freaking masterpiece

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Ardurino - Multi Color LED project

(I have needed to finish this stupid project and blog about it for almost two months now.)

The gist of this project was to take an array of tri colored LEDs and use the arduino to receive data over the serial port and change the color of the LEDs based on this.

Got most of teh code from
http://todbot.com/blog/2006/10/23/diy-ambient-orb-with-arduino-update/

Set up the wiring mai self... definitely not optimized but it is not frying the LEDs and looks pretty good :)

Here are some pics:

This is totally going to ruin mai street cred.

Ok, I like wacky food... there has only been one legit piece of food that I have thought twice about before eating (Chinese shell on salted shrimp for teh record (and it was delicious once I ate the face off of it))

Also I am a big fan of the
Peanut Butter + Meat
Peanut Butter + Cheese
Anything wrapped in bacon or prosciutto

So I give you the unlikely but very very delicious crunchy peanut butter and feta wrapped in prosciutto

Mai gut tells me it need 3 minutes on a grill and a sprig of rosemary or mint but even without those it was a complex yet light taste with just enough salt to make it addicting.

Next time I grill I'll subject mai friends to a couple of variations and post the results (mmmm... fresh mint and rosmary)

In the mean time here are some pictures


definitely needs better presentation... but it is good!

Picture of the Habanero & Ginger infused Tito's

el tango de la muerte (Further adventures in infused vodka)

Yes it is a blatant rip from the Simpsons episode, however, it was the first name that came to mind and it seems fitting.

This is released under a BSD licence

EL TANGO DE LA MUERTE (the tango of death)

So there are two parts to the drink
1. Infused Vodka
2. Fruit Juice

Part 1.
The infused vodka mixture is
Tito's Vodka (just covering the hacked up ginger and pepper)

Fresh Ginger (I hack them in the major nodes and then quarter or eighth them)((Srsly just look a ginger root in a store and it will make sense.))

Peppers (couple jalapeños from mai garden and a couple of habanero from the store) halved

Let that sit a couple days in your freezer until it has a good burn and taste of ginger.

Part 2.
The fruit juice mixture is Santa Cruz Organic Lemonade and 365 brand Orange Peach Mango juice at a ratio of anywhere between 4:1 and 1:1

Add vodka to taste.

Suggestion.
Bring the ingredients a spot that you can stay for a while and won't have to, under any circumstances, drive.

put a 2:1:.5 mixture in a glass

drink

Use iterative development... get the product into the hands of the consumer quickly and then fine tune :)

IMO 2:1:1 is a pretty darn good ratio... but it has a stiff kick and stiff burn.

Cheers

Making Mud (Experiences Cold brewing)

Mmmmmm... coffee.

Two people who have been both friend and mentor to me, have sung the virtues of cold brew coffee. It seems obvious, knowing my liking of both cold coffee and strong coffee that I would explore this world. However, for four years there was an unseen mental wall that kept me from experiencing this joy. (don't ask what it was... I honestly don't know)

Now that I have shelled out the $30 and gotten mai own cold brew kit... "Awesome!" is the only word for it.

Always needing to putter and mod, I've done several tests (if you will, studies) and have a couple of findings.

1. Chicory (Sold as Coffee Partner at whole paycheck (in an orange box in the coffee section)) adds a wonderful punch (of taste but not caffeine) that really does make the coffee go further. IMO Chicory gets you up to brewing around the same amount of coffee albeit in concentrated form, as you do as normal drip coffee. This comes with the benefit that you don't throw any coffee away. I've used ratios in the neighborhood of 3 - 4 : 1 : .25 - .5 (water : coffee : chicory) with great success.

2. Whole bean .* versus pre-ground .* && Arabia vs. Robusto && Light vs. Dark Roast
Frankly, IMO the type of bean and roast matter less than the grind. Now I don't have the most discriminating pallet and drink mai coffee with cream/soy/sugar/ice, however, I am very discriminating on the process of making coffee. It is a HUGE pain in the * if your filter gets clogged. I am not as anal as the manufacturer which states to layer the grounds and water. Mai findings... if you use a nice course blend and you have to agitate or stir the grounds a little bit, you are totally fine. If you are using a fine grind and you accidentally bump the brewer... the filter is clogged (and it sucks)

Mai current favorite mix
4 cups water

1 generous cup (prolly 1.2 cups) course ground Pleasant Morning Buzz (cheap pre bagged fair trade whole paycheck beans)

3.25 oz (.5 package) Coffee Partner Natural Ground Chicory.

(Heh I think that I'm going to mix up a batch right now to make sure that I'm not lying to you)

Ubuntu Desktop vs. Ubuntu Server

Perhaps it is that mai age is > 30, but I seem to be slipping back into tried and true technology. VIM, Tiling window managers and command line apps have become very appealing lately. I know... appalling isn't it :)

It is in this context that I finally decided to install Ubuntu Server and to see if the process of starting from a small unbloated distro works better than starting bloated and removing the gunk. (No flames from Gentoo users about what is an unbloated distro)

The verdict. Undecided.

It definitely takes less time IMO to start bloated and strip down. However, it is definitely more interesting and you learn more starting small and building up.

For me the big gotchas that make sense but still took me by surprise
1. No support for restricted drivers
2. No support for wireless
3. May have done something wrong but there was no support for DHCP
4. No sound

The system may still be a little flaky... but overall it was good fun and I may just try a Gentoo install some day (err... some week :P)