...Weeeeeell, at least the gas company only tore open a wall that involved moving half the furniture in the studio, and not, say, destroying my bedroom so I'd have to move out of my flat. That's something, right? Right?
...Sigh.
...Sigh.
A question just now in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
little_details touched upon something I remembered learning from the New Things Project, go me for the Amazing Data-Retention Capabilities. Which made me realize, when I went to double-check the specifics, that the year when I managed to learn a new thing every. damn. day. predated my adoption of the tags system. So now the New Things Project, AKA "all of bloody 2007", is all properly labeled for posterity's convenience, hurray. One Of These Years I my even get around to reading over and tagging the rest of the unclassified years of this nearly-8-year-old blog thing, man...
little_details touched upon something I remembered learning from the New Things Project, go me for the Amazing Data-Retention Capabilities. Which made me realize, when I went to double-check the specifics, that the year when I managed to learn a new thing every. damn. day. predated my adoption of the tags system. So now the New Things Project, AKA "all of bloody 2007", is all properly labeled for posterity's convenience, hurray. One Of These Years I my even get around to reading over and tagging the rest of the unclassified years of this nearly-8-year-old blog thing, man...- New Thing Learned for 25 December: Some oysters practice a form of internal fertilization that can leave the unwary oyster-eater with a mouthful of gritty little baby oyster shells, and I'm going to stop here because I already lost myself at "oysters" in the first place. [Source: A geography of oysters : the connoisseur's guide to oyster eating in North America, Rowan Jacobsen]
- New Thing Learned for 26 December: There are 18 football fields to a mile. Not that I can readily picture a mile in my head off-hand either, but you never know when you might need these conversion tables. [Source: "Who Wants to be a Millionaire".]
- New Thing Learned for 27 December: Chicago's Pakistani community is the second-largest in the country, behind only New York. [Source: local news coverage of Bhutto assassination.]
- New Thing Learned for 28 December: Elizabethan parents changed diapers when they damn well felt like it. Which I suppose is only fair considering the general attitudes of the period towards hygiene, but damn. [Source: Wikipedia.]
- New Thing Learned for 29 December: The deer in the North Park preserve now also have a Kinko's down the street to go to, although it's not 24-hours. Looks nice, though, and since it's next to the grocery store... [Source: "coming soon" finally came.]
- New Thing Learned for 30 December: There's a sound effect in The Age Of Steel that sounds exactly like our front doorbell. And yes, this does tend to disrupt one's suspension of disbelief. [Source: twigged during repeat viewing that it was actually on the soundtrack and not in the front hall.]
- New Thing Learned for 31 December: "Hey, y'know, iCal is one of the things Emil syncs with, so if I tell him where I'm supposed to be going tonight, and then remember to take the iPod with me..." [Source: eventual adoption of available technology.]
So that's that, then, with 23 hours to spare, and I can go back to accumulating Facts on a much more leisurely schedule. Debating now whether this experience and its results would be worth trying to write up as a nonfiction book proposal, maybe with additional "behind the scenes of why I learned this then" material to make it fresh for a dead-tree audience...
{looks at list} Oh, dear, well, I suppose I've let this go long enough...
One more week of this to go, thank GOD... I do have a note for 13 December, but unfortunately I can't make sense of the first word -- if I can figure out what "pojssternd 1973" might have pertained to before New Year's, I'll come back and fill that in, so keep your fingers crossed, it's on the tip of my brain, I swear. [EDIT, THE NEXT DAY -- Oo, and I remembered it!]
- New Thing Learned for 1 December: There is a savoury form of Pocky called "Pretz"; the so-called 'tomato' flavor contains chicken, for some reason. [Source:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
atlanticat's habit of reading ingredient lists.] - New Thing Learned for 2 December: The Green Line inbound from Oak Park actually achieves speeds loud enough to drown out an iPod turned halfway up, unlike the Red or Brown lines... [Source: experimentation.]
- New Thing Learned for 3 December: Corbin Bernsen has a collection of over 6,000 snowglobes. Hey, everybody's gotta have a hobby, man. [Source: One red paperclip : or how an ordinary man achieved his dreams with the help of a simple office supply, Kyle MacDonald.]
- New Thing Learned for 4 December: Speaking of our "rapid transit" (ahem) system, once the Blue Line repair work has finally replaced all the old ties with composite materials, the O'Hare leg should see speeds of up to 65 MPH. Which I will believe when I see it and not a moment sooner. [Source: local news.]
- New Thing Learned for 5 December: It is not yet possible to breed eels in captivity, which means that that unagi you're eating was wild-caught. Assuming you like that sort of thing in the first place. [Source: The year of eating dangerously : a global adventure in search of culinary extremes, Tom Parker Bowles.]
