BrianYoxall.com

Holiday Photos 3 of n

2011-12-29T16:49:00.000-08:00

We had our friend Sarah come out and take some pictures of Cora, mostly, but also of Marion, myself, and my folks. There are some true classics among what she captured, here are a few of our favorites.

Holiday photos 2 of n

2011-12-05T21:23:00.000-08:00

Getting all christmas-y with the making decorations

Cora practicing her crawling stance. No movement yet, just a gentle swaying followed by face-plant, but I count our time of blissful baby-not-moving-ness in hours, not days.

You know it's the holidays when grayboy gets his party hat out.

Oh, and Cora sits up all by herself now too!

Cora sporting grayboy's party hat.

She's so happy to see you!

Notice sunshine bear getting a piggy back ride from Carl there (the green monster puppet). No? Well, I guess she is pretty cute.

Papa and Cora

Holiday Photos 1 of n

2011-12-01T21:34:00.000-08:00

Photos of Things (and Cora)

2011-11-04T18:21:00.000-07:00

Morgan Territory

2011-10-15T23:14:00.000-07:00

We've begun exploring the hiking options around us, now that we've settled into our place in Livermore. There is a huge (4000+ acres) park in the east bay parks district that lies about twenty minutes north of town, called Morgan Territory, that we decided to hike today. There are tons of trails, and plenty of altitude gain if you desire, but we stuck to a mild ~3 mile loop that was relatively flat. Here are some photos I took:

Lots of the area north of Livermore is tree-less due to over-grazing, but managed grazing patterns at the Morgan Territory have left many oak tree groves. They are quite nice against the dry, brown California grasses.

Lunch spot.

Part of the trail system there is dirt roads, quite nice for schlepping a baby around on.

Local wildlife, a tarantula.

A wash off of Prairie Falcon Trail.

Local wildlife, a redtail hawk.

NearIR of an oak tree

NearIR of Mount Diablo in the background

NearIR oak trees

NearIR dead tree full of woodpecker holes

NearIR, a closer view of Mt. Diablo.

Cora Pictures

2011-10-15T23:01:00.000-07:00

Tummy Time!

Hmm... Eunice, the unique unicorn, what are you doing with the bumble bee?

Cora and Mom

Out for a hike, Marion is holding Cora because she tries to jump out of the Ergo every time she straightens her legs.

Rest Stop.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

2011-09-26T18:48:00.000-07:00

Zebrasnout Seahorse

Very small Seahorses

Cora and Marion checking out the Leafy Green Seadragons

Cora checking the shrimps, there's a tubefish in there somewhere too.

Jellies!

Oooohh. ZOMBIE!

A very small great white shark. I could take this guy.

Hammerhead and Tuna fishes, very delicious.

Cora and her Unicorn (from Aunty Oriana)

Om-nom-nom-nom-nom

Daily Cora Photos?

2011-09-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

It's been requested that I try to take a photo of Cora every day and post it for people who don't see enough of her. I can't promise anything, but here's at least one day in a row of posting photos!

Sunny Cove

2011-09-25T20:30:00.001-07:00

New Apartment

2011-09-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

Black Point

2011-09-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

August and Everything Since?

2011-09-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I posted, mostly due to being super busy. Since the last post, I've:

Graduated
Finalized acceptance for a new job
New place in Livermore
Moved three times

Nonetheless, I know that people want to see photos of Cora, so here's a backlog for you!


Cora and the fam at the Eel River

Sarah, Linden, and half of Malanyon

Cora and Mama

Cora going in for a dip

NOOOOO!!! It's too cold, papa

Cora and Grampa Bruce. Yay for pigtails

At the Abalone dive, cleaning the beasties

Abalone gut pearls

Cora says "check out m'socks"

Linden and Sarah

Cora, Holly, and Kim

Cora and Brian in their matching hats

Cora partying

2011-08-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

Cora, Marion, and Andy's daughter Rowan at our "leaving Davis drinking event"

Cora at Emandal

Malanyon and Sarah's son, Linden, thinks the camera looks fun to grab.

Cora and Saren on Linden's arms.

Linden trying to put the moves on Cora. Not so fast, buddy!

Cora sporting a sweater her great grandma Edna made 26 years ago for aunt Kim.

Cora in her pumpkin hat

2011-08-20T09:23:00.001-07:00

It's not Halloween yet, but Cora wears her pumpkin hat like it's going out of style!

Rolled: The Documentary

2011-08-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

An ambitious young documentary filmmaker (Whit Scott) has embarked on a project to display the art and craft of LA's seedy, clandestine TP-ing scene. He needs support to get his project off the ground, and here is why YOU should support him.

A) Living the dream - Whit is doing something he's dreamed of since a youngster. It's something we all hope to do, so it's incumbent upon us to support dream-following whenever we see it. I'm supporting him, just like I'd support you.

He's asking close friends to ask their friends to pledge $25 to his project. You could come up with chump-change like that by eating in tonight, collecting all the coins in your couch cushions, or taking those Christmas gifts back to the store.

B) Kick-starter - an awesome model of crowd-sourcing funding

Connects dreamers to funding.
You pledge a few bucks to support great ideas (like Whit's)
You get a prize from the project, depending on your pledge
No Risk:

if the project ISN'T fully supported, you don't pay anything.
If the project IS fully supported, you pay and get whatever the prize is.

Go to his Kickstarter page now: Kickstart: Rolled (The Documentary)

C) YOU READ MY BLOG - if you don't know Whit directly, by virtue of the fact you are reading this, you're essentially guaranteed to meet Whit sometime. So you practically know him. If you think supporting a friend's dream is worth a few bucks, you should extend that support to Whit.

RECAP: Great project, Awesome model, Supporting a friend.

Here are some other people who think his project is great:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/whitscott/rolled-32-years-of-toilet-papered-houses
http://teamjaded.com/2011/08/rolled-fund-this-film-on-kickstarter.html
http://laughingsquid.com/rolled-a-documentary-about-a-32-year-tradition-of-toilet-papering/
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2011/08/toilet_papering_documentary.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_papering

Photos From a Thursday Morning

2011-08-11T11:11:00.000-07:00

Cora and Mom hanging out.

Cora doing her best Westley impression. " I ... am not left-handed!" "I'm not left-handed either"

A-hmmmmm.

Monster Pants! Oh Yeah!

Sprout

2011-08-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

Our cat, Sprout, got chewed up by a dog in mid-July. She's otherwise young and healthy, so we decided to get her patched up at the vet. For $1400. She's the new, inflation-adjusted, million-dollar cat.

Fortunately, after a roller-coaster of healing and nearly dying, she's healthy and getting back to her old self. Here are a couple of instances of photographic proof.

Back to begging at the dinner table

Hanging outside on the patio, looking squirrelly.

Eating directly from the motherlode, elbows deep in tasty delicious kibble.

A photo of Grayboy, just for good measure. Mugging the camera, as usual.

More Cora Pictures

2011-08-09T10:42:00.000-07:00

Cora and G'ma Karen at Marilyn's house for Lewis' Birthday weekend

Tummy Time!

Working on push-ups

Cora found her hands. They're tasty.

Bath time, YAY!

I want my bubble bath, bubble bath, bubble bath, ... bbq sauce!

All Clean

Cora, hanging on the lawn while Mom and Dad do some packing up the backyard.

Cora! Cora! Cora!

2011-07-25T18:32:00.000-07:00

Woo-wee. Last Wednesday we took Cora in for a checkup and she weighed 10lbs 6oz. She's growing like a weed.

Here are a few new photos.

Cora and Uncle Chris

Cora practicing her smiles

Hamming it up for the camera. Look Ma, it's a silly face! Is she pooping? Peeing? Starting to cry because she wants to eat? None of the above. She just likes to make funny faces, maybe it's her mirror neurons firing off when she sees Daddy.

Not Baby Related - Disable Presentation Mode in Vista

2011-07-25T15:55:00.000-07:00

I hate Windows, the operating system family, but I'm too lazy to spend the 10 minutes it would take to switch over to a nice open-source operating system. Instead, I spend hours figuring out crap like this:

When I plug a monitor into my laptop, a stupid script in Windows gets activated that starts changing all of my display settings, assuming that I want to do a formal presentation on the new screen, instead of just doing work. I don't want this. Ever. Ever ever.

There is a "feature" called Mobility Center which allows you to quickly change/toggle a small subset of configuration parameters, one such parameter being "Presentation Mode", the state of which causes the stupid script to change my display settings. Turning "Presentation Mode" off is useless, as it checks for a monitor and restarts the insanity right away.

Permanently disabling Presentation Mode is the best thing in the world, but no-one knows how to do it. Except me. Because it made me angry and I went and figured it out.

In regedit, find or create the following key:
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\PresentationSettings

In this key, create a DWORD called NoPresentationSettings and set the value to 1.

Restart Mobility Center and verify that the Presentation Mode box is grayed out.

Viola.

Now I can work without losing my mind.

P.S. Microsoft has, at the Microsoft Download Center, a list of all the group policy settings and their location in the registry. Here's the page I downloaded the Vista settings from. http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=25250 . You can use this to find other interesting modifications for windows.

1-month Old (Yesterday)

2011-07-14T15:32:00.000-07:00

Time sure flies! Cora reached the ripe old age of 1 month old yesterday. Crazy. She's growing up fast, and growing fast too. At her last appointment, she had changed from the 20th percentile weight at birth up to the 75th percentile. Good work Cora, and Momma. Here are a few pictures.

Baby hand, Daddy hand

C-biscuit with her thinking face on.

Cora snuggled up nice and warm under the blanket Erszi made for her.

Cora's First Outings

2011-07-11T15:35:00.000-07:00

It was very HOT in Davis over the 4th of July weekend, so we decided to try traveling with Cora to beat the heat. The first stop was to visit Great Grandma Edna. It was fantastic to introduce Cora Mae and Edna Mae, plus Cora got to meet practically everyone at the Forum. The following weekend, we decided to try the first overnight trip and went to Willits to visit the Yoxall side of the family. Cora got to meet Uncle Chris and Uncle Malanyon for the first time! Here are some photos.

Cora Mae and Great Grandma Edna Mae

In the park, waiting for 4th of July fireworks

Some of the Independence Day festivities

Cora, Marion, and Uncle Malanyon on the bank of the Eel River at Emandal

Marion and Malanyon talk garden shop, Cora soaks up the information

Uncle Chris with Cora

Glow-worm

2011-06-25T16:34:00.001-07:00

Cora taking a nap on the couch, wrapped up in her sleep swaddle.

Ted the Titan Arum

2011-06-24T12:26:00.000-07:00

There's a cool rare flower on campus at UCD called a Titan Arum, at the Botanical Conservatory. It's common name is Corpse Flower because of the smell it lets off as it blooms. It only blooms one time every two years, and the past couple years we've been out of town, but this year we've got Cora, so we're around. Here are a bunch of photos.

Cora hanging out with Ted, the Titan Arum.

Ted in full bloom.

Looking down at the spadix.

Ted in the near infrared.

Another near-IR shot of Ted.

Squeezle Bean

2011-06-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

Walk in the Park

2011-06-19T23:01:00.000-07:00

We took Cora out in the stroller that Great Grandma Edna got for her.

More Cora Photos

2011-06-18T10:20:00.000-07:00

Cora and G'pa Bruce

Cora with G'pa Bruce and G'ma Pat

Ninja Cora.

Beautiful curly hair after Cora's first bath.

Cora in her LOVE onesie, Thanks Beth!

Papa hand, Cora hand

Cora Mae Yoxall

2011-06-15T17:15:00.000-07:00

Yay!

