Beth Skwarecki:
The first round of auditions (for the chime competition is on Saturday. Wish me luck.
Am I the only one who thinks the chime clavier looks like a less futuristic version of the pleasure machine Duran Duran tortured Barbarella with? (it was no match for Barbarella, of course. She broke the machine, it started smoking and flaming, and Duran Duran asked her, "Have you no shame?!"
I made bread today.
Recently a cow-orker and I competed to see who could make the better zucchini bread, as judged by Teri. I lost, but was left with a delicious loaf of losing zucchini bread. The loaf pan that I bought to make the bread came with a recipe for apple bread (basically the same thing, but with apples instead of zucchini). This, too, was delicious.
Of more dubious quality was the beer bread I made (with Ithaca Apricot Wheat). I thought it was OK; Chris ate the rest and asked for more.
Happy with my success so far, I decided to try something more challenging: the recipe for "classic whole wheat bread" from the back of the flour bag. This, too, was delicious.
Kreuter requested bloggage; here it is. Recipes are as modified by me.
Originally from: King Arthur flour bag
Ingredients:
Originally from: loaf pan label
Ingredients:
Originally from: Moosewood recipeasel
Ingredients:
Originally from: allrecipes.com
Ingredients:
I did surprisingly well on this quiz, despite my answers to some questions - for example, I don't own a microscope, did not build the computer I took the quiz on, and have no dead rodents in my bedroom.
In other news (I'm trying to be all up-to-date and not-stale here), today Nick, Teri, CTL and I went to Syracuse for boots and only ended up getting lost, and spaghetti (long story). Yesterday Teri, Happicow, CTL, and I went to the Museum of the Earth, a short drive up the lake from here.
I liked the museum a lot. For being a smallish museum, far from civilization, it used its space very well. It beat the pants off the San Diego Natural History Museum. For one thing, the MOTE had two large skeletons (a right whale, and a local mastodon); but more importantly, the exhibits were arranged in a way that makes you, well, learn.
The exhibits are a chronological tour of the history of life on earth, starting with a short movie about how the earth was formed and when bacteria first started shaping it. A few smaller rooms guide you through the next few geological periods, showing fossils and reconstructions alongside some little guides to what happened when: the position of the continents, the amount of biodiversity, and so on. When you hit a major extinction (five are counted), a big black skull-and-crossbones sign marks the spot. The next big room is the Devonian (age of fishes), and after that we get dinosaurs, the basics of evolution, and the Hyde Park Mastodon.
What sets this apart from other museums I've visited is that the information is presented clearly (the graphics are excellent), and in a coherent story. Many museums try to tell a story but only end up with disjoint pieces badly illustrated. Worse, they'll start with a collection of rooms (the dinosaur room, the mammal room, the bugs and reptiles room) and try to have their tour guides connect them. To make the museum more interesting and educational, they add a lab full of iMacs in the middle of it. (No, I'm not thinking of anybody in particular, why do you ask?) The MOTE has two advantages, though: it's a small space with a smallish collection of items; and its focus is fairly limited. The Carnegie, on the other hand, has TONS of crap, of all sorts, so the atmosphere is more cabinet-of-wonders than coherent storytelling.
Also, I'm old enough to actually pay attention to the movies, the text, and the rocks with little worm-shaped smudges on them. As a kid, I would have run up to the mastodon, wanted to climb on it, then cried when somebody told me there were no dinosaurs.
[2005-02-13] (Feedback)
I'm learning to play the chime here at Cornell. This means I've signed up for a ten-week competition; for the first stage, I have to learn three required pieces: one easyish one, one with a bunch of three-note chords (right hand + left hand + left foot), and one with a gazillion notes that must be played at breakneck speed.
Somebody asked me the other day, "Is a chime like the advanced placement version of a triangle?" It is not. A chime is a large tower with bells the size of your car. (A carillon is similar but larger.)