- New Thing Learned for 6 December: Early hot dog filling machines ran so fast that all the proteins aligned within the casing, causing the dogs to split when cooked. Machinery was quickly developed that massaged the passing links to make the proteins blob up more randomly. [Source: Chicago Reader book review.]
- New Thing Learned for 7 December: Latex balloons get their 'ring' by being partly rolled down off the dipping mold like stockings by a finger-like device that's really hard to describe. Trust me, it was funnier when I Learned it. [Source: our old pal How It's Made again.]
- New Thing Learned for 8 December: DNA evidence now suggests that some Neanderthals may have had red hair. Um, whatever. [Source: Wikipedia.]
- New Thing Learned for 9 December: The technical term for a female voice with masculine characteristics is 'androglossia'. Yeah, like we're going to be using that one very much. [Source: Nisus Writer's deranged thesaurus.]
- New Thing Learned for 10 December: The mumbly bit at the end of the Pet Shop Boys' "It's A Sin" is the Mea Culpa. Who says you can't learn anything from your iTunes widgets? [Source: Sing That iTune! 3.0.3 lyrics retrieval.]
- New Thing Learned for 11 December: Emetology is the study of vomiting. I bet y'all are going to be so glad when I wrap up this project, huh... [Source: Wikipedia.]
- New Thing Learned for 12 December: It's lemon or milk in tea, because otherwise the citric acid makes the milk curdle instantly. Being a heathen who refuses to drink tea in the first place, I had to go look this up to be sure I was getting the details right. [Source: writing research.]
- New Thing Learned for 13 December: The phrase "blow this popstand" appears suddenly in multiple citations circa 1973. Nobody's quite sure what the original source was, although some ephemeral media outlet such as radio is a leading suspect. [Source: KPBS radio.]
- New Thing Learned for 14 December: Scientists have cloned cats with an inserted gene that makes their flesh glow under ultraviolet light. Nobody Knows Why. [Source: CNN.]
- New Thing Learned for 15 December: Matthew Broderick was the producers' original choice to play Alex Keaton on Family Ties. Um, yeah, I can maybe just barely see that... [Source: Biography, "Michael J Fox".]
- New Thing Learned for 16 December: Bertrand Russell was also a little freaked out on a daily level by the idea of the heat death of the universe. I think I feel a little better now. [Source: The new time travelers : a journey to the frontiers of physics, David M Toomey.]
- New Thing Learned for 17 December: The first primitive baby monitor was invented in the wake of the Lindbergh kidnapping. [Source: Antiques Roadshow.]
- New Thing Learned for 18 December: A rare birth defect can cause babies to be born without internal or external ear structures altogether. [Source: CNN?]
- New Thing Learned for 19 December: It is still legal to raise chickens in the city of Chicago, although legislation to ban this is being considered again. Not that the thought has ever occured to me, of course... [Source: Associated Press.]
- New Thing Learned for 20 December: A mechanism called "epigenetics" is being considered as a possible cause for certain developmental effects that classical genetic theory can't account for. Sounded kind of Lamarckian to me, but who the hell really knows anymore... [Source: Nova.]
- New Thing Learned for 21 December: Netflix discs can manage a two-day turnaround just being left in our building's outgoing-mail holder, which is actually kind of nice to know since it means not having to remember where not to drop them off because it took a week that one time. [Source: experimentation.]
- New Thing Learned for 22 December: "Garnet" and "Pomegranate" both derive from the same root, meaning, obviously, deep red. [Source: something on the telly the other day, which I forgot to write down, dammit.]
- New Thing Learned for 23 December: The smoke-and-carbon-monoxide-detector that came with the house runs on the main electricity, and started cheeping for a new backup battery when the wind knocked out the power for a few minutes the other night. Must look into getting a backup power source for the sump pump, now I think about it... [Source: power failure.]
- New Thing Learned for 24 December: Channel 7's street-level news studio has bulletproof glass, as a minivan driver discovered the hard way the other night... [Source: local news {snerk}.]
One more week of this to go, thank GOD... I do have a note for 13 December, but unfortunately I can't make sense of the first word -- if I can figure out what "pojssternd 1973" might have pertained to before New Year's, I'll come back and fill that in, so keep your fingers crossed, it's on the tip of my brain, I swear. [EDIT, THE NEXT DAY -- Oo, and I remembered it!]
Really fell down on the job of Consuming Media in November, with only 6 books and 3 films added to the ongoing tally. I blame a combination of a foul frame of mind and having started several large books that turned out not to be worth finishing halfway through. (And yes, I do realize that that's still more reading than most Americans apparently do in an entire year. Still no excuse.)