We've got a new baby.

She was born 6/13/11 at 9:33pm.

7lbs 9oz, 19 inches long.

Cute as a dang button.

Cora.

Marion and Cora.

Brian and Cora.

Marion and Cora.

Cora getting a diaper change.

Cora, mid-scream.

Cora, looking intrigued.

Brian and Cora.

Trying out the baby wrap.

Marion a day or two before Cora was born.

Some IR Photos

2011-06-08T18:09:00.000-07:00

I took the recently renovated near-IR camera to Willits for the weekend and got some nice shots in between rain showers. We helped celebrate my pop's retirement, but also relaxed lots and went for a few adventures.

Shot inside a pizza oven.

Honey Bee on a bright orange california poppy.

Oak Trees on a ridge.

More different oak trees.

The Adams family. His party shirt was shockingly bright in visible light. The colors come through ever so slightly because the filter I'm using isn't a proper visible light cut-off. Her sweatshirt was a bright royal blue, but reads as white in the nearIR. Cool stuff!

Pop's Retirement Soiree and BBQ

2011-06-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

We were in Willits to help celebrate my dad's retirement on Monday, 6/6/2011. Here are a few photos:

Pano-shot of the location: Brooktrails Golf Course

Sooooooooooo many of my middle and high school teachers in attendance!

Ze Cake

Tearing into some parting gifts. Classic presentation of the weekday clock, since you can't remember what day it is once you've retired, apparently.

DIY IR Camera Hack

2011-05-27T15:31:00.000-07:00

So, you bought a new camera!

Or, your mom just gave you her crappy old point-and-shoot!

Or, you've been waiting to try an IR conversion for a long time and want to know how to do it!

Then this step-by-step tutorial is for you...

WATCH and learn the basic process to convert my Canon digital ELPH into a high-power IR shootin' machine.

PRE-REQUISITES

This is super easy: find/remove IR filter, replace with visible light filter
42% chance you'll break camera irreparably, make sure you don't care about it
Mild mechanical aptitude required. If you've ever built a computer or fixed a small appliance, you're fine. If you haven't, send your camera to me (I'll provide un-guaranteed work for a fee).
NEVER FORCE ANYTHING! See bullet point #2.

TOOLS

Tiny Phillips screw-driver (if you don't know what Phillips means, send your camera to me)
Tweezers
Canned-air (blow dust out of camera at every step)

STEP 1:

Clean your space. Those screws are easy to lose. I use a magnet to hold the screws

STEP 2:

Remove housing screws. If the housing won't come off, double check screws (especially under labels/decals etc.)

STEP 3:

Carefully remove housing. There are probably tabs holding things in place, use tweezers to release.

STEP 4:

Remove LCD screen.

screw
power connector (tweezers to gently pull out of socket)
tabs (gently pry w/ tweezers)
fold LCD out of the way (it's still connected by the "data" wire to the camera electronics)

STEP 5:

Remove sensor screws. keep these separate from housing screws, they're probably different

STEP 6:

Access IR/UV cutoff filter. Remove with tweezers

STEP 7:

Re-assemble camera - make sure you don't have left-over parts

STEP 8:

Epoxy mount retaining ring

If you have a slow epoxy, extend the lens then remove the battery so it stays extended. If it retracts before the epoxy sets, it'll ruin your alignment efforts.
I ordered my parts from Thorlabs.com. If your lens is less than 1" across the longest dimension, the easiest part is #SM1M05. For a shorter barrel, you can order #SM1T1 and 2x of #SM1RR.
The cheapest lens is from EdmundOptics.com, part #NT43-948. This is a good plastic longpass filter which cuts out visible light and transmits light with wavelength longer than ~720nm. They have glass filters too, but those are more expensive.
Also good to note, a ND (neutral density) filter USUALLY is designed to cut light intensity only in the visible spectrum, so you can use that as a poor man's IR-pass filter.

STEP 9:

Attach filter to lens barrel

STEP 10:

REJOICE! and take a few photos.

Let me know how it works out for you!

MEMS 2011 in Cancun, Mexico

2011-02-01T14:53:00.000-08:00

I traveled to Cancun for a conference called MEMS 2011 at the end of January. Here are a few pictures:

Sunset over Cancun Airport Traffic Control Tower (and Lagoon behind hotel strip)

A sinkhole (called a Cenote) that we stopped at on the way to Chichen Itza

The largest pyramid at Chichen Itza. No longer climbable due to spring break drunken shenanigans.

A stone mural depicting sacrificial decapitation of winning team's captain after a game of Pitz.

Alter called a Chac-Mool, upon which sacrificial beheading took place. This one is in poor condition, and was used for killing enemies and slaves. A much nicer version was on top of the pyramid for killing virgins and heroes.

Local wildlife.

Beach between hotel and conference which I walked up and down every day. Nice.

It was winter there, despite being tropical, so the days were mostly overcast, around 75 degrees F, and windy, windy, windy.

Hotel at which the conference was held, properly dubbed Chichen Hilton.

Air traffic control tower at Cancun Int'l Airport, brought to you by the letters X and R, the number 2, and centennial sponsor, Corona beer.

A selection of the MEMS 2011 attendees, photo by John Yan from UC Davis.

Ecuador Trip 2010

2011-01-03T22:50:00.000-08:00

We went to Ecuador in December. I wrote about it on our vacation blog brian-and-marion.blogspot.com

Squirrel Tube

2010-11-30T12:57:00.000-08:00

SquirrelTube: The beginning.

I had a cheapo USB webcam lying around, and I was waiting at home for the half-wit maintenance men to come by and screw around with my stuff, so I could tell them what I really think, but realized what a waste of time that is (they never show up when normal working people would be on a job).

To allow myself time to actually go to work, I decided it would be convenient to be able to see what was going on in the backyard, via webcam. I was searching for solutions online (of the free, easy variety), and not getting much. Additionally, I found recommendations, for an application like mine, along lines of a motion sensing image capture instead of video streaming.

The first one I tired wasn't very good, called Dorgem. It was good in that it captured motion, but it would trigger on any little thing, like a leaf, or an actual squirrel. There was no sensitivity setting ability, so I moved on.

The software I ended up using is called Tebocam, which provides sensitivity settings, region of interest definition, calibration, and built in alerts through e-mail messages. Additionally, you can set regular, repeating image capture for time-lapse movie making. Awesome!

I have the SquirrelTube setup to allow e-mail posts, so Tebocam can send the images once it's been triggered by a significant enough change in the image and they get posted up right away. Additionally, I have SquirrelTube send me an e-mail when a new post arrives, so now I have *nearly* real-time updated images about anything interesting going on in the backyard.

It's also fun to make a time-lapse of what the yard looked like each day. I've done that in MS Movie Maker, a POS software that installed windows spy-ware on my computer, which I've had to spend significant time getting rid of. BALLS. All for a little fun w/ movie making.

Anyway, if you see any squirrels in the webcam, let me know!

Pocket Scarf - The Swiss Army Knife of Neckwear

2010-11-26T23:39:00.000-08:00

It's getting colder, with winter approaching, and I was reflecting on my favorite beanie, an earflap number that's lined with fleece. I like the hat because it's fashion forward and keeps my head warm. I notice, though, as I bike to work, that the wind is beginning to feel bitingly cool on my neck. I have a collection of scarves, woolly guys that do the trick, but nothing with the warmth and comfort of my fave beanie.

We have a box full of fabric, most of which Marny buys for her projects, but a few pieces I pick up out of the odds'n'ends bin whenever I've tagged along and ended up in the fabric store. There's a bit of the blue felt I lined the beanie with left, and I was going to see about building a scarf from that, but alas, it was insufficient, requiring a store run.

I got a bargain on some light blue fleece and picked up a yard of gray fleece too, in case I want to make something respectable looking.

As I pondered the thought of a scarf, and walking to the grocery co-op without gloves on, I stumbled upon the realization that a scarf with pockets would be sweet. How to make pockets? Two ways: 1) fold the end back up and sew the sides together, leaving the entry perpendicular to the scarf length, or 2) make a doubled up scarf and leave a section of seam open to access the inside.

I made one scarf a-la option 2, and it came out nice, only stylistically challenged due to some questionable decision making about where stripes would be appropriate. My sister works in an office that's aggressively air conditioned, and she thought the scarf was pretty sweet, so she inherited it. She did have some requests, should a round two of scarves be produced: be able to put whole arms in; glove ends instead of pockets.

To that end, I "designed" by my usual hack-n-fix methodology, what I feel can legitimately be called a Swiss Army Scarf. It has pockets. It has arm holes. It can be worn as a hat. It is fashion challenged in the best of circumstances, but when all the other meeples are shivering in the snow, it'll keep me as warm as a convection toaster oven.

I'll be selling them for $30. The Snuggie people may want to contact me for licensing rights.

Crochet Beanie - Engineering Guidelines, for Awesome

2010-11-19T14:47:00.000-08:00

Crochet: traditionally an art form practiced by women on long winter days in front of the fire-place (also knitting), is something that every person a) is capable of doing, and b) should learn to do, especially the man-folk. Here's why:

You will make an awesome hat
If you're a single man-folk, women are irresistibly drawn toward men who crochet
It's awesome for killing time if you're at holidays with the family, stuck somewhere without electronics, or watching tv/movie that you're not that into.

I won't go into the basics of crocheting, because there are MANY internet sites dedicated to teaching you the technique. Instead, I will offer up some of my awesome patterns and tell you how to make one of your own...

Here's a short list of other websites that will teach you to crochet:

Now, on to the good stuff

Crochet Beanie

Start at the top of the beanie and work down. Start with an initial loop, then each row is numbered as follows:

8 single stitches (sc) into the initial loop
double sc into each stitch of row 1 (16 sc total)
{double sc, single sc} x8 (24 sc total)
{double sc, single sc, single sc} x8 (32 sc total)
{double sc, single sc, single sc, single sc} x8 (40 sc total)
{double sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc} x8 (48 sc total)
{double sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc} x8 (56 sc total)
{double sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc} x8 (64 sc total)
{double sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc} x8 (72 sc total)
{double sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc, single sc} x8 (80 sc total)
Now you've expanded all the way out, you'll do 20 rows of 1 sc per stitch in the previous row. {single sc} x80
{single sc} x80
....

30. {single sc} x80
And you're done!

That's it for the basic beanie. If you find it is too large, give it to a friend with a huge melon, then decrease the number of expanding rows (stop after expanding 8-9 times, rather than 10). If you find it too tight, give it to some pin-head you know, then increase your expanding rows to 11-12.

Some variations on the theme:

Two Color Hat -
Start the first row with one color, start the second row with the second color. If you work in a spiral (rather than "complete" a row and then bump up, just keep stitching over the transition), go as far as you can with one yarn, then switch and repeat.

Earflaps -
You'll make decreasing triangles each 1/8th the circumference of the hat, with 1/2 the circumference open in the front and 1/4 of the circumference open in the back. Example: Say you made the basic beanie above which has 80 stitches at the end. If you have an ugly seam, that should be centered in the back. Start the left decreasing triangle 10 stitches from the seam and stop at stitch 20, turn, drop a stitch by your favorite method and go back, turn, drop, go, turn, drop, go.... until you have gotten to the bottom of your triangle. Repeat on the right hand side. I like to go once or twice around the whole hat after I've added earflaps with a sc row to tidy up the edges of the earflaps and visually tie them in with the basic beanie.

Poofball -
Take your ball of yarn and wrap 20 times around the thickest part of you hand, starting at your thumb and ending at your thumb. Get someone to help you pull this wrap off your hand without letting it all go, my favorite way is to have a friend stick their fingers in at the palm side and back of the hand and grab ALL the loops, then they need to hold those loops while you A) tie a string very tightly around the middle of the loop (leave long ends on this string), and B) cut through the loops where your friends fingers are holding them VERY CAREFUL NOT TO CUT YOUR FRIENDS FINGERS. Viola, use the long strings to tie the poof onto your beanie! More loops around the hand makes a thicker poof.

Also of interest: Smurf Hats

Smurf Hat - DIY Awesome

2010-11-18T16:16:00.000-08:00

I previously wrote about making Smurf Hats, but looking back at what I wrote, I realize that there are A) no pictures of the smurf hats, and B) no descriptions of how I made them, just a link to a website with tons of pop-ups. Hmmm... That should be rectified!

Since I don't have any photos of the hats, I'll add them later on, but they are darn good looking!

Here's the play-by-play for making the hats:

1) Find your favorite beanie (or measure the circumference of your melon, if you don't have a beanie)

2) Cut open a paper shopping bag, squish your hat down flat on the bag and trace it with a pen or pencil.

3) Draw an extra knob on the top, aso:

4) Now draw another line outside previous line by about 1/2 inch. This new outer line is your cutting pattern. The inner line is your sewing pattern.

5) Cut out the cutting pattern

6) Pin your pattern onto a piece of felt and cut carefully along the pattern. Repeat. You'll need two of these pieces of felt for each hat.

7) Pin the two pieces of felt together and sew about 1/2 inch in from the edge on the top curve only (LEAVE THE BOTTOM OPEN SO IT STILL FITS ON YOUR HEAD)

8) Fold the bottom edge up 1/2 inch and pin in place, then sew around to fix that "hem" in place.

9) Turn the hat inside out! Viola, Smuf Hat in 10 easy steps.

Higher Dimensional Thinking

2010-10-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

So,... I waste approximately too much time with this stupid plug-in called Stumble-Upon. You give it some categorical preferences for information, it supplies Stumble! button which takes you to some random webpage which has been categorized by users as belonging in said category. I, for example, have indicated I like information about math/science, DIY projects, anthropological information, etc. My Stumble! button takes me to websites like physorg, this old house, make, phdcomics, etc.

Recently, when I whacked the ol' Stumble! button, it took me to a page about the possible dimensions of reality. I generally find some of these types of discussions interesting, and reading through I found that I was up to date on most of his background material. Then he starts spouting crap, which to my feeble mind seems like the tried-and-true, but it occurs to me that his #1 bullet point, the 3D nature of our universe is fundamentally lacking.

Lets say, for arguments sake, that you're an engineer and have studied dynamic systems extensively. How many co-ordinates are required to describe the location of an object in space? Ah. 3. Excellent. Good work. What about if you want to know everything about the physical space of the object? Now you need 6. Huh? 3 for locating the object, and another 3 for determining the orientation.

Why does the orientation matter? Let's say you are located in a long dark train tunnel, and a train, also located in the long dark train tunnel, is tooting along towards you. You start to run, but your orientation has been left undefined. Where are you running? Are you running toward the train, the wall, flailing to run straight up in the air (and not making it, b/c we included gravity in our scenario)? Let's fix two degrees of your orientation so you are looking at the tunnel exit. Now, are you right-side-up, upside-down, or lying on your side? So, now, without your orientation being fixed in three degrees, you won't be able to scoot out of the tunnel in order to live another day and think about high level geometry ideas.

"Ah!" you say, "this is just a short-coming of thinking about the object in terms of dynamic systems, no?" Well, what's your argument? "If you were to think of the object as a bunch of small objects, i.e. atoms, then locate all the atoms in space in 3 coordinates, the orientation takes care of itself, Q.E.D!"

Almost, but what about the orientation of the atoms? "Why, atoms are the fundamental unit of matter, the orientation of them must not matter." But clearly there is orientation in all elementary particles: Spin! So we can't even talk about the most fundamentally small parts of the universe without talking orientation.

Let's argue that the smallest elementary particle is the basis for a geometrical point. In order to locate this point in our universe, we now need to know where it is (3 dimensional space) and how it is (3 dimensional orientation). Build up the universe from that assumption. HOLY CRAP! Now we live in 6D!

Let's not even talk about time...

The Great Handcar Regatta

2010-09-29T13:09:00.000-07:00

I've recovered somewhat from the sprint (in every sense of the word) that culminated in The Great Handcar Regatta. A sprint because I spent the last four days working up to 10 hours a day getting the YOXMOBL ready with the crack team of builders. A sprint, also, because racing the YOXMOBL is an all-out sprint, but the kind of sprint where you're pushing a huge weight up a hill.

The regatta was an awesome event, it was fun to see all the other vehicles, the costumes and characters, and the support of 13,000 spectators. The races were super exciting, with head-to-head matchups going down two, roughly parallel, sets of curved tracks. We very nearly won our races, but after losing parts, belts, and rollers on the way down the track, every race ended with us slightly behind. No matter, we finished every time we started which greatly passed expectations.

Next year, we'll be back with an improved YOXMOBL, a better idea of what we're doing, and a hunger to win!

YOXMOBL

2010-09-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

The YOXMOBL has taken many different forms over the years, but the most recent form is by far the most awesome!

This is a picture of the YOXMOBL after 4 days of fabrication. It is a human powered machine and is being raced in the Great Handcar Regatta at Railroad Square in Santa Rosa on Sunday, September 26th.

Our drive mechanism is based on a rotating turntable, force is transmitted by the racers walking in place with the turntable rotating beneath. Power is transmitted to the wheels by pulleys and belts below the platform. Pretty sweet, huh?

The build team consists of yours truly, Stefon, Garrick, Kim, Marion, Chezo, Azlan, Logan, and guest appearances from Bruce, Pat, and Malanyon.

The race team is looking likely to be myself, Stefon, Kim, and Garrick, though there is always the possibility for last-minute change-ups.

The race itself is bound to be amazing, and if you're reading this post, you probably should be there. There are 22 teams currently registered who all have sweet human powered contraptions of various and sundry wacked-out drive mechanisms. The event is throw-back themed to the early 1900's, with an interesting sort of super-advanced-railroad-tech look called steampunk. If you don't know what that is, do a google image search and it'll open your eyes to a whole new sub-culture.

Fabrication has been a lot of fun, it's amazing what you can put together with a welding machine, chop saw, and many hours of grinding metal.

Recently we hit set-backs in the drive mechanism due to a lack of proper engineering. Our drive-shaft which couples the platform rotation to the pulleys is very under-engineered and we've broken it several times. The first time, we had our large pulley attached with set-screws to maintain alignment, but that didn't work, the screws were unable to hold things in place. To remedy that, we drilled a hole through the large pulley and drive shaft and bolted them together. That bolt lasted about 10 seconds before it sheared off completely. We put an actual steel pin in place, one that should be appropriate for such use. The pin worked properly, but was too strong for the drive shaft, which sheared off. The last ditch effort, which looks like it MAY work, was to weld a plate directly to the shaft and then bolt the pulley to the plate. It looks like it's holding for now, but we may win the "Spectacular Failure" award at the race if it doesn't.

In any event, there are more pictures up on facebook. If you are someone who watches what goes on here, you probably should consider coming out to the race, we definitely could use some fan-base so there are familiar faces amongst the 10,000 people expected to show up.

Garden Fauna

2010-05-25T12:33:00.001-07:00

I was picking some chards and found this little guy. My best guess is that it's a Johnson Jumper or a California Jumper (thanks to Spiders on the Web)

Nu kittiz

2010-05-18T22:04:00.001-07:00

M's been trying to get some kittens for work, so the second graders have another fuzzy farm animal to play with. For a while, it seemed all the farmers in Yolo cty had gotten rid of their feral cat colonies simultaneously, because there was not a kitten to be found. At last, though, someone dropped a pair off at the local feed store who called up M. They are white with just a touch of gray fur on top of each of their heads, but they're too darn fast to catch on camera. Ah well, here's my best shots.

Political More-ass: Prop 16

2010-04-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

Firstly, let me just say I think The Daily Show or the Colbert Report could do something fantastic with a segment called Political More-ass, describing the ass-iest political move of late. You can tell them I said so.

Secondly, California Proposition 16. I just started reading about it, and it strikes me as a bad idea. I've put some links together which support my position, as well as making fun of the proponents.

Pros:

Good for PG&E;
PG&E will spend $35 million to promote this, someone must be making money off this.

Cons:

Bad for renewable energy projects;
Bad for non-profit energy producers;
Provides for direct democracy: i.e. the general populace (the unerudite jackassery*) gets to vote directly on, and determine the outcome of, every governmental decision. BTW, this is what led, directly, to the fall of the Rome empire.
I still remember when the big energy companies did their "rolling blackouts" scam, declared an emergency, got a bunch of money from the CA government, and made windfall profits. Turns out, the blackouts were all avoidable. Remember Enron. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis

LA Times Article: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/18/local/la-me-cap19-2010apr19
This puppy basically points out that PG&E is the primary proponent of Prop16 and theorizes that this is a case of a corporation attempting to legislate monopoly for themselves through the constitutional initiative system.

SF Gate Article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/17/INA41CUA8O.DTL
This article makes the point that Prop16 makes it very difficult for non-profit community-based (read local government) energy utilities to form by requiring 66% voter approval.

Bay Area Council (BAC): http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/17/INA41CUC5P.DTL
SF Gate Editorial by Jim Wunderman, CEO: BAC
This is the only "article" in the news promoting Prop16, and it's an editorial. The BAC is a pro-corporation group (who PG&E is a member of) that is promoting the proposition. Ironically, two years ago, they were hot-and-bothered about forming a constitutional convention because "Special interests have hĳacked the initiative system, passing misleading initiatives through expensive campaigns". I think these guys are idiots.

North Bay Journal: http://www.northbaybusinessjournal.com/20329/pg-not-all-agree/
This article discusses the viewpoints of some debate participants.

Fresno Bee: http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/04/12/1894460/pge-deceives-voters-about-prop.html
Compares PG&E with junk-mail credit-scammers.

* - Special Note: I firmly believe that the general populace is "the unerudite jackassery". I also believe our elected officials are largely stupid and ignorant, but at least they have the benefit of being lobbied from both sides of a position.

Tahoe Weekend (from 3/20-21/2010)

2010-04-15T16:06:00.000-07:00

On March 20-21, we went skiing in Tahoe with some friends (Nilla, Dania, Chezo, Stefon, Elia, Matt) and Marion's family to celebrate my 30th birthday. It was a great time, the snow was good, we ate some fantastic lasagne (Marion's own secret recipe), had cake, and had some great hanging out.

Here're a few photos I took on my phone:
http://picasaweb.google.com/brian.yoxall/TahoeBdayPartyWeekend?authkey=Gv1sRgCLLM_bb0gO6JSg&feat=directlink

Dania had some photos too:
http://picasaweb.google.com/daniarocks/BrianYoxallS30thBirthdayInTruckee#

Gophers 2010!

2010-04-15T15:22:00.000-07:00

From Drop Box

This guy lives in our shed.

Now, to business!

Inevitably, the soil softened by winter rain allows deep roots to grow, resulting in weeds and annual grasses of massive proportion. The soft soil also permits the migration of garden nuisance, the gopher. The gopher comes, he eats some of this, some of that, but without exception, the gopher finds something tasty which I also find tasty. In these instances, I tend to get hopping mad and renew my vow to bring these thieves to their ultimate justice.