It's played from a console like this one. Not content with making chime players run from side to side pushing levers, the inventor of the console added foot pedals for each note, so you get to hop around on one foot playing notes with your three spare appendages.
Don't let the paper hearts fool you. It's actually a vicious beast.
The piece of music on the stand in that picture is the "Cornell Changes". It has some ungodly large number of notes and must be played in a ridiculously short amount of time. By March I need to be able to play it flawlessly in under three minutes. Wish me luck.
The console is on the 8th floor of the tower. (the practice room is on the 3rd floor; the bathroom is on the 6th). You can climb a few more stairs to stand out on the belfry, next to and under the bells (it's really not that loud) and enjoy views of the campus and town on all four sides. You can see halfway up Cayuga Lake, or all the way down to the Commons. The bells themselves are in a metal cage, presumably to protect them from visitors and vice versa. The bells all have inscriptions on them from when they were given as gifts to the University (starting with the original 9 bells that were reportedly played at Cornell's opening ceremonies). These are two pictures I took of the low C, the bell that's rung to chime the hour.
There is a computerized mechanism that chimes the hours when no human is in the tower (though a human can turn off the bells and play the chime manually - I did that today for the 9:45 chime. The whole campus heard me. Fortunately I didn't screw up. :)
[2005-02-09] (Feedback)
I got my dog today!!!
My dog is a retired racing greyhound. I got her on Jan 22, 2005 from Greyhounds of Central New York and Monica's Heart Greyhound Adoption. She was born on March 5, 1997, making her 7 years old when I got her.
It looks like she raced in Florida for a while, then in West Virginia; she was a brood bitch and had a few litters before being given to an adoption group in Kansas in October 2004. On her way to me, she passed through West Virginia and Binghamton, NY. She lives with me now in Ithaca. She likes to sleep on the couch.
I call her Moxie, but you can look her up under her racing name, Kiowa Eby.
(This painting, "Study of a Greyhound" by Jacques-Laurent Agasse, is not of Moxie but it kind of looks like her.)
[2005-01-22]
(Feedback)
Theremin, continued. Last time I posted, we had an oscillator that, tuned together with an oscillator in a radio, was demonstrating theremin-like properties: move your hand near the coil, and you change the screechy noise it makes.
I'll skip over all the fiddling we did, building the second oscillator, prototyping about half of the circuit, hooking it up to the oscilloscope and having some fun with it.
The other day, we started making the circuit on perfboard. (We could have etched it, but that seemed like a lot of work). We glued the schematic over the board, then put our components through whatever holes were closest, using wires from a scrap of Cat-5.
I learned to solder. I still can't do it as well or as quickly as my dad, but I did get him to reveal his secret technique for stripping wires.
Here it's about halfway done. The green and orange wire is for power, the orange and white is for the switch, and you can see the coils waiting in the background next to our old breadboard circuit, which we were cannibalizing as we went along.
Here's the circuit all wired up. The computer speakers in the background didn't work so well; what we ended up using was a battery-powered speaker. It eliminated a lot of the hum and extraneous noises we were hearing.
The case we used is an 8x10 shadowbox which gave us a nice cigar-box form factor with a glass lid. It also gave us two layers of wood on the side to drill through, so I wouldn't recommend it.
Connectors: black thing on the left is for the antenna, blue box at the top is the on/off switch. The connector going out the right side is a jack for headphones or speakers. Also, the coil on the right has its brass screw sticking out, for tuning.
This picture shows the antenna: a tall thin brass rod, in a wooden stand made from a scrap of molding. My dad bent the end of it into a loop "so you don't poke your eye out".
The theremin is complete, and it even sounds reasonably close to what a theremin should sound like. It's pitch-only, although there's a way to add a photo-cell volume control. Now I just have to learn to play it :)
My dad and I are building a theremin. It's the RS Ultimate 2 [download the schematic and play along!], whose main virtues are that all the parts are available at Radio Shack and that its mp3 samples sounded a lot better than the Minimum Theremin. The plan is to build this one as an experiment, and then see where to go from there - possibly a tube-based theremin like the 126.
