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May 16, 2008: oh, hi
So I am very madly and very seriously in love. It's funny how things happen when you least expect them, when you aren't looking. She's an amazing person, strong in every way, compassionate, genuine. We think along the same lines about many things and we've been finding ourselves having the same ideas even! At the same time we complement each other well and nudge each other towards new things. It's the sort of relationship that just grows and grows.
There will be some big changes in my life soon, I look forward to them because they all include her, and being with her is all I desire.
March 20, 2008: hurm
Some days I can't stop working, I just go and go and go and feel very productive. Other days I can't seem to manage to do anything at all. Today was like that, yesterday too actually.
Making mushycat orders doesn't count, I can do that work in my sleep now, I'm just talking about new, challenging work. That's one of my 'problems', if it isn't new and challenging I tend to get bored rather quickly. So when I'm working on something and I find my attention tapering off, I get a bit worried about whether or not I'm ever going to finish.
I feel like getting lost in some narrative, but whenever I sit back and try to let myself be entertained I feel a bit empty. I don't actually like to consume, and my standards are ridiculously high anyway.
I found a nifty online gaming magazine the other day called Cerise. Check out that mission statement.
I need to be inspired.
January 21, 2008: My new favorite comic
http://cectic.com/ - It's smart and funny without any of that slightly pretentious geek-hipster stuff like some other comics...
January 04, 2008: Organization
One of the 'quirks' of having ADD (for me, anyway) is that I'm always searching out new ways of trying to organize my thoughts and ideas. Usually that means software, though I do revert to pencil and paper quite often (right now I'm on a Post-It kick (again)). The problem is, no matter how good a system is, eventually I feel mired in it and have to start my search anew. I used to find it very frustrating (and I still do sometimes) but now I just accept it as part of being who I am.
I went as far as building a wearable computer, but it wasn't as effortless as I had hoped to be a cyborg (though I haven't quite given up... it's just on hold... hah).
Organization is paramount for me because without it I literally can't get anything done. I work out step-by-step processes, I can't work in an ad hoc fashion because I find it incredible stressful. I could hack something into existence but I never really like to make just one of something, it often feels wasteful. Usually I spend quite a lot of time thinking about how I'd make something, working out an approach, detailing each step, and then getting distracted by something else and forgetting the whole thing. Once in a while though, I follow through and it's effortless (and respectful of resources, efficient, and responsible).
December 24, 2007: No electricity = boredom
There was quite a bit of rain last night, which, along with the rapidly melting snow on the ground, turned the mountain's gentle waterways into raging torrents. And of course the gutters got clogged and I had to put on a raincoat and go out and clear them.
Then the power went out.
What better time than to play a bit of Silent Hill? yay for batteries!
December 01, 2007: Just throwing this out there.
Trust me, I'm way too complicated for you.
October 29, 2007: I almost killed my yeasty friends
I almost killed my yeasty friends, I forgot to keep a bit of my sourdough starter out of my bread dough so that I can build it up again. Fortunately I realized my mistake before baking the bread, so I just used a bit of the dough to get the starter going again. Not ideal, but it seems to have worked.
I actually felt a pang of sadness thinking that my starter might have been lost. I'm sure I could have made another one easily enough, but it might have a different flavor and the original has really developed into something I look forward to every week.
Okay, technically I kill and eat most of my yeasty friends every week and then the next week I eat their children, but I feed them really well first. ^__^
October 13, 2007: It wasn't a rock... it was a rock, um, dove.
I felt something watching me (really, I must have noticed some movement in my peripheral vision and/or heard a sound) and I looked up -- there was a rock dove sitting on the skylight looking down at me. Cute.
October 08, 2007: Onward
Being continually distracted by ideas is tough because I'm bad at making decisions sometimes. What do I pursue? What do I spend my time on? Should I work hard at one thing or many things at the risk of not being exceptional at any? What I look for are projects that tie many things together for me, so I can work on them all at once. So that I *have* to work on them all at once.
My constant state is frustration, because there's never enough time.
Not having full use of my hand has been very annoying. I can't just sit around waiting for it to heal, because I as a self-employed person I don't have that luxury, and also because I can't sit still for two seconds. It has clued me in to the reality of pain and disability, though just in a small and trivial way compared to what many people go through. I've never broken a bone or ever had any major ailment or affliction, mainly, I think, because I've never been reckless though I have taken lots of chances. I am a bit concerned of losing any function at all in my finger or hand, I know I wouldn't deal with it well.
September 21, 2007: All night long! (all night)
Lionel Richie is apparently huge in Arab states:
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Richie -
In recent years, Richie has become a phenomenon in various Arab states,[5][6] and has performed in Morocco, Dubai, Qatar and even Libya[7] which has until recently shut out Western influences.