Two weeks ago, as we were casually picking arugula in the garden, we noticed some gopher activity in the raspberry bed, of all places. Since we hadn't really gotten around to preparing the garden yet, it took me some time to find my trusty cache of macabee traps, but I did. I poked around until I found the gopher hole, dug it out, and set my traps...

and forgot about them...

for a week...

and a half...

d'oh...

so, I checked them, and sure enough, I'd caught a gopher. I probably caught it within the first couple hours that the traps were in the ground. It wasn't so much a gopher, as a pile of fly larvae. In any event, I didn't take a picture, dear reader, because I figured you probably don't need to see that. It was gross.

Upshot:

Gopher count 2010!
Brian - 1 / Gophers - 0

Barber-ous

2010-04-06T19:35:00.001-07:00

My hair had gotten quite overgrown, so instead of my usually weed-whacker haircut performed by yours truly, I decided to trust my locks to the talents of someone, well, talented.

After drawing out the decision for weeks, I had settled on going to the guy in the basement of the MU on campus. To my extreme dissappointment, I found out that he'd retired at the end of last year, and there was nobody else to take over. Fortunately, a search of the local wiki shows that Davis has the unusual distinction of keeping two barbershops per tax-paying citizen, so all I needed to do was pick one.

After reading the reviews, I settled on an old-school set of brothers downtown, mainly because of comments like "the conversation was horrible" and "if Fox News had a barbershop, this would be it".

On a sunny Tuesday lunch hour, I stopped in and let one of these pompodor maestros have at. In slightly more than 10 minutes, he had reduced my hippy mane into the tightly cropped cut of an eight year old from the 50's.

Sigh.

I had hoped for something spectacular, but as I learn over and over again, most things in life can be done better, faster, and cheaper at home.

Finger Painting -=- Droid Use #429

2010-03-19T12:05:00.000-07:00

The program for Android called Draw, while not the most full featured graphic art platform available, does let you do finger painting, which is fun and brings me back to elementary school. Here are a couple pieces I've done, some thematic based on the day, to use as background images on my phone.

Spring is here!

2010-03-18T10:51:00.001-07:00

The flowers are out on all the trees on campus, which is the first sign of spring (the second, of course, being that "the titties are blooming", which hasn't happened yet.)
Relate signs are the Sierra range rivers starting to show the daily cycle of flow increase/decrease corresponding to snow melting. This weekend, we're heading up to Tahoe to get in what could be the last ski/board trip of the year (and celebrate my 30th birthday). Hopefully, the weather will be perfect, the snow corny, and the company beautiful!!!

Emandal

2010-03-01T14:54:00.001-08:00

We spent the weekend hanging out with Malanyon and Sarah, and helping Buff and Claudine move back to the farm. It was a great time, Marion and Malanyon spent a bunch of Saturday going through the garden and talking about plants and plans.

Sarah introduced me to Perplexus, an awesome 3D puzzle game combining hand control with a sharp mind. We also found a brand new copy of Carcass-onne left behind by some departed staff people, so we rocked a couple games. Sarah crushed us all (Malanyon, Marion, my mom, and myself) by claiming roads and small cities, but ignoring the farms race!

This photo is of Malanyon playing in his manure pile. He's experimenting with different combinations of rotting wood, cow and chicken poo, soil, and straw. Additionally, he is working on some Poo-Tea (c) which he'll use as fertilizer for the garden (unless he's made it too strong, in which case it'll only be good for nefariosity).

Malanyon and Sarah are awesome!

CC Skiing

2010-02-13T22:19:00.001-08:00

We went to Echo lake for some cross country skiing today. It was a fantastic day, the weather was perfect and the snow was nice. This was the first time for Marion and I, and it took a little getting used to (read: falling over a lot). Definitely will be doing this again.

Super bowl XLIV

2010-02-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

Best superbowl party ever, this year. Started with typical issues with the TV failing minutes before kickoff, despite working flawlessly an hour earlier. Props to the fellas for the troubleshooting and getting 'er running in time to watch the kickoff. The apartment was packed to the gills, the usual davis suspects (D&B, will&melody, scott and libby, myra and chris, matt and jen, stefon and elia, melanie made a cameo appearance), claremontians (nick, laura b, michael and becky), and a special guest appearance from malanyon and sarah.

Conspiracy Theory #2398b: Toyota in Ruins

2010-02-03T16:00:00.000-08:00

Just remember, you heard it here first.

Toyota is in a lot of hot water for their apparent lack of spine regarding a string of failures in their automotive product (brakes, accelerators, software). The general consensus amongst the media, executive branch appointments, and US congressional P.O.S.es (persons of substance?) is that Toyota is deliberately confounding the issues of their product safety at the cost of millions of US taxpayer lives, merely to maintain profit and standing as the largest auto producer in the world.

Here's the conspiracy:
Toyota is doing what any self-promoting business would do, the hysterics are designed and choreographed by the US government as a way of reducing consumer faith in a rock-solid, dependable brand name in order to increase sales and profits of domestic auto producers. This will save the economy of the US, free markets be damned.

This a great idea for the US gov't because a) the Japanese gov't is in bed with them, so they can get Toyota sales eroded internationally, b) when Toyota stops selling cars or goes out of business, they will be able to claim the US auto bailouts of last year were successful because US auto sales will go up, and c) it distracts the media outlets from reporting on politics for a while (which actually is nice).

What you can do to profit personally from this Bull-caca: buy a Toyota when they go on clearance after Toyota collapses (just remember to buy an older car, without all the problems), and invest in US automakers so when their stocks go up, you are riding the wave!

Personally, I wouldn't take any of my advice, but you might be more gullible.

Grumpiness = Highly Civilized

2010-02-03T09:06:00.001-08:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7103354/Grumpiness-is-a-sign-of-advanced-civilisation.html

Grayboy is the grumpiest, and by that I mean the most highly civilized, cat in the whole world. He also happens to live in the most highly civilized house in the world.

Garden works

2010-01-31T21:27:00.000-08:00

We spent the day in the garden, making a new bed for the artichoke plants (bareroot) that we got at Sparetime supply in Willits on Saturday, and mulching the paths with rice hulls. The picture here is of our compost windrow. Our compost is a mix of last years plant matter, weeds, and kitchen scraps.

We saw our friends Mike and Sandrine enjoying the nice weather to get a little gardening in. We also saw Doug who was pruning his grapes and showed us his tulip plants starting to poke out of the ground.

There is still a ton of work to do on the garden before the growing season starts, but it's still January (for a few more hours), so hopefully we can get out when the weather cooperrates again!

Cat Warhol

2010-01-25T17:29:00.001-08:00

A new toy (droid) with new toys inside it (fancy camera effects) is pretty sweet! Now if only I could rotate it...

Squawesome!

2010-01-23T14:44:00.001-08:00

We went to ski-landia this weekend (1/23-24) because it dumped snow with the storms last week. The crew was Marion (shown) and I, Stefon and Elia, Chezo, and Heather. Saturday we went to Squaw and got there early enough to find some of the 14" of powder dropped the evening before (while we were in our 6 hour hell-drive up the hill). We ran all over the mountain and the skiing was amazing. The afternoon ended pretty early for all of us, since we had only slept four hours the night before, and since none of us are in ski/boarding shape yet for the season.

Sunday we hit Sugar Bowl, the snow was super nice again and we got to find untouched patches of day-old powder in the trees. There were lots of nice groomies which allowed us to rip until well into the afternoon, as it was pretty much all the muscles could handle after lunch. We drove home Sunday evening and crashed hard! Marion won the weekend for the worst injuries after getting trucked by some jackass teenager who was going 100mph and had 0 control. She's on a strict vitamin I regimen until her neck muscles recover from the whiplash.

Blogg it to Blog it

2010-01-19T10:15:00.000-08:00

I haven't been posting recently, so I'm going to do a quick summary of my favorite topical updates for the last few months.

Parties

Lei-out 2010 - Los Angeles
We spent this last weekend (1/15-1/18) down in sunny SoCal playing beach ultimate, catching some sun, seeing old friends, and pretty much having an awesome time. Our team, straddle, from Davis goaltimate roots, was incredibly fun to play with but we were too short to win the tournament, alas. Super props to Melody's parents for putting us up in the PV.

Superbowl 2010 - Davis
This party is upcoming, Feb 7th at 3pm. If you read this blog, you should probably be invited, so if you don't know about the party, send me an e-mail and then come on over! It will be the most awesome superbowl party of 2010, and you don't want to miss it.

Kayaking
The last kayaking was done in early december, with Stefon and Chazo on the SFA Gorge section. We put on at 11:30, ahead of the water thinking it would catch up with us before we hit the Gorge proper. The crew, being particularly prone to restlessness, was unable to wait, so we ran the entire river only 10-20 minutes ahead of the water. We know this because the people who got off the river 15 minutes after us claimed they were in high water the whole time... That said, I think SFA Gorge is almost better at low water than high.

Beer
The thanksgiving stout turned out great! The "beauty and beast" cider is still a story in development. The beauty finished fermenting, but was bottled with lots of yeast still in suspension, also with too much priming sugar. The result is a fairly yeasty cider with explosive tendencies. It may need to be re-bottled and/or donated to the new "fortifying" project.

The beast is still in the carboy, it's long since quit fermenting and is just settling now, but looks nearly clear enough to bottle. One of these days...

We started another beer, since it's pretty cold outside (daily lows ~40 F) we did a pilsner which wants to be lagered below 50F. It's fermenting away happily in the shed, but may require a better setup for lagering post-ferment, especially if it warms up after these storms.

Technology
New computer - This is old news, but I never did write anything about it. We were running out of room on the living room desktop, plus it was slow, plus it was loud, plus it was vertical tower. The obvious choice was a quad-core AMD machine with 4GB memory and 4TB hard drive in a horizontal form-factor. It worked OK with WinXP, but is now running very nicely with Win7. All told, the box, processor, memory, and mobo were ~$300, the HDs were another ~300.

Pending updates - we've decided to catch-up with smartphone technology and are joining the Droid bandwagon. They seem pretty nice in the "in-store preview", and we'll see how they rate once we have them in hand.

Weather

It's coming down. I read a neat prediction by some NASA guy about getting 10ft of snow during the next three days of storms, then having a nice warm rain which will melt it all, flood the lowlands, cause the retards in Natomas to get New Orleans-ed, and generally wreck havoc. Either way, there will be good skiing or great kayaking in the next few days.

Garden
Not much going on, we've taken out all the plants from last year, but it's too wet to be doing anything now, so we'll just be waiting. The solar system is still working beautifully, I couldn't have designed it better if I knew what I was doing.

Paddling bLog - Creekin' the Gorge

2009-11-18T17:02:00.000-08:00

We went up to the SFA on Sunday with Melody to do the Gorge run. There was no water (the release was cancelled due to issues at Camino PH), but that was cool cuz we wanted to beat the water anyway. We were looking for some creeking practice (aka: hitting lots of rocks).

The flow was down at about 250cfs, which made getting through some of the class II section hard, having to scoot over gravel bars and whatnot. Once we were in the Gorge it was a lot better. Overall, I'd say most of the river is easier at low water, there isn't anything pushy and you're moving slower, so it's easier to make the moves. The moves themselves tended to be somewhat more technical, since you're bouncing off rocks all the time and the river is in a much narrower channel.

The only spot that was any trouble at all was Satan's. As with most of the rapids, the places that are normally big holes are reduced to the boulder typically underwater. At Satan's, the underwater boulders are pretty close together and the river does an abrupt drop between them, at a 90 degree angle from the direction your boat is heading. The easy way to deal would be squaring up to the drop, but that would smack you nose first into the wall at the bottom. With a bit of steam built up, we all went sideways off the drop, it nearly ate Melody, but she got through. Marion got rolled, rolled up, smacked into the wall anyway which flipped her back in, but she flushed from the hole and rolled up again beautifully. I got mostly eaten too, but by some black sorcery, managed to keep upright, smacking into the wall actually saved me from certain rolling practice.

