Author: Zane Selvans

A former space explorer, now marooned on a beautiful, dying world.

Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • I feel so fat. #
  • Should have new phone by end of week. Hopefully at least the SIM card survived its trip through the washing machine. #
  • Not sure I really buy the remote sensing mineral spectra thing. #
  • Ha! The CU NORML forum made it into the NYTimes: http://is.gd/tx8i All those official publicity e-mails must have worked. #
  • In solidarity with Farrand Field. #
  • Vanguard manages about a trillion dollars. Annual compensation for each trustee: $152,500. #
  • No cavities (yay!), but man, that cleaning was carnage. Blood everywhere. #
  • Best fit great circles work! Now I need food. #
  • My god setting up a phone is annoying #
  • running a calculation out of spite? No no no, just in order to be able to say convincingly that it’s wrong. #
  • Grad school is making me feel nauseous. #
  • going to Montaña de Oro state park for the weekend. Back Monday. #
  • Okay, now we’re *really* leaving for MdO… #
  • The highway system only just barely seems to be working. Why are people so into them? #
  • Michelle forgot her sleeping pad. Bummer. #
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • Today I’m going to write in English, not Python. #
  • My review of Fred Pearce’s modern, globalized Cadillac Desert:,”When the rivers run dry” http://is.gd/seee #
  • Does writing about what code does count as English? It sure doesn’t read like it… time to go home and eat. #
  • trying to get rid of a headache… hydrate, vitamin-I, soothing ambient music… #
  • To anyone who’s edited the Wikipedia: please vote for Creative Commons BY-SA licensing! http://is.gd/shHq #
  • what’s the best way to generate an evenly spaced set of points covering the surface of a sphere? #
  • Why can’t I fall asleep? #
  • Sixteen tons and what do you get? #
  • replenishing my solvent of choice. #
  • coffee, snack, bicycle, and NSR fit curves. #
  • Owner of Glendale Galleria declares bankruptcy. So sad. What ever will Americans do without our iconic malls. #
  • mirror mirror on the wall, what’s the best Europan paleopole of them all… #
  • Hmm. I guess that kind of looks like a result. #
  • here we go again. #
  • I like talking to Aaron about SCIENCE. #
  • Arrr, the pirates be goin’ to jail. Who wants to bet P2P filesharing continues anyway? #
  • is so glad that CU is doing free PR for 4:20 via the campus e-mail list. If anyone didn’t know about it before, they sure do now! #
  • sore from turning the compost again. What a glorious heap. #
  • First night of using fan to cool down the house after sunset, and it’s going to be 10F hotter tomorrow. Ugh. #
  • Well, my cell phone is finally clean. If only it were also waterproof. #
  • Compost went from 76F to 130F overnight! #
  • I’m so glad I wasn’t born in Afghanistan. #
  • Incredibly, in less than 24 hours the compost has gone from 76F to 150F. Hopefully it won’t set anything on fire overnight… #
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • Sometimes fast and broken is better than slow and functional. Right? #
  • I really do not want to deal with my inbox right now. #
  • SatStress has been vectorized. What used to take overnight now takes 30 seconds. #
  • back to the eigencrap. #
  • looking more and more like Jean-Luc Picard every day. #
  • Having code that needs to run for a few hours does provide a good excuse for going home and eating. #
  • Actually going to make it to the ESE & Society talk this week. 9am is just too early most of the time. #
  • Pasadena Water and Power chose new natural gas fired plant over (transmission+renewables), so it can sell power to other cities at a profit. #
  • Our server, and much of bay area, cut off by 2 pieces of network sabotage in San Jose. Disgruntled union workers? http://is.gd/rF2d #
  • Or maybe just a a convenient distraction while a packet sniffing black box is installed on the temporarily dark fiber. #
  • Whew, interwebs again connected in our neck o the woods. #
  • is going home to look at the garden before it gets completely dark. #
  • candied kumquats. #
  • leftover kumquat syrup turned into kumquat jelly overnight… time for toast. #
  • why bother making a cartoon figure when creating a real model is the same amount of work? #
  • FoxNews: speaking crazy to power. #
  • checked my source code in for the weekend. #
  • I wish we could just hang out with the Theologians more often. #
  • 2 Brandywines, 1 Momotaro, and a Sweet 100., all before breakfast. Next: Jamaican hot cross buns for Ishtar. #
  • Underslept. Just want a naptime… #
