Right Brain Feed

 I recently got an interesting book from the library called "How to Break Up with your Phone". I realized I've been too glued to my screens: both phone and iPad. The book recognizes that phone have wonderful capabilities, but not all phone usage is good (or healthy). I'm not planning on giving up Google Maps, or my recipe app, 2FA, or learning using YouTube. And I just love having an awesome little camera always in my pocket.  The book has a bunch of exercises to help me recognize what things on my phone aren't really helping me. Teasing apart the good from the not so good has been helpful. The book had me consciously stop after I use my phone and examine how I feel, for me I realized social media in the form of Facebook and Instagram are kinda downers. I don't really like all the 'like' homework, it feels bad when I don't like all my friends posts, 'Like' has almost become 'yeah, I saw this'. Birthdays definitely feel less special ...

 Occasionally I find my former security nerd tin foil hat wedged firmly on my head. Translation: I used to work in computer security, and I still worry about risk on my home network.  Embedded devices are everywhere…. Running your thermostat, printer, webcam, etc etc. Some of these embedded devices tend to have security issues in them. So depending on the device (do I trust the company that made it), what it’s doing in my house (can it remotely unlock my front door?), or what pieces of my online identity and access it has to (really, this thing thinks it needs FULL access to my Google account?), I assess the risk differently. For instance, I can’t imagine having a web connected front door lock. One such embedded device is my kiln controller. It’s made by a small manufacturer that probably doesn’t have security specific software engineers, and it controls a fire breathing 2300F dragon (my kiln). Yikes!  So I don’t have it hooked up to the web so I can monitor it while it’s...

 A bad batch of clay led several folks in my salt and soda firing class to have cracking issues with clay, called dunting. It can be painful to invest so much time into a piece, have so much hope for how it will look once fired, and then have your pot crack in the kiln. And I don’t mean a simple small crack, with dunting the pot literally tears itself apart over a period of a few weeks. The dunting god hit one of my pots,  it started slowly cracking as we unloaded it from the kiln. From a geek perspective, it was interesting to watch. My pot ended up in 16 pieces!  I decided to try a Japanese technique called kintsugi on the pieces. Kintsugi is the process of repairing a pot by highlighting the broken breaks with seams of gold. It is a way of preserving the memories of the pot, and in wabi sabi fashion, embracing its brokenness. I spent some time googling DIY kintsugi, and decided on using gold colored mica and E6000 glue. Real kintsugi costs tons of $$ and is a hard proc...

 I've been experimenting with a DIY hydroponics setup. I wanted to see if I could grow decent lettuce during the winter.  I figured out that there's a whole industry around selling components used in aerogardens. I was too cheap to fork out $$ for a real aerogarden, and I also wanted to use more environmentally friendly planting medium made from renewable coco coir rather than peat. I drilled holes in the lid of my food safe container, sterilized everything, and planted. The benefit of hydroponics is complete control over water, nutrients, and light. I pH balanced the water, added fertilizer (really similar to the fertilizer  I use in my fish tank), and set up a full spectrum grow light on a timer. I also had parts on hand from my aquarium to set up a bubbler in the hydroponics water, which ensure the roots get enuf O2.  Seems to work pretty well, once it got going.  Here are some pics from along the way. 

I'll own it, I really enjoy feeding the birds. We get tons of chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, and a few cardinals.  It's nice to watch them swarming the feeder on a cold morning.  The neighborhood squirrels have been hard at work trying to defeat the "squirrel proof" feeder.  I've been doing battle with them, and putting technology to good use. When a squirrel approaches the feeder, my outdoor wyzecam pops up a notification on my phone and pushes up a short video of his antics. Just like real war, it's a series of back and forth moves. He figured out the last setup, so now it's a higher pole.... and here's what happens when I slick it down with EVOO. I get a kick out of watching him. Squirrel wars can be entertaining. 

 I’ve been tinkering with Chlorophyll printing.  It’s fun, when it actually works. I start with a photo I took, and print it out in black and white on a clear sheet of acetate. I overlay that clear acetate on a leaf.  Only certain types of leaves work, this one happens to be a hasta leaf. I leave it outside on a sunny day, oriented directly facing the sun. As the sun beats down on the leaf, the places where the image shades the leaf stay green, and the places where there is no image force a change in the chlorophyll, resulting in an image on the leaf. It’s not transferring anything from the acetate to the leaf, the image is entirely a result of the chlorophyll in the leaf trying to cope with being in extended very direct sunlight for an extended time. How cool is that! Here are some more images. Lots of different tests, trials, and tribulations…. I’ll leave those perhaps for another post.