We started work after getting home from Christmas with the relatives. We didn't have a whole lot of time, but we got as far as a single working oscillator.
To be brief (since I'm still learning this stuff myself), a theremin is a "heterodyne" made of two oscillators. Each oscillator contains a coil. You can change the inductance of a coil by waving your hand near it, and this changes the frequency of the oscillator.
One oscillator is hooked up to the antenna. You wave your hand to fiddle with its frequency, while the other oscillator is undisturbed. It's the difference in frequency between the two oscillators that gets converted to beautiful theremin music. Or pathetic attempts at "Somewhere Over The Rainbow", which I gather is more common.
The first step was to make the coils. We made the coil forms out of PVC pipe, with long brass screws threaded into the endcaps. The brass screws will let us fine-tune the electrical properties of the coils later on.
My dad explained how to wind the coil, and as I wound it, he mentioned
casually that he happens to especially hate the grueling work of winding
coils. He then found convenient excuses to make me do all the winding
("Wow, you really wind coils well!" "Oh,
you're done with that? I'll help you by taping down the end. In the
meantime, you wind the next one!" [etc]).
Once we had the coils built, we could try to make a working oscillator. We poked wires into a breadboard (please disregard the years-old "other project" that is taking up most of the board in this picture) and then my dad gave a little disclaimer: "when I build oscillators, they never work."
But it worked. We tuned a radio in (conveniently, this radio had its own built-in oscillator) and when we waved our hands near the coil, we heard a sound like a staticky badly-tuned theremin!
Tuning with the brass screws.
Here is a photograph of the sound it made. :)
[2004-12-25] (Feedback)I knew one-dollar DVDs would be around soon enough. A few weeks ago I saw some in Target: flimsy cardboard boxes, each with an episode or two of some old TV show. None interested me.
It gets better. In the dollar store the other day, looking for stocking stuffers, Chris found me a DVD with three episodes of Flash Gordon. Score!
Better yet, in the same pile of DVDs were a bunch of old cartoons. I got some Betty Boop, some Little Lulu, and some Tom and Jerry (not the color TV shows I remember - I mean these guys, whoever exactly they are). Also a disc of miscellaneous "Classic Cartoons". The packages are a sort of half-assed envelope, and there's no brand name other than "Cartoon Classics™" - good luck googling that. (or defending that trademark!)
This is the kind of thing that makes me remember why I own one of those shiny boxes with the little buttons on the front.
In other news, my apartment is the same temperature as my refrigerator. I'm sitting here in a poofy winter coat, and I have to stop typing because my fingers are getting cold. The emergency maintenance guy said he'd be over as soon as he finishes with the frozen pipes he's working on.
If you're bored, here's the recipe for the soup I'm going to make to warm me up:
[2004-12-20] (Feedback)Carrot-Ginger Soup
Cut up 2 pounds of carrots. Put them in a pot with enough water to cover, then add 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger and 1 cup of wine. Cover, and boil about 30 minutes.
Puree. Season with salt and pepper, and add more water/wine if necessary. Serves 4 to 6.
Recipe is from 500 3-Ingredient Recipes, as reviewed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
<shameless plug>
If you like my photography, you might like my calendar. I've made up a 2005 calendar with my photography (mostly landscape type shots) and I'm giving a few out as christmas gifts. It's print-on-demand, though, so anybody who wants to can order a few. It's not too late to get them in time for christmas!! :)
Disclosure: I make about $1 each. I set the price low because I'm more interested in people seeing and enjoying my work than in pretending I'll make more than pocket change off this :)
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| Trees on the bank of Crater Lake, OR | Stick bug sitting on the South Lookout at Hawk Mountain, PA | A pond in Oregon (like Crater Lake only much smaller) | The "Corduroy Mountains" of southeast Pennsylvania, view from Hawk Mountain's North Lookout |
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| Trail at Robert Treman park, Ithaca, NY | Apples at the Agricultural Research Station in Geneva, NY | Lucifer Falls, Ithaca, NY | Fields near Crater Lake, OR |
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| View from the South Lookout at Hawk Mountain, PA | A spooky Pennsylvania forest on Halloween 2004 | A building outside my apartment | The night of 2004's first snowfall in Ithaca, NY |
</shameless plug>[2004-12-16] (Feedback)
Quote of the day:
"I don't think we ought to lie to our children about science," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.),[2004-12-01] (Feedback)
I got some really cool pictures the other day when we had our first snowfall. Click for more!
