could always have a go at making my own (kilt or cargo Lederhosen), if I suddenly started having craft time available (and if I got around to fixing the sewing machine).

Afterthought: a kilt would perhaps not be the best attire for a hike that includes river crossings.  For those, I think I'll stick to swimming trunks.

 

Awww, darn.

Many years ago, a Heinlein character equipped his flying / dimension-jumping car with a lock that opened in response to a secret knock.

Just a few years ago, Jim Newton suggested such a gadget as a product.

A couple of weeks ago, I came up with it again, as a gimmick in a novel I'm not writing... and thought maybe it was time to develop the product, IMCFT.

Now someone's gone and built one.  Not a production item; it's got one of those Aard-wino doohickies in it, but (at a glance) there's no obvious reason it couldn't be made tiny and more practical.

(OK, so on a few more seconds' examination, it needs some mixed-signal engineering to get the standby power consumption down.  Details!)