  • Now it’s really nap time. Not sure if marmalade is going to gel. Feel free to return for full refund if not. #
  • The day is so beautiful, and I feel so lazy. Feel like I should be outside, but it’s all cars, concrete and asphalt. #
  • I think the days of flood irrigated agriculture are numbered. #
  • going to watch some more BBC science documentaries… #
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • Compost reactor core temperature has peaked. Now 325 K and falling. #
  • Wish I knew the young up-and-coming Richard Burke, Bill Moyers, Will Durant, Carl Sagan, and Joseph Campbell. #
  • hopefully I won’t have a headache in the morning, after 5 glasses of homebrew. I blame Susan. #
  • Compost reactor core temperature 325 K and holding. #
  • borderline catatonic. But at least I’m not at Disneyland. #
  • music of the spheres my ass. I hate spheres. #
  • The average distance to the nearest person having sex in Pasadena is roughly 200 meters: http://xkcd.com/563/ #
  • vectorizing myself to bed. #
  • Compost reactor core temperature 324 K and holding #
  • We’re as good at being capitalist as the USSR was at being communist. Who said we couldn’t both lose the Cold War? #
  • why does it feel so good to delete everything from my inbox? #
  • kebabs for dinner, and then some live music. #
  • Caltech campus, you’re so pretty. In a stage makeup and plastic surgery kind of way. #
  • Compost reactor core temperature 322 K and falling. Going to move the therm-o-meter to a new hotspot. It’s entertainment, not science. #
  • How is it exactly that the truth ends up setting you free again? #
  • Ordered some purslane seeds on Pliny the Elder’s recommendation (despite its supposed antaphrodisiac properties) http://is.gd/qoOy #
  • I must have learned something. Code is half as long, 10,000 times as fast. Who doesn’t love vectors? #
  • wondering who turned down the volume on the internet. #
  • Just watched a black guy doing taiko drumming for a bharatanatyam dance performance in California. Small world we have here. #
  • has a short week to recuperate from guests. #
  • bummed that Mike the tomato guy didn’t make it to the farmer’s market today for some reason. WTF? #
  • still dealing with the Newtonian hangover. #
  • planted cucumbers and Chinese long beans today. #
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • Compost reactor core temperature holding steady at 294 K. #
  • I wanna make some kumquat marmalade. #
  • Tyler Durden where are you? Your country needs you now! #
  • Hmm, is it just me, or is everydns.net hosed? #
  • is re-re-writing, paper and code, hammer and tongs. #
  • Compost reactor core T=302 K and rising. #
  • holy crap, it sounds like the EPA grew a pair… #
  • falling asleep, despite the coffee. #
  • Compost reactor core temperature: 309 K and rising! #
  • Compost reactor core temperature 313 K and rising… #
  • If only there were also a clause that said “nor shall public property be taken for private use, without just compensation.” #
  • Compost reactor core temperature 315 K and rising. #
  • Best fitting great circles requires that I get a better handle on this eigen-crap. #
  • $stuff != $information http://is.gd/p1VL #
  • Compost reactor core temperature 318 K and rising. #
  • estoy tomar 15 kg de naranjas agrias para hacer un olla grande de esto: http://is.gd/p7UE #
  • boiling marmalade. No happy endings forseen to the economy. #
  • Hopefully the marmalade wil gel by morning… but for now I gotta go to sleep! #
  • Compost reactor core temperature 321 K and rising. #
  • 10 liters of un-jelled marmalade. Will code for pectin. #
  • The first rule of Fight Club is: maltodextrin works just as well as pectin. #
  • Compost reactor core temp 326 K and rising. #
  • Disarmed the Jehovah’s Witnesses, by vigorously agreeing with them. Yes, I’m going to hell. Yes, I’m okay with that. Now please leave. #
  • Planting tomatoes, making bread, sharing beer with the Stempels. #
  • Setting up to watch a movie about Gypsies #
  • going to dream about how the Chinese cyberspooks are watching me through my computer. In my sleep. Hopefully they don’t speak English. #
  • getting up too early. Going to Getty Villa to see our namesake diety (and other things), then a beach picnic! #
  • Well, we’ve successfully taken the neighborhood down a notch. Now our neighbors are parking on their lawn too. #
  • Compost reactor core temp 328 K and rising. #
  • glad Getty spent some of his ill gotten oil riches on a cool Roman villa in SoCal. #
Categories
journal

Two by Four Brew Bread

This recipe is a variation on the no-knead bread made famous a couple of years ago by the New York Times.