As ABC News reports:
Grown Iraqi men get misty-eyed by the mere mention of his name. "I love Lionel Richie," they say. Iraqis who do not understand a word of English can sing an entire Lionel Richie song.[7]
According to Richie, he was told Iraqis were playing All Night Long on the streets the night U.S. tanks rolled into the country in 2003.[7] Richie explains, "I'm huge, huge in the Arab World. The answer as to why is, I don't have the slightest idea."[7]
Random and amazing.
September 12, 2007: That's a nice piece of wood
I got some sitka spruce guitar tops and I showed them to Shannon. "Is that Birch? It looks like Birch.", she said. Now, Shannon doesn't know anything about wood species as far as I know, so I was a bit confused as to how she could identify this wood, wrong or not. Then it hit me -- Birch is one of the fake wood finishes that Ikea offers for their furniture. That's how she (thought she) knew. : )
This whole guitar-making endeavor is a bit daunting. I feel like I'm trying to pull myself up by my Chuck Taylor's laces. My brain hasn't let go of the idea yet, so work continues...
September 10, 2007: Capos and Paris
I got this really nifty guitar capo today, it's a 'partial' capo meaning it doesn't capo all the strings. It capos (I don't actually know if the word 'capo' is generally used in this manner, but then again what do I care if anyone says it can't be) whatever strings you want it to via rotating cams. What's really interesting is that you can fret strings behind it and under it.
Unfortunately the tension isn't really adjustable and it's a bit more than I'd like (pulling the strings a little sharp), but I'll see if I can do something about that.
What I'm mad about is the place I got it from shipped it in a huge box with all this packing material:
What a complete waste.
Over the weekend I went to see "2 Days In Paris" and I loved it. It's just a relationship movie, but it was fun to watch, and it really communicated the messiness of a relationship (with the equally messy backdrop of Paris, which came across as dirty and busy and smelly somehow, but still charming). What really impressed me was that Julie Delpy wrote, produced, directed, acted in, and wrote the music for the movie. And the cat in the movie was her actual cat. She put out a CD a few years ago and from what I've heard of it, I really like it as well.
September 01, 2007: blarg
Too many people seem to think the word "sustainable" means "If I greenwash my products I can keep on making money!".
A while ago I read about a company getting a certificate of sustainability from the city it was in. The company was just packaging and shipping things that were made elsewhere. Yet the work being done in the location was considered sustainable, and thus the cert. Ridiculous!
Marketing. Why do people write about themselves in press release format? Why self-hype and turn yourself into a product? It makes no sense to me. Why not write honestly and be a real person instead of a marketing facade? I stopped reading ad copy a long time ago, that sort of hollowness has a way of working its way into your brain until you think it's the only way things can be presented.
I find it all very frustrating.
August 28, 2007: Flexible
Sometimes I watch two movies at once. Drama requires a lot of pauses so there's usually plenty of room in the dialog. The thing that trips me up is when one movie is subtitled.
I want to live next door from someone who is crazy like me, we could knock on each other's doors when the torrent of ideas is too much and escape for a while to make out or something.
Plan A for what material to use for guitar sides didn't work out, so I'm moving to Plan B. There isn't really a Plan B yet, but it's quickly forming in my brain. I love workarounds. Sometimes I feel that programming is 99% workarounds. When something doesn't work, you just find a way that does. No sense sitting there saying, "darn, this doesn't work".
August 27, 2007: Guitars
I've been working pretty seriously on working out exactly how I can build guitars, responsibly and with as few power tools as possible. It's a mental exercise, but I'm documenting everything and I've been designing jigs and tools. After all these years (I've made guitars before) it feels like a nodal point in skills, ideas, and materials is near, so building guitars again might actually happen.
Unless I get distracted by something else. Which happens a lot. Doing animation again has been in the back of my mind for instance, and I designed a cute cat character the other night. Sigh.
August 23, 2007: Bone Nuts
I requested a guitar parts catalog from a certain company and today I received an email newsletter from them about guitar nuts. "What material is the best to use?" it asked. I immediately thought, "not bone" (it's a common material) because I wouldn't use animal parts in my guitar making, regardless of performance. Of course, their answer was:
"For guitar, bass, mandolin or banjo, I recommend bone because a well made bone nut gives bright, resonant tone that really sounds alive." (emphasis mine).
I found that to be incredibly ironic.
August 19, 2007: More vegan ice cream
I made vegan ice cream using two different recipes yesterday. One was based on using arrowroot starch and the other on using ground cashews (sounds strange, right?). Both came out just as good as any commercial vegan ice cream I've ever had.
Arrowroot definitely beats cornstarch as a thickener. The cashew recipe needed no thickener, but cashews are a bit expensive (about $1.80 for what I used).
I started by making fresh soymilk, a bit thicker than I usually do.
Here are the recipes:
Fancy Pants Vanilla - I used soy milk instead of creamer and added 2-3 T of oil.
Cashew ice cream (apparently adapted from a book called 'Vice Cream') - I used soy milk instead of water.