All of which is to say that I probably deserved this result:
( Nerd, Geek, or Dork? You Decide! )
But hey, at least I'm not the guys who wrote up that page on exorcism...
- New Thing Learned for 29 November: High-bush blueberries, which produce most of the commercial crop in the US, are indeed high, up to 12 feet tall. Not exactly what one would picture if one's more familiar with wild blueberries, which are small shrubs. [Source: Good Eats.]
- New Thing Learned for 30 November: Researchers have now confirmed that there are lightning strikes on Venus. Kind of an academic point of interest, really, but I guess it keeps those rowdy researchers off the streets. [Source: Yahoo! News.]
All of which is to say that I probably deserved this result:
( Nerd, Geek, or Dork? You Decide! )
But hey, at least I'm not the guys who wrote up that page on exorcism...
- New Thing Learned for 28 November: In another installment of 'the Wild and Wonderful Wacky World of Wikipedians', there's a listing for record labels starting with a non-letter. ('Random Page' clicking again? What, I just realized it was ten to twelve and I hadn't been doing anything Educational all day...) [Source: Wikipedia.]
Still grappling with the soul-crushing awareness that nobody in this life is truly happy and the sun's just going to burn out in six billion years anyway, or "November" as we like to call it around these parts. Don't suppose anybody would be up for taking me out to lunch sometime for a live reading of this emo-girl opus...?
...Crap. Well, here's yesterday's New Thing, anyhow:
...Crap. Well, here's yesterday's New Thing, anyhow:
- New Thing Learned for 27 November: A single company in Chicago produces 40% of the country's supply of gyros meat. Sadly, the program didn't go into detail on how these vast herds of gyros are raised and humanely slaughtered. [Source: "Culinary Chicago", WTTW.]
The Strange Interlude appears to have drawn to a close. I'm guessing that it was largely brought on by the professional disappointment of having a knitting pattern I had high hopes for rejected by Knitty.com, and my overall crappy state of mind in general. {*grumblegrumble*ifanybodyneedstogetlaidaroundhere*grumble*} Still very weirded out by the experience. (It's not unlike being possessed, and Captain Jack Harkness isn't exactly the most considerate houseguest I've ever had to put up with. Talk about your free-floating memes...) On some level I'm sure it's a reaction to the general impossibility of doing original work in a climate that's reduced everything to endlessly recycled Product (don't even get me started on the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie) and the lack of a cultural headspace for not wanting to find a Mercedes under the tree, and then again, it could just be that it's November, when the rising curve of "GOD I NEED TO GET OUT OF THIS HOUSE AND INTERACT WITH PEOPLE" intersects with the falling curve of the possibility of actually accomplishing same in this region at this time of the year. Not sure whether Thanksgiving having been a non-starter is really a factor, considering that going to see my relatives generally makes me end up feeling worse, but at least it would have been something Social to complain about... Bah.
Okay, then, back to regular programming:
Oh, and did I mention this?
( mm, blue-haired old lady... )
Fading dreadfully already, alas, but hey, it's Hat Weather. And yes, I've already startled myself pulling off a blue hat in front of a mirror, thank you.
Okay, then, back to regular programming:
- New Thing Learned for 26 November: LSD can be lethal to elephants in large enough doses. I guess experimenting further on Cary Grant would have been cruel and unusual. [Source: NewScientist.com news service.]
Oh, and did I mention this?
( mm, blue-haired old lady... )
Fading dreadfully already, alas, but hey, it's Hat Weather. And yes, I've already startled myself pulling off a blue hat in front of a mirror, thank you.
Still having a Strange Interlude. Have some New Things while I chase this stupid Muse around with a chainsaw:
- New Thing Learned for 22 November: Iceworms eat the algae and bacteria living in the ice with them. Just in case you were wondering, which I was right before they said it. [Source: documentary on Denali?]
- New Thing Learned for 23 November: Someone actually thought it was a good idea to make a movie about a vampire motorcycle. Let's not all go rushing to add it to our NetFlix queues at once... [Source: Wikipedia.]
- New Thing Learned for 24 November: Humans grow three distinct sets of kidneys in succession during fetal development. I always knew "Intelligent" Design was a crock... [Source: Body : the complete human : how it grows. how it works, and how to keep it healthy and strong.]
- New Thing Learned for 25 November: Nisus Writer Express lists "captain hicks" as a possible thesaurus replacement for "six". I'm guessing it's cockney rhyming slang, but it still seems unnecessarily obscure. [Source: this program has an odd turn of mind in general.]
