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Inspired by Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s tonic syrup recipe, which I’ve made and enjoyed on several occasions, I created some flavorful syrup suitable for winter mixing.  To me, the spices of Thanksgiving and Christmas speak of cold snow and warm fires.  A few years ago, they also invoked hot cocoa and warm apple cider, but these days my tastes run a bit stiffer.

Here, then, I present a recipe for “winter syrup”, as well as a few ways to use it.  If you have other recipes, please leave them in the comments.

2C water

0.25C whole allspice berries

0.25C whole cloves

2 whole cinnamon sticks

1T whole cardamon pods

2 nugmeg seeds, crushed

Freshly extracted seeds of one whole vanilla bean

1T dried orange peel

0.25C fresh lemongrass, chopped

Combine all spices and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.  Remove from heat, and strain – I use a french press but feel free to substitute some other fairly fine strainer that you have available.

Return to heat in a clean pan and stir in 1.5C raw agave nectar.  Remove from heat, and refrigerate until you’re ready to use.

It took a while to find the right mix for this strongly-scented and flavored syrup, but the following two seem to be working well:

4:2:1 brandy:irish cream:winter syrup, hot

4:1 brandy:winter syrup, hot

Presidente brandy seems to blend well with the flavors of the syrup.  Enjoy!

Maybe you’ve heard, it’s all over the interwebs – I’m getting married to MariaG.  In keeping with my deeply held principles of “why do something the easy way if I can learn new stuff instead”, I started organizing using a whole bunch of Google Docs spreadsheets.  While I use Google Docs all the time, my principal use of spreadsheets is as a gigantic table.  It turns out that they’re also pretty good at being a calculator.  And, thanks to our Google overlords, we can also bring data from the web into our spreadsheets.

While the first spreadsheet I made was a guest list, the second (and more interesting one, in my opinion) was a scheduler.  Several very important guests are on academic schedules, whether as teachers or students, and of course no two of them appear to be the same.  Having decided to try for a Saturday event, and having selected the location (big enough to accommodate the entirety of the draft guest list), I made a tool to help narrow down the candidate days.  It looks like this:

So the idea here is that I want to let the spreadsheet do the work of identifying all candidate dates and hunting down some useful information to use in making the decision.  Given any set of start and end dates, it will identify the first Saturday (hardcoded at the moment) in the range and every following Saturday.  Then it will go look up in the Old Farmer’s Almanac (http://www.almanac.com/) the temperature, rain/snow, and wind for that day last year.  It’s not perfect, but I like where it’s going.  If you want to play with the formulas or copy it for your own use, you can grab the template here.

Most of the stuff in this spreadsheet is run-of-the-mill formulas and number crunching that you can do just by looking at a calendar, but what puts this into the “useful” category is Google’s “importXML” function.  While maintaining the well-ordered and well-understood spreadsheet functions like rows, columns, formulas, etc., it also allows me to operate on data pulled from arbitrary URLs using XPath functions.  I’m no power user but I’ve run across XPath before, and it’s pretty neat: it’s basically a way to navigate to a particular element or set of elements in an XML document with highly configurable granularity.  Since the Old Farmer’s Almanac website is conveniently rendered in XHTML (thanks!), and the data is available through RESTful and deterministic URLs (again, thanks!), it’s a snap to extract the info I need and pop it into the cells.  You could easily see how this could be useful; more historic data and predictive data as well as charts would quickly make this a great tool for picking dates for all kinds of activities such as picnics, camping trips, etc.  Hopefully it’ll also help us with the wedding planning.

Enjoy!

As some of you have no doubt sampled, we’re playing around with homebrew beer.  It’s all turned out drinkable, and some of it was downright delicious, but it’s been mostly luck.

Our beer supplies have come mostly from William’s Brewing, and although I don’t have any other datapoints, I’ve been pleased with the ingredients, equipment, and service.  The instructions are clear and straightforward, which is probably why things have turned out so well.  But there’s one thing we haven’t been following: the brewing temperature requirements.

Temperature is a major factor in the brewing process.  We’ve been brewing ales, which are relatively forgiving, but too hot or too cold can impair the yeast activities or impart strange flavors to the beer.  We’ve been leaving the beer to ferment in a cabinet in the kitchen, so that it would be in a cool dry dark place, and hopefully brew well.  But in truth, we have no idea what temperature it is in there.  Sure, I could buy a thermometer… or I could use this as an excuse to buy more microcontrollers.

The result is the “Beerbug”.  Right now, it’s an Arduino mounted in a cigar box, placed in the brewing cabinet.  It logs temperatures every five minutes and wirelessly sends it to another Arduino, which sends it over USB to a laptop computer, which uses a Python script to read the temperature data and logs it in a Google Docs spreadsheet, which then updates a line chart, which you can see at http://mattborn.net/beerbug.

The source and some of the technical how-to is on at http://github.com/mattborn/beerbug.