The cashew ice cream had a richer flavor, and I preferred it slightly when the ice cream was soft. Hard frozen it had a little less of an iciness than the arrowroot ice cream, but wasn't quite as smooth (that's not quite the right word, but I've not been able to find a word to describe the texture properly). The arrowroot ice cream was a bit lighter.
Next time I will combine the two recipes and I think it'll be just about perfect. Then I can try making the pistachio ice cream I've been wanting for years!
August 15, 2007: Strawberry Ice Cream
Today I made strawberry ice cream (vegan, silly!) using a recipe from this nifty blog: A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise. I used cornstarch instead of arrowroot (because I didn't have any arrowroot) and maple syrup instead of sugar (because I didn't have any sugar). Oh, and no (vegan) creamer (didn't have any), just soymilk (which I made a couple of days ago). It didn't thicken as much as I'd hoped, but it froze nicely and is so yummy. I'm going to find some arrowroot and give that a go.
August 13, 2007: Treadle spindle sander
Darn my brain. Why not make a spindle sander based on a treadle pottery wheel design? I'll need one to make more guitars...
August 10, 2007: The Great Escape
Patches somehow knocked a screen out of a window and got outside. She's never shown the slightest desire to go outside so it was a bit of a surprise. It's raining too, and she's scared of the rain. I found her under the shed. She wouldn't come out because of the rain, so I had to grab her. Poor Patches. I'm guessing another cat came along and started trouble. There's this one cat that will actually jump up and cling to the screen, maybe it did that and pulled the screen off and Patches gave chase.
August 09, 2007: Dent. Arthur Dent.
This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.
I'm good at a lot of things, but not at the things I want to be good at. It's awful really.
August 07, 2007: drumming on my desk
I "play" drums on the edges of tables an awful lot. I have a little electronic drum set but I don't have space to keep it set up all the time, and spontaneity is so important. I thought it would be nifty to make something that would let me actually play drums on the edge of a table. Commercial drum machines have playable pads, but they're meant to be played with fingertips and I don't like the feel of that. My little Roland SP-808EX (it's dark pink! so pretty!) has pads, but they aren't even velocity sensitive.
So I've been designing this in my head for awhile, and today I sat down and modeled it in SketchUp:
That's an approximation of a D-15 connector at one end. The large pad is for the snare.
Looks simple, right? But it's the pocketing underneath for the wires and to keep the pads in that's a little complicated:
Thankfully my Storm Trooper robot (Stormy) can probably make short work of that, if I can tell him how to do it.
I've already made a couple of test pads and they work fine. They're based on simple piezo elements, pretty standard for drum triggers.
This project may take awhile since it relies on me finishing another project (Stormy)!
August 06, 2007: Frog and Cat
So I'm in the back taking pictures of a cute little frog when I see my neighbor Allison. She's got some problems but she's nice. She was actually where she wasn't supposed to be, so I asked her what she was up to. She said she was playing with her cat (which I couldn't see) so I took the opportunity to ask if it was neutered, which she said it wasn't. I've been trying to find a place that will do spaying/neutering for cheap or free, once I do I'll see if she'll go for taking her kitty in.
She started talking about washing him, and apparently she puts him in a mesh laundry bag to do so. : ( I always see him around, he doesn't look like he gets washed much, which I guess is a good/bad thing based on what she told me.
Anyway, frog:
It's tiny, only about an inch and a half long.
August 06, 2007: yum
Arepa with freshly made guacamole and hummus is SO GOOD.
August 06, 2007: Gluten Flout
I heard back from the manufacturer of Vital Wheat Gluten flour (which can be used to make seitan). While they wouldn't tell me their exact process, they did say that it's a mechanical process that uses water to extract the gluten, and that they used the byproducts of the process for other products. I'm guessing they use pretty much the same process as I do for making seitan out of whole wheat flour, and they they dry it and mill it into flour again.
I'm going to stick to milling my own flour and washing the dough to make seitan. It's easy extract the bran and to use the water for the garden, so there is no waste. It's more work but I think it's probably more efficient, and it costs much, much less than buying gluten flour.
August 04, 2007: Sushi
My avocados are ripe so it's sushi time. The rice is cooking in the solar oven.
Because of all the trees I have to move the solar oven around a bit as the sun progresses through the sky. The other day I thought I should make a sunlight sensor circuit, something that would beep when the sun had moved away. I probably wouldn't hear the beep from inside the house though, so it would have to be wireless, and...
Silly. Instead I'm just keeping track of where the oven needs to be at what time, and setting a timer to remind me if I think I'm going to be really distracted.
BTW I'm taking girlfriend applications, just send me a note! I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be getting any notes though, sigh.
August 03, 2007: Hot
sigh! Today is turning out to be a bit crap. And I just broke a mug (a rare mushycat mug which sucks since I'll never make any more) and a dish. I hate breaking things. I've seriously considered getting stainless steel dishware at some point, unbreakable and easy to clean. Just not very pretty.