- New Thing Learned for 21 November: 1/4 tsp nutmeg next time, and don't be too lazy to pull out the food processor for the cranberries and orange rind. [Source: poundcake 2.0 arrived at the WCKG party too late last night to make much of an entrance, but it's so good for breakfast...]
BTW,( hand turkeys! )
(Also now leftovers, see "late arrival of", above, but more for us.)
- New Thing Learned for 20 November: The Pit of Despair was Harlow's name for for his monkey isolation box, which generally drove the monkeys psychotic. Kind of takes the fun out of a certain quote, don't it. [Source: Wikipedia]
- New Thing Learned for 19 November: Overhead lighting and prolonged exposure to aluminum foil is a really bad combination for me, as in "did I just burn a hole in my retina, or has everything gone all blinky all of a sudden?". [Source: not, as it happens, making a tinfoil hat, although at this point I'm starting to feel like I seriously need one.]
After an extended funk culminating in a spectacularly wasted weekend, here are some New Things I've Learned, as the year-long project enters the home stretch. (Next year's story arc is pencilled in as "whining about Politics", which I know is a repeat but it does keep coming around again.) So:
( err, this one's gone a bit long )
In conclusion, David Tennant is a bigger screaming fangirl than all the rest of us put together. Nuff said.
( err, this one's gone a bit long )
In conclusion, David Tennant is a bigger screaming fangirl than all the rest of us put together. Nuff said.
I must be getting old, I just wasn't feeling the whole halloween thing this year. (I suppose it doesn't really help that it's a reminder that the Manuscript is another year unsold and I can't even seem to keep beta-readers engaged with it... {grumble}) I managed to sacrifice the ritual vegetable during an early burst of enthusiasm, but by the time Holy Week actually rolled around I was in full-on "it's too cold out and everyone hates me anyway" mode, and I spent last night in front of my own tv rather pointedly Not Doing The WCKG Newsletter until I realized that it was 3am and I'd just sat all the way through Howard the Duck. Gonna be a bad Xmas Season if I can't drag myself out of this funk... Anyway, here's some New Things I've Learned:
- New Thing Learned for 25 October: My bedroom is cold enough to suck the charge out of poor Emil's battery. Fortunately I discovered this in plenty of time to defrost him for use on the L the next afternoon. [Source: Apple.com troubleshooting docs.]
- New Thing Learned for 26 October: There's a truck stop on I-80 in Iowa that's 2 1/2 times the size of Disneyland. (It has its own dentist on-staff.) [Source: Modern Marvels, "truck stops".]
- New Thing Learned for 27 October: Large mausoleum complexes are designed with systems of concealed vents to remove, erm, "gases", since just bricking the coffins up in the walls would eventually blow off the fancy engraved fronts. The guide didn't exactly diagram out where these "gases" were vented to, but I do note that the place was a little... funky. [Source: Rosehill cemetery mausoleum tour.]
- New Thing Learned for 28 October: In an area of China that's lost its bees to pesticide use, humans now hand-pollinate the pear crop. Which kind of only works if you've got as much surplus labor as a place like China, so we've got to get cracking on the Colony Collapse Disorder thing. [Source: Nature, "the silence of the bees".]
- New Thing Learned for 29 October: When casting machine parts out of magnesium alloys, the pour-hole in the mold has to be sealed up with sand to keep the metal from reacting with oxygen as it cools. [Source: "how it's made".]
- New Thing Learned for 30 October: The Centralia mine fire was started when somebody unloaded hot stove-ashes into the mining pit that the town had been using for a dump. Just in case you thought that stupidity around hot objects was a modern invention. [Source: The day the earth caved in : an American mining tragedy, Joan Quigley.]
- New Thing Learned for 31 October: American Sign Language was developed from the natural signing of a French group, and is thus mutually incomprehensible with the independently derived British Sign Language. This is not the time or place to get into the "separated by a common language" joke again...[Source: Talking hands : what sign language reveals about the mind, Margalit Fox.]
- New Thing Learned for 1 November: Don't pour liquid nitrogen down the drain: as it expands into a gas, it'll blow out a pipe somewhere along the line. [Source: Dinner:Impossible, "Magicians Meal".]
- New Thing Learned for 22 October: There is an annual conference for would-be developers of robotic bartenders. And y'all say I watch too much SF on the telly. [Source: What's science ever done for us? : what The Simpsons can teach us about physics, robots, life and the universe, Paul Halpern.]
- New Thing Learned for 23 October: Feta cheese, while it doesn't exactly melt as such, is still suitable as a supplemental pizza topping, and more experimentation is indicated. [Source: improvising to make up for a cheese-challenged storebought frozen pizza.]
