It's a squealing sound. Shrill, even. Why would I like such a thing? How could I want to get into the shower in the morning and hear unpleasant sounds?

Because I don't like being frozen or burned, that's why. The pitch of the squeal goes down if either the hot water or cold water is about to drop precipitously. I get about 2 seconds of warning before I experience serious discomfort.

When I moved in I didn't really think "I hope my shower shrills in my ear", but I guess it's what I want, given the situation. Thanks showerhead!

I wrote this almost ten years ago. I don't remember why.

The rain is coming down in little drips, not big splatting ones. It is also making a background noise that sounds like it does when you're in the shower, but quieter. Every once in awhile a big drop falls off the eaves and goes popsplatt on the ground. The leaves on the trees are a little bit droopy. It is pretty quiet, except for the rain and a crow squalling in the background. Inside the house, it is so quiet that you can hear the cat chewing. It is almost dreary but not quite(it isn't dreary because Philip's chewing breaks the silence).

The rain just stopped. The sun is trying to come out, but the clouds are having the victory. I feel like I want to do something that is less boring that doing this math paper. I feel like this because we are going to a model store soon and we can't go if I'm not done. It is muggy and stuffy inside the house, but the air outside is fresh and cool. The leaves are still soaking wet and would drop their water any minute if the wind rustled the leaves. It is the sort of day that things don't happen in much.

A few months ago in late July, I flew to California for OSCON 2009. On the way back, I took a few photos out the window of my plane as the sun was getting close to setting. Today I stitched together some of those photos into a relatively wide angle view of what was a breathtakingly beautiful view. I'm not sure this representation does it justice, but here it is nonetheless:



Fly Sky Full Size Panorama

People who live in New England can very easily just miss how nice fall is here. Bah, the tourists are suckers, it's just leaves, it happens every year. Well, I went camping last weekend and I'm really happy with the photos I took.

A selection:











Monadnock View Full Size Panorama

I'm posting to tell you about a recipe I've been making frequently in the last year. It's a beanless chili of the pretty spicy persuasion based on Turkey meat rather than Beef. I got it from a cookbook PDF that I downloaded once, but I don't remember where that is or precisely what it was called, so I'll just post the recipe itself.

It only takes about 20 minutes preparation time to make this once you've got it down, and about 45 minutes of cooking.

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground turkey
• 5 roma tomatoes, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, diced
• pepper to taste
• salt to taste
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 6 oz hot salsa
• 3 jalapenos
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp chili powder
• 1 onion, diced (1/2 a medium onion will do if you don't want to use much onion)

Instructions

1. Heat olive oil in large sauce pan over high heat add onions sprinkle with a little salt and saute until they become translucent.
2. Add garlic wait 30-45 secs until garlic is light brown but not burnt.
3. Add package of turkey stir until cooked.
4. Add the tomatoes, jalapenos, and salsa.
5. Continue stirring until everything comes to a boil.
6. Add cumin and chili powder, stir.
7. Cover, reduce heat to low, and allow to simmer for 45mins-1hour.

Voila:

The stone Soup Community Center, a neighborhood outreach, education center, and co-op at 4 King Street, has been gutted by a fire of currently unknown origin. Nobody was hurt as far as I know. The building has been evacuated - all 3 floors are involved and several ladders are at the scene. I hope that the people who built and relied on Stone Soup can find what they need to continue.





More photos. My heart goes out to everyone who lost a place to live and an important part of the community today.

I've had a fascination with photography and capturing the moment for a long time. Back in November, I realized that the world of panoramas was within my grasp when hugin, a panorama stitching program popped up on Reddit. Since then I've learned quite a few of the finer points of hugin based panorama stitching and made 4 panoramas in total.

The White Mountains

Every Thanksgiving my Dad's side of the family makes a pilgrimage to Pinkham Notch in the White Mountains for a weekend of family, hiking, board games, and eating too much.

From Square Ledge

I took this shot from Square Ledge, overlooking the pass:


White Mountains Full Size Panorama

Lion's Head

That Saturday my cousin Jacob and I climbed up to Lion's head (foolishly without enough gear, but we survived). I got this view:


Lion's Head Full Size Panorama

Vermont Weekend

Last weekend I went up to my friend Jack's Uncle's Friend Dave's house. I got these shots while there:

Sledding Hill

We decided to go sledding on Saturday. I got this one from the bottom of the hill.


Sledding Hill Full Size Panorama

Dave's House

As we were figuring out what to do with the day on Sunday, I stood in the corner and took a lot of photos of the inside of the house... here are the results!


Dave's House Full Size Panorama

Panoramas are Great

I hope you liked my work. If you like photography, you'll love panorama-ing, or whatever the verb for making panoramas is.

Cake. Everyone likes cake. I recently found my mini bundt pans.. so what to bake except mini bundt cakes? I found this recipe at cooks.com but it was not complete.. I found some general figures for bundts and fleshed it out.



Looks tasty eh? Here's...

The Recipe

Prep time: 20 minutes
Bake time: 45 minutes

Ingedients

• 2/3 cup butter
• 2/3 cup confectioners' sugar
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• pinch salt
• 2/3 cup milk

Nothing fancy there. You don't need yak milk or anything weird and hard to find like that.

Steps

• Cream butter and both sugars until light and fluffy.
• Separate eggs.
• Add egg yolks, separately, beating well after each.
• Mix in extracts.
• Mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Add flour mixture and milk alternately to creamed mixture.
• Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Pour into greased and floured mini bundt pans or cup cake pans.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Mmm, tasty. It's been suggested that I try chocolate drizzle next time. I'm thinking of either doing that, or lemon glaze next time.

I can't say I'm surprised. Any time Andrew and I are part of the same group going somewhere, we turn it into a photo opportunity and whatever was going to happen is co-opted by our photographic endeavors. Originally, we were going to see Much Ado About Nothing on Boston Common. When we got there, we were coldly surprised with the fact that As You Like It was playing instead.

Given the controversial and opposite opinions that we all held about this lower work of Shakespeare, it was decided that the best course of action was to wander off with no particular purpose in mind.

The expected occurred. We took a lot of photos.








A good time was had by all. More photos at the album.

Here at HOPE the current talk is discussing various methods for communicating without using corpoorate and government controlled and monitored infrastucture that we're all accustomed to.

As a licensed HAM, much of the info about how radio can be used to do long range comms isn't new to me. However, there have been some interesting tidbits: morse transmission over CW is very narrow band and uses very little power.

Software for encoding and decoding morse code is available which makes long range packet radio a good method for sending text communications. Some questionably legal methods for transmitting crytologically secured messages come to mind.

It is legal to use cryptography on MURS frequencies, but the long range low power capabilities are lost. I'm looking forward to finding an inexpensive set of equipment that can be used in combination with GNU radio to exchange messages long range. Perhaps the unlicensed bands will be hospitable.