It's 86F degrees in here at the moment. Just ask Patches.
No AC for me this year. I haven't even put it in the window.
87F now!
August 02, 2007: Treadle Scroll Saw Restoration
I finally finished restoring the Millers Falls "New Rogers" treadle scroll saw (circa 1880) that I bought off ebay for $50. Here's what it looked like before:
And here it is now:
Someone had actually painted the saw white at some point. Even the grinding stone! So I had to remove all of that.
I removed all the surface rust with wire brushes and a molasses solution (which really works!).
Fabricated new wood arms and pitman out of maple (the old ones were completely dry and cracked). I'm really happy with how they turned out. I finished them with 100% tung oil and oh my, what a gorgeously smooth finish. You really have to see and touch them in person. I <3 tung oil. : P to varnishes and other solvent-based yuck.
Fixed a small crack in the cast iron.
Made a new screw or two.
I was initially going to paint all of the metal black, but I really hate paint, and once I had cleaned up the metal it looked really good by itself, so I used paste wax and oil as a finish. I also didn't want it to look 'new'. It's over 100 years old and I wanted to respect that.
I made a small T-base for the saw to sit on, it makes it more rigid and also keeps it the cast iron feet from scratching up the floor. I made a nice half-lap wood joint.
For the drive belt I used the same urethane hollow-core belt material that I use for my treadle sewing machines because I won't use leather, which is the standard belt material. It's yellow and looks silly but it works great.
There was a mechanism for a dust blower but I left it off because the bellows was missing. I've yet to find any reference as to what the bellows actually looked like, it seems that none have survived intact. No big deal, and I saved all the bits of course.
It cuts beautifully. I think it looks beautiful too. I am *so* happy with how it turned out. Now I maybe I can start taking shirt orders again. ^__^
August 01, 2007: Solar Seitan
I cooked seitan in my solar oven today. It's perfect for solar ovens because seitan is generally cooked at relatively low temperatures for a long time.
I made it from freshly-milled whole wheat flour again. After I first made seitan I emailed a producer of wheat gluten flour (the other (and easier) way to make seitan) asking how the wheat is actually processed to make such a product, but I have yet to receive a reply. I'm not comfy with the idea of eating stuff made through some unknown process when I can make it myself and know exactly what's going on. That's one of the reasons I mill my own flour. Most flour is heavily processed so that it can sit on shelves for a long time at the expense of its nutrition.
This time I saved all the bran that washed out of the dough so that I can use it later. I just used a sieve to collect it from the water.
If you do a search for recipes that include bran you'll find a lot of muffins. They all call for white flour, which is nigh-ridiculous because BRAN IS ONE OF THE THINGS THEY REMOVE FROM WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR TO MAKE WHITE FLOUR! It would be much better just to make muffins with whole wheat flour in the first place!
You can add bran to smoothies, granola, etc., and apparently it can be made into a pie crust.
Anyway, the seitan came out really well. I made a gravy out of the broth I cooked it in.
July 29, 2007: Bagels
I made bagels today. 100% whole wheat, sourdough, and vegan of course. Totally yummy with vegan cream cheese.
Pretty much the same as making bread, except for the shaping of course, and boiling them in water for a couple of minutes before baking them.
When I was in Australia bagels were very hard to find at all for some reason, so I taught myself to make them. I'd make bagel sandwiches and we'd go to the beach and have a picnic. I haven't made them in years, not sure why. Oh, I know why. Because in NYC there's a bagel place on every block and they were amazing. So I didn't have much reason to!
I'm in a vaguely bad mood today. I have too many ideas that pull at me and too often I don't get anything done. It's difficult to work out what's really important. Most times I just follow my whims and hope that my internal compass will lead me the right way, but what if I'm just wandering? What really matters and what is just self-absorbed cleverness?
July 28, 2007: ug
ug, my last entry got cut off and I didn't realize it until now. It must have made no sense at all that way!
July 26, 2007: Like a Hawk...
Many years ago I worked at an ad agency in SoHo helping to take care of their Macintoshes. The guy who hired me, let's call him Bob, seemed very nice and friendly. He'd recently been divorced and was a bit bitter, but when he talked to me he'd cock his head to one side and take on a soft tone. He'd give me shoulder massages. I thought he was just affectionate and sweet, although he did make me feel a tad awkward. He wasn't the best person to work for though, and when my kitten got very sick and I had to make lots of calls to the vet, he admonished me and said that I could just get another cat. I quit soon after.