All in all, very recommended for when you're tired of the Gorge at normal flows and want the river all to yourself (none of the rafters dare go at low flow).

Cider Update III

2009-11-18T16:50:00.000-08:00

Update III, the ill-conceived, bastard child of update II. Snicker...

We bottled the first 5 gallons of cider when my sister, Kim, came by to hang out. It hasn't finished with the yeast settling yet, so they will probably take a month or more of bottle conditioning before they're ready to drink. We used the new bottle capper that my coworker Matt gave/lent us (he just kegs anymore), and it worked great.

When we racked from the secondary carboy into the bottling bucket, the SG was 0.996, the same as it had been when we racked into the secondary carboy, so we are certain now that fermentation was complete and we've just been waiting for the yeasty-beasties to settle down.

The cider is pretty tasty, on its own, but we decided to up the ante a little bit by adding some malic acid when we bottled, I think somewhere on the order of 1 tsp, which added quite a bit of sour apple flavor to the juice. We also used 3 cans of apple juice concentrate as the sugar source for carbonation. The combination of sugar and some extra apple flavor was delicious.

After adding the malic acid and the concentrate, the SG was back up at 1.070. This is higher than the starting gravity at the very beginning, so we may have just doubled the strength of the cider, or potentially made for explosive (or extremely foamy) bottled product. As a precaution, we put all the bottles inside a rubbermaid tub to keep the carpet safe.

Next up: Bottling the Beast, Tasting the Beauty

Bread Recipes

2009-11-10T11:58:00.000-08:00

Here are a few bread recipes that I use in the breadmaker all the time. They go great with BBQ ribs.

French Bread

Ingredients:

1.5 cups water
4 cups bread flour
1.5 tsp salt
2.5 tsp bread yeast

Throw them into the bread maker in that order, set on white or french cycle. If you don't have a bread maker, you'll mix them up in your mixer with the dough hook until it forms a nice cohesive ball, let it proof in a nice warm place for a few hours. Punch it down and let rise again, then bake at 350 until it gets brown, maybe 30 min, but not sure.

Potato Bread

Ingredients:

1 cup water
2 glugs olive oil
3 cups bread flour
1 potato, "baked" in microwave, peeled then mashed or grated
1.5 tsp salt
2.5 tsp bread yeast

Similarly, throw into bread machine in the order presented, run on white bread cycle. Alternatively, mixer/dough hook, rise, punch, rise, bake.

No Knead Bread

This is from Mark Bittman. It works good, and tastes amazing for how much work it takes.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2006/11/07/dining/1194817104184/no-knead-bread.html

3 cups flour
1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/4 tsp salt
1.5 cups water

Mix up dry ingredients with a quick hand fluff. Toss in the water and mix it until it's just mixed together and forms a cohesive lump. Let it sit for 12-24 hours.

After it's done sitting, flop it out on the counter, pat it a little until it's a fairly uniform thickness, somewhat circular shape. Grab opposite edges, and fold in thirds into the middle, from two orthogonal directions. Sprinkle some flour out and set the loaf on it, throw some more flour over the top.

Get your oven pre-heated to 500 F with your dutch oven inside of it. When the dutch is blazingly hot, carefully pull out the oven rack and remove the dutch lid. Toss the loaf into the dutch with the seam side up and replace the lid. Shove it back into the oven.

Let it cook for 30 min with the dutch closed, then open it up for the last 15. Turn it out of the dutch to cool, this allows the crust to form up on the bottom. Viola! Bread.

This is a picture of Marion's first No Knead Bread

BWM Water Pump Replacement

2009-11-08T12:09:00.000-08:00

I guess it was about 6 weeks ago now, we were driving home from dinner when the car starting making these awful noises. We limped it home and opened up the hood to see the fan stuck up under the fan shroud, where it obviously was never meant to go.

After working myself up to the task for five weeks, I finally went and opened the hood up again to see what I could find. I initially intended to pull the shroud out (since it was warped from the collision) and see if it would work without any major repairs. To get said shroud removed requires taking the fan out too, since the tolerances are too tight to remove one without the other.

Removing the fan was only minorly painful, it nominally requires a 32mm open end wrench and a special tool for holding the fan pulley, but I was able to make it work using a large crescent wrench and a screwdriver. Once I had some leverage on the fan, I noticed the shaft it mounts on was wiggly (which it definitely shouldn't be), which got me reading and I found out the fan mounts to the water pump. I hate water pumps. They suck and should be cause enough to switch over to electric engines.

The water pump in my BMW is a known suck-fest. It is a recommended maintenance replace item every 60,000 miles, so it wasn't really surprising that it had failed. To replace the part itself is pretty easy, it's almost like the engineers knew it was going to have to come out regularly so they made it easy to get to.

I have the 2.8L BMW Z3 coupe (engine M52 TU)

Remove fan and cowling - 32 mm wrench and either a special tool or a large screwdriver to keep the pulley in place. The fan is threaded onto the shaft CCW, so righty loosey. Pop the two rivets on the cowling (one in each top corner).
Get the belts off - for each belt, there is a hydraulic tensioner which keeps everything tight. Pop the covers off these with a small, flathead screwdriver. A T50 torq bit in a nice long socket wrench gives enough leverage to push the hydraulic tensioners down, letting you slip the belt off the pulleys. The more forward belt runs the AC, the longer serpentine belt runs the water pump, alternator, and power steering/brakes. You have to get both of them off, and should probably replace them while you're doing so.
Remove the pulley off the water pump - 4 bolts, 10mm heads
Drain the coolant system - There is a valve at the bottom of the radiator on the drivers side. There is a valve at the bottom of the engine block, exhaust side, and cylinder 2
Take the nuts off the water pump - 4 nuts, 10mm
Use two M6 bolts in the threaded holes on the water pump to push it out of the engine block, try to move the bolts evenly
Lube the gasket on the new water pump with clean antifreeze
Reverse removal steps with the new pump
Once it's all put back together, fill the coolant system and bleed the air out - turn heater to high, fan to low, and idle the engine, once the bubble stop coming out at the bleed screw, you're done. Don't forget to check the level after the first time you drive the car.

All in all, it was a straight forward repair. It only required buying 1 new tool (a T50 torq bit), new belts, new water pump, and anti-freeze for a total of <$200. I would do it again instead of taking it in to a shop.

Don't forget that antifreeze is nasty bad for critters, so clean up after any spills, don't leave any AF out, and make sure not to kill your pets. Apparently it gives them liver failure and they die a slow, horrible, painful death.

BBQ Ribs - A Cooking Adventure

2009-11-08T11:45:00.000-08:00

I recently bought a rack of pork ribs and tried out a few methods for cooking them. Here are the winners:

Weekend Ribs - BBQ slow cook

These ribs want some attention while they are cooking, so it's best to do on a day when you're nearby to tend them appropriately. To start, fire up the grill to inferno and clean the grill as necessary with your wire brush. Take the ribs and apply your favorite rub. This can be as simple as garlic salt (like I used), or a nice fancy rub that has cayenne, salt, pepper, msg (for the daring).

Put the dry rubbed ribs on the inferno hot grill over burner A, and turn burner A off, leaving burner B at inferno. After 10 minutes, flip the ribs over onto burner B, turn burner A on to low, and turn off burner B. You now have nice grill lines and have seared both sides of the meat, hopefully sealing some of the juices in. For the next several hours, only apply indirect, low heat; flip the ribs about once an hour. 5-6 hours is a good timeframe for eating these, but if you're short on time, they are edible at 4 hours.

Weeknight Ribs - Crock Pot, BBQ finish
These ribs are great for preparing ahead, letting them cook unattended for hours, then "preparing" in twenty minutes once you get home. Cut up the rack of ribs so the sections will fit into the crock pot. Get the grill hot (as above) and give these ribs some nice grill marks on each side. Cut an onion into 1/2 inch slices and throw the onion and about 1 cup BBQ sauce into the bottom of the crock pot. Put the crock pot on high while you're pre-grilling the meat to get the sauce up to temp. Once the ribs have spent their time on the grill, throw them into the crock putting more sauce between the pieces as you stack them. Turn the crock pot to low.

If you're lucky, you have an old crock pot that'll cook at a nice temperature (~180F) all day at the low setting. If not, you have a newer unit that will boil anything you put in there. With an older unit, you can pretty much cook the meat all day, since at 180F, the soft gelatinous connective tissue will stay put until you come home. With the newer units, you want to limit the amount of time in the crock pot to about 4 hours, since too much time above 180F will cause the meat to come out dry, yck! (see food science entry below).

Once you get home, and the meat has finished cooking in the crock pot, you'll want to fire up the grill once more. Put the ribs on for 10 minutes a side at medium to high heat, until they get a little crispy and delicious.

Side Dish - Easy Coleslaw

Whichever version of ribs you make, you'll want to make the slaw a day ahead of time. Cut a head of cabbage into wedges, remove the spine, and slice as close to paper thin as you're willing to do (a food processor can work too). Toss the cabbage with a few pinches of salt and put in a collander (inside a bowl, of course) in the fridge for up to 6 hours. Grate a few carrots and cut a red onion into tiny bits.
The sauce is easy:

1 1/4 cups mayo
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tsp sugar (a little more if you like a sweeter slaw).

Mix up the wilted cabbage, carrots, onions, and sauce. You *could* eat it immediately, but it'll be much better tomorrow, when you cook the ribs!

Basic food science entry: Meat is composed of muscle, fat, and connective tissue. The muscle and fat lose water above 140F, tending to dry out. The connective tissue begins to melt, losing tough/chewy characteristics, at 160F up to 180F, and turns gelatinous. Above 180F the gelatinous connective tissue seeps out of the meat into the broth making the broth delicious, but the meat dry and chewy. Thus, the goal is to cook it for several hours between 160F and 180F to get the most tender, succulent meat possible. Here's where I learned about this: http://www.edinformatics.com/math_science/science_of_cooking/slow_cooking.htm

Cider uPdate

2009-10-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Now we have 10 gallons of cider. The first 5.5 gallons were pasteurized and pitched with commercial Wyeast cider yeast, we call this the "beauty" batch. The second 4.5 gallons were unpasteurized and are using wild yeast as the fermentor, we call this the "beast" batch.

Today we racked the beauty into the secondary fermentor to get rid of lots of the apple solids and yeast poop. The gravity reading was at 0.996, which, compared with the OG of 1.056 is looking like 7% ABV, or thereabouts. Whoa! We threw some pectinase in to clear up the cider because the initial ferment had slowed to a crawl, but the cider was still very cloudy, so hopefully the pectinase breaks down all those long polysaccharide chains and produces more alcohol while clearing it up.

The beast took about 1.5 weeks longer to really start fermenting, it's bubbling along nicely now, but we have a while yet before we rack that off.

Cider Update

2009-10-08T17:31:00.000-07:00

We're drinking some of the fresh apple juice now, and I decided to take a gravity reading so we have some idea of how the hard cider ends up, alcohol wise. The OG is 1.056. Not sure how heavier sediments might be contributing to the density of the juice...

The cider is bubbling away, all happy like.

Kayaking (b)Log

2009-10-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

9/27 - SFA - The Gorge - 1500cfs - Went w/ Marion - good trip, turns out Marion is only happy when she's in the big waves. Saw Dan McL at the takeout/shuttle.

