Posts
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Day 86 - cancelled
Taking another break from Netflix, after checking one of the latest super-hero movies and breaking down in the first third. The exact name of the movie doesn’t matter, you can put in multiple names. Man, what is this junk?!
Yes, I know I sound like an old fart, but this super-hero stuff is getting on my nerves, never again. Unless Nolan decides to attack the subject, of course, but he probably knows better, judging by the decision to take Batman.
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Day 85 - rediscovering what you already know
Fun or sad fact: You actually achieve more when getting more sleep than you think you need. You are simply more focused in whatever you do, and it reflects in the results.
Back to the 00:30 curfew, enough is enough.
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Day 84 - startling discovery
Well, I’ve accidentaly discovered via IMDB that Stanley Kubrick was actually an American. Yes, I feel a bit dumb. I was probably fooled by his British residence and personel. He was actually a New-Yorker…
The cinema is much more profoundly American than I’ve anticipated, then.
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Day 83
September was a very bad month for business (unending series of holidays), so I could not really put to the test my, ahem, food system, but nevertheless it is going well. Just bring proteins to work in a form of (usually) roasted beef, add some freshly picked lettuce and spices, and complete the carbs with some bread provided by the workplace.
I should probably start to bring my own bread, though. It is so much better…
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Day 82
To add: hot peppers shoot
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention in the previous post: The hot peppers are doing great! The Jalapenios have absolutly no taste for some reason (they are not even spicy) but on the other hand, the Habaneros are TERRIFIC - hot as hell and tasty.
I am especially happy to see the chocolate Habanero, these are the tastiest of the bunch. Not shown in the picture - the pale greenish/yellowish variety which is the slowest to mature. That has also happened to me last year, so it’s probably a trait of that particular type. On the up side (well, depends how you look on it) those pale looking Habaneros are the DEADLIEST of the bunch.
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Day 81
The garden is giving me great difficulties this year, although I’ve spent there more time there than any previous year. Something about the excessive shade that leads to excessive bugs?
I am sick of it. Let’s try some round of POISONEOUS PESTICIDES.
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Day 80 - the best game of all
To complete: picture of, well, lego. Should actually shoot one!
Inexhaustible? Timeless How would you call this Danish marvel? Fun fact: the actuall “secret” to Lego’s success (besides very clever choices of the themes) is not the visible part of “the system”, but actually the underside, the extruded rods that hold unto the underlying building block. Lego experimented with several types of bottom extrusion. The one they came up with is pure genius. How could they get plastic mold SO accurate in the 1960’s, way before computerized CNC? Hats off.
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Day 79 - Japanese toolbox
To complete: picture of the mentioned Japanese toolbox
Completed in a hurry (well, a relative hurry, about two days) a simple Japanese toolbox to hold the kids’ bicycle apparel. I like it very much, the lid trick works well even with an old piece of recycled 3-ply plywood, and the toolbox itself is surprisingly sturdy - you can insane weight on top of it, due to the peculiar construction which has zero stress points in the vertical level.
Definitly not the last box I’ll make in this fashion. I should probably make a bit of effort in the looks department, though, this is barely acceptable.
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Day 78
Just learned that I have to report back to duty behind the piano. This will be tough, very tough. I don’t have even a SINGLE second to practice. Deep sigh.
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Day 77 - another home cinema post?!
Some rough retrospective on the home cinema setup I’ve been enjoying for the last month
I’ve come to understand that movies soundtracks are not meant to be used as a powerfull surround tool - which is a bit sad. The main goