zhrodague - We do Zhrodague, right?

Waiting on hold forever.

ruthietwoshoes — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:55:50 -0400

I'm at my desk at work, waiting for the mortgage counselor to pick up. I'm feeling jittery as I ate two chocolate chip cookies that were left from yesterday's group lunch. group munch. group feed your face.

This morning I went to Thornwood Elementary School and presented "What a Water Engineer Does" to three classes of fifth graders. Then I helped them perform a water filtration activity in which sand, gravel, and cotton balls are layered in the top half of a coke bottle to form a simple sand filter. Then dirty water I made from potting soil and tap water was poured though the filters to demonstrate removal of solids in the water purification process. My asshole boss was beside me while I was giving the presentations, interjecting little comments.

Woot Success Story - BW976 Weather Station in GNU/Linux

drewzhrodague — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:23:14 -0400

I like to garden. I wanted to figure out how to measure the temperature of the night before, to see if the plants froze. I wasn't able to figure out a convenient logging method. Luckily we passed the last frost here in Pittsburgh.

Then I noticed Woot had this cheap BW976 Thermor BIOS Weather Station with PC Link Interface thingy for $59. I haven't seen any computer-accessible weather sensors of any kind for under $300. It was long overdue for a toy and a piece of other puzzles I've been working on, so I threw the switch. I am very glad that I did, mostly because this unit is deployed and working, and not adding to the piles of junk!

Peep Welding and Peep Bonding

drewzhrodague — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:43:10 -0400

Presumably, during the extrusion stage, which makes the initial peep shape, peeps are bonded together. They are born this way.

Peep welding is a method of bonding peeps together. I can only imagine that would involve either a hot wire, torch, or even using corn syrup as a cement.

Cutting peeps may prove to be a challenge. I imagined cutting frozen peeps with a circular saw, in order to reassemble them as a sort of fractal peep. A mitre saw may be useful for this. I can't imagine what the blade would look like, though, or even how to hold the peep that close to a blade.

A Phrase I Hate: Pre-Owned Cars

humblewine — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:05:36 -0500

Doesn't "Pre-Owned" mean "before it's owned", or that they are "New"?
How do you pre-own anything?
What's wrong with good old "Used Cars"?
Cars that are... yep, you guessed it... used!

God forbid that they would ever actually tell the truth about the product they're selling us. I'd like to own a "Lemon Lot".

Can you imagine??? All the product, and none of the disappointment.

WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get!

Recovering Brew-Sinner IV - Importance of the Hydrometer --RTFH

humblewine — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 13:37:34 -0500

The difference between a Cyser that can remove spots from garage floors, and a refreshing Metheglyn that will lull you to sleep on a Summer evening... all comes down to SUGAR!!!

I'm a big-time tinkerer! I like taking perfectly good things, and tweaking them to see if I can make it better. This is what always made me a horrible cook in the past. I was barred from the kitchen by my wife for the first 6 years of our marriage. (How was I to know that those Brown Sugar Turkey Burgers would taste that bad... seemed like a good idea at the time.) My wife will never-ever let me forget it either. It was not until I actually started following the recipe word-for-word that I was allowed to relinquish the family spatula. There's a hilarious commercial for Labatts Blue beer in which the husband partners with a bear to build his wife's shelves, but the bear says, "Who needs directions." The wife then comes home to see they built the ultimate beer dispenser. Ha. So, I treated wine recipes more like a guideline, than a stick-to-it-rule. Switching, and adding ingredients at-will. Although they seemed trivial substitutions at the time... they only seemed to induce disasters.

Recovering Brew-Sinner III: Everyone has their breaking point.

humblewine — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:55:40 -0500

After life slowed down, my first two batches were "hurried" to say the least.
First a cyser using Shop n' Save brand apple juice, and honey from Costco. This came a few weeks after I'd read this article about how boiling the honey could spoil its delicate flavors.
Then I threw down a batch of strawberry melomel a week later. I thought, I'll add as much fruit as possible to get a good taste. Costco honey, and strawberries from the freezer section. Again, I didn't boil the honey, take a specific gravity, or a pH level reading. Just flying by the seat of my pants. 15lb of honey with whatever the fruit added, and no idea what the eventual alcohol level might be, or how acid/base the musts were.

Recovering Brew-Sinner II: Time to make a statement.

humblewine — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:50:55 -0500

The always-cheesy mission statement:

Here upon this site (though I know not what a "zhrodague" be), I will chronicle my humble attempt(s) to change my brew-sinning ways. To work towards a better-brewing ethic. To toil tirelessly in the search for a way to consistently provide a pleasing product.

All alliteration aside... this is my Mission Statement.

