sauergeek

I have been making sangria out of various things, and have finally learned some things that I think make it consistently better. My most recent round was one of the best ones I've made. The key inspirations were from the sangria recipe and writeup at Gimme Some Oven, and had me modifying a batch I'd made the night before by adding brandy, sugar, and a cinnamon stick.

My most recent recipe:

The equivalent of two bottles (1.5L, just over six cups) of red wine (in this case, Black Box Malbec)
1/2 C brandy
1/2 C sugar
Juice and zest of one lime
Juice and zest of one lemon
One Valencia orange
One pint of raspberries
One cinnamon stick (4")

Pour the wine into your preferred sangria pitcher. (I have a 2L glass pitcher with a lid, which holds this recipe pretty much exactly.) Add the brandy and sugar, stir well to dissolve the sugar. You may need to stir the sangria again later, as the sugar likes to settle. Zest and juice the lime and lemon into the wine. Cut the orange in half, then cut each half into ~1/2" slices, add to the wine. Pour in the raspberries. Add the cinnamon stick. Cover and put in the fridge overnight.

Serve as you would wine, in ~5 oz glasses. I've put a slice of orange in each glass so far, which mostly, but not entirely, used up the orange slices. (I generally eat the orange slice, peel and all.) I also finished off this pitcher by pouring all the raspberries — they sink! — into a glass and eating them with a spoon.

Early raspberry season is mostly over, so the next batch may have blueberries or blackberries in.

I have a garden patch in a community garden. This year, I have an exuberant basil plant, which is trying to eat the half of the 4'x10' raised bed. I've ended up with a lot of basil. After making basil sugar, and basil ice cream, and two rounds of basil loukaniko, I still had basil.

I hadn't been particularly enamored of my attempts at loukaniko[1], I suspect because I omitted the garlic (garlic does bad things to me). So this time I went on a tangent, and also cut down the ingredient list a lot.

2.5 lbs ground beef (85% lean)
1 T pickling (Diamond Crystal) salt
1 T ground white pepper
Zest of three limes
One huge handful of basil leaves, coarsely chopped (no, I did not measure this, but it was rather a lot: I had to chop it in four piles)

Mix all ingredients together. Pan-fry into crumbles.

So far I've had this sausage with salad and rolls, which worked pretty well. And also with chopped cabbage-and-carrots cooked in the same pan after the sausage was done, with a bit of sherry for a deglaze, all on top of spaghetti, which worked better.

[1] I worked from the recipe for loukaniko from Honest Food. I've had decent luck with other sausage recipes from the site. Unfortunately, this one, minus the garlic, just wasn't doing it for me. It will probably be fine with the garlic in.

aldersprig reblogged this poor put-upon dog to Tumblr, with a not-quite-a bredlik caption.

I thought I could come up with a more appropriate bredlik for this poor dog, and after a few go-arounds, have produced:

My naym is Dog
I lives with floofs
I must be nyce
No bygg loud woofs
Wherever I
Do rest my hed
The floofs they perch
I is thayre bed

I'm now on what will likely be the last opera of this vacation. What started me on this is hearing "Pirate Jenny" from The Threepenny Opera at a Dresden Dolls concert. I'm not sure why I kept going after that. Whatever the reason, I've listened to and sorta-watched a whole lot of opera this vacation: 18 done, and a 19th — Verdi's La Traviata — in progress. In order, so far as I recall:

The Threepenny Opera (in English) (and part 2), Weill & Brecht

Die Fledermaus, Strauss (conducted by Placido Domingo, with a call-out by him from the pit, and to him from the stage, in the production)

Die Zauberflöte, Mozart

The Mikado, Gilbert & Sullivan

Rinaldo, Handel

Carmen, Bizet

Pagliacci, Leoncavallo

Fidelio, Beethoven

Eugene Onegin, Tchaikovsky

Le Nozze di Figaro, Mozart

Der Ring des Nibelungen, Wagner, comprising:

• Das Rheingold
  
• Die Walküre
  
• Siegfried
  
• Götterdämmerung

Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Rossini

Aïda, Verdi (possibly missing one act?)

Fra Diavolo, Auber (I could find productions only in Italian or German, not the original French, nor in English translation, so I went for Italian on the idea it was closer to the original than German.)

Madama Butterfly, Puccini

La Traviata, Verdi

I may well keep going after this, but at nowhere near the sheer number per day. Headphones don't really make sense with the dynamics of work. Many thanks for the recommendations! In case it's useful to anyone else, one useful reference I found along the way was Operabase for listings of recent popular opera productions, among other things, on their statistics page.

To the tune of "The Sound of Music", perhaps if Lovecraft had been the librettist instead of Hammerstein:

The hills are alive, and I think they're hungry
No one has come back for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with a dreadful terror
I fear for my life with each sound I hear

We're told not to look at the hills when we're on
The trails near the lake in the trees
And travel with friends when the black birds fly
In the woods like bees

But leave friends behind when they trip and fall
Over stones in the way
So someone survives
And can tell everyone "keep away!"