- New Thing Learned for 24 October: To remove a broken-off lightbulb, cut a potato in half and spear it onto the stump as a makeshift handle (after one had switched off the power, of course). [Source: DIY Network bumper.]
Apologies to all I left hanging at the last post there, but I had a sudden attack of Housecleaning and decided I had better take advantage of it before Social Services came to take Gaius away. Since that last post I have cleaned the bathroom including much scrubbing plus unblocking the drains, finished putting all my clothes away in bins in my new closet setup, ruthlessly tidied the remains of the garden, aired and installed the Fluffy Comforter on my bed, built a yarn-drying rack out of PVC pipe, prepared Evil Jello for a party and built a halloween costume from scratch out of stuff I found while I was doing the closet, done some more photography for the etsy shop which I have yet to label and post, wrangled all the library materials in the house and yes that counts as heavy housekeeping, installed a new toilet seat, put away the dishes, and, um, filled a saltshaker. So there. Before we get into Things Learned and the explanation for the video, have some of the Evil Jello:
( This jello is evil! EEEEVIIILL! )
I told you I wasn't to be trusted with that mold.
All right, for everyone who hasn't been scared off by that sight, the answer to our "What's Wrong With This Video?" quiz from Saturday-before-last is that was, in fact, the theme version from all the way back to Doctor #2 that someone had plugged in on top of the modern visuals to see how well it would fit. YouTube being the cornucopia of anoraks that it is, in fact, from the above link the curious can follow the entire development of the opening sequence, but I'll leave you to your own devices on that one rather than overload the rest of everybody who wasn't following the original discussion with a dozen embedded video posts (and because posting the post-1980 versions would be just plain mean). Just to prove that I could, though, my crash-course Top Ten list for the latecomers amongst us to start catching up with the 44 years of backstory might look something like this:
(If you're still game by that point, the next step could be the multiple-Doctors episodes, starting with "the Two Doctors" which I nearly recommended as the better example from Six but decided Two's presence in it kind of disqualified it as a special case.)
And lastly, I did Learn some New Things as well:
( This jello is evil! EEEEVIIILL! )
I told you I wasn't to be trusted with that mold.
All right, for everyone who hasn't been scared off by that sight, the answer to our "What's Wrong With This Video?" quiz from Saturday-before-last is that was, in fact, the theme version from all the way back to Doctor #2 that someone had plugged in on top of the modern visuals to see how well it would fit. YouTube being the cornucopia of anoraks that it is, in fact, from the above link the curious can follow the entire development of the opening sequence, but I'll leave you to your own devices on that one rather than overload the rest of everybody who wasn't following the original discussion with a dozen embedded video posts (and because posting the post-1980 versions would be just plain mean). Just to prove that I could, though, my crash-course Top Ten list for the latecomers amongst us to start catching up with the 44 years of backstory might look something like this:
- Doctor #1, William Hartnell: It's sort of Required that one watch the very first episode, "An Unearthly Child", but as for actual entertainment value I'd then skip ahead to storyline number two, which is the very first appearance of "The Daleks", and holds up surprisingly well for any television circa 1963 much less the SF of the period.
- Doctor #2, Patrick Troughton: Due to the BBC's housekeeping policies of the period, only 6 out of Two's 21 storylines still exist in their entirety, and I've only seen one of those (hey, I wasn't born yet then and I'm just now catching up on dvds); still, "The Mind Robber" is entertainingly odd and surprisingly postmodern.
- Doctor #3, Jon Pertwee: This is about where I came in, and one that still sticks in my mind from this Doctor's tenure is "Inferno" -- Evil!eyepatch!Brigadier, anyone?
- Doctor #4, Tom Baker: The One With The Scarf, of course; "Genesis of the Daleks" (them again?) is probably the one to see from this period, since it works with long-running themes relating to both sides of the conflict and Nazi allegories are always fun to dissect.
- Doctor #5, Peter Davison: Got to pick "Earthshock" to represent Five, because we have to have Cybermen in this list somewhere!
- Doctor #6, Colin Baker No Relation: Um, well, "Mark of the Rani" doesn't have that much Peri in it, even if it isn't the Master's finest outing, and anyway you might eventually need to know these things.
- Doctor #7, Sylvester McCoy: "Battlefield" narrowly comes out on top as the high point of Seven's time on the job, mainly because we've got enough Daleks on this list already and not nearly enough Brigadier.
- Doctor #8, Paul McGann: Okay, so he's definitively canon, go ahead and watch the tv-movie if you really care, at least it's got more of the Master in it, anyway...