Recovering Brew-Sinner I: Hasty Wine/Mead Making

humblewine — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:16:56 -0500

Time to slow it down!
After 7, yep 7 years of mead-making, I've gotten fed-up with ambiguity, and trusting other people's recipes. Tired of not knowing the exact hydrometer reading, or the exact pH.
The problem is inconsistency, and the solution is cold hard facts!!! I've been an engineer in R&D, and a QA software tester for over a century now, and very successful in what I do. But unfortunately I really have never applied the same science/attention-to-detail/research/documentation/root-cause-analysis that accompanies successful development of ANY product.

In those 7 years of brewing, I've moved 3 times, between 3 states, and to think about it, I haven't stayed longer than 2 years in any one place since 1996. No, I'm not a fugitive, or wanted by any 3 lettered institutions. :) The Military took me across the world, and dumped me off in TX, and Marriage took me across the country with a 2 year lay-over in WV, and finally rooted me in PA.

DIY Scanning Electron Microscope

drewzhrodague — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 11:07:33 -0500

My lovely wife spends lots of time with the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_electron_microscopy, looking at labeled neurons from rat brains. We discuss the imaging she does, how the apparatus works, and issues she has with the thing. I'm always interested in making pretty pictures, so this got me thinking about how to use an electron beam for making pictures from stuff laying around the house.

Lawn Mowing

drewzhrodague — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 20:28:44 -0500

Being a recent homeowner, mowing the lawn is a chore that I still look upon fondly. Gas, Machine, nature, and sun. Usually there's some period of fixing things, which I get a kick out of. Being a tinkerer also, go figure, I wonder how else a lawn can be mowed.

My last (and second?) full-time gig had been contracted to produce autonomous lawn-mowing robots. Even though the facility had a multi-million-dollar budget, the brightest minds in the field, and it isn't a product you can buy. That should should illustrate the difficulty in doing something as simple as mowing the freaking lawn. There are other products out there, but they're about what I would pay for a decent used car, which is an absurd price for such a potentially interesting machine.

Location-Based Beer and Wine

drewzhrodague — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:51:03 -0500

I wondered if there were any websites that focus on the locations of breweries and wineries. I haven't found any yet. The idea is to make note of the locations of breweries, and indicate the types of beer and ingredients they use. Wine would be slightly different, focusing on the exact and specific regions where the grapes are grown, and allow a user to investigate the historical and predicted climates for the region. Where available, state-sponsored (like the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board) websites can be scraped to provide more local pricing and availability information.

HDHR Hacks - HDHomeRun Hacks

drewzhrodague — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 12:35:09 -0500

Love your HDHomeRun HDTV tuner? The two tuners on HDHR from Silicondust can accept ATSC/8vsb or QAM 256, and stream it to your PC over ethernet.

Bodyflying

micha — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:57:36 -0500

Some ridiculous outfits

Brick Edging - pear - slanted radial

drewzhrodague — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:46:42 -0400

I freaked out last year, and pulled the bricks out that were in the ground as some sort of forgotten walkway. After much use of many bricks, I decided to use them as edging in the yard. Mike helped me put this one together. The pattern is a slanted radial of bricks. If I were to design this properly, I'd have to use some kind of math that I don't know, so Mike and I just squished the bricks into the shape, until it looked right. The layer of bricks underneath is a mirror-image of the top layer. This surrounds our pear tree.

I have an image of the bor

symmetrical offset multi-quad antenna

drewzhrodague — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:21:42 -0500

I built this antenna as an experiment. I looked at a few patents, and was inspired by some of the designs for fractal antennas. Without much knowledge or calculating, I put this together from 12/2 romex. I used an El-Cheapo balun from sadoun.com, but I would not recommend these ultra-cheaply-made units. I am using a $0.99 set of baking-racks as a reflector. This picks up every signal around in the City, even though half of the signals are on the other side of my slate roof. I am using an HDHR ATSC/QAM/8vsb HDTV ethernet tuner thingy. 1080p through my ol

Econojacked

drewzhrodague — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:19:09 -0500

Econojacked - adj. - The forceful seizure of one's economic system.

Zhrodague Television Channel Aggregator

drewzhrodague — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 13:59:43 -0500

I propose a method for displaying channels across the world, collected from users everywhere. This scenario, would be similar to sites like WiFiMaps.com, Flickr, and others, where users upload their content, which is then aggregated with other users' content, to form a large set of data for display. Users can see what channels are actually there, whether VHF, UHF, HDTV, QAM, 8vsb, Cable, Satellite, FiOS -- whatever -- in a non-marketing-hype kinda way. This could be coupled with sites like Zap2It, or SchedulesDirect, to provide an additional layer of clarity in what is advertised, versus what is reality, and even different package-plans or antenna types. Coverage maps can be provided generated and overlayed with Google Maps. This should prove to be an interesting feature for the Internet.

