drinkumbrella

time machine go boom

I recently set up our desktop to use time machine. first few backups worked fine. a few days ago, it started a backup, and never finished.

I tried stopping and restarting the backup, but to no avail -- this backup either hangs, or oh-so-helpfully reports "failed!" with no actually helpful diagnostics.

Is there any way to tell what's making it fail?

Automatic backup software really shouldn't a) hang and b) not tell you what happened and c) have a way to work around problems and back up the stuff that doesn't have problems.

The config setting says "back up every hour" and a successful backup hasn't happened in over a week, and it hasn't figured out there's a problem worth telling me about?

kindle commentary

I just finished reading "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan on K's Amazon Kindle. First book I've read using the device.

Rather than bore you with Michael Pollan fandom (ok, I thought this was weak compared to many of his earlier works that included more personal narrative), here's some blathering about the Kindle experience.

The index for In Defense of Food was reproduced in its entirety -- almost. Unlike the paper edition, the index included no page numbers. And the index entries were not linked to the page-equivalent positions in the book. So about one quarter of the length of the book was an index that doesn't index anything. This is the stupidest index I've ever seen.

I apparently have a habit of flipping through a paper-based book to see how far it is until the next chapter break, when I'm up late and getting tired. There's no easy way to do this on a Kindle. I was somewhat suprised to see the actual content end at not quite two-thirds of the way through the progress bar doodlyhoo. (The remaining length was sources/index.)

I will typically skim a book at least once to get an overview (how long is the index, where does the content really stop, that sort of thing), and, again, no way to skim quickly.

I wish the screensize were larger, so I could get, oh, roughly the same amount of text as a trade paperback on the screen at one time, without making the font the most microscopic. I settled on the 2nd smallest font, though would rather have one size bigger, but page flips were just too frequent at the larger size.

makin' bacon: the longer story

Here's the longer bacon making story...

A couple years ago, I got Charcuterie, by Michael Ruhlman. All about cured meats, sausagemaking and whatnot. I had been intimidated by some of the recipes, because they use either ingredients or equipment I didn't have, had never used, and all that.

The problem with bacon:
- where to get pork belly
- how to smoke the bacon

I finally went on a mission to find pork belly. All the butchers in town are great, and all seemed interested in helping. But nobody wanted to make an order and sell me less than their minimum order, which seemed to be around 60lbs (a "case", whatever exactly that is). I now vaguely recall Shopper's Corner saying they could do a minimum of 20lbs, which was still four times as much as I was originally aiming for. And then I saw a blog post somewhere about how they got their pork belly at 99 Ranch Market, a chinese grocery store chain, inconveniently located outside of Santa Cruz. Through some sort of bewildering reverse psychology, my friend Amy convinced Ann-Marie to pick some up. And I wound up with 10lbs of pork belly. Awesome!

Then I found out that Bob had a smoker that I could borrow. All the pieces were finally coming together.

The actual bacon-making process is pretty easy: cure pork belly for one week, wash off cure, hot smoke to 150 degrees, remove skin.

The cure was only four ingredients: salt, brown sugar, maple syrup and "pink salt" (aka sodium nitrate, for protection against botulism and other nasties -- trivia: all the "nitrite-free" bacon will have something like "celery extract" as an ingredient, which is a natural source of nitrate, which is converted to nitrites by bacteria. McGee wrote more about this.).

The curing pork belly needed to get turned every day, but that was about it. Making smoke was no trouble. I took Bob's advice, went down to the bait shop in the harbor to find more smoker chips. Smoker worked great. Except that it was actually not very hot. 3 hours of smoking left the meat at about 90 degrees, not the desired 150. Transferred it all to a 200 degree oven for a couple hours, and then done.

Slicing the skin off was the most challenging part -- the skin curled at the edges of all the pieces, and, surprise!, became somewhat leathery. Trimming off the edges before slicing off the skin took care of that. If you look closely at the pictures of the chunks o' meat with the skin off, you could probably tell which were the first ones and last ones by how smooth the cuts were.

This morning, had bacon with breakfast. Yummy!