- Doctor #9, Christopher Eccleston: Who, when you look at it, actually got about as much in the way of storylines as Six or Seven, which is something at least (remember they padded them dreadfully back in the day); in the context of this list, "Dalek" is the one to go with for the overall picture, especially after "Genesis of the Daleks" above.
- Doctor #10, David Tennant: It's hard to judge the incumbent, but, again in the context of this list, "Human Nature" is the most spot-on hour of it for tying into and adding to the ongoing mythos, and it's got killer scarecrows!
(If you're still game by that point, the next step could be the multiple-Doctors episodes, starting with "the Two Doctors" which I nearly recommended as the better example from Six but decided Two's presence in it kind of disqualified it as a special case.)
And lastly, I did Learn some New Things as well:
- New Thing Learned for 10 October: Speaking of anoraks, Torchwood episodes are available through ComCast OnDemand starting the Mondays after they first air, which is good because all the timeslots seem to be bad for me, and my god I'm turning into one of those people aren't I. Not that I even particularly like the show in the first place, but one does feel a certain obligation to keep up with these things. [Source: finally thought to check after missing it once too often.]
- New Thing Learned for 11 October: Leather is stretched out by means of small clamps with pegs on them that fit into holes in a big mesh frame, in a process known as "toggling". I'm thinking of setting something like this up for the next time I need to block lace. [Source: Modern Marvels.]
- New Thing Learned for 12 October: To take a picture of your own head with a digital camera, point the lens at you and the LCD at the mirror. It still makes you look like an idiot, but at least you look like an idiot without a camera growing out of your face, which may or may not actually be an improvement sometimes. [Source: experimentation.]
- New Thing Learned for 13 October: Science has finally invented the mobile ATM. I'd worry about an electronic eavesdropper setting up across the street, but that's probably just me. [Source: example laid on by YarnCon 2007.]
- New Thing Learned for 14 October: CGI water-sprays can be rendered more accurately by imaging sand, which provides a particle size more appropriate than actual water. Now if only CGI of this caliber had been around back when they were doing "the Power of Kroll"... [Source: Doctor Who Confidential.]
- New Thing Learned for 15 October: Holography as a concept was invented more than a decade before the invention of lasers would make it practical. There is no Sanctuary. [Source: info-text track for "the Talons of Weng Chiang".]
- New Thing Learned for 16 October: A tubular cast-on can be done by knitting a swatch of half the desired number of stitches in waste yarn, then working (k1, p1 into bar between stitches) across, although I missed the bit about how to get the waste yarn back out, dammit. [Source: Judy Chan, October WCKG meeting.]
- New Thing Learned for 17 October: One of the Spanish Armada's bigger problems was that no two of their cannons took quite the same-sized ammunition, and furthermore no one had been careful enough about seeing that the ammunition loaded aboard a given ship necessarily matched any of the cannons on board it at all. Planning, people, planning. [Source: History Channel?]
- New Thing Learned for 18 October: Putting cinnamon in the Marshmallow Rice Squares was an experiment worth doing, but not really one worth repeating. [Source: hey, it was next to the vanilla...]
- New Thing Learned for 19 October: Europeans do occasionally measure things in terms of soccer fields, which it had occurred to me to wonder. Not that I know what "as big as a soccer field" looks like any more than "as big as a football field", but it's nice to know about the conversion factor just the same. [Source: Lost Worlds: Hitler's Supercity.]
- New Thing Learned for 20 October: Larger knives should be operated by pinching the blade between thumb and forefinger and then wrapping the other three fingers around the handle, rather than in a "mitten-fist" grip. [Source: Knife skills illustrated : a user's manual, Peter Hertzmann.]
- New Thing Learned for 21 October: The Home Despot I usually find myself in now provides produce-department-style bags to manage one's purchase of plumbing connectors in (see "built a yarn-drying rack out of PVC pipe", above). [Source: Home Despot on Oakton, Evanston.]
Tags:
- New Thing Learned for 9 October: Somewhere along the line I ended up with a Flickr Pro account. Which saves me a lot of work, because right before that went down I bumped up against the 200-photo limit on free Flickr accounts, and I've been procrastinating about moving old blog-specific pics over to LJ's photospace, so, score one for laziness. [Source: Not, as one might imagine, by being duly informed about it by the service itself, but though idly clicking on things on the site while looking for something entirely different.]
My feet are still cold and I still don't have that sandwich, dammit.
Horribly sleep-disrupted this past week or so, as in "how can you honestly call going to bed at 8:30 on a Friday night because you woke up at 3 am a 'sleep cycle' by any meaningful definition of the word?" disrupted. I blame the opening for the show Mum has a piece in -- having to Be Places always makes my internal clock go into "You're not the boss of me!" mode, which can take ages to reset. (At least I missed most of the baseball hand-wringing, anyway.) Fortunately -- for me, not for you -- I Have Notes:
My feet are cold and I want a sandwich.