Stay here in the town, even if you're lonely
Close your house at night, always bar the door
Don't mention the hills in your conversations
Or they'll take one more

This post was originally going to be a comment on another post about sad smoke detectors. It got long and ranty, so I put it over here instead with significant edits.

I'm a systems administrator[1]. I'm also a luddite about a lot of technology. These two things are not in conflict; in fact, one leads to the other.

I wear the security hat at work. Wearing the security hat means I'm the one responsible for making sure that our systems are reasonably secure, and I'm also the point of contact for any security issues (such as malware, breakins, attacks originating from our systems, or anything else related). Wearing the security hat also means that I regularly look over the log files produced by our systems, to try to make sure that there's nothing bad happening on them. In looking over those log files, I have come to one inescapable conclusion: the tendency toward the Internet of Things is exposing the fact that an awful lot of software out there is crapware (which includes stuff that isn't securable), poorly secured, or both.

Those log reviews show me the end result of the crapware and/or refusal to lock down devices: constant portscans from around the world, hundreds of thousands of failed login attempts on our systems, coordinated attacks of all sorts coming in from disparate parts of the world, and who knows what else I'm missing. Every now and then, one of the attacks succeeds. (We recently had someone's email account get broken into due to that user's bad password practices. The attackers used the broken account to try to send tens of thousands of pieces of spam. Fortunately, they failed. I've set up defense in depth on our systems; one of the other layers caught it all.)

Most[2] of the attacks I see in the logs are because entirely too many manufacturers can't be bothered to write good software, and entirely too many people can't be bothered to actually use the software properly even if it is (beyond any reasonable expectation) good.

Given all the shenanigans we've had with even high-end consumer electronic manufacturers bollixing up incidental Internet connectivity (never mind the number of point-of-sale systems using default passwords or the vulnerability of SCADA systems on critical and/or hazardous infrastructure), I want as little Internet-connected stuff as I can get. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the only Internet-connected stuff I have actually connected to the Internet are things whose primary job is to do so: smartphones, tablets, computers, and networking hardware.

I've only vaguely thought about a Nest, but have consistently rejected the idea. The rejection is in no small part because I am probably running my own thermostat at further extremes than anyone non-malicious on the other end would think of. Last winter I had the heat set to 50F (10C for those of you in the sensible part of the world); I believe it never turned on all winter. When I'm away in summer — including at work — the AC is off. It's also off most of the time I'm home. (I have windows and I'm not afraid to use them!)

My smoke (CO, heat, and any other) alarms should sound an alarm when they detect the thing they're supposed to detect. They should also tell me — with beeps, dammit! — that there's something wrong with them. I keep the manuals for precisely this reason. Those alarms should not be reporting anything at all to anyone other than me when I am home. If I'm not home, they can report all they want, but nobody's going to pay them any mind. Certainly there's nobody else who would be in any sort of position to do so if they did hear the alarms.

If someone offers me a new whizzy toy that wants Internet connectivity — for example, my new washing machine — I will not set up that Internet connectivity. If someone offers me a new whizzy toy that requires Internet connectivity despite being a thing that shouldn't need it, I will not buy that device. And if someone offers me a new whizzy toy that will let me order things by voice recognition over the Internet (I'm looking at you, Amazon Echo), I want nothing whatsoever to do with it.

[1] For those who don't know, being a systems administrator means I break computers for a living. (I also have to fix them afterward, but the goal is to break them then fix them so they run better afterward.)

[2] Another major reason behind attacks is overly-permissive Internet service providers, but that's beyond the scope of this rant.

Warning: broken bits of dentistry involved.

Thursday evening, a chunk of something popped off one of my teeth while I was flossing. The gap between that tooth and the next one over had been catching floss and shredding it for a couple weeks, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. (I knew I had a dental appointment coming up in another couple weeks, so I figured it would keep until then. Guess not.)

I called my dentist's office and left a message telling them what happened, and asking that they fit me in at earliest opportunity. 7 AM Friday, I got a call from the dentist office: could I make it in for 8:30? I could, and did, with 15 minutes leeway.

Turns out, the bit that popped off was part of an onlay I'd had for ten years. The rest was still attached to the tooth. My dentist said that the reason it hadn't lasted much longer was because I grind or clench my teeth — which I do. I have a nightguard, even, but apparently that wasn't enough.

The last two onlays I had installed (yes, I've not been kind to my teeth; I'm a lot better about that now) took a week or two to turn around. Once I heard that I'd broken an onlay, I was expecting the same. I was pleasantly surprised that they now had the ability to make them in-house. I got the pertinent teeth imaged by a fancy software suite and an odd probe (it was a solid metal thing, and it was warm), which I eventually got to see on-screen. Then the bonus: getting to watch their in-office CNC machine carve the new onlay out of a block of porcelain. (Yes, it uses a lot of water — based on signs nearby, recycled — in the process.)