I'm glad I went with the hickory for smoking, and not applewood, since it was certainly sweet enough. I was surprised that, when frying the bacon, the edges that had been cured/smoked went crispy faster. I think that was the sugars from the cure making themselves known. The sweet didn't hit strong -- still more savory than sweet -- but  with a slightly sweet aftertaste. All in all, quite a nice complement to the beignets.

Oh, and halfway through the the curing process, I got a call back from Patrick at the new Whole Foods store in Santa Cruz. Apparently he'd had enough interest that he'd made a pork belly order, which should be in soon, if I still want any. Anyway, I'm surprised that 4 or 5 people had talked to him about pork belly. The store had only been open for 5 days when I asked. All the other butchers I talked to seemed like they though they'd never be able to unload any extra. Maybe there's an underestimated demand for pork belly? When the Whole Foods order is in, I'm thinking maybe pancetta?

bacon, ready to eat, yum yum

bacon, ready to eat, yum yum


Originally uploaded by drinkumbrella

I made some bacon. One week to cure, one day to smoke, minutes to eat.

Good thing there's 8 pounds more!

1926 Beach Boardwalk Pass

1926 Beach Boardwalk Pass


Originally uploaded by drinkumbrella

From my grandfather's files: a Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk pass, along with the newspaper snippet below.

It doesn't come out well in the picture, but it's pretty clear the original pass had the name aggressively rubbed out, and "Theron Fox and lady" retyped, using a different typewriter than the rest of the text. Apparently good enough for 1926. He never mentioned that part when retelling the story, though.

San Jose Mercury News, March 11, 1987

Leigh Weimers

UPS AND DOWNS -- The historical site designation of the roller coaster and carrousel at Santa Cruz reminds historian Theron Fox of the day in 1926 when he made a bit of history himself -- 20 consecutive rides on the Giant Dipper, each time with a different woman. Fox, then an official with the Amateur Athletic Union, was in Santa Cruz for a women's swimming meet and had a pass for the roller coaster that was good for himself "and lady". "I took advantage of my pass and took all 20 girls on a ride," he says, "one at a time"

Chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream

Chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream
Originally uploaded by drinkumbrella

As tasty as it was good looking. My first attempt at vanilla buttercream frosting, after K convinced me it wasn't very hard.

fruit ice

Once upon a time, Harold McGee wrote a book called "The Curious Cook", regretfully out of print. In it, he's got a great chapter on fruit ices, for making granitas or sorbets or whatever. There are a handful of incredibly useful charts that you can use to make pretty much anything into a nice frozen dessert.

I've finally transcribed these charts at http://www.re.org/eric/fruitices/ for your freezing pleasure.

The basic recipe is easy: fruit juice + sugar + lemon juice + water. The chart tells you how much of each. Medium-sweet water ices are usually best for sorbet. Mix ingredients until sugar is dissolved, then freeze in your ice cream freezer.

Easy and delicious!

fireworks

When I was wee, the 4th of July was packed with "safe and sane" fireworks. Everybody had them. They were fun! Fountains, flowers, sparklers, snakes, whistling things, the usual stuff. I don't remember anything that flew or went boom.

Now, 4th of July sounds like a war zone. Since the "safe and sane" are illegal too, everyone who has fireworks seems to get things that fly and go boom, or just go big-badda-boom.

Is this really better than those old "safe and sane" fireworks?

my first patent!

A few years ago, I added this feature to Altera's SOPC Builder product, back in 2005 or thereabouts. I remember filling out info for the patent discovery process, but thought it died there. Today, I got email saying the patent has been issued.

Check it out: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7331022.html

Woohoo!

(Of course, the feature doesn't exist anymore... now nobody can use it!)

shuffle music

I've been listening to my ipod on shuffle a lot recently, and have learned some valuable lessons:

1. I have some music that I really like in album-context, but I tend to skip if I hear one at a time.
2. Adding a big collection of concert albums for one band skews the whole random-play experience. (Didn't I just hear that song? Actually, yes. One at location X, and another at location Y.)
3. I really need to remove the Information Society track "300 BPS 8,N,1 (Terminal mode or ASCII download)" from my ipod. It's probably more enjoyable if you're a modem. Definitely not for the party mix.