9/26 - No. Feather - Lobin - 800cfs - One day trip, drove up w/ Gabrielle, met Bill, Brian, Luke @ river - Definitely a step up, pretty awesome section of river, would definitely do it again!

9/20 - SFA - Chili Bar - 1650cfs - Went with Melody, Bill, Rafael, Gabrielle - Handpaddled, awesome, and surfed it up at First Threat.

9/19 - SFA - The Gorge - 1650cfs - Went with Marion - Started early (before water), but rode the bump through the gorge. Awesome run, both of us felt really confident with all the rapids/lines.

9/13 - Pacific Ocean - Albion Cove - 100000000cfs - Paddled with Melody and Will, Marion and Rafael in attendance - Kayaked with Chris and Rafael while they were Abalone diving, then spent an hour surfing some nice waves with Melody and Will

9/5 - 9/7 - Lower T - 1200cfs - Marion, Melody, Will, Rafael, Libby, Bill, Brian G, Luke - Last T release of the season, was super nice run, I got to do Clavey IV sneak twice, pretty much nailed it the first time in Diesel 75, got to see most of the rapid upside down in the Java. Video

Apple Cider

2009-10-08T12:04:00.000-07:00

We have approximately 300lbs of golden delicious apples on our back porch in 8 boxes, a 20 gallon trash can, and an old pot. They are starting to get wormy, but we're going to get a few batches of juice out before they're all rotten.

Last night we ground up enough apples to fill a 5 gallon pot, it worked out to just under one box... my b.o.t.e. calculation says we've got about 40 gallons of potential juice. At the most, I think we'll be making 10 gallons, so if anyone actually reads this and wants some apples, let me know!

The juice was pasteurized (brought up to 160 degreesF) then cooled to 75 and some Wyeast Cider yeast pitched in. It was bubbling this morning. Sweet!

Einished d Beerz

2009-10-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

Well, the stout is now bottled. FG = 1.016, so about 4.5% ABV in the finished product. It tastes pretty good, the bitter hops are pretty bitter and there isn't much aromatic, so I think maybe next time I'm going to either throw the aromatic hops in then start cooling immediately, or try dry-hopping. I don't mind the bitterness, just think having another stand-out characteristic would be nice. I think also, as it carbonates in the bottles, it will get a bit of character from the bubbles and become more balanced, will report in ~1 week...

Dry Stout Update

2009-09-29T08:58:00.000-07:00

We racked the beer into secondary fermenter last night, probably two or three days behind schedule, but better than nothing. The SG was about 1.018, down from 1.050 when we put it in. The recipe sheet says that it should stop somewhere just below 1.020. It's starting to taste like a nice dry stout (think boddingtons maybe), but tastes like it has a little ways to go with the sugar yet.

We've come up with a highly developed refrigeration unit to keep it between 55 and 65 degrees for the next week while it finishes fermenting, basically just set the carboy into our largest enameled canning pot full of water, then threw a towel over the top which wicks water up over the top of the carboy. It kept the setup at 65 degrees last week while it was 100 outside. This week I'm running a fan on it to see if I can convince the setup to get down closer to 55, but I'm not sure it'll work.

Kayaking (b)Log

2009-09-22T12:40:00.001-07:00

9/20 - SFA - Chili Bar - 1650cfs - Went with Melody, Bill, Rafael, Gabrielle - Handpaddled, awesome, and surfed it up at First Threat.

9/19 - SFA - The Gorge - 1650cfs - Went with Marion - Started early (before water), but rode the bump through the gorge. Awesome run, both of us felt really confident with all the rapids/lines.

9/13 - Pacific Ocean - Albion Cove - 100000000cfs - Paddled with Melody and Will, Marion and Rafael in attendance - Kayaked with Chris and Rafael while they were Abalone diving, then spent an hour surfing some nice waves with Melody and Will

9/5 - 9/7 - Lower T - 1200cfs - Marion, Melody, Will, Rafael, Libby, Bill, Brian G, Luke - Last T release of the season, was super nice run, I got to do Clavey IV sneak twice, pretty much nailed it the first time in Diesel 75, got to see most of the rapid upside down in the Java. Video

Thanksgiving Brew Kickoff

2009-09-22T12:22:00.001-07:00

We spent the morning brewing up a batch of beer for Thanksgiving. The beer is a Dry Stout mix from the Beverage People, a beer and wine homebrew store in Santa Rosa. The yeast we used is Wyeast 1084, an Irish Ale yeast.

The first step is prepping the grains by bringing to a simmer, then letting steep for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, the main brew kettle is fired up with about 4 - 4 1/2 gallons of water and the malt extract powder mixed in. There was a little container of water conditioner which we threw in, it's probably a mix of salts and minerals for people with soft water, but we threw it in anyhow.

After the 45 minute steep on the grains, they were sieved out and throw in with the wort. The first round of bittering hops is added followed by a 15 minute boil. The second round of bittering hops is added, followed by a 45 minute boil. The final round of hops (aroma hops this time with a distinctly different smell from the bittering hops) is added with a final 5 minutes of boiling. It took about 30 minutes with the wort chiller to bring the temperature down from boiling to about 80 degrees.

The wort was measured for specific gravity and tasted for appropriate hoppyness. The OG is 1.050 and the beer is pretty dang bitter. We poured off the wort into a glass carboy and pitched the yeast. There were chunks left in the bottom of the pot, mostly the hops which had been added at various stages. I wasn't sure whether they should be added to the carboy or not, to impart more flavor as the beer ferments, but since it was pretty bitter already, I decided not to put the sludge in. We'll see...

That's it, the brew has started bubbling already, more once it's done and we get to taste it.

Neato! Haleakala in Photosynth

2009-08-06T16:18:00.000-07:00

Though generally, I don't feel that Microsoft produces a very useful product (despite running their OS and productivity suite), this time they've made something really neat.

The product is called Photosynth, and is something like a fancy photo stitching program which serves high quality (resolution) images from their webserver and combines images from various viewpoints and magnification levels. The really cool stuff happens when you use your feet to zoom in on incredibly fine details of the scene (which I haven't managed to do yet, but the examples on their site do well).

They offer another cool piece of software, called DeepZoom, which is a similar idea, except without doing the photo stitching, just lots of high-res images which are shown at low resolution, but you can do GoogleMaps style panning and zooming to get in close for high-res details.

I think they're going in a good direction on these projects, what I want to see (and I will grant that it is asking alot), is for the smooth panning and zooming of DeepZoom to be combined with the stitching ability of Photosynth. Additionally, and this is where it would be SUPERCOOL, they need to be able to do it with more than just images. Imagine if you could create a website where the entire site is one big Photosynth, you can zoom in to arbitrary detail on images and text, and most importantly, the clickable links will take you between parts of the site, or open new browser tabs for external links. If you can't imagine it, trust me, it would be amazing!

Here's the fantasy: You go over to byoxall.awesome.com (not really there) and it brings you to the home page, you scroll out, mouse over the galleries section, scroll back in, mouse over the gallery you want, scroll in some more, see the photo you want, scroll in some more. Now you click, and BAM! (to quote Emeril), you see the next photo in the album, or better yet, you right click, and all the photos with common content are displayed as a photosynth. Bored of photos, you scroll out until you see the blog section, mouse over, scroll in, read the fascinating insights and want to know more, so you click the link and it pops up another tab with the external site. It's fast, intuitive, makes navigating super easy, and looks slicker than snot.

In the meantime, here are a few Photosynth things I've made with old photos.

Gard'nin' in July

2009-07-25T22:41:00.001-07:00

Marionthedirtprincess and I went to the garden this evening and found out that the tomatoes are a-bloomin (or ripe, really, is what I mean to say). We picked a bushel and Marion made super tasty fresh-tomato-sauce pasta for dinner. MMMmmmmmm.

Here're a few photos I took of the sunflowers as the sun was going down, it's really cool to use the flash to light up the flowers because it allows all the color of the sunset to show up in the background. Normally, in no flash mode, the sunset colors are all washed out because the integration time to get the flowers to show is so long.

Here are some gratuitous photos of my new cat, Sprout, growing up.

GVoice

2009-07-21T13:26:00.000-07:00

Dang, I feel technologically adept.

I got an e-mail this morning about being invited to Google Voice, and now, a mere 5 hours later, calling one simple phone number will ring my cell, home phone, and computer VOIP program, all at once, so there is no way for me to avoid you! I put a widget on the sidebar ... Nyah --> so you can call me.

Talk soon. Brian

Gopher Battle Update II

2009-05-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

Gophers - 0 / Brian - 3

Ha Ha! I got the sucker! This guy wiped out an entire bed of lettuce and was making a bee-line towards the garlic. It took me days of hunting to finally get him, he outsmarted my trapping maneuvers on three separate occasions, but finally, FINALLY, I got him. So far, I'm going to say that the Old Reliable traps (the original macabee style) are better than the new ones.

Gopher Battle Update

2009-05-12T16:09:00.000-07:00

Well, darned if I haven't killed a single gopher since I wrote the manifesto. Recently, I've been stuck in an intense battle with a very wily critter. He started out eating some heads of lettuce which were bolting, so it wasn't too bad, but he was very close to the garlic bed.

I dug up his surface holes and set traps in them, despite knowing that finding a deep mainline hole is the most important part. At first, I was foiled because he came through a third hole which I hadn't noticed and filled in the area I had dug out. I re-dug and set another trap, but somehow he manages to push dirt past the traps without springing them. It may be that I'm using an inferior version of the macabee style traps, since they are new ones with two wires that have to be tripped.

He moved on from the holes I was setting traps in after filling them in a second time and killed a few more heads of lettuce by chewing the roots off. He's getting closer to the garlic, so I decided to dig back along the surface hole until I found a deeper route. I did so and set a trap, but he dug a parallel hole next to the one I'd dug up and filled it in from the other end, then ate some more lettuce. GAH!! This critter is getting frustrating.

Today I followed his new, parallel hole back to where it dives deep underground and used the "big shovel" to dig down and set a trap, but I still think that I haven't found his main thoroughfare because there is only one hole, and it pretty much led to the surface tunnels I've been digging up.

If failure was an option, I'd write this off and call it Gophers - 1, Brian -2, but it isn't an option, so I'll keep setting traps and digging until the entire garden is dug up if I have to.

On a side note, I've installed PVC irrigation and spigots in each bed so that we don't have hoses running all over the garden. Today I installed the solenoid valves to run each of the four sections, now I just need to run the power supply over from the garden shed and install the controller, then it'll be ready to run.

Smurf Hats

2009-05-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Posted a tutorial on making the Smurf Hats

Project #73 for when I should be doing something useful

I made some smurf hats. It started out innocently enough, I'm playing in a spring frisbee league in Sac and the theme for picking team names was "cartoons from your childhood". Of course everyone starts in with various and assundry cartoons, animaniacs, looney toons, eco-panet-rangers (whatever they were called)... I bit my tongue, hoping someone might mention the obvious choices: He-Man and the Smurfs.

How is it that in a group of fifteen people aged between twentyfive and thirtyfive, I'm the only one with a fixation on such nerdy classics? I can almost recall doing a mathematical proof that the odds of having two people with a fixation on Smurfs looks something like this:

#people %(2 smurf fans)
-------------------------------
1_ _ _ _ _ _0
2 _ _ _ _ 100
3 _ _ _ _ 100
...

It was probably a proof I did in my sleep at college, while I was taking the prob/stat course that I don't remember much of and didn't like very well. And it may have been true in college, too. But, I begin to realize that going out into "normal" society introduces strange twists into the equation.

So after the discussion goes on for many, many minutes, including having the modern, PC ultra hypenated team name (something like loony-maniacal-power-saving-mutant-explorers, though not nearly that cool), I slipped in a casual "or we could be the smurfs," then scampered off to play another margarita point.