Brewing beer at home means ending up with a gigantic pile of spent mash – malted barley and other grains that have been sprouted, roasted, and then soaked to release their carbohydrates as simple sugars for the yeast to consume.  The remains are rich in fiber and protien, and also still have residual starches.  They make wonderful compost, but it seems a waste to just toss out all that nutritious food!

So instead, I’ve been trying to figure out the right way to reliably incorporate it into bread, and I think I’ve finally found an insanely simple recipe that works:

  1. 2 cups bread flour
  2. 2 cups whole wheat flour
  3. 2 cups spent mash grains
  4. 2 cups warm water
  5. a pinch of salt
  6. a quarter teaspoon of dry yeast.

Add all the dry ingredients together (the mash grains will be wet, but that’s okay – add them in too).  Then add the water, and mix until it’s a big sticky ball.  Let sit covered overnight, and plop out onto a floured surface for a second rise.  Make sure the whole surface of the dough ball gets floured.  Let it rise for an hour or so, covered.

Meanwhile, preheat your dutch oven (or other massive, heat retaining baking vessel with a lid) to 350F in the oven for at least half an hour.  Drop the now risen dough blob in and shake it around a little to get it to settle.  Bake covered for 45 minutes.  Remove lid, and bake for another 45 minutes.  Remove from the oven, allow to cool, and enjoy!

Still takes a long long time to go through an entire batch of spent grains.  Best to separate them into several 4 cup yogurt containers and freeze them for later use.

Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • incredibly, there doesn’t seem to be anything left to want. #
  • coffee++ #
  • had an unreproductive day. So far anyway… #
  • Can bacon fat really make everything taste this good? #
  • I’m wearing green. Trust me. #
  • music makes working easier. #
  • fiddling while Rome burns. But really, aren’t we all? #
  • is it wrong to be mad that neither I nor anyone else suggested a better way to do this sooner? #
  • having communication issues, with myself. #
  • As systems, biospheres don’t consume energy, they consume order. We are all eddies in the entropic flow: http://is.gd/nZpr #
  • eating peas and greens and habaneros from the garden, stir-fried in bacon fat with onions, bell peppers, garlic, and ginger. #
  • I should buy some milk and bake a cobbler. #
  • equinox. Here that means the sun is starting to get angry. #
  • happy to have gotten some constructive criticism from peers on the NSR/TPW paper. #
  • I wish Michelle and I could have watched the Power of Myth with my mom. #
  • going for a bike ride. #
  • just finished a three hour discussion about having kids. #
  • is not in Houston. Thank God. Steamy post-apocalyptic petrochemical automotive flatland, periodically visited by the planetarians. #
  • both disturbed and pleased that the best financial journalism available today is from This American Life, The Daily Show, and blogs. #
  • We turned the compost! It’s like magic. Kitchen scraps, leaves and urine goes in, beautiful black dirt comes out. #
  • Just watched Milk. Sad. Encouraging. Interestingly, all the promiscuous sex with strangers, much weirder than that it was gay. #
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • City of Pasadena bicycle survey is up (English and Español) and ready for your input. It’s very short, 5 minutes max: http://is.gd/mAB2 #
  • is smoothing with weighty functions. #
  • “Almost everything in this room is in a landfill and just doesn’t know it yet” @AlexSteffen #
  • just sent in payment for a year’s worth of rack space @cernio. Hopefully the last time I ever have to think about hardware. #
  • After two (dollar weighted) years of investing my portfolio is worth exactly 1/3 less than I invested. Not so bad, given the circumstances. #
  • secure in the knowledge that I have cumulatively spent years enjoying voluntary homelessness. #
  • The holes in my woolens are a feature (and a bug): http://is.gd/mObh #
  • I’ll miss all the great little ethnic grocery stores someday. #
  • mysterious and horrible computer hangs… thankfully on somebody else’s machine. #
  • scheming as to what citrus I will juice next… #
  • eating homemade tabbouleh and hummus, with bulgarian feta and kalamata olives in a whole wheat pita. #
  • heading to Lucky Baldwin’s to talk about Mars. Or something. #
  • To the phone company: keep your ad filled slab of cellulose to yourself! #
  • Making toast and coffee #
  • prisoner, monk and soldier. maiden, mother and crone. #
  • annoyed that the Pasadena district 7 runoff is between two pro-traffic candidates. Businessman v. police chief? I probably won’t vote. #
  • home alone, what to do for the evening? #
  • is going to start assuming NREL is not interested as of tonight. #
  • incredibly, we only used 5.34 kWh/day on average over the last two months. Down 50% from last year. But what did we do differently? #
  • I think I finally understand why James Honaker and Eric Dickson changed their majors from physics to political science: http://is.gd/niFC #
  • packing up for a weekend citrus raid. Consensual, of course. #
  • Got backed into by a careless driver. Lost it. Smashed his spoiler with my fist. #
  • definitely not getting scurvy this week. #
  • definitely not getting scurvy this week, despite my mutation. #
  • misses sleeping with someone who gets up and makes coffee when I feel like a log in the morning… #
  • Heading over to michelle’s place for grapefruit #
  • anybody else in Pasadena have citrus they aren’t using? I’ll split the juice with you 50/50 if you let me pick and sqeeze… #
Categories
tweets

