Archives for: March 2008
03/31/08
Storm Casualties
Not a good week to be garden plants. We had some severe weather roll through, but then again it is spring in Texas. Looks like three of the broccoli, one jalapeño, and one of the tomatoes got damaged by the winds. I've got one more of the tomatoes still inside, but the rest will have to be re-seeded.
03/30/08
b2evolution Upgrade
I upgraded the blog software today and while you may not notice anything different, I sure did. I've been reluctant to update the software because it's been a pain to do. I've had to customize some stuff, like the Adsense code, Google search, Google Analytics, and some HTML validation steps.
Well, it turns out that none of that is needed any more. The 2.1.x series has a generic HTML widget that you can drop just about anywhere. I just copied the HTML into widgets, put them where they needed to be, and was done. Now code updates don't require me to crank up vi and get dirty with PHP.
03/28/08
An Inconvenient Truth
Saw this on one of the lists I read, found the Snopes page that confirms it. All I can say is wow.
03/23/08
Sowing More Seeds
More work in the garden today, got the seeds for the lettuce, beans, squash, chives, catnip, basil, and dill in the ground. The seedlings on the kitchen table are looking good and some of them are going to be ready for the dirt next weekend. Got to get the bird netting put up though...
03/17/08
Dread Empire's Fall: The Praxis
| I picked up a couple books to read during the flight and got most of the way through this one on the way out. I finished it off tonight after class... I was intrigued by its premise, that humanity had been dominated, not really conquered, by an alien race who completely rewrote the belief system of any race that it encountered. Usually by bombarding the planet in question for a while. The book starts out with a little introduction to The Praxis and how humanity got to be where it is now, but the real action doesn't start until the last member of that race dies. That one death set in motion what looks like the destruction of the empire that had been built over the last few thousand years. By the end of the book there's a civil war going on and I'm really not sure where it's going to go from here. It was a good read though and the other two volumes of the trilogy are definitely in my future... |
03/15/08
Kegged The Wheat
Getting ready to head out to San Jose in the morning for a week of training and one of my last tasks was to get the wheat from the fermenter into the keg. It went as painless as could be and tasting the dregs of the batch from my siphon hose seems to indicate that it'll be a tasty brew. It's under pressure now, in the fridge, aging and getting ready for Pascha.
03/09/08
A Round Of Planting
There are now 16 carrots, 32 peas (16 snow and 16 pod), and a couple catnip plants seeded in the soil. After the crazy week we had with snow, 80 degree temperatures, and then snow again, hopefully we're past the last frost. If not, it really doesn't matter for these seeds, they're all frost hardy.
03/02/08
Marking Off The Squares And Onions
I got the garden's squares marked off with some jute twine and then planted the onions. There are now 64 onion plants growing and it looks like we're going to get a bunch of rain tonight and tomorrow so that ought to make them a little happier. It's starting to look like a garden now. I've also uploaded some more pictures to the album...
03/01/08
Plain Old Basic Wheat
I kicked off a batch of a plain old basic wheat beer today. It's a simple recipe, and the first all-extract brew I've done in a while. It's also the first one I've done since the Oxynator arrived and it was pretty impressive to watch. Lots of bubbles and I'm hoping that the yeast will be a little happier with all of that dissolved oxygen.
Here's the basic recipe:
- 6.6 pounds wheat extract syrup
- 1.5 oz. Hallertauer hops
- 1.5 oz. Tettnang hops
- 1 pack Wyeast 1010 American Wheat yeast
The procedure is simple. Just get the water heated up, add the extract, and bring to a boil. At 15 minutes in to the boil, add the Tettnang hops. At 40 minutes in to the boil, add the Hallertauer hops. After it's boiled for an hour, remove from the heat, chill, dilute to 5.25 gallons, hit it with the O2, and then pitch the yeast.
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