It took almost literally one ultimate point for the full swing. I staggered back to the sideline after we'd scored the point (cuz I wasn't walking straight by then) and there were already three people assigned names: papa smurf, smurfette, and gargamel. Those are the only ones that anyone can remember.

Fortunately, people who are into smurfs are nerdy, as a prerequisite, so the internet (also being the domain of the nerdy) is full of smurfy information. Mel took it upon herself to dig some of it up and the corruption began. First there was the list of all the characters in the mushroom village. There are 98. They came the e-mail list of who's who. My name is Brian, I choose Brainy smurf because that's how most people spell my name anyway, and he's annoying, self-righteous, and gets hit in the head with a mallet for his qualities. Marion is farmer smurf for obvious reasons. Jeffro - jokey smurf. Melody - harmony smurf. It's almost too easy.

So smurfs are distinctive for two things: blue bodies and goofy looking white hats. Blue shirts I have, but goofy looking white hats? I'll just have to make them. So I found out there are not really any patterns on the internet, but a picture of a hat from the interweb was good enough. I started with the outline of a beanie, and added a big top knobby bit. Six hats later (and at midnight), I gave up for the day. But I promise, and this is especially for the Smurf team, I will make a team set of these before the season is over!

Which brings me to the whole point of writing this post. I did a facebook status update saying "I just made a half dozen smurf hats" at the end of my fabrication last night. This morning, DChun, a good, nerdy college friend commented, saying "I'm proud, but scared. How many minions are you authorized to have?"

I don't know that I have any authorization, but by the looks of it, tonight I will have fifteen!

Gopher Battle Royale

2009-04-29T15:21:00.000-07:00

Current Count -

Gophers - 0 / Brian - 2

Preamble -

This is my gopher killing log. This truth which ought to be self-evident; that gophers are the bane of the garden, bring limitless destruction, and as a result, should be exterminated with extreme prejudice at any and all opportunities, this truth is the justification for these seemingly genocidal activities. By posting the gory, graphic details of these battles, I lay myself completely helpless before the gnashing teeth of gopher law should they ever become the dominant specie on this rock we inhabit. Until such a time, I have faith that my actions will be justified by the improvement in garden production and reduction of a garden frustration.

Article I - History of gopher malfeasance and justification of extermination

Gardening in an organic community garden is a frustrating endeavor for many reasons. Some of the most remarkable frustrations are: bermuda grass, disease load in the soil, hippies, and vegetable theft. These irritations are all addressable through work, building and maintenance of soil, and liberal application of shotgun. The largest remaining problem in the organic community garden is the gopher.

The gopher inevitably strikes a garden from deep underground, burrowing toward the tender root of a vegetable mere hours from ripeness. There is some signal which plants release as their fruit become perfect for picking that draw the rodents in from miles around. The gophers have different strategies for ruining a vegetable garden. In many cases, a plant with a full load of some deliciousness will inexplicably wither and dry up, the result of having only the roots chewed off. Other times, a four foot tall plant will start disappearing into the earth and after just a few minutes, only an inch of vegetation is left.

A special favorite target of the malicious gopher community is the sulfuric root vegetables, most notably garlic and onions. Garlic and onion are particularly vexatious due to their long growing period and the strength of the signal they send out to the gophers. These plants must be sown in the fall and are tended throughout the winter, when the weather is particularly unpleasant, so that when the spring thaw arrives, they can fatten up and become the vegetables we know. As they become ripe, due to their particularly strong disposition, gophers can smell them and will burrow through hell and back to get at the roots.

After years of losing significant produce to the gopher population, it is necessary now to go beyond the typical methods of discouragement (such as flooding the holes, bringing in cats, and playing loud music), and set a course for liberation of the garden plot from these fiends. As there are no catch-and-release cages in the market for gophers, and due to the strong karma implications of releasing gophers into someone elses plot, the only reasonable alternative is gopher extermination.

Article II - Methodology

It is important to hit the gophers in their position of strength, and use their own defense mechanisms to effect their downfall. To this end, a collection of traps knows loosely as macabee style (henceforth referred to simply as macabees), are used.

Identification of gopher routes is very important, as the effectiveness of the macabees is highly dependent on placement. The mounds of dirt that we typically associate with gophers are usually poor places to set traps, as they represent the ends of a gopher tunnel, a location used only for deposition of dirt from deeper tunnels or as a point of attack on garden plants. That said, the mounds of dirt often can lead back to major thoroughfares or habitat locations, though significant excavation is required.

In general, upon seeing gopher mounds in the garden, the preferred method of attack is to use a regular spade shaped shovel and dig a hole centered on the mound, about 1 foot in diameter and 2-3 feet deep. It is important to dig the sides cleanly, i.e. cut into the side and move the dirt directly away from the side, to avoid compressing the tunnel openings and obscuring the gopher tracks. Digging such a large hole may seem overzealous, but it has two purposes. First, the goal of the hole is to find the major gopher route, and these are often 2-3 feet deep. Second, once you find the major route, having a large opening makes setting macabees straight forward and the open air will drive the gophers to investigate (more on this later).

Here is an image of a hole which was successful in uncovering a gopher lair and resulted in a gopher death. The hole is about 2.5 feet deep, there was a tunnel very near the bottom which lead into the lair, and a tunnel which led up to the surface (and some plants he'd eaten) on the other side. Once the hole was found, it was slightly enlarged by excavating the sides and top of it with a trowel. This allows the macabee to slide easily in and out of the hole and gets the gopher hoppin' mad in the process. To try and close up this newly enlarged hole, the gopher will attempt to push dirt out the opening and blockup the works. This of course, is the action the trap uses to trigger and get the sucker.

All gopher hunting methods require going from an obvious sign back to a major travel route. Often in hard soil, this can be accomplished with a hand trowel by simply lifting the roof off the tunnel and following several feet back to a cross tunnel. As the dirt gets softer and easier to dig, the gophers will move deeper and the hunt will require larger tools.

Often you will find a thoroughfare which leads off in two different directions. In this case, since you don't know where the gopher may attack from, it is advisable to place a macabee in each hole. It is IMPORTANT that you tie off the macabees with string or wire, as the gophers reaction to getting caught is back-pedaling, and the traps can disappear if you don't have them fixed to something solid.

Article III - Implements of Destruction

The tools used in gopher warfare are simple and direct. The most basic tool required is a shovel. More than a few gophers have been caught by simply inserting a shovel into the tunnel behind them as they chew on some delectable plant, then stomping or kicking them when they try to make a break for it.

For gophers not present, a trap is easier than waiting for the pesks return. The macabee trap is a simple wire device with a spring loaded set of jaws locked into the trigger paddle by a long wire. When the gopher hits the trigger paddle, the long wire is loosened and the jaws snap shut, usually crushing the gophers lungs and causing asphixiation.

The only other tools required are a long thin stick or piece of bamboo for probing tunnel locations, a trowel for preparing holes for macabees, and a pair of special gopher gloves. The gloves are important because some wily elder gophers are attuned to the scent of humans and will avoid traps. Get a pair of gloves, crush up some garlic cloves and wipe the garlic oil around on the gloves and on the macabees while you're at it. Try to keep those gloves separate from the everyday ones and only use them for the hunt.

Norf Carolina

2009-04-16T22:28:00.000-07:00

This weekend is the wedding of my best friend from Willits, Malanyon, to his fiancee, Sarah, and I'm out here in North Carolina with them a few days early to help as I can. I'll be fulfilling best man duties for Malanyon, so I've got to come up with some witty things to say about him both during the ceremony and afterwards, at the dinner.

Since arriving on Tuesday, we've been running around like chickens with out heads trying to get things organized. First stop Wednesday morning was the folks with the meat. The plan was to get a bunch of pork loins for Michael, a friend from New Zealand who's a bit nutty and prone to fits of passion about Malanyon's lack of preparation. Michael is going to be cooking up the meat for the wedding dinner, which started off as a pulled pork sandwich line with Tam's homemade rolls. The wrench was thrown in when a bunch of the good ol' NC folks offered up some lambs to help feed everyone. Now Michael is in a constant fit of passion, cursing and swearing and tearing about as he attempts to figure out cooking up three lambs and a random assortment of pig meat. (I secretly think that Malanyon likes getting Michael riled up).

After the fairly fruitless meat-fact-finding trip, in which we got promised a bushel of lamb and a pile of pork, we met up with Sarah and with Tam and Kashaya, we all headed over to Sam's club for supplies. Since Tam's making the rolls for the sandwiches, and Kashaya is making desserts (Tira Misu and Lemon Bars), we bought about 120 pounds of cooking ingredients in addition to the necessities for the next several days leading up to the wedding. By the time we left, the cart was over-flowing and nearly impossible to move.

Today (being Thursday), I hung out with Malanyon, his soon-to-be sister-in-law Kate, and her children Alex and Chad. Alex is four years old and has more energy than the sun. She bounced off the walls like energy was going out of style for a full twenty four hours after arriving on Wednesday. Half a day was all I could handle of such energy abundance so I left to work on the photo slideshow I'm making for the rehearsal dinner tomorrow night. It's now 2am and I'm tired, so I'm going to sleep. Woo!

Easter Celebration Preparation Explanation

2009-04-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

In preparation for our annual fiesta of going straight to heck (because Jebus doesn't like it too much when people take jello shots in his name), we spent all morning putting the goodies together for tomorrow. The two productions were the classic hard-boiled eggs and the noveau 43 kinds jello shot (actually only 3).

EGGS

We like to use the hard-boiled eggs technique from cooks illustrated. Put the eggs in water, bring it to a boil, boil for 5 minutes, let sit in hot water for 10 minutes, then straight into cold water to stop the cooking. They always come out delicious, not overly dry nor goopy in the middle. And check out the color that this simple process makes them.

Just kidding, Marion dyed them using food color and vinegar, something on the order of 20 drops of your favorite color, 1 cup water, and a tablespoon of vinegar. Put the eggs into the colored mixture until they look like the right color, and viola! Easter eggs. In the past, we've drawn on the eggs before dying them with Crayons in neat patterns, the dye doesn't go where the wax from the crayons is, so you end up with multi color designs.

JELLO SHOTS

We made up four flavors of jello, three of them with alcohol and a virgin batch (not shown) for the kids. One of the flavors was a hold over from last year, the margarita, and the other two are new adventures, orange dreamsicle and raspberry coconut.

The general guideline for jello shots that I'm following is to mix the jello with the called for amount of boiling water (to get it dissolved) and then add a combination of liquor and water for the cold addition. The combination of liquor and water is based on the strength of the liquor. Basically, the amount of alcohol by volume can't exceed 20%, so if you're using straight vodka at 80 proof (where 80 proof = 40%), then you'd use 1/2 vodka, 1/2 water for the cold portion of the jello recipe. Note that this would taste awful and get you shnookered pretty quick, so you'd probably want to consider watering it down even more.

Margarita:
We use a package of lime jello, it calls for 2 cups boiling water and two cups cold water on the package. We dissolve the jello in two cups boiling water (stir for 2 min), then squeeze in the juice from two limes, add about 1/2 cup of triple sec, somewhere around a cup of tequila, and fill up to the four cup line with cold water.

Orange Dreamsicle:
Orange jello, dissolve the jello in two cups boiling water, add about 1/2 cup triple sec, somewhere around 3/4 of a cup of vanilla vodka, and fill up to the four cup line with cold water.