After I quit they still occasionally asked me to come back in to help when someone was on vacation or something. For five times the pay I was making when I was working there I didn't say no often. It was on one of those stints that I found out that Bob had come out of the closet, he was gay. I was still pretty naïve, and I was a little surprised, but I thought that was great for him to do. Then I also found out that he had a thing for young asian guys. Everything suddenly clicked. All the comments about my appearance, the way he talked to me, how he would say that he liked my hair a certain way, all the touching and shoulder massages… Had he hired me just because he thought I was cute? He had started with all that stuff right at the interview.
No one should be subjected to that sort of behavior in the workplace. I can't help but feel that my experience was very mild compared to what a lot of people (overwhelmingly women) go though, but still, it's unacceptable on all levels. If I had been less naïve and had asked him to stop could I have lost my job?
What bothered me the most though was the whole asian fetish thing. I find any sort of racial fetish to be super creepy and totally offensive.
July 24, 2007: ug!
I save the whey that's left over from making tofu in the fridge, it's good for lots of stuff. The problem is that it's pretty much the same color as lemonade, and I haven't gotten around to labeling the pitchers yet.
A mouthful of whey when you're expecting lemonade is pretty gross!
July 24, 2007: hmmm.
I feel like a wide-eyed little boy most of the time. I don't know if that's good or bad.
July 24, 2007: Wii
My parents somehow managed to get the last two Wiis at a store yesterday and they gave me one. I mentioned before how they were trying to get one, I didn't think they would actually manage it!
I thought all the chatter about Wii controllers flying around and breaking things was silly, but I can totally see how it could happen now. Plus there's that other mode of damage infliction, e.g. other players! I got smashed in the elbow playing tennis tonight!
It's weird when you talk to someone on the phone and they sound exactly like you thought they would from their emails (but it's nifty).
July 23, 2007: Schunemunk megaliths
Yesterday I went hiking on Schunemunk Mountain with Shannon. The goal was to see the 'megaliths' (they sound interesting, right?).
North-east parking area -> Sweet Clover Trail -> Jessup Trail to the megaliths -> Jessup Trail -> Dark Hollow Trail -> and part of Sweet Clover again back to the parking area. ~4 miles? 1600 feet up? The New York/New Jersey Trail Conference sells maps (I'm a member).
We had to climb all the up there...
The going was steep but there were lots of rocky areas where I delighted in bounding up the boulders. When I was little that was my favorite thing to do in Central Park.
The dwarf pines are so cute, this one was only about three feet tall.
I was lying down on a big rock and this is what I saw...
And here's the camera facing the other way. : )
The awe-inspiring megaliths! Actually we were just like, "oh". They're huge though. Two eagles took to the air just as the megaliths came into view. Gorgeous.
Shannon took this photo of me. It kind of looks like I was making an offering to the sky, but I was just taking a photo.
See that sheer bit I'm standing near? Shannon dropped my hiking pole off of there (by accident of course...). I tried to get over to the area where it fell, which meant climbing up the megaliths and then down a bit, but there was one part that I didn't want to jump across. If I'd hurt myself they'd probably have to airlift me out, and wouldn't want to hassle people. : ) Also I think I heard a rattlesnake...
There was also an interesting cave down there... If only I had brought a bit of rope... Anyway, what sucks is that hiking pole was the one I had modified to work as a camera monopod. : (
Pretty sky.
Getting down the mountain was tougher than getting up it. The trail is steep and well, I had forgotten to clip my toenails (I always forget) and that caused me quite a bit of pain going down! A steep descent is pretty tough anyway, especially without a hiking pole. : (
So cute! There were lots of deer on the mountain, this one was at the bottom.
oh, the blueberry harvest! Not much to speak of really. There were much more in years past. I used the blueberries as an excuse to take lots of breaks going down the mountain. ^__^
July 21, 2007: Singer Model 115
I finished restoring my second Singer Model 115 last night. It dates from 1916, my other 115 (the one I found in the trash) dates from 1913.
This is what it looked like before:
This is what it looks like now:
It has prettier details than my 1913 115, like this front plate.
Here's my other one, for comparison.
I put a hand crank on it so that it's portable! All 21 lbs. of it. I just have to make a box for the bottom.
It runs smoothly (after a lot of cleaning) and sews beautifully. It probably will for at least another hundred years. Pretty amazing if you ask me...
There's no cabinet for it, unfortunately it was in horrible shape (I got the whole thing for only $10 so I can't complain). I'm using its treadle for my converted serger, so it will be dedicated to being hand cranked.
I've been a bit obsessed with working on it the last few days, now hopefully I can get around to taking shirt orders again (soon!). And yes, there will be stuff on mushycat that I will be making with my sewing machines...
July 20, 2007: Steampunk! and Gullibleness.
I'm sure you heard about the steam explosion in NYC the other day. I used to tell people that Manhattan is steam-powered, it's hard to refute when there's always steam coming out of manhole covers.
It kinda is really is, but when people hear 'steam-powered' they tend to take it to an extreme in their heads. Clanking metal and hissing pipes hidden under the streets with oily-faced men tending to the machines with big rusty wrenches and all that...