Free Satellite TV in North America

drewzhrodague — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 16:40:55 -0400

I've been monkeying around with FTA Satellite for MythTV, and I have having two hells of a time. I have collected the appropriate hardware, a 30" dish, universal LNBF, and a Hauppauge NOVA-S DVB card -- and all the required cable. I even have a signal meter, compass, mounting hardware, and some other crap. But I can't find any discussions on Google of other people doing these things from the US. I've found discussions about Linux driver issues, Microsoft Windows configurations, non-USians, dish-aiming, signal-strength issues, and even information about the same tools I am using. None of the discussions are of MythTV users aiming their dishes in North America -- so here's mine.

Intertainfo

drewzhrodague — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 19:20:10 -0500

Intertainfo, n. Thinly sliced information, entertainingly slathered atop Internet detritus fillets.

Soylent Crime

drewzhrodague — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 17:37:09 -0500

I suggest the phrase 'soylent crime' should be used to describe a crime, where the body is consumed by something -- as if I were to grind up my neighbor, and use the result as a fertilizer. Soylent crime is a crime, where some act of soylency has been performed.

the automated recording of a television show

drewzhrodague — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 11:55:41 -0500

I had decided to automate television shows in a few specific ways, after taking a trip with a friend to pick up a used and decommissioned television studio. I thought about it for a long time, and came up with a long document describing how to do it. Unfortunately, some kids at some university whipped up an implementation before I was able to do it, and so I kinda backed off a bit. One thing that has been a result of my thoughts, is to automate the recording of a live news/talk show, without the need of a cameraman, or editing.

I propose to do this with a couple of scripts -- one that does the recording, and one that does the timing for the audio and cue playback. This doesn't seem too hard, except that I can't figure out how to record from any of the (now numerous) collection of webcams.

washing machine hack: fruit centrifuge

drewzhrodague — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 00:18:02 -0400

I intend to dump a whole bunch of peaches into an old "Easy two speed spindrier" washing machine. The six peach treas in my yard produce more fruit than I know what to do with. The only solution is to ferment it all.

The washing machine has two chambers: an agitation chamber, and a centrifuge chamber. The agitation chamber contains a spindle and rotor, which is shaped like a screw tapering towards the top. The centrifuge chamber has a basket of sheetmetal, which has holes drilled into it. The washer was probably intended to fill the agitator and go through an agitation cycle, and then start the centrifuge.

I am a spam fighter

drewzhrodague — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 19:18:01 -0400

Everybody hates spam. From penis pills, to texas holdem, to phentermine and hoodia, to asbestos lawyers. As a systems administrator, part of my job -- part of my lifestyle -- is to fight spam. I fight spam at work, I fight spam at home -- it is required of me, as a node on the Internet, as a human on the Internet, and as a consumer of Internet. I fight spam at every level, from email, to web, to the information that I seek out. There's a lot of it out there, and there is even more than that.

I've been plagued by spam email for over 10 years now. Having established my permanent email address that long ago. I posted on Usenet. I've posted in mailing lists. I've posted web pages, blog entries, and comments on other people's blogs. None of my previous dealings is any contribution to the usefulnes of my mailbox. Unfortunately.

Epson 1520 Hack

drewzhrodague — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 21:13:57 -0400

THis is a hack I did with my friend Gus, on a sunday afternoon. The idea is to modify an Epson Stylus Color 1520 inkjet printer into a printer that can print onto either the floor, or walls.

Camping with Static

drewzhrodague — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 20:29:30 -0400

I posted the pictures from my camping trip with Static, and a couple of other people. Neat stuff going on, though I need to take more pictures. when I do. staticcamp

dell c640

drewzhrodague — Wed, 24 May 2006 18:11:15 -0400

this is my Dell c640.

compaq 2000vz

drewzhrodague — Wed, 24 May 2006 18:11:06 -0400

Compaq 2000vz

G4TV's Banzai - no play show?

drewzhrodague — Sun, 21 May 2006 00:03:05 -0400

This sucks. I absolutely love Banzai on G4TV -- this is interactive TV. This is that which they promised us in the '80s. Unfortunately, it's 11:00 PM EST, and Banzai is on -- and I can't play. According to their site, I can only play on Tuesdays at midnite, but the show is on NOW, and I wanna play NOW! Bastards!

soside sprinkles

drewzhrodague — Sat, 20 May 2006 02:21:44 -0400

I snapped this the other day while it was sprinkling. This came out well.

half buckwheat honey

drewzhrodague — Sat, 20 May 2006 02:02:59 -0400

When I bought honey from E-Bee Honey, I picked up both sunflower honey, and buckwheat honey. I didn't know much about them, and couldn't find information on the Internet about what meads to make with 'em. Raw buckwheat honey smells like a wet dog.

I had to cut the one gallon jug in half in order to get the honey out of it. This stuff was pretty solid. After cutting the jug in half, I spooned out the mead into the soon-to-be-boiling pot. I figured I'd take a picture to show what it looked like.