ben.parmeter

Yesterday, Suzy and I bottled the beer. Yes, after two weeks of waiting anxiously, we opened fermenter and siphoned off the delicious liquid into a another large bucket which we used to finally bottle the beer. This part of the process has had me very nervous for the past two weeks. With so many variables, there are lots of opportunities for something to go wrong with the process.

After carefully extracting the fermenter from the bathtub, in an effort not to stir up any of the yeast residue clinging to the sides of the bucket, I slowly transferred it into the kitchen where the bottling was to take place. I lifted the heavy bucket up onto the counter, accidentally slammed the base against the counter-top, I cursed myself for not being careful enough. Probably not a big deal, I told myself. I stood for a moment mentally preparing myself for potential catastrophic beer failure. Then I began to crack the lid open. As I did this, a wonderful smell arose from the container. A sweet aroma, a bouquet of distinctly fresh… beer. There was no mistaking it – the process had worked. The smell and appearance of the liquid proved this a success.

I quickly hooked up the siphon and began transferring the beer into the second bucket with the priming sugar. After siphoning the beer into the second bucket, I was able to attach the bottling wand to the hose and spigot and begin the bottling process. At this point, I decided to actually taste the beer. Understand that at this point, it has just been mixed with the priming sugar, is still warm and of course, flat. However, I needed to know if the flavor was right. And thus, I poured out a shot glass worth of the liquid and lifted it to my lips. I emptied the container into my mouth, let is slosh around a bit, testing the flavor and finally swallowed. Success. Sweet success. Literally – definitely could taste the priming sugar. But at this point, it was definitely, beer. And quite tasty I might add.

And so we spent about an hour bottling the stuff up and transferred it to the bathtub again (mostly in case any bottles decide to explode). The fermentation is still in process and that priming sugar should generate some great carbonation to give it just the right mouth-feel. In two weeks, I’ll have a very drinkable beer – I hope. Wish me luck.

The jig is up. I got the following note from YouTube today:

Video Disabled

A copyright owner has claimed it owns some or all of the audio content in your video What’s Inside: Continuous Spray Bottle. The audio content identified in your video is Crimewave by Crystal Castles vs. Health. We regret to inform you that your video has been blocked from playback due to a music rights issue.

Replace Your Audio with AudioSwap

Don’t worry, we have plenty of music available for your use. Please visit our AudioSwap library to learn how you can easily replace the audio in your video with any track from our growing library of fully licensed songs.

Other Options

If you think there’s been a mistake, or you have other questions, please visit the Copyright Notice page in your account.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team

It seems a big corporate recording company doesn’t like people using their copyrighted material in our personal YouTube videos. Even if those videos were only viewed a total of 50 times by probably only a handful of unique visitors. Well, big recording company, I’m sorry – truly. I should have gotten your permission first. I suppose there was some blatant copyright infringement here, but isn’t it good marketing in the end? Please, please don’t sue.

Oh well, I’ve swapped out the audio with some creative commons licensed music from NIN. All is right with the world again.

Well, I didn’t get a chance to write from the campsite. There was far too much “relaxing” going on for me to whip out the phone and tap-out a full post. However, I didn’t want to leave you hanging with nothing after I teased you with the possibility of pictures in my Friday post.

Let me preface the link with just how cool this spot is. Somehow by magic, we were able to obtain a group spot in the campground which is nearly unparalleled for it’s sheer size. We literally had multiple acres to ourselves, completely separate from the other campgrounds. We had our own bathrooms, charcoal grills, potable water taps, garbage and recycling, several fire rings, and just all around amazing nature around us. It’s just a short hike down to the sea shore (less than a mile), where you can check out the tide pools or just fly a kite (like Suzy and I did). We’re definitely going to have to organize a repeat trip to this place.

Click this link to go to the Salt Point gallery.

Today’s post is inspired by cockeyed.com and their outstanding “how much is inside?” feature. Have you ever wondered just what’s inside that continuous spray bottle of sun block. Just how the heck does it actually continuously spray out the liquid inside? I mean, usually a bottle of plastic design like the one I have is simply a pump mechanism, but this continuous spray is like magic to me. So when we finally ran out of sun block I decided it was time to perform a vivisection on the spray bottle to determine just what’s inside this little mystery of the universe. For your viewing pleasure, I’ve provided the video and some photos here of my experiment.

Much to my surprise, there is a very simple mechanism inside. What I found was that it’s basically a thick rubber tube, which constricts a plastic bladder (not sure what all the stringy glue/rubber is around that bladder), and releases the spray when you press down on the head on top of the bottle. There was something very H.R. Giger about that bladder. Kind of organic in an alien birth-pod kinda way. Odd.

Anyway, mystery solved!!

Suzy and I eschewed work, responsibility, friends and family for a three-day weekend to ourselves. It was one of those times where you just didn’t want to come back. We stretched our time in the “wilderness” for as long as we could. It was fantastic – aside from the throngs of people that had the same idea that we did. Alas, we made the best of it by attempting some of the close-by hikes, cooking outstanding meals, enjoying wine by the fire, biking through the valley, playing card games and sleeping in the hammock. I captured a video of our biking excursion below which I’m really proud of. All stunt work was performed by Suzy herself.