Also, if I hold a strong magnet near your head I can change what you're thinking about!
July 20, 2007: dorkier than you
For one class in middle school (junior high) we got to screen print a shirt. The front of mine had the Atari Computer logo (because I had an Atari computer. Not a game console, my parents never let us have game consoles) and on the back it said 'Fernando' (which is my middle name. 'Ken' seemed to short and 'Morton' just didn't appeal to me, perhaps tellingly because it's really only my grandfather's adopted name, but I didn't find that out until later).
July 19, 2007: Hair mode for working: pigtails
Compare yesterday:
To today:
A previous owner had silvered and damaged little parts of some of the decals, oh well, I can't do anything about that, it still looks good though. All of the bearing internals have been cleaned and lubed and it's turning very smoothly now.
All the other parts are still in the molasses having their rust removed. I'll check on them tomorrow.
There were some decals that were so covered with dirt I didn't even know they were there until I worked on suspected areas a bit.
I think I'm going to make this one into a hand-crank machine so I can take it to the park and sew. I already have a hand crank, all I'd have to do is make a bit of a box to cover the lower bits.
July 18, 2007: Singer Decals
I think I found a good way to clean the almost hundred year old dirt from a Singer head:
If you use the wrong cleanser the decals can lose their color and turn all silver. Overall the decals are in really good shape. This head is much dirtier than my other 115 was, for that all I used was diluted dish soap and oil.
I'm going to wait awhile to see if anything happens to where I did clean before I do any more.
oh, and why do I have two 115's? I like to have backups... for example I have two button machines, just in case. I'm weird like that.
July 18, 2007: Restoring old machines instead of working...
I should be putting the shirts back up but I'm procrastinating by working on the treadle saw instead. I had some parts in the molasses (to remove rust) for so long that when I cleaned them off and used a little steel wool on them they came out totally shiny. That doesn't match the rest of the saw though, so I used some cold bluing compound on them to give them a nice dark finish:
Then I decided to get to work on my second Singer 115, so I took that apart and put the parts in the molasses:
I got that Singer off ebay for $10. My other main Singer, the one I found in the trash and restored, is also a 115 so I was pretty happy to find another one (they're a bit rare). I also have a model 15, which I only really bought because the cabinet came with a nice stool (that I reupholstered).
That black box to the right in the last picture is a Wheeler screw driver set that's actually made for gunsmiths. It has a ton of bits in it so that you can find an exact fit for almost any screw, regardless of slot width or thickness. That way it's almost impossible to mangle a screw. So useful!
July 18, 2007: scaredy cat
Miss Patches (my sweet kitty) is afraid of the rain. At first I thought she was afraid of thunder, but no, she runs and hides at even the softest pitter-patter of rain on the roof. This morning glorious sheets of rain were coming down and Patches didn't even come out for breakfast.
Silly kitty.
July 17, 2007: ladybug
oh ladybug, why are you so cute while other insects are kinda creepy?
I'm having a tough time getting anything done today.
Last night I had broccoli that actually tasted good. I've never liked broccoli, and I think I was further traumatized by making out with someone after they had eaten a whole bunch of raw broccoli. The stuff I had last night though... so good. It was in a sauce, but I think it was prepared just right as well.
It's time to make some tofu. The solar oven should have the water as hot as it can go now.
July 17, 2007: Tomato!
Tomato plants smell wonderful.
July 16, 2007: I can't skip. why?
I need to find more shiny-happy songs like this one (Feist - One Two Three Four). I could listen to that song on repeat for nigh-forever.
The bit where they skip though... sigh! I've never been able to skip. I can't get the hop right. I have some sort of mental block, maybe it's part of my happiness issues, if I could learn to skip then everything would be okay.
Who's going to teach me?
July 14, 2007: Capo
I took a saw to my Shubb guitar capo awhile ago because I wanted to have it span only four strings, it turns out they actually make them like that now.
July 13, 2007: xkcd
I <3 xkcd.
July 12, 2007: Arepa
I had a craving for arepa so I had to make some. Arepa is just corn flour and water. It's not the sort of corn flour you'd make corn muffins out of though, it's pre-cooked. I'm not sure if I had the right one, I think I might have used Maseca, which is pretty easy to get, but masarepa flour is supposed to be better. It tasted fine though!
My mom is Colombian and she used to make it all the time. It's not done until the kitchen is filled with smoke and the smoke alarm goes off!
I just put a little earth balance on it.
I think I'm going to work it into my diet in the place of some of my whole wheat bread so that I have more variety.
July 12, 2007: photoclinometry
I had a little breakthrough yesterday with some software I'm writing. Basically I'm going to be able to do all sorts of stuff with textures and metal using images and photoclinometry. It's going to be rad.
July 11, 2007: GBA
My parents want to get a Wii but they're still pretty impossible to get. My mom was joking about how she'd wait in line overnight if she had to.