This week in tweets

  • befuddled by this gray sky. #
  • Adam Schiff is at risk of supporting HR801, a bad law prohibiting open access requirements for publicly funded research http://is.gd/lunv #
  • decided not to virtualize the ideotrope hardware yet. Planning migration to WordPress MU + BuddyPress, hosted Gmail… and NextGen Gallery? #
  • attempting to make a tasty breakfast mush out of spent brewing grains. #
  • I just voted! And then accidentally disenfranchised Michelle by signing the wrong absentee ballot envelope. #
  • it’s so sad that the coffee doesn’t work on me any more. Maybe I should have given it up for Lent (to enable an Easter espresso binge!) #
  • Hmm, what rhymes with ‘theses’… Coincidence? #
  • is singing bye, bye breeden. #
  • Morning. Always with the morning. #
  • Hoping someday to become an ex-PhD. #
  • reducing the frequencies of all kinds of digital notifications (FB, Twitter, e-mail, etc) #
  • Happiness may not be a warm gun, but I don’t know if it’s a PhD either. #
  • I love translucent young peas climbing into the morning sun after a rain. #
  • It would be so nice if hReview and the other @microformats were just baked right into @wordpress *sigh* #
  • Finished The World Without Us, now onto Robert Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation. #
  • I love how all the stories about financial prognostication take the form of “So-and-so *sees* such-and-such”, like they have a crystal ball. #
  • nice, retaliatory, forgiving, and clear. #
  • stupid off-by-one errors. #
  • I wish CA would abolish marriage as a legal institution altogether and just let everyone sign whatever contracts they feel appropriate. #
  • streaming NASA TV of the Kepler Launch onto the big screen at home. #
  • Riding to downtown LA for the bicycle summit! #
  • LA Bike Summit was probably a success, given that I now have twinges of guilt over my plans to abandon SoCal as soon as humanly possible. #
  • climbing into bed with a cuddly redhead… #
  • Time for shower and a shave… that time change really screws with the concept of “morning”. #
  • Mmm. Homemade bread for breakfast… at 12:39pm (but it’s really 11:39pm, so it’s okay!) #
  • nervously awaiting the resurrection of my server @cernio #
  • Is thankful that the server move went well. #
  • Ahh, beer and taxes. #
  • does not have any Ottoman Empire Settlement Payments to report on my tax return, but thanks for asking anyway California. #
  • poverty based tax evasion was fairly successful. Made $20k, paid $1100 (fed) + $500 (state), for an 8% personal income tax rate overall. #
Categories
journal

Letter to Adam Schiff on Open Access Publishing

Dear Congressman Schiff,

I note that you are on the House Judiciary Committee, which is currently considering H.R. 801, sponsored by John Conyers (D, MI), and entitled the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act.  I also notice, courtesy of MAPLight.org, that you received $6,000 from the publishing industry in the most recent election cycle, which is actually more than the average received by those representatives who co-sponsored the bill.

Continue reading “Letter to Adam Schiff on Open Access Publishing”