January 2, 2016

inspired by magicmirror

I’ve been really inspired by the MagicMirror project. The basic idea is getting a piece of mirror glass and putting a monitor and computer behind it, then having a status page show some pertinent information about the day (like weather, calendar, news, etc). So it looks like a regular mirror, but when you look closely, it shows the extra information.

I’d like to put one in the bedroom to replace our tall mirror. That’ll be pretty cool, but it requires a bit of extra thought because our magicmirror setup would replace a tall and skinny mirror, so we’ll probably just want a monitor behind the top part of the mirror. That will require some extra bracing to hold the monitor up in the frame. I’ll need to think about that a while.

December 30, 2015

individual sealed ibuprofen & zyrtec

Today I made some individually sealed ibuprofen (Advil) and cetirizine (Zyrtec) packets:

![ibuprofen]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/ibuprofen_s.jpg)

I did it by cutting about a two inch strip of vacuum sealing bag, then doing several perpendicular seals far enough apart that I could pop a couple of pills in it.

![ibuprofen strip]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/ibuprofen_strip_s.jpg)

Why bother? Mostly, I want to keep a few doses in my backpack / car, but don’t want them turning into dust. (The softer coat on Kirkland seems especially problematic.) The next best idea is of course just buying the commercial version, but I don’t really need 50 packets at a time. I’d prefer to keep more stock in the “more liquid” bottle form. Finally, waterproof can’t hurt!

December 29, 2015

first canning adventure: brandied pears

I’ve been wanting to get into canning for a while. It was finally time to take the plunge. I made brandied pears. One of the really striking things is how simple the ingredients list is:

pears
lemon juice
sugar
water
brandy

Here’s the setup just before I started:

![canning prep]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/canning_prep_s.jpg)

Allison got me a pressure canner/cooker for Christmas:

![pressure canner]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/pressure_canner_s.jpg)

It’s huge! After I cooked the pears I packed them

December 27, 2015

pragmatic edc

Lots of folks wax poetic about their every day carry kit, and then include things like fishing hooks. That might make a “pragmatic hiking edc” kit, but I’m interested in some of the more realistic things that might happen:

Phone is dead and need to call someone (wife, parent, car insurance company, whatever) but don’t have the relevant phone number / insurance number / etc.
Minor illness like headache, indigestion, things like that.
Forgot my wallet at home and need lunch or cab fare.

purell sanitizing hand wipes pac-kit hydrocortisone pac-kit medication triage pack

November 17, 2015

recent projects - sous vide, hydroponic pump, and another table

I’ve been working on a few fun projects recently.

First: I built a temperature controller out of a crock pot and a cheap import temperature controller. It looks like this:

![temperature controller top]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/temperature_controller_top_s.jpg)

![temperature controller bottom]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/temperature_controller_bottom_s.jpg)

I’ve used it to cook eggs and steak. Both turned out great! Here’s the only shots I got of the steak:

![steak vacuum sealed]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/steak_vacuum_sealed_s.jpg) ![steak cooking]({{ site.baseurl }}/assets/steak_cooking_s.jpg)

Next, I’ve put together another refinement of the hydroponic tomato setup we have in our living room. Also, just realized I haven’t added the backposts about it yet. Allison and I started three tomato plants back in May:

August 23, 2015

life pro tip curb rampant consumerism by identifying actual needs

A while back, I realized that I wanted a nice digital SLR camera. Before I bought it, I made a list of all the things that I wanted to do with it. Ultimately, this ended up being a sort of self-justification for buying it, but it did serve one deeper purpose: I now had a list of about 20 things that I had committed to doing with my new camera. So while it didn’t actually prevent me from being rampantly consumerist, I did have a whole set of worthwhile things to do with my new camera!

August 19, 2015

build_json.sh

This might seem silly, but I’ve beeing playing with some json.sh scripts that build legitimate json bodies and are easily filled into a shell script variable as needed.

The basic driving idea was that there are lots of slick ways to pull data out of JSON(either by programming something with python’s json or running a command line tool like jq or whatever), but not as many friendly ways to build some JSON out of a given token or whatever. Often, you have a list of identifiers and you need to build a bunch of JSON blobs from that list.

June 7, 2015

carputer brainstorming ideas

As much as I enjoy driving, radio almost always annoys me. There’s a couple of particularly terrible stations and commercials around, but even the least objectionable of the pack really bother me. The focus did come with an auxiliary stereo input plug, which we have used extensively, but even that seems to have some shortcomings. In particular, one of the things I really miss about the radio approach is just that I don’t really need to think that much about it – it is just there while I’m driving around. Starting up spotify after I’ve started off isn’t safe or prudent.

May 16, 2015

car is paid off!

I finally sent the last check for my 2013 Ford Focus a couple of weeks ago, and finally got the title in the mail today. It also came with a “congratulations for paying off your car!” letter, which was a nice touch.

I opted to pay it off early, despite the (moderate) financial disadvantage it put me at. The loan was only 2.4%, so the cost of carrying the loan actually wasn’t super significant. I had started paying the loan ahead of schedule during graduate school because I was worried about whether I would have the cashflow available to keep making payments during the time between graduate school and real paid work. Then when I did get a job, I just kept making the higher-than-required payments.

November 19, 2014

slide rules

Suppose you want to evaluate the multiplication problem $C = A\cdot B$. But you forgot your times tables, so you are stuck using your expedition watch or something. In fact, you can even make your own out of a couple of slips of paper, if you really need to.

First bit of background: One of the rules you probably learned and I definitely forgot was the rule of logs: $$ C = A\cdot B \equiv \log C = \log(A\cdot B) = \log A + \log B$$ This ends up being useful for slide rules, because you can easily add distances together by putting two things next to eachother! So that is exactly what we do. We add the logarithms by putting things next to eachother.