Raspberry Coconut:
We weren't sure how this would turn out, but we used the ol' saying "coconut rum tastes good with everything" to convince ourselves it would work. And it does.
Raspberry jello, dissolve jell in two cups boiling water, a splash of amaretto (which is entirely unnecessary if you don't have it around), and nearly two cups of coconut rum because it's only 20% abv. Fill up to the four cup line with cold water.

Virgin Black Cherry:
We decided to make some for the kids, so we made up black cherry jello, but put in club soda instead of cold water for the last two cups. It didn't taste very fizzy when we poured into the cups, but hopefully there will be a little sparkle once the jello is set, I'll report back.

The jello shots are destined to go inside of large plastic easter egg shells so the critters don't get in them while they're hidden. Last year, this worked so well that we found jello shots that looked edible months after the party (I couldn't quite bring myself to try them, however). If you ever wanted to know what it's like inside an easter egg, here's the view from a jello shot's perspective.

Snowbirding

2009-04-05T21:26:00.000-07:00

The great M and I went to Tahoe this weekend to test our luck at snowbirding**. What's snowbirding? Well, let me tell you!!! The basic premise is to go to an area with lots of snow... what's that now, you live in India and you don't know what snow is? Listen punk, just fix the credit card so I can rent a frickin' snowboard, OK?

SO... it was very nice this weekend and we had two excellent days snowbirding, the first at Sugar Bowl and the second at Squaw Valley. Both days the mountain was pretty empty, undoubtedly the result of nice summer weather down the hill. The days started out pretty brisk, all the runs except the freshly groomed areas were very icy until the sun got them thawed out. Towards afternoon, it warmed up and both days got into the high 40's or low 50's which meant the snow got "corny" on top of the hills and slushy at the bottoms.

On Saturday at Sugar Bowl, we started by doing warm up runs on the Jerome Hill lift, then cruised over to Christmas Tree, Mt. Lincoln up to the tippy top, and long, leg-burning traverse to Mt. Disney lift, and a pretty rough ride (it was icy and super choppy) down to lunch. A bit of tasty burger in the belly and we were off again. I think in the afternoon, we started at the west side of the resort and worked our way back across all the lifts and many of the runs off each lift, ending up in the terrain park. I tried going off a jump, very successfully I might add, but forgot about landing it and ended up with a bruised bum.

Sunday we went to Squaw Valley, it's an immense place and has enough ski runs that you can get lost quite easily. Fortunately, Marion's uncle has been there a time or two and was able to guide us from trail to lift to trail. We went straight to the top, then skittered down a couple of steep icy faces. Moving over to the south facing slopes worked out pretty well, as the ice quickly turned into a light slush with the addition of sun. We took a half dozen runs before lunch (Marion got a delicious fish burrito, who knew, fish at 7800 feet), then spent the remainder of the day traversing the entire resort, much as we'd done Saturday at SB.

We gave up a little early, due to the drive home, and by 4pm (after waiting around for half an hour for Marion's brothers to pack up their crap), we were on the road. Back at home, a beer, two advil, and I'm ready for sleep.

Oh, and for those who don't know what a tree well is (and you know who you are), this is the basic idea, though obviously it's at the base of a lift pole instead of a tree. The idea is that the tree (or pole) has a deep ring around it that is really sucks to fall into. The mechanism for making the ring is probably well known by someone, but my guess is that the tree has a microclimate warm enough to melt some of the snow under it.

**This is basically the story that Marion tells about the time she tried to rent some gear and ended up trying to explain the concept of snowboarding to some customer service person from India.

Sugar Bowl

Squaw

Twittin' in the wind

2009-04-02T21:17:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that I've gone and done a terrible, unthinkable thing. I joined up on the twitter bandwagon, possibly before everyone has, but certainly after most people have. I even heard that one of the random crappy radio stations that I flip through has a twitter stream, as I dialed past it on my drive this morning.

Having a twitter account is bad in and of itself, as I legitimately feel no one in their right mind would care what I'm doing on a day to day basis, much less hour to hour, or minute to minute, or (god forbid I should use my time so foolishly) on a second to second basis. The really bad part, and the reason I didn't jump on the bandwagon months ago, is that I don't have any way of reading the twits outside of the intarweb. I can't afford a data plan on a phone, much less one of those telephones with an 8"x10" color glossy screen. Yet here I am, riding along on the wagon just because I'd feel out of the loop. Who the heck knew about a ford fiesta before whitscott?

The even worse part is now I'm going to think about whether I need to get a phone and a data plan. I don't need to, obviously, but I'm still going to ponder the possibility. Most likely, I'll do a half-way compromise and get something like the ipod touch which can, mas 0 menos, act like an iphone when I'm around internet connections, which is nearly all the time. Oh wait, I have one of those, it's my computer. Crap. No toys for me.

Do You Dig it - Fence?

2009-03-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

Our garden expands, constantly and forever. This spring, we've avoided the temptation to incorporate more space (so far), and we're just making better use of the space we have. To this end, we took out an old funky fence and rebuilt it, bigger, faster, and sexier than before. The project takes about four hours to complete and requires some manual labor.

The first part of the project was taking the old fence out. Luckily, all the hard effort and back-breaking that went into this portion was done by my charming bride, cuz I was too busy studying, doing research, and writing reports. Tearing out the fence can be the most difficult part, depending on how determined the fence builder was to keep out rodents.

Next up, digging. And by digging I mean a sweet trench the likes of which have never before graced this particular corner of garden. We're talking a full shovel width and depth for tens of feet in either direction (from the middle), squared up at the bottom, and cleaned out of all the big chunkers.

If you have stout fence posts in place already (because you're going off a previous fence or something), they are a great place to start and end your fence. If not, you need to make such a post. My favorite post setting method is quick and dirty: dig a hole with your post-hole digger (P.h.D) about 1/4 the length of the post (so for a six foot fence, you want a two foot hole and an eight foot post), then throw the post in, pour loose dirt in around the edges and wiggle the post so it gets down to the bottom. When the dirt has filled up the hole, you'll put extra dirt right next to the post and stomp it, hard, repeatedly, and with conviction. When you've added dirt and stomped each side of the post about three times, the thing will be pretty stout.

If you're going to have a corner in the fence, you can do one of two things, build a stout post with a smidge of outward lean on it, or build a freeny post with some bracing to keep it in place against the pull of the fence. I usually opt for the latter since I'm a broke grad student and because it works just fine. Here's a picture of the freeny post with bracing. The bracing comes off along the line of the fence in each direction. The post and bracing both need to be sunk a ways into the dirt so when you're wrenching on the fence to get it tight, it doesn't give.

Roll out the saved fence from the demolition of previous fences if it's in good shape, or find some other source of salvaged fencing. Ideally, it will sit right on the bottom of the nice, even, square trench you dug without scrunching or lifting above the dirt. A couple of horseshoe nails (the little ones, no use putting a 6 gauge nail in chicken wire) in the post at one end, then work along to each subsequent post, pulling the fence taut before nailing. I always like starting from the bottom to get the depth right, but Marion likes to start from the top to get the top straight and tight, the choice is yours.

Now the fence is all nailed, at the perfect height, and ready for anything. You'll probably want to fill the trench in now, but if you have particularly nasty gophers or bermuda grass, consider filling the trench with woodchips or bark mulch or something. Doing this makes it easier to pull out bermuda runners, harder for gophers to find their way into the garden, and saves all that dirt for something useful, like planting beds.

That's all there is to it: rip, dig, post, nail, fill...

Happy fencing

The Glory of Electricity

2009-03-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

The solar panel project is complete. It took a bit of dangling precariously off a ladder, lifting a 50lb battery directly over my head while contorting myself to get around the shelves and studs/rafters, then the excitement (sort of) of plugging it all in and throwing the switch. Fortunately, it all went off without a hitch and the garden shed now has clean, green, power.

The mounting went much according to plan. I built a steel angle iron frame to hold the panel in place. In order to get everything aligned properly, I cut the steel to length with a hacksaw (that was work!) then taped it into place to drill the holes. After getting the holes started, I moved the panel, because I didn't want to slip and put the drill through the glass. I drilled out the holes to an appropriate size to get around the carriage bolts, then applied a liberal coat of rustoleum to preserve it for perpetuity.

The frame fit nicely around the panel, carriage bolts through the roof to keep ne'er-do-wells from, well, ne'er-doing, and a little bit of caulking around the bolt holes to maintain weatherproofiness (though I'm not sure how necessary that is, I didn't get the thing caulked and it survived a BIG storm last week just fine).

We had an old set of christmas lights with no greater purpose in life, so we brought them and wrapped the adjacent grape arbor. Now all we need to find is an old radio/boombox and we're ready for all night parties and disco dancing.

In summary, the PV power project was ridiculously straight-forward. The panel and charge controller are both manufactured by Sunsei and the cords are idiot proof, hooking up the deep cycle battery and the car inverter took about three zaps of a neuron to figure out. The hardest parts were the frame and mounting everything. Total cost was about $250, total effort about 4 hours, total awesomeness, awesome!

Alien vs. Protatoder

2009-03-06T21:35:00.000-08:00

This was the most interesting of the entire bag of seed potatoes that we got for plantin' in the garden. Reminds me a bit of those scenes in the Alien movies where the little buggers are coming out of everyone's stomachs.

We decided to get rid of the aliens before they could take over the world, we cut this sucker up into little bits with two eyes per bit. We're drying the bits out to make sure they're dead, then we're going to bury them in the ground, probably on Sunday. After they're good and buried, we'll throw some mulch and water on top and call them dead for good.

We'll them pretend that everything is hunkey-dorey until they sprout in a few weeks and grow into full-fledged aliens. Mwuah-haha-ha-ha.

mmm... flied dericious

2009-02-28T00:16:00.000-08:00

We were shopping for our asian staples at the pacific east mall ranch 99 market when I happened to look up out of my buffet counter induced stupor to see this gem. It made me extremely happy, and try though I might, I couldn't find any other fantastic missperrings the rest of the time.

While I'm thinking about grocery adventures, I present to you the best broccoli in the world (from a nerdy, fractal point of view (which is a strange point of view if you think about it)). It's called romanesco broccoli and really does come in bright chartreuse. It stands out on the vegetable shelf for it's color and it's unique pattern. Only downside, it tastes just like broccoli.

PV Fun

2009-02-25T16:36:00.000-08:00

I got a solar panel, and you didn't, nana na na na naaaa!! It'll go on the garden shed and charge up my cordless drill batteries, run the margarita blender, and support all night techno dance parties. Now don't you want one? eh? I mean, look at how blissfully happy those people look on the box...

All I've got to figure out is the rest of the system. Presumably I'm going to need a 12V deep cycle battery as the backbone of the system, maybe a few of them linked up in parallel for longer dance parties, some sort of inverter that's not going to melt if I leave it running for months at a time, and the requisite wiring doodads to put it all together. Anything else? Maybe a few outlets through the wall of the shed, gonna need to figure out GFCI... Seems eminently doable, let's see how many times I can kill myself electrically (falling off the roof doesn't really qualify as a kill because it's too easy) before this things up and running. I'll post progress as it happens.

Now that's Taxing!

2009-02-24T19:46:00.001-08:00

WooHoo! It's national taxing season, but that el presidente keeps increasing the tax refund we're supposed to get, so I don't want to file too early and miss out on the late breaking bonuses. Then again, it's a tricky business filing at the perfect time, because if you file too late, they're gonna be outta bucks and we'll end up with IOU's. It's somewhat like the stock market... looks like I missed the peak on that one too...

Wears your paddle?

2009-02-24T08:25:00.001-08:00

So these two guys are kayaking in the desert.

The first guy says "wears your paddle?"

The second guy says "sure does!"