- New Thing Learned for 3 October: A serving of Cheerios has more sodium than a serving of Doritos. Mmm, sodium. [Source: Salon.com.]
- New Thing Learned for 4 October: Cary Grant took LSD as part of an early experimental psychiatric-treatment regimen. [Source: History Channel, "Hippies".]
- New Thing Learned for 5 October: Science, meanwhile, has come up with a way to superoxygenate salty water into a potent germicide that's safe for humans if accidentally ingested. Unlike Cheerios and Doritos. [Source: Wired.]
- New Thing Learned for 6 October: Paleo-Gummibears were invented before WWII. There's probably an alternate-WWII joke in here somewhere. [Source: That Food Network show with the guy from "Double Dare".]
- New Thing Learned for 7 October: Speaking of alternate-histories, Ridley Scott was nearly tapped to design the Daleks. This scares me more than trying to imagine a world where the noninvention of gummibears affected the course of WWII. [Source: infotext track, "The Daleks ; The edge of destruction" DVD.]
- New Thing Learned for 8 October: Mozzarella is quality-checked by making a pizza, standing a ruler up in the pizza, and measuring how far the cheese will stretch before snapping. Sadly, the programme did not go on to record the eventual fate of the desecrated test-pizza. [Source: Modern Marvels, "Cheese".]
My feet are cold and I want a sandwich.
- New Thing Learned for 25 September: The hairdryer was a good idea in general, but more practice is needed. Be afraid, BTW. [Source: Scary Gingerbread-Man Cake-And-Gelatin-Mold didn't fit into any vessel on-hand that was suitable for the conventional hot-water-dip unmolding technique.]
- New Thing Learned for 26 September: Some of the immediate casualties in the Moscow theater hostage crisis may have perished due to improper EMT handling rather than the effects of the gas proper, dying as a result of obstructed airways during the chaotic initial evacuation. [Source: National Geographic channel, "Critical Situation: Moscow Siege".]
- New Thing Learned for 27 September: In New England, three-flats are called "triple-deckers", and they're made of wood. I guess we're all still a little traumatized about that city-burning-to-the-ground thing around here. [Source: Inside This Old House.]
- New Thing Learned for 28 September: As the depth of our windowsills would seem to bear out, the exterior walls of our building are indeed two thicknesses of bricks deep, which is nice to know when the emergency tuckpointing on the other side of your living-room wall starts in with the Big Noisy Saw... [Source: water-damage repairs to common-brick surface alongside an outside walkway.]
- New Thing Learned for 29 September: Polyethylene glycol is a main ingredient in coughsyrup and paintballs. Not sure what to make of that, really. [Source: How It's Made.]
- New Thing Learned for 30 September: Garden hoses are now available that are self-coily, like an old-fashioned phone cord or the sproingy pneumatic line on the shelf-snipper at Home Despot. Assuming the reconfiguring of the back patio's dirt areas comes off the way that was discussed at the last condo board meeting, one of these hoses is definitely going onto my shopping list for next season, since there's a faucet back there that would be much closer to the new plots than the one in the front... [Source: some home show or other.]
- New Thing Learned for 1 October: Chard is actually a kind of beet. Yes, I've been planning next year's gardening, inspired here by an in vivo sighting of rainbow chard in the landscaping outside the North/Clybourn Container Store. [Source: A canon of vegetables : 101 classic recipes, Raymond Sokolov.]
- New Thing Learned for 2 October: Continuing with our anatomy series, or "...Okay, WTF did I do to myself now?", the adductor magnus runs along the inside of the thigh, and testing indicates that it's about 60% as inconvenient to have pulled as the quadriceps. I think my warranty ran out or something... [Source: but at least we got the closet done.]
Weekend-before-last, Mum needed to drop off a piece of artwork at a show in the town where she grew up, and afterwards we ended up tooling around town for a while, reminiscing. Eventually we stumbled across an estate sale, and decided that since it was probably getting on the end of the season it was worth having a look around; the house itself was one of those postwar protoranches, a scraper by today's standards, but I figured that that very fact indicated possible vintage goodies inside. (Mmm, tchotchkes.)