Given the beginning of a chunk of something popping out when I flossed, having it fixed and being on my way to work before noon the next day was a pretty good end.

Saw the word "chatoyance" in the comments to someone else's post, and this came to mind:

Chatoyancy is a form of divination using cats' eyes. Practitioners initially used the eyes of deceased cats. There are some records of chatoyancers killing cats to acquire their eyes, but in fragments of letters from that era, they determined that killing the cat for its eyes ruined the divination. The practice of chatoyancy was initially codified by an unknown author in the now-lost Quod Visus Cattus[1].

Some time before 981, a chatoyancer[2] found that a cats-eye gem worked as a usable if inferior substitute for an actual cat's eye with the notable advantage of not having to find a dead cat first. This discovery caused a schism among chatoyancers, separating those who insisted upon using only true eyes of cats, and those who thought that the gem was acceptable. The latter faction was by far the smaller of the two, as the cost of a suitable gem was often beyond the reach of practitioners. Some letters between practitioners of this period, debating the merits of gems, survive. Many critics denounced the use of chatoyantic techniques on gems as a bastardized form of lithomancy.

A second codification of chatoyancy appeared in or around 1304: Libro Modi Videre Sicut Feles Verax[3]. This codification dismissed all forms of chatoyancy other than those involving the eyes of an actual cat. It is notable in its speculation about the use of the eyes of living cats, which in turn spurred a number of experiments -- all failures -- in the immobilization of cats to use their living eyes for divination. However, practitioners of various other forms of chatoyancy continued divination through their preferred method during this period, though no codification of other forms is known.

Roger Bacon's publication of his Opus Majus in 1267 led to an increasing use of the scientific method. While many disciplines, including chatoyancy, adopted Bacon's methods, improvements in science reduced the need for all forms of divination. Most practitioners of chatoyancy -- and divination in general -- were reduced to essentially parlor magicians. Many charlatans claimed to be able to see the future through various methods, with chatoyancy being one of the more esoteric. While the practice of chatoyancy did not die out in the era of science, fewer and fewer true practitioners could be found.

The salvation of the practice of chatoyancy came from an unexpected source: William Morton's demonstration of the use of ether as an anesthetic in 1846. Further demonstrations of other forms of anesthesia, especially in veterinary medicine, has led to successful demonstrations by modern chatoyancers of the use of the eyes of living -- if anesthetized -- cats for highly accurate divination.

Many recent works on chatoyancy[4] speculate that the reason live, anesthetized cats provide such accurate divination is that the divination operates on the dreams of cats. These speculations have led to various experiments[5] on naturally sleeping cats in an attempt to use their eyes for divination without waking them. While these attempts have so far been unsuccessful, investigation continues.

Today, likely more than half of the veterinary specialists in cats are chatoyancers. The active scientific investigation into the theory and practice of chatoyancy should hone its accuracy in the near future. There are numerous avenues of research in the field for dedicated investigators, and the employment opportunities are predicted to grow at least over the next decade. Chatoyancy is a thriving method of divination with a bright future.

[1] Quod Visus Cattus initially circulated in the area of what is now Switzerland as several copies of a small handwritten manuscript in the early 4th century CE. The last known copy was lost in the great flood of Grenoble in 1219.

[2] Believed to have been the Welsh chatoyancer Dafydd ab Gethen, member of the court of at least Maredudd, and author of the widely discredited De Divinatione Feles Oculos in Varias Incideritis.

[3] The author is not named on any extant copy. However, most known copies of, or references to, the book are found near Buda. The author is suspected to be noted chatoyancer Ilona Budai.

[4] See, for example, Seeing With Cats Eyes by Rumiko Watanabe (Elizabeth Gundersen, translator); Dreams of a Cat by Arthur Jones; and Chatoyantic Inquiries by Giselle Marley and DeShawn Robertson.

[5] Every issue of The Journal of Chatoyancy through #44, except #8 and #21, contains at least one such paper. The publishers dedicated both issues #20 and #38 entirely to experiments on naturally sleeping cats.

One useful thing I've found from getting skunked: a workable de-skunkification mix. A chemist came up with the mix based on a liquid filter he used to break down hydrogen sulfide in a waste gas stream. It's a 192:12:1 mix (in my case, 1 cup, 1 tablespoon, and 1/4 teaspoon) of 3% hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and liquid hand soap. See the actual recipe for details and some explanation, and his IFAQs for a more detailed explanation of how the reaction works.

One of the worst-hit things was one of the bike panniers. I went after the pannier with this stuff and a toothbrush, and it slew the stink. (As a control, the bike itself, which I am slowly acquiring the tools to properly dismantle so I can get at all the places that skunk spray got, and which still is not acceptable in company.)

Go vote. (And if you don't think your vote matters, why is there so much squabbling over who gets to do it?) See also, this magnificent statement (warning, Facebook link) on the subject by a professor at West Point.