My 1984 Honda Nighthawk 700S came with some added character, including a burnt out light behind the tach.  Here’s my how-to on changing the bulb.

1. Get the right tools for the job
   You will need a 10mm ratchet or wrench and a Phillips head screwdriver, as well as a replacement bulb. My bulb came from Honda with part number 37237-SA5-003. If you’re not using stock parts, it was also labeled as “Stanley 158″ which might help you find it.
2. Be safe
   Always do electrical work with the key removed and the bike left in “lock” or “off”. Do not do electrical work with the ignition in the “park” position. It is still possible to get zapped if you touch the wrong wires, but it is probable that you will get zapped unless you leave the ignition in the “off” or “locked” position.
3. Remove the nuts from the brace at the bottom-front of the front cover
   Using your 10mm ratchet, remove the nuts (x2) attaching the brace to the front cover.
4. Remove the bolts from the frame on the inside left and right edges of the front cover
   Using your screwdriver, remove the bolts (x2) attaching the front cover to the frame assembly. On my bike, I had to nudge aside the hydraulics to even see the bolts, much less unscrew them. The front panel including the headlight will probably fall off at this point. Mine was attached to the frame with a wire but you may not be so lucky. If it doesn’t…
5. Remove the front panel from the frame
   Tug, pry, cajole or otherwise entice the front panel off of the frame. To the best of my knowledge you should be able to freely move the panel about at this point. There should be wiring to the headlight and a safety wire but these should not restrict your freedom of movement.
6. Pull the bulb assembly from the back of the instrument panel
   Using your fingers, pull firmly back on the rubber tab on the back of the bulb. There are two of these located on the extreme edges of the panel, so it should be pretty obvious which one you want to replace. I don’t recommend using a pliers to grip the rubber tab, nor do I recommend pulling on the wires.
7. Replace the bulb
   Extract the bulb from the sock by pulling gently but firmly on the glass. Replace with the new one. Mine was idiot-proofed so as long as you seat it properly in the sock it should work. After you have inserted the new bulb in the sock, I recommend that you put the key in the ignition and turn it to “on” to check that it works.
8. Put it all back together
   If you end up with parts left over you have probably screwed up.

It seems I am 96% percent female.
http://www.mikeonads.com/2008/07/13/using-your-browser-url-history-estimate-gender/

I have always thought that music about other music is among the most absurd things masquerading as art, but today I realized something which is going to require me either to accept an unpleasant truth about myself, or to acquiesce to the self-referential mania of pop music.  As I read White Oleander (NAMMP!  How we all crave validation of our tastes…), getting high from the blur of titles, the dizzying array of literary figures furiously flung at me, I realized that this, too, was a form of genre-promoting inbreeding.  It is not at all obvious whether literature which promotes other literature is any different than music which promotes other music, and since I consider the nepotistic tendencies of certain music distasteful, I must – though with regret – entertain the notion that some of my favorite name-dropping books are morally equivalent.

Why do I, as the reader, take such pleasure in the references, paeans, and sometimes outright lists of writers and works I find in books which are, in most instances, saturated with character, plot, meaning, conflict, delicious sass and wit?  Shouldn’t I judge the work based on the original content, instead of being influenced by the spate of great names it might invoke?  And while I can muster a few defenses of this practice, they all sound weak, even to me.  So let me be the first to say, I am a hypocrite, because I hate it when Eminem talks about Dre but I love it when Fitch talks about Proust.

“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” –Thumper

“Mens regnum bona possidet” (”An honest heart is a kingdom in itself”) –Seneca

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” –Cain

To hold back out of kindness, even perhaps mercy, is a time-honored tradition often associated with polite society. It expedites, it smooths over, it lets us not butt heads over every disagreement. But every time we withhold the truth, we also lie a little bit.

Honesty frees us from the fences every lie puts up. When one has to lie in the first place, it’s usually because the true answer would have undesirable consequences, and so to avoid the compounded consequences, one often chooses to lie to cover the lie.  I’m sure everyone has heard something like this from one’s mother.

Recently I have been finding that when the admonition to be honest collides with the admonition to say only nice things, I side with honesty.  I’ve been feeling rather blunt, and perhaps a bit simple, because for whatever reason, the ability to dissimulate carries with it an air of sophistication.  And so I have injured my pride by being straightforward, and others’ feeling by being honest, and my reputation by being less than nice.

I wonder (out loud, apparently) if there were two right ways to handle those situations, and if so, why I seem to have consistently chosen the more innocent?  In many ways this is a trap of my own doing; if I didn’t care about the consequences of my words (or lack thereof), this wouldn’t be a problem; many of these recent confrontations were borne out of a feeling of responsibility; the idea that, through my honesty, I might open up someone’s eyes to something that they really should know but weren’t about to find out for themselves.