That reminded me of when Jen and I were planning to get Game Boy Advances when they first came out. We were going to get up real early and queue up to get them, and we did! The funny bit is that the day before we happened to go into a comic book shop that had GBAs out a day early. We didn't get them though, I guess it would have been too easy and not as much fun!
July 11, 2007: Doves
When you think of Doves you think of white doves and peace, but the rock doves that frequent the feeder in my backyard are the most aggressive birds I've seen, in a pushy but not violent sort of way. They rush the other birds off the platform by picking up their wings a bit and then running at the other birds. The smaller birds just flit around to the other side of the platform and ignore them, but the larger birds tend to go away and wait for the doves to leave.
Unless they can do what the blue jays just did, coming 4-5 at a time.
The funny thing is the sound that the doves make when they're startled and fly off, they sound like little old ladies who have had their sensibilities offended, "oh my goodness! oh my! good gracious!".
Sometimes they all get along though.
July 10, 2007: Where's the bit I have to hit with a hammer?
I sent in my passport to be renewed a couple of weeks ago, fully expecting not to receive the new one for months since I did not choose the (very expensive) expedited service. They said it would take 10-12 weeks, even for renewals! So I was a bit surprised to get it in the mail today.
When I had my photo taken the photographer overexposed the first go, and then I blinked on the second, but the third one came out okay.
I don't have anywhere to go however! Shan did say that I should meet her in Amsterdam next week, to which I replied, "No Passport!". I guess that's not true anymore, but there's also No Money! and Who Will Feed My Kitties?.
I was out earlier today getting my car's oil changed (and yes, I had the tires rotated!) + other stuff, and I felt like I was swimming through the heat and humidity. But it felt nice...
July 08, 2007: kindred spirits
I <3 Anne of Green Gables.
July 08, 2007: Little Frog
The tadpoles in my pond have varying degrees of legginess now, I think some even have started developing front legs. They're very skittish though so it's hard to get a good look at them.
There's at least one baby frog, I don't know if it grew up in the pond or came from elsewhere:
It's small enough to be able to sit on the lily pads (they are also small). I know this is a crap pic that gives you no sense of scale! It's a real cute little frog though.
UPDATE: A real baby frog!
It hopped away across the lily pads once it got tired of me taking photos of it!
July 03, 2007: Yucko
You know that molasses I was using to remove rust? Well after a week or two IT STINKS! : )
It worked really well though...
July 03, 2007: hot peppers! yay!
My hot pepper plants are starting to flower!
June 30, 2007: Seitan
I usually make tofu and bake bread on the same day, but today I decided to try making seitan instead of bread. Seitan is just wheat gluten.
First I milled five cups of organic wheat berries:
Then I added water until it made a sticky dough (turned out to be 2.5 cups of water). I was tired from milling the soy beans and the wheat berries so I just used a mixer. The important thing is to knead it a lot to develop the gluten. I kneaded it, let it sit, and then kneaded it some more.
The next part is the bit I had reservations about. You use water to remove all the starches from the dough so that you're just left with the gluten. I don't like the idea of washing away half of the dough and using a lot of water to do so, that's pretty much why I've never tried making it before. So I tried to use as little water as possible, and I saved some of the water in a pot to water stuff with outside and to put in the compost pile. You really do need to use a lot of water though, so I'm not sure if I'm going to make this again.
Basically you submerge the dough in water and work it with your hands. The water will turn cloudy. Repeat until it's not so cloudy anymore.
Then you'll get this:
Yes it looks a little yucky!
You can see that it's smaller than it was before. Then you cook it however you like. I cut up some veg and used some of the whey from making tofu to make a stock, then I cooked the gluten in the stock for a bit, drained it, and then marinated some to use for dinner. I just fried it up in a pan, added some mung bean sprouts that I'd grown and some rice.
It was pretty good. But again, because of the water and basically wasting almost half of the grain I'm not sure I'm going to make it again.
Update: It's also possible to make wheat gluten from processed products such as "Vital Wheat Gluten". In that case you just add water and no rinsing is needed. I sent off an email to a manufacturer to try to find out what exactly the processes for making such products are.
June 30, 2007: sigh
Patches has her head on my chest. She always knows.
June 28, 2007: Patches
My kitty Patches knows when I'm sad and lonely and she comes and puts her head on my chest. Doesn't matter if I'm sitting or lying down. It's so cute. The feelings don't go away but it's nice.
June 28, 2007: Labyrinth Tiddlywiki export
I sent a little code to the author of Labyrinth a while ago to add Tiddlywiki export and it looks like he's going to use it, which is nifty.
June 20, 2007: Gardening
So it turns out I'm a shitty gardener. My plants just aren't getting enough sunlight, there are too many trees and they keep growing bigger every year. There's no where else on the property that I can plant things either. To trim the trees I'd have to hire a professional, there's no way I could do it myself.