[2004-11-13]
(Feedback)
I don't like Bush, and I'm disappointed that he won.
However, I'm not going to secede, or move to canada, or proclaim that I can't understand how half of america can be so insanely moronic as to consider voting for Bush.
Some people like him. They're still human beings. They're still 51% of our country. Hell, I'm marrying one of them, and I promise you he's not a brain-dead moron. He doesn't agree with everything Bush stands for - just like I don't agree with everything Kerry stands for (come on, did you?) He saw advantages in Bush that he did not see in Kerry.
You don't have to look far in the news to find stories of voter fraud, intimidation, and voting machine malfunctions; these appall me. I doubt that the party in power is interested in effective ways of correcting the abysmal state of our voting procedures and technology.
What's worse, though, is the amount of social engineering that goes on to trick people into voting for one side, or not voting at all. Both sides do it. One side might be more successful than the other, but how would I know which it is? Some people are criticizing the Republicans' actions here; this reminds me of the line from The Sting: "What am I going to do, accuse him of cheating better than me?"
Our most serious problem is the fact that (mostly because of our voting and vote-counting procedures and technology) the margin of error in counting the votes is not as small as we would like. If one candidate got 60% of the votes, a 1% margin of error isn't a big deal. But when the "winner" appears to have 51%, that margin is too large. This is, I think, the biggest problem in both the 2000 and 2004 elections. We need to find a way to fix this.
[2004-11-05] (Feedback)
This weekend Chris and I went to Hawk Mountain, a nature preserve and hawk-watching lookout on Kittatinny Ridge, aka the Endless Mountain. It's a mountain that runs from New Jersey almost to Maryland, curving through Pennsylvania. I tunnel through it every time I drive on the Turnpike.
My pictures didn't come out as well as I hoped - the first day there, it was cold and wet and rainy and overcast; the second day, I didn't have enough battery left to bother bringing the camera with me.
best parts of the trip:
In the news today: Google's desktop search can find things that you don't want people to find. This isn't a security issue in desktop search; this is a security issue in windows's lack of good default permissions (and encryption), and users' ignorance about those things.
If you don't want people to read something, don't leave it unencrypted and world-readable.
Bruce Schneier also has a good article in today's CRYPTO-GRAM about security through obscurity - in this case, the context is keeping secrets about infrastructure vulnerabilities. Some choice quotes:
[2004-10-15] (Feedback)Secrets are fragile; once they're lost they're lost forever. Security that relies on secrecy is also fragile; once secrecy is lost there's no way to recover security. Trying to base security on secrecy is just plain bad design.
This keeps terrorists in the dark, especially "dumb" terrorists who might not be able to figure out these vulnerabilities on their own. But at the same time, the citizenry -- to whom the government is ultimately accountable -- is not allowed to evaluate the countermeasures, or comment on their efficacy. Security can't improve because there's no public debate or public education.
Last week I had a wisdom tooth extracted (it had a nasty infection - later on I'll get the other three out). I was going to take some nice macro shots of the tooth (they let me take it home in a little bottle) but now I can't find it! Instead, please enjoy these historical and otherwise dubious procedures that make going to the dentist look like fun.
