Spent today with Dad wrenching on the Benz.

I set out to change the belts, oil, fog lamp bulb, and driver's seat springs.

Dad immediately became obsessed with the air cleaner assembly and promptly broke the crankcase vent tube, which was replaced by day's end with a steampunk chunk of copper tubing.

I broke a non-essential part of the headlight frame, so we were even.

Together, we changed the belts through a simple 28-step process.
Really - no cursing was required, but our arms were sore by the end.

The oil change was a friendly and mess-free process thanks to a well designed oil filter that does not immediately spill oil all over you and the ground, but rather drains it right down with the rest of the oil. So sensible, so German.

Back to Dad and the air cleaner assembly. While I'm changing the oil, he removes the air cleaner assembly, which *was* rather loosely attached.

Boy, were there bugs under *that* rock.

Two hoses were disconnected, and 3 or 4 screws to nowhere had to be corrected.
The air intake had a loose hose clamp, and then a vacuum (or EGR-related) hose had torn off and was hanging loose.

The Benz has shown itself to indeed be the most reliable car on earth.
I dare say you could disconnect most of the hoses under the hood and the damn thing would still run ok.

After Dad's earnest wrenching, you can do pullups on the air cleaner.

With the tubing reconnected, fresh belts, and 2 fresh *GALLONS* of diesel synthetic motor oil ('cause that's how freakin' much it takes) the car runs confidently and smoothly, with enough low-rpm power to drive up maisimai's tailpipe. Er, her car's tailpipe. Hahaha.

Tomorrow? Seat springs and a new radio antenna.

I thought this would be a fun way of finding good apps.

Post your list of iPhone/iPod Touch apps!

* Aurora Feint RPG / Puzzle game with stunning graphics and sound
* SplashID password manager
* Moonlight MahJong
* Twitterrific (Twitter client)
* AirSharing (wireless file sync and management)
* Constitution (keep one in your pocket where Bush can't piss on it)
* AOL Radio (HFS2 Baltimore/Washington is the one true radio station)
* BreakClassic (BreakOut clone)
* Vector Pong
* AIM
* PhoneSaber ('cause I'm a nerd like that)
* freebird (lighter/candle/glowstick simulator)
* Stones (electronic Go board)
* Shazam music recognition
* QuickVoice recorder
* Shozu (multi-blog client - so/so)

I just got the entire shop manual for Mercedes W126 (including my 300SD) on CD-ROM for $20.
And it's almost completely HTML, Flash, and PDF, so it's accessible from Linux.

Let the fixing begin.

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating

I looked out the window just in time to see a rare wildlife competition.

Seagull vs. Crow.

(Waiting for laughter to die down...)

Both shameless scavengers, and fairly ballsy birds.

The crow is smarter and sneakier.
The seagull is more agile and, as we all know, annoyingly persistent to no end.

I see the crow picking up something from the ground, presumably food.
The seagull wheels in, lands, and walks toward the crow, who gives him a powerful evil eye.
The crow seems to have dropped the food between his feet and readied his bill for fighting.
The seagull lifts effortlessy into the air, and repeatedly wheels up and swings down, while the crow plays keep away, always moving the food behind his back.

Seagull finally wings away to the other side of the parking lot and Crow promptly hides his food in a secret stash.

Crow wins.

Dear Apple,

There's not much February left - where is the iPhone Dev Kit?

All year, I've been plotting a way to end up with an HDTV, DVR, home theater setup without breaking the bank.

maisimai and I have gone back and forth on which component was more important to do first, whether to roll our own DVR or buy a Tivo HD, what option cost least, etc.

When the SuperBowl TV sales rolled around, we found a surprise deal on an Olevia 26" HDTV that was perfect for us. That became the first component.
A surprise bonus of the Olevia was that it had an input for just about anything, including good ol' SVGA.

Suddenly, we didn't have to buy 2 add-in cards in order to repurpose maisimai's old desktop for DVR duty.

I knew about MythTV and Freevo, so I did a bit of hunting and decided to load KnoppMyth, since it sounded like the best prepackaged MythTV distribution. I also figured that it would run straight from CD/DVD like most Knoppix variants.

Well... not really.

To be fair, MythTV uses a *real* database backend, which is a little much to run off CD and RAM.
Okay, so you have to do a real install to make it go.

The distro installs easily and reboots with LILO (didn't we all switch to GRUB?).
At which point you have to either wait 2 minutes or push two buttons. Just to boot.
This should be a sign.

The system then fires up X-Windows and goes straight into the MythTV setup GUI.
So far so good - works with defaults, mostly.

I do have to do a few side-forays into a root shell, at which point I find out that vt switching is busted. You can flip to a text terminal, but you can't flip back.
A bunch of Googling shows that the system has installed using the generic VESA video driver instead of the specific Intel i8x0 graphics driver. Once this is fixed, vt flipping works again.