My hot pepper plants are looking okay but the tomato plants should be much bigger by now, and the rest just look blah. It's disheartening.
ah well, maybe one day I'll have somewhere more suitable to growing stuff. For now I'll just have to make do.
June 18, 2007: Chippy
One of the chipmunks in the backyard (there's at least three) is chirping loudly about once every one or two seconds. I never realized they chirped until one did it in front of me. I saw a cat go by a few minutes ago so it's probably a warning chirp.
Okay it's getting a bit annoying! hah it's just the same chirp over and over again.
June 17, 2007: Firecrackers
I'm trying to work on some code I wrote last year that is fairly well commented but for which I did not document its intended workflow at all... it's a bit frustrating. Plus I'm a bit frustrated in general and pining a bit (not for the fjords), and people are setting off firecrackers outside which is more than a little annoying.
Someone come save me!
June 16, 2007: Molasses
The treadle scroll saw I bought recently for so cheap was so cheap because it's in pretty bad shape. I started working on removing the rust. I used a dremel tool with a wire brush to get off as much rust as I could, but I also tried something new (for me) - molasses.
Molasses + water in a 1:8 ratio will apparently remove surface rust. It's supposed to take a few days to a few weeks, depending. I put my mixture and parts in the oven with just the oven light on to keep the temperature elevated. It seemed to do a pretty good job after a few days:
before...
and after (coated with paste wax)
It doesn't do anything for paint, which is what those white specks are. There's lots of pitting of course, but the saw is over 100 years old... Most importantly it got the internal threads clean.
I've not been able to find much about how the molasses actually works other than it acts as a cholate. It's also supposed to be possible for lactic acid to be created from molasses through fermentation, which might be a factor for longer immersions.
I still have to do the larger pieces, but first I have to strip off the paint.
Molasses is interesting, I never really liked it cooking-wise, but I do now use blackstrap molasses for cooking/baking because it has lots of iron. And it's vegan because it's not bone charcoal filtered like most refined sugar.
June 15, 2007: Asian Genes
Honestly, I'd probably take up drinking if it were not for my asian genes making alcohol nothing but a painful experience (ALDH deficiency). The funny thing is that I never really had any desire to drink when I was younger, and so I didn't, and I never knew I had the asian flush thing. I think drinking is generally dumb anyway.
P.S. I wouldn't really ever take up drinking.
June 15, 2007: sigh
I am *such* a fucking idiot. *bangs head against wall*
June 15, 2007: Why I don't finish things
I always have ideas for new projects, which I tend to work obsessively on for days or weeks, planning out all the details of the processes (because what I do is work out processes, not simply make things) and then suddenly... I stop and work on something else. It can be a bit frustrating. Sometimes I come back to things and finish them, sometimes not.
Once I get something squared away though, it's almost effortless for me to do.
June 15, 2007: Thermos
During the day I open the fridge about 10 times to pour myself a drink, so I bought a thermos. Now I hardly open it at all. I should have thought of that sooner.
June 13, 2007: sadpants
I've decided I need a personal journal again. This may or may not disappear at some point. You're probably rather sharp-eyed to have found it in the first place!
I've been down lately. Actually, for a long time. I just didn't realize how much until recently.
Back when I lived in NYC I had a relationship end, one that I probably had the highest hopes for out of every relationship I've been in. After that I just sort of gave up and went into 'whatever' mode. I didn't care anymore. I wasn't going to put myself out there, it was too hard. Then I made a big mistake and let my best friend (who is my ex-lots of things) talk me into buying a house north of NYC. It wasn't hard to convince me. All I really wanted was more space to work on projects, to lose myself in my work.
Worse decision ever. Not only did I only end up isolated and unhappy, it prolonged this odd purgatory of a relationship I had with my best friend. Something that should have been (and was) over years ago. It's not her fault. I understand why she wanted what she did.
There were and are many positive aspects to moving here, but on the whole it's been awful. I've been in this haze. You may have noticed I started putting less and less work into mushycat. I became, and I'm so embarrassed to admit this, a bit apathetic. I've never been able to meet anyone nifty up here. I've had no inspiration, no real hope, no nothing. Just going through the days. Weeks seemed to fly by and I always wondered why. It's because they were gossamer and I passed through them as if they weren't there. Everything seemed okay, but it was just a veneer and I couldn't tell.
So recently something happened that woke me up and I was very happy for a little while, but as always the happy things never last. Now I don't feel like I can just slump back into the way I was living. I don't know what to do though. In a lot of ways I'm trapped, mainly financially because of the house. Ideally I'd like to move back to NYC (or somewhere), meet people, be happy, but my own nature (shyness, sensitivity) has always made that sort of thing difficult. So what can I do?
I have my work, that's always gotten me through a lot (thanks in part to all you wonderful people), but I need to step it up so I can get on my feet again. I hope I can do it.
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