I’ve written about my love for the movie Fandango before; Metafilter just had a nice wrap-up of links both old and new with some great footage and behind the scenes commentary from the actors who were there.
I got in a discussion with a coworker a while back over a cup of coffee I’d just made with my french press. He asked me about my preferred roast, and then asked me about my press (the excellent purple Bodum press my Dad gave me for Christmas a few years back); mentioning the Aeropress in passing. I asked him about it, having read glowing reviews about it, and he said he’s been using his exclusively since he bought it. He was kind enough to lend it to me yesterday, so I brought it home and gave it a shot this morning. I used two scoops of grounds, as I normally would, added hot water, stirred, and pressed. What I got was watery coffee-like water with no real flavor, which was disappointing. I tried another cup, letting the water sit with the grounds for a minute or two, and the results were almost exactly the same. It may be that I need to add three scoops of coffee per cup to get more flavor, but that’s going to burn through grounds a lot faster than before–and coffee being as expensive as it is, that’s a non-starter for my wallet. Further experimentation is required, but so far I’m not hopeful.
Apple announced new iPhones and a watch yesterday. The phones are nice; I’ll probably upgrade my 4s to a 6 when they’re released, because my 4s is beginning to get a little flaky on battery life, and I like the idea of Apple Pay. Having printed out a full-size comparison of the 6 and 6 Plus, the Plus is HUGE. Like, Mini iPad huge. The watch? Meh. I could care less, although it probably does some cool stuff. As I’ve said before, I’d rather spend that cash on something classic instead.
There hasn’t been much else going on, other than on the weekends; work is busy but exhausting. I have been playing around with digital sound recording and syncing with video for the past two weeks, and I think I’ve got both of our digital recorders figured out when connected to wireless lav mics. I shot some interviews earlier in the summer and while the video looks beautiful, the audio settings I was using were too low. I’ve run a bunch of tests on syncing up digital video with audio through the mic/recorder system, and I’ve now got it dialed in. There’s talk of recording an interview here at work in the next couple of weeks, which I think I’m ready for.
I keep meaning to post a link to Open Culture, but I get sidetracked by watching/reading/exploring hours of links of video footage–lectures, documentaries, photo archives, and other great stuff. This site should have a Roku channel of its own.
I had a little time to fool around with the Scout this weekend after taking her camping; I tackled a few smaller issues that I knew I could wrap up quickly (with a bored daughter rolling around in the back seat). First up was the passenger door handle, which has been loose since I got the truck. I pulled the inner panel off, took the handle off, and fitted a couple of lockwashers to the mounting screws, then tightened it up snug to the body. Next I took the shitty pot-metal rearview mirror mount off the passenger door (the mirror was gone when I got the truck).
Then I fitted a replacement glove box door to the dashboard. See the clip held in with two screws in the photo above? That’s an early-style clip, from what I can gather. Later clips were actually a hoop of metal the latch hooks onto. My dash is old so the metal lip the hoop mounts to is smaller. I’ve got to figure out some kind of temporary fix for this so I can actually use my glove box.
I also have to get up under the dashboard and POR-15 the seam at the firewall; I noticed some water leaking down inside when the truck was sitting at the campsite. I may actually use some Eastwood rust inhibitor this time to see how well it works, and I can get it at the Advance when I pick up some new door jamb switches.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
WRI was mentioned briefly in this NYT article, only in passing; from the outside it looks like foreign governments could be buying influence, but as an insider, I see it as solid investment in the future by outside parties with no partisan axe to grind.
We started out the weekend with a little De-Finnse.
Then we packed the truck up for our camping adventure.
The cabins at Patapsco are close by, comfortable, and if you pick the right one, private. We picked the right one.
We were able to set up camp, get dinner prepared and eaten, and just have time to stoke the fire up well before a fierce downpour. Then we sat it out on our porch, listening to the sounds of the woods and the rain, watching our fire.
The next morning was chilly but we enjoyed some bacon egg & cheese sandwiches from the grill and it wasn’t long before sunlight started poking through the trees.
I high school, I was a huge Frank Miller fan–based not only on the Dark Knight, but Elektra and Ronin, weird books that weren’t like any of the other ‘comic books’ I saw out there. Miller has gotten strange in the last 15 years or so, and Grantland did a great retrospective of his career which explores where he’s been and why he’s so uncompromising.
The thing Miller admires about his heroes isn’t their power — he’s yanked that away from them, over and over. He worships their certainty. Their moral clarity, their willingness to judge and mete out the punishment that society can’t or won’t, their refusal to back down or equivocate.
I sleep heavily. So heavy I don’t usually remember my dreams. Last night, lying on the mattress at my parents’ house, I must have been drifting in and out of REM sleep, because I was having a great dream. I had been invited to join the Queens of the Stone Age on their next tour, and I was at their practice space, a huge cavernous warehouse of some kind. We played a set of songs, and I remember being nervous but getting into the groove. Then we took a break, and naturally it was time to get high. Of course, Dave Grohl was there, and he had a TITANIC amount of weed (curiously, in the shape of hop pellets, don’t ask me why) and he gave me a bunch to carry, because his hands were full, and then some water fell from a leak in the ceiling and got Dave Grohl’s handful all wet and they made fun of him, and then we got REALLY, REALLY HIGH with the stuff I had and we began playing again. And I got completely paranoid that I wasn’t in the pocket anymore and that I was playing badly (note: all that weed didn’t affect QotSA or Dave Grohl at all) and that they would tell me to leave, but I was able to get into the groove, and then I woke up.