And so I am either my brother’s keeper, honest in my loving criticism, shouldering the burden of speaking the cruel truth because I have the sad gift of seeing it; or else I am a meddler, interfering in other’s lives, choosing to belittle them for some unknown reason.  Or more probably, a little of each.  In any case, I wish I had been able to say more nice things lately.

How much money is there in bumper stickers?

A friend of mine had a pretty awesome bumper sticker idea last weekend; I could see it going over well.  And then it turns out that he’s had this idea for a while.  I wonder where it could go if he would follow through.  Ideas are pretty valuable things – I would rather have a good idea than a good thing.  The guy who first put water in a bottle is a lot cooler than a guy who just has water in a bottle.  Or perhaps that’s a bad example; I mean, water and things to hold it have been around for a long time.  Maybe it would be better to say that the guy who thought up the helicopter (I’m looking at you, DaVinci) is a lot cooler than a guy who just has a helicopter.  You get the point.

So is there any money/glamour/future in the idea of a bumper sticker?  One could sell the idea to somebody who is already in the business of making stickers (deal with nothing but the idea), or make some stickers and sell those.  How much money do you think a good bumper sticker makes?  I wonder if the guy who made the “Endless—-this war” sticker (the most popular one I see) has retired off of the profits.

Okay, probably not.  But I wonder how many of these other ideas I can find if I start looking around for them – ideas that are good, and could be marketable with a little work.  Of course there are people who do make their living by providing the drive and perspiration for other’s inspiration – people like editors or agents, for instance.  I’m probably terrible at it – after all, I can’t usually turn my own ideas into reality – what are the odds I’ll have the follow through to work on someone else’s?

I’m off to see if I can turn somebody else’s inspiration into money.  Chances are I will give up and it’ll have just been an interesting exercise.  But if not… today, a bumper sticker.  Tomorrow – who knows?

HAVE YOU EVER?

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped.
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten my own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than I could afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as I possibly could
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking.
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about my life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for my computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk.
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip.
48. Gone rock climbing.
49. Taken a midnight walk on the beach.
50. Gone sky diving.
51. Visited Ireland.
52. Been heartbroken longer then I was actually in love with the person.
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them.
54. Visited Japan.
55. Milked a cow.
56. Alphabetized my CDs.
57. Pretended to be a superhero.
58. Sung karaoke.
59. Lounged around in bed all day.
60. Posed nude in front of strangers.
61. Gone scuba diving.
62. Kissed in the rain.
63. Played in the mud.
64. Played in the rain.
65. Gone to a drive-in theater.
66. Visited the Great Wall of China.
67. Started a business.
68. Fallen in love with someone and not had my heart broken.
69. Toured ancient sites.
70. Taken a martial arts class.
71. Played D&D for more than six hours straight.
72. Gotten married.
73. Been in a movie.
74. Crashed a party.
75. Gotten divorced.
76. Gone without food for 5 days.
77. Made cookies from scratch.
78. Won first prize in a costume contest.
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice.
80. Gotten a tattoo.
81. Rafted the Snake River.
82. Been on a television news program.
83. Received flowers for no reason.
84. Performed on stage.
85. Been to Las Vegas.
86. Recorded music.
87. Eaten shark.
88. Had a one-night stand.
89. Gone to Thailand.
90. Bought a house.
91. Been in a combat zone.
92. Buried one of my parents.
93. Been on a cruise ship.
94. Spoken more than one language fluently.
95. Performed in Rocky Horror Picture Show.
96. Raised children.
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour.
98. Created and named my own constellation of stars.
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country.
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over.
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge.
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when I knew someone was looking.
103. Had plastic surgery.
104. Survived an illness that I shouldn’t have survived.
105. Written articles for a large publication.
106. Lost over 100 pounds.
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback.
108. Piloted an airplane.
109. Petted a stingray.
110. Broken someone’s heart.
111. Helped an animal give birth.
112. Won money on a T.V. game show.
113. Broken a bone.
114. Gone on an African photo safari.
115. Had a body part of mine below the neck pierced.
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun or pistol.
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild.
118. Ridden a horse.
119. Had major surgery.
120. Had a snake as a pet.
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours.
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states.
124. Visited all 7 continents.
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days.
126. Eaten kangaroo meat.
127. Eaten sushi.
128. Had my picture in the newspaper.
129. Changed someone’s mind about something I care deeply about.
130. Gone back to school.
131. Parasailed.
132. Petted a cockroach.
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes.
134. Read The Iliad.
135. Selected one “important” author who I missed in school, and read.
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating.
137. Skipped all my school reunions.
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language.
139. Been elected to public office.
140. Written my own computer language.
141. Thought to myself that I’m living my dream.
142. Had to put someone I love into hospice care.
143. Built my own PC from parts.
144. Sold my own artwork to someone who didn’t know me.
145. Had a booth at a street fair.
146: Dyed my hair.
147: Been a DJ.
148: Shaved my head.
149: Caused a car accident.
150: Saved someone’s life.