I'm guessing that the house had had just the one owner since it was built, since you generally don't see that depth and breadth of Accumulated Miscellaneous Stuff after somebody's been through one or more moves and it certainly all looked like it was bought new at the time. The garage door was installed in 1953, according to the certificate still stapled to the wall in the garage. A door propped up in the garage displayed the growth records for two children, "Jenny" and "Jon", through the mid-1960's. From the personal effects up for sale, the owners were a typical middle-class family of the time period, with a rock tumbler to polish up the souvenirs of their travels, and the requisite pool table in the basement and token Danish-modern desk unit in one of the bedrooms. Someone collected beer cans and golfed. From the evidence, they found the JFK assassination deeply traumatic. Their toaster was a few years younger than Mum's toaster, which just died last month after 50+ years of faithful service. A Braille-writing kit suggests that someone in the family either was or went blind at some point. From the mix of clothes and hats laid out in another bedroom, it was the male partner's death that occasioned this sale. (The house was for sale as well, so I'm picturing a widower, rather than that Jenny and Jon have put Mum in a home to split the proceeds.)
So far as tchotchkes went, I wasn't seriously tempted by anything until I saw this in the kitchen:
( Enter The Gingerbread Man )
(For the record, the label reads:
HILLWARE Gingerbread man aluminum CAKE PAN and GELATIN MOLD
This sanitary, durable, easy-to-clean, aluminum pan will use 1/2 package of prepared cake mix or equivalent.
PURE ALUMINUM
Easy to clean • will not rust
for parties etc. ••• for special occasions and everyday use
for birthdays and holidays ••• for anniversaries
Raising the question "...Anniversaries of WHAT?!?" in this mind, but whatever.)
The blue dot meant a buck, so how could I resist the subtle insanity of gingerbread-man-shaped CAKE or GELATIN? Back at the Test Kitchens, Mister Scary Gingerbread Mold turns out to hold a little less than 3 cups of liquid. I immediately set about making jiggler-strength Jell-o in it, since I can't remember how strong a gelatin mold is supposed to be prepared:
( Mmm, red... )
This led to the New Thing Learned for 25 September, when I tried to unmold it later:
( ...AHHH! THE HORROR, THE HORROR! )
Undeterred by this first bloody mess, I've retooled the recipe, and I have some plans for this little guy, involving clear gelatin and -- well, I just dare you to invite me to your Halloween party, is all I can say... >:)
Oh, and this last weekend, we finally got around to installing the shelves in my closet:
( crap, no Tom Cruise in here... )
Imagine it with just the shelf across, about 6 inches lower, and you begin to get an idea of why I've been so annoyed since we moved in, since there's not enough room in this bedroom-slash-office to have a freestanding bureau and the closet's not quite deep enough to stick one in there. As we get around to buying more containers to keep the spiders out of my underpants, I'll gradually be able to put my clothes away properly for the first time in -- well, several apartments, if you want the truth, but certainly a giant step up from having had to dress in the living room since the Great Flood. Mmm, domesticity.
In late-breaking news, I remembered what "naked" referred to -- it was some sort of Japanese festival where they get a guy to run down the street naked and getting close enough to touch him absolves you of your sins, or something. And then he buries all the sins, in the form of a rice-cake, and goes to have a lie-down because he's pretty banged-up at that point. I think I'll stick with the bit about the sink-plug for posterity's sake, though.
Coming Soon: Estate Sale Tales, including the inexplicable creepiness that is Gingerbread Cake-And-Gelatin-Mold Man! (But first I have to prepare the jello, to provide proper illustrations of the inexplicable creepiness, so this might be a while.)
- New Thing Learned for 21 September: Pringles, or "stackable chips" for readers who may be from an area colonized by a different subspecies, are made by cutting ovals from a sheet of dough, and then pressing them with a convex mold into an individual concave wire-rack that goes immediately into the fryer. There was also a neat bit about how the tubes are formed and labeled that I can't even begin to describe properly. [Source: yet again, How It's Made.]
- New Thing Learned for 22 September: The Post Oriface now has a kiosk to weigh packages and dispense appropriate machine-scan postage up to and including Priority Mail tyveks, which is great because they still haven't figured out to put another drone or two on at the windows on a Saturday. [Source: Evanston main Post Office.]
- New Thing Learned for 23 September: The phrase "gung ho" was popularized by the activities of Carlson's Raiders during the "long patrol" on Guadalcanal in WWII. [Source: "the War", Ken Burns.]
- New Thing Learned for 24 September: The technical name for the little pellets that are the raw fodder for a plastic-molding press are "nurdles". You can't make this stuff up, folks. [Source: The world without us, Alan Weisman.]
Coming Soon: Estate Sale Tales, including the inexplicable creepiness that is Gingerbread Cake-And-Gelatin-Mold Man! (But first I have to prepare the jello, to provide proper illustrations of the inexplicable creepiness, so this might be a while.)
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