Our existing media library is on an external USB drive formatted with NTFS, which is now straightforward to mount and use under Linux (after many, many years). I add this to the fstab using the ntfs-3g filesystem driver and mount it up. I softlink the appropriate subdirectory into /mythv/music and hit "Scan for Music".

Nothing.

For kicks, I reboot, since HUP-ing X isn't causing a reload for some reason.

When I reboot, no music scan ... because the NTFS filesystem didn't mount.

WTF?!!!

It's in the fstab.

Things in the fstab get mounted. Period.

Otherwise your system doesn't work.

I figure this is because the USB storage drivers aren't loading.
Nope.

I look in the init scripts and there is no clue why the NTFS fs doesn't load.
It mounts by hand *using* the fstab. I temporarily give up.


Most of this distro is in fact alpha quality fit and finish and requires typical old school Linux hand configuration.

I'm perfectly able to do this - hell, I've even installed Slackware from floppies back in the day. I can make my own distribution, but I didn't WANT to.

Knoppix just works, and KnoppMyth is billed as doing the same.

Very disappointing that it doesn't.

I may well do a distribution switch to Mythbuntu, an Ubuntu variant.
Ubuntu is *very* well polished, and I would expect their MythTV distro to be the same.

Some coffees (and roasts) are clearly just not meant for espresso.
The Sumatran from last post is pleasant when coarse ground and put through the press pot.
Nice and smooth, with no hint of orangutang.

This also marks my first foray into french press coffee - we actually had the press pot for tea!

I had a little credit to burn over at A Southern Season, so I picked up some fresh organic, fair trade Sumatran beans to try. I've liked Sumatran coffee before - it's usually a smooth, silky coffee.

So I ground some up and sent it through the espresso machine...

Fantastic crema, just amazing. Gobs of thick, milk-chocolate-colored creaminess.

The shot has a rich earthy flavor, with strong tones of...

ORANGUTANG BUTT.


I think I blame their roast. I can taste some good stuff hiding behind the funk, but it's just awkward and disappointing.

I'm going to coarse grind some and run it through a press pot and see what I get.

With the right grind fineness (3 is the magic number) and fresh beans, I have a REAL espresso with nice dark caramel crema.

It rocked that I started my day with one better than the super-automatic Acorto at work.

Happiness is a warm cup.

(and perfectionism never rests ... oh, ristretto ... ristretto ...)

Perhaps it would help me to get a longer brew time with luscious crema if I was actually using a finer grind when I thought I was.

According to the concise manual, on a Gaggia MDF (adjustable to *thirty-freakin-nine* degrees of grind fineness!), '20' is NOT finer than '9' after all.

[smacks self in head with portafilter]

That would explain why my shots were coming out sour in 12 seconds instead of tasty at 27 seconds.

If it ain't workin', RE-READ the F'in Manual.

Prep and priming of the machine went smoothly and easily.
It's hard to believe this machine will be 10 years old in June!
Italians make espresso machines for the long haul.

Made 6 shots:

1. Immediately into the sink. Not enough coffee in the portafilter, weak tamp, visibly awful.


2. "Mr. T" shot. Black, strong, and punches you in the head. Tastes like the output of a moka pot hacked by mad scientist. No crema.


3. Inferior shot, but drinkable by bottom feeders. Weak and watery, no crema. Super short brew time.


4. Fumbled technique. Overpacked portafilter, then attempted to remove excess and re-tamp. Into the sink.


5. Shot comparable to middling moka pot. Still short brew time. No crema, still a little watery, but drinkable by the slightly desperate. Am questioning the age and grind fineness of my pre-ground espresso.


6. Used fresh ground beans and finer grind. Should have ground a spoonful more, but within reason. Shot is still short, but longest brew yet. Thin layer of light crema that dissipates. Slightly better than moka pot. There is hope.

Next time, even finer grind. Keep going until brew time gets into 25-35 second range (vs. 15 second range).
Calibrate tamp force using scale.
Shop for 58mm tamp rather than 57mm and real knock box with portafilter rest (vs. wooden spoon handle, tupperware, and trivet).

Woot!

I have an espresso machine!!!



A well-loved Gaggia Carezza that a Brit over at Sony Ericsson sold me.

Thanks for the GREAT B-day present maisimai !!!

Tales of my brewing adventures to come...

Oh, you are so cruel ... always fleeing me on eBay into the arms of another.

Someday I will make my fortune and seek your handle to be united for the rest of our lives.

As of this morning, I'm on 7 different medications concurrently, only one of which is over-the-counter...

AND I FEEL JUST FINE.

You're not supposed to take this many drugs without feeling overmedicated, right?

Oh, well - I guess half my warranty just expired this year.

I'm shocked - really.
kickaha, are you *sure* you answered all the questions?

And no, I don't have complete seasons of the Thundercats, but I *do* have a most of the X-Files...

... but the Chevy Cobalt is rated at 34 mpg highway, and I just got 41 mpg out of one all the way back from the beach. Going above the speed limit. Without drafting. That's *Mister* Heliumfoot to you. Ha!