a data-driven life

Two of my kids and I took our first hike of the year along Grant’s Trail last week. We started at the eastern end and walked a little over a mile to Trailnet’s office. On the way there, we surprised a flock of turkeys. (more…)

The NYT has an article on the discontinuation of the Bill Blass collection. I’m not all that interested in the world of high couture, but I was intrigued by the black-and-white photo of Mr Blass that accompanied the article. (more…)

This is a very approximate recipe, as I wasn’t the cook.  We made it during while brewing beer a week ago. (more…)

A few years ago, my friends John and Dave decided they wanted to brew large batches of beer.  So they built a really big rig.  Every time they brew, they invite a few friends and neighbors to help out.  I’ve been coming for a few years now.  This time, John explained everything to Glenn, a first time visitor.

Every so often, I get invited to a friend’s house to brew some beer.  Being a good guest, I try to bring an interesting gift.  This time I procrastinated until late the night before, then ran to Friar Tuck, a local beverage store.  Wandering the aisles, I finally found some Bourbon County Stout by Goose Island Beer Company.  This is a seriously good beer, at a serious price.  A four-pack was almost $20, but I have to say it’s worth every penny.  The first sniff confirms what the label tells you, that this beer was aged in bourbon barrels.  And it’s so thick and dark it makes a Guiness look like an ale.  Buy one of these, you’ll not regret it.

One of the Audacity use cases lists functions that would be useful when transcribing recordings.  I’ve investigated what is required to implement these features, and while it’s more complicated than I might have hoped, it doesn’t appear to be insurmountable.  Looping play repeats the initially selected section until stopped; however the selected region can be changed without affecting the looping region.  Similarly, it seems apparent that dynamic changes to the looping region should not change the current selection.  Therefore, none of the current “change selection” code can be re-used. (more…)

Normally, my wife cooks all of the meals in our household, but a couple of times a month she takes some or all of the kids and spends a few days visiting her parents.  At those times, I’m able to release my inner chef and try cooking something that I’ve never made before.  So it shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that, a while back, I decided to try my hand at making hummus.  I bought a can of chick-peas, tossed it into the back of the pantry, and forgot about it until tonight. (more…)

Over at Trevors Trinkets, there’s an interesting bit about chording keyboards that made the front page at Slashdot. Chording keyboards are nothing new (Douglas Engelbart invented one for use with his other invention), but Trevor seems to have come up with the idea independently. Or at least he has some fresh twists on the idea. (more…)

I just discovered Rob Weir’s blog and have been reading some of his past posts. One thing that has occurred to me is an old annoyance with HTML, especially from ten years ago or so. HTML never standardized a way to implement work-arounds for new elements. (more…)

On Christmas Day, 2006, the following intro to a fantasy story popped
into my head. Due to procrastination, it is only now being put down in
words, er, electrons.

In the Elder Days, before the Time of Legends, we were all
brutes. Only the Bear Clan has stories from that time and they are
ill-formed tales, possessing neither Heros nor Deeds. They tell of a world overrun by goblins, and of a light from the heavens that drove them away. (more…)