I transferred my Session IPA to the secondary fermenter last night, took a gravity reading (4.5% ABV-perfect), and dry-hopped it with twice the recipe’s ingredients: 2 full ounces of Simcoe. I went back and forth on whether I should stick with the kit recipe, which called for one ounce, figuring I’d only had three glasses of it before it was killed on Parade day and I never really got to sample it in detail. But then I said fuck it and dumped the second one in. Let’s see what happens.
Having finally brought wired power to the garage, I thought it would be a good idea to add a battery conditioner to help the Scout make it through the winter. I generally get out and start her up every weekend during the snowy months to keep systems lubed and working (three of the saddest words in the English language are ran when parked) and there have been some days when I’ve needed to pull one of the Hondas up to jump the battery. I found an inexpensive battery conditioner on Amazon and got it a few weeks ago. It’s meant to keep the battery topped off, which is just what I need.
I heard from our friend Mike in Colorado after a long quiet spell, who has been driving his shiny Scout daily after rebuilding it from the ground up. He offered me a spare set of traveltop window seals he’s got sitting in his garage, which is fantastic timing. I’ve been eyeballing my traveltop in the garage, thinking it would be wise to get it back on the truck before things get really cold. It’s got solid side windows but I’ve got a set of sliders from the crappy top I had sitting in the backyard, and the seals they came with are OK but not new. One of my goals before it goes on is to knock down and shoot the rust inside along the bed rails with some Eastwood encapsulator and then cover them with etching primer. It’s in great shape overall but there are a bunch of inexplicable screw holes that need to be welded shut, something I’d like to test out a new welding rig on.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
I shot another video interview this week at work, in less than optimal conditions (about 3 hours of advance notice, overcast weather) and it turned out pretty well. I’m getting the video portion dialed in, having practiced a lot on my own and helping my friend Dave shoot an event last week. The audio is the thing that’s bugging me. I’ve got the subjects miked up correctly, feeding into a high-quality recorder, but the results aren’t what I was expecting.
The audio I got today was low quality. So bad, in fact, that I was afraid I’d made a technical mistake and was pulling the audio in from the built-in mic on the recorder and not the lav mic on my subject. (In order to boost recording levels on the Zoom H4N, you have to select the input device before changes will stick, and I was afraid I’d switched the inputs). I futzed with the levels in Final Cut Pro but didn’t like the results, and brought the original clip into Audacity to boost the levels, clean the garbage out, and split the signal. Once I’d done that the results were much cleaner and I was ready to sync it to video.
So, I’ve got to run some tests on my recorders to see what the issue is. I have a Roland R-09 as a backup, so I’m going to do a 1-1 comparison on recording levels to see what’s what.
I got an email a couple of days ago about my Flickr Pro account. It’s time to renew my account, which is fine; I’ve been a member for nine years and I’m very happy overall with Flickr as a service. In years past I’ve been able to renew it with no problem, but 2014 is different. Apparently they’ve gone to some kind of “wallet” construct for their payment services, which means they want to store your payment information (um…OK) and tie it to your account. Mind you, this is a Flickr wallet. Here’s the issue: There’s no way to apply my card to the bill. When I enter my card information (correctly) into the wallet, I get the cryptic message: “There was an error.”
So, tell me what I’m supposed to do, Yahoo. Do I put my credit card in again? (Did that. Twice. Didn’t work).
Do I click on the Order History links? (they don’t do a fucking thing).
Do I go to Yahoo and log in there and attempt to find my billing information and clear it up there? (Ha, that’s a goddamn joke. I can barely find the “Log In” button, let alone any billing information. And when I did find a link to the billing page, after a goddamn Google search, they had all my old invoices but not the new one).
Here are a couple of entry-level, UI 101, common sense suggestions to the wizards at Yahoo:
- When there’s an error, tell me clearly what the problem is.
- Don’t fuck with best practices, especially when it comes to important stuff like payments.
- Give me some information about what I can do to fix it so that I can give you my money.
So I have to call someone and sit on hold and try to clear it up tomorrow. Stupid fucks.
Sunday morning I woke up with a slight hangover to the sound of Finn’s voice. She was asking if we would play chess with her, having set up the board while we were sleeping. We’d had friends over Saturday night for drinks and dinner, with emphasis on drinks, and both Jen and I were feeling the effects in the morning. It was my turn to get up, so I made some coffee, organized the board correctly, and we got to playing. She played four games, trying to make sense of the rules, but quickly got better with each. Later in the day, I started rolling white on the walls in the living room, covering over brown paint that dates back to 2006.
Saturday’s schedule called for a soccer game but it was cancelled due to rain. At the local Marshall’s, we found a raincoat for Jen and I found a down coat for the winter, a new fleece, and a sweater. We used the afternoon to clean up the house and prepare for our guests.
The week at work was very busy, which makes this three-day weekend that much more appreciated. Among other large projects, I found myself about five feet from Al Gore on Wednesday evening, running second camera video for a friend. We launched the US version of the New Climate Economy report on Friday, where I shot stills, and then went across town to attend a lunch seminar on infographics with some very interesting speakers.
The update on my yeast is good. It finally started working on Thursday morning and it’s been burbling ever since. The recipe says it only needs two weeks to be done, but I’ll probably transfer it next week and leave it in the secondary for another two.
Huh, how did I miss this? Deadspin has been doing a series called Drunkspin where they review beers from far and wide. I’d have to agree with their assessment of Pumking: Too much spice, not enough flavor.
A “golden key” is just another, more pleasant, word for a backdoor—something that allows people access to your data without going through you directly. This backdoor would, by design, allow Apple and Google to view your password-protected files if they received a subpoena or some other government directive.
I don’t allow my local police department to have a key to my house, “just in case”, nor would I ever. Neither should a corporation own a key to my personal data. This shit has to stop.
I was worried that I’d cooked and killed my yeast when I activated it the other day. The idea is to wake it up in a warm bath of clean water and then add it to the wort; I misjudged the speed at which our simmer burner could heat 1/2 cup of water, and it got up to 100° before I pulled it off. I added it on Monday but it wasn’t doing anything until late last night, and this morning there was about an inch of krauzen on the top of the fermenter. Usually by this point it’s spitting bubbles out of the airlock. If there isn’t more of a reaction by tonight I’m going to go get some replacement yeast and throw it in for good measure.
I love Mastodon, because they are an incredibly melodic hard metal band, they have an excellent sense of humor about themselves, and they write great songs. I’ve been jamming to The Motherload all day:
I would embed the official music video here, but it’s ABSOLUTELY BATSHIT CRAZY.