 Like most folks, I use google products, especially when they are free, generous with resources, and at least play well together.  Every software has to be maintained, and there are times when functionality is either orphaned/unmaintained/ignored, or the software maker announces it's end-of-life. Such is the case with the already poorly maintained google feedburner's email subscription capabilities. Sad to see it go, but I get it.  I've switched over to follow.it for this blog. I've moved existing email subscribers over, in theory it should be seamless. Follow.it looks pretty cool.

  I’ve decided I’m retiring from IBM. Yes, it was my choice to do it, no one shoved me out the door.  I put in my notice, I’m outta here! There. I said it out loud. Exciting, but also scary. Big Life Transition.  Time to reflect on it all…. And also look forward. My plans for retirement include travel, pottery, swimming at the lake, photography, hiking, cooking and grilling up a storm, and even dusting off my raspberry pi and my python skillz, and geeking around a bit.  31 years at IBM packs a lotta memories, from getting seasick when working on 3D stereoscopic Quake2 game support to at least one clear IBM Business Conduct Guideline violation! I cherish the excellent teams I’ve been lucky enough to work on, the intersection of great people and a fun project is a very sweet spot. Find it whenever you can. I loved working with so many different bleeding edge technologies as they evolved. Seriously, name one other company where I could have worked on all these things i...

 Recently one of our front burners on the stove refused to light. I could see a spark, could smell natural gas, but could not get the friggin thing to light. Bizarre.  I ended up using my phone camera (Pixel 4a has an awesome camera) along with my little LED work light panel to debug the problem. While the burner looked reasonably clean-ish, there’s a tiny tiny little pinhole in the burner that apparently controls the burner lighting. It looked like it was clean, until I was able to get the phone camera closeup.    I used the LED panel and was able to see light thru the pinhole as I carefully fished around with a toothpick, and eventually cleared it up. The design of the burner is such that it requires a ratchet of a small small size that I don’t have, and the pinhole is tucked away well hidden. Translation: it’s like they wanted to generate service calls by designing it that way. I’ve found that my phone camera becomes a useful tool when doing household projects fai...

 Laser cutter technology has really brought back old style Victorian wooden puzzles in a big way.  It has enabled exquisitely precise laser cut pieces that fit perfectly.  I’ve tried a few different brands, Liberty puzzles, Wongo, and Unidragon. None were cheap, they are pretty pricey.  Liberty has more traditional pictures that they use, we got ours as a gift years ago. My hazy memory of it was that the pieces were pretty cool, but that it also took us  a while to finish.  Recently I splurged and got a Unidragon puzzle. They are vivid colors, and not a square puzzle. Here’s how vivid they are: I got the medium size fish. It was really fun and didn’t take long. I think the funnest thing was flipping it over after I was done to see the cuts that made up the puzzle: I thought they did an excellent job of making the cuts appear like an ocean scene with waves. Also notice the smaller fish made up of multiple pieces in the middle. After I did the Unidragon fish,...

 I wasn't sure what to file this one under... Geek? Photography? GettingOldSucks? MentalHealthIsAThing? I recently decided to get back to the pool.... I really really desperately needed to be swimming. My body and brain were screaming at me to get back in the pool. Those screams eventually overpowered the "stay home stay safe" risk avoider in me.  I found a local indoor pool that's pretty quiet, not a lot of humanoids, and has decent fresh air flow. The swim below I shared large 6 lane pool with two other swimmers.  I dug back in, happiness ensued, until predictably my ole nemesis Swimmers Shoulder showed up. Drat! I did some reading and found that rotator cuff weakness and swim mechanics can play a part in Swimmers shoulder. I've been working on some exercises for strengthening, but wanted to see how I was actually swimming. I wired up my GoPro knockoff in its waterproof case, and snuck it into the pool to film.  Note: I also filmed underwater but it isn't i...

 We had a beautiful crisp day last week, clear, blue, and sunny. The blue ridge parkway is still open, so we headed out. We came across a rock face that normally seeps water all the time,  it was sporting 6 foot long icicles, and you could totally see the freeze-thaw cycle was eroding away the rock face. We also came across ground heaving due to ice, it was pretty wild looking. It looked like ice needles growing up out of the ground. A Texan like me was easily impressed.