And in other news, I have finally installed and am starting to use the integrated gallery software in WordPress called NexGEN Gallery. Note the link on the upper left of the page actually works! I actually like it much better than all the previous galleries that I tested. It’s really slick and integrates extremely well into my current format. Check out the latest pictures from Yosemite here. Note: All my previous galleries are gone, which is sad, but necessary as start over. So if you click any links from my previous posts, they’ll likely take you to a 404 page.

Enjoy! Until the next adventure.

Well folks, just so you know, I haven’t just been sitting on my hands lately. I have been working on the website. I did a bunch of exhaustive research on free picture gallery software to use on this website. I was motivated by the few sporadic pictures that I get from my sister through e-mail. I’d sure like her to be able to post pictures (easily) to the site so that everyone could see them. The dilemma is, unfortunately, that there just is no simple gallery software out there for your own website. I honestly tried a bunch – gave them the a serious shot. I currently have four installed and none of them cut the mustard (whatever that means). I tried Gallery 2.0, Coppermine, Singapore, PHPGraphy, and Gallerific. All of them had their good points, but universally they suck at user-friendliness. They’re downright limited.

So, sis, I think I’m finally going to throw in the towel and say, let’s use Flickr. It’s fast, easy and best of all free (there are limits). We can link directly to your galleries from the website and I don’t have to worry about broken databases, site outages, code atrophy, or whatever else plagues this site.

So there we go. With that said, I’m going to switch to using a built-in gallery in wordpress and for everything else, we’ll switch to Flickr. If I have time this week, I’ll post some pictures from Suzy and I in Yosemite last weekend.

Muwah.

I’ve recently been playing around with Hydrogen, a sequencer for Linux. It’s incredible. No musical talent is required. I jumped right in and started creating music right away. The interface is intuitive and you can create beats on the fly, while it’s playing in real time. Apparently if you’re at all familiar with Fruity Loops, it’s simple to jump right in – and I believe it because it is darn close to GUI copyright infringement. Not having any experience with Fruity Loops I pretty much picked it up and was able to start creating immediately. I think I could waste hours and hours playing with this software.

Check out this short clip of some beats I laid down last night.

Bravo open source community, bravo.

Silently and right under all of our noses, the reds have invaded our cities. They’ve invaded our McDonald’s, our Wal-Marts, and our FoodMaxxs. RedBox has quietly deployed thousands of DVD vending kiosks since 2005 and they’ve finally reached the west coast. Suzy and I spotted one of these monstrous machines at our local warehouse supermarket. We were instantly intrigued. Sure enough, this big red box with a large touch screen on the front instantly vends hundreds of DVD movies in seconds. You simply swipe your credit card, enter you e-mail address, and it spits out the movie of your choice from the slot in the side. Simple. Even more exciting was the fact that all rentals are $1. I’ll give you just a second to process that. I mean, for just one frigg’n dollar, who wouldn’t try it?! And after renting the first time, you can reserve your films online for pickup. No searching the walls of your local mega-movie rental store. No waiting in line. No waiting for your movies in the mail.

NetFlix killed Blockbuster and in turn, this might be the next NetFlix killer. I expect these things will spread like wildfire. This just seems too good to be true. There must be something evil lurking inside these boxes. I’m not sure what it is yet, but I’ve got my eye on you, red box. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy this $1 viewing of Spiderman 3.

I’m a guitar hero. I have to admit, I’m hooked. Suzy and I were first introduced to this game at our friends Beth and Steve’s house. I was really skeptical at first because it looked like just a rehash of the dance-dance revolution, a game which I completely despise. I mean, dancing and techno music? Two of my least favorite things. But that’s a story for another time. This game slowly grew on me with each passing level. And finally, as my fingers began to learn the keys without my brain intervening, it was as if I was truly playing the guitar and I began to bob my head to the beat. It’s like ultimate air guitar. I can’t explain it, but you truly feel like you’re shredding a face-melting guitar solo in your own living room. Songs that I wouldn’t normally enjoy, I was finding myself mesmerized by the intricate notes of the lead guitar. I have a whole new appreciation for the genre now. The game is dead simple. Strum each note as it whizzes toward you on the simulated guitar neck on the screen. You have five colored buttons that represent each note on the screen. They sort of symbolize frets – but don’t get me wrong, you will not be able to play a “real” guitar after mastering this game.

Suzy and I bought two of these guitars for our Nintendo Wii, and we’ve been playing co-op mode which allows us to play both the lead and the bass (and on some levels the rhythm). We’re just beginners right now but I’m sure that with enough practice we’ll be banging out hard core licks like butter.

And check out this kid play the hardest song in the game. Inhuman.

I made a Master Shake from a coffee cup at work last week. I’m so proud of it that I took a cell phone shot of it so that I could share it with the world. If you want to make one too, it’s really quite simple. All you need is a bit of drawing skill and some sticky notes to create the hands.

I know, I’m missing the straw… details.

Enjoy.