Take a candle and burn it close to the tooth. The worms that are gnawing the tooth will fall out into a cup of water held by the mouth. [ref; more on tooth worms]
Take some newts, by some called lizards, and those nasty beetles which are found in fens during the summer time, calcine them in an iron pot and make a powder thereof.
'Wet the forefinger of the right hand, insert it in the powder, and apply it to the tooth frequently, refraining from spitting it off, when the tooth will fall away without pain. It is proven. [ref]
A German with a toothache will cook a dried fig in milk and apply it to the painful area.
One European toothache remedy is garlic. You can chew on a clove of garlic, or hold it against the tooth. The antibacterial properties of garlic are well known.[ref]
To cure a toothache, touch a dead man's tooth. [ref]
You can read more about teeth here or here.
[2004-10-12] (Feedback)I'm in Pittsburgh today, looking at wedding things.
The reception will be in this castle. The ceremony will be in this church. We've set a (tentative) date of July 16th.
[2004-10-09] (Feedback)Alright, I left the ring post up long enough for ctl to show it off to his parents and everyone else. Now, I'll talk about the thing that's been on my mind:
How much my mouth hurts now that I got a tooth out.
No, before that! ... ah, right, pumpkin pie.
Teri and I made a pumpkin pie the other day (two and a half pies, actually) out of actual pumpkins. It was fun and interesting and delicious. Homemade pies are definitely better than the store-bought kind or the kind that comes from a can. (Fun fact: commercial pumpkin pies aren't made of pumpkin).
Pie pumpkins are little round pumpkins that are smaller and tastier than the kind sold for jack o' lanterns. We heard a rumor that organic pie pumpkins are tastier than the regular kind, so we went to GreenStar and got a volleyball-sized organic pie pumpkin and a few other ingredients. Here's what we did:
pieifying the pumpkin: Pie is made of the actual flesh of the pumpkin (not the guts). We cut out the stem, then cut what remained of the pumpkin into quarters. Pumpkin guts and seeds get saved into another bowl, for later.
Put the pumpkin pieces onto a cookie sheet, skin up, and bake at about 350° for an hour. Then the pumpkin is mushy enough to scoop with a spoon into your mixing bowl.
One volleyball-sized pie pumpkin makes about 5 cups of pumpkin mush. One pie requires only two cups of pumpkin mush. Double your pleasure!
cookingifying the pie: Then you have to mix up the ingredients and cook the pie.
You'll need two bowls. Break the eggs; the whites go into their own special bowl (THIS BOWL MUST BE ABSOLUTELY CLEAN! I learned this the hard way) and the yolks go into the everything-else bowl.
Have your assistant/monkey whip the egg whites with a whisk until they are frothy and creamy and stand up by themselves ("form stiff peaks").
Mix everything else in the everything-else bowl. Get the pie crust ready.
Fold (this means "stir very gently") the egg whites into the everything-else mixture. Pour it into the pie crust.
Bake for 15 minutes at 425°, and then 45 minutes at 350°, or until a knife comes out clean.
super extra bonus recipe - pumpkin seeds: For that "we use every part of the buffalo, except the stringy orange bits" feeling. Rumor has it this pumpkin seed recipe is an American Indian version.
Remove the seeds from the guts; throw the guts away. Wash the seeds in a strainer.
Soak the seeds in a bowl of very salty water overnight.
Spread the seeds out on a cookie sheet and roast them at "enough" [ed. guess: 350°?], rearranging them every few minutes so all sides get toasted. Continue until done. [ed. guess: 15 minutes?]
Chris gave me an engagement ring! (He really didn't have to). It's a sapphire in a titanium tension setting. I love it. :)
I'm getting a doggy!! His name is Boo Boo. There's a different picture of him here.
[2004-10-01] (Feedback)
It's banned books week again!
I'm copying another one of those silly livejournal lists. These books have all been banned somewhere. Bold indicates books I've read; bold italic indicates books I read, with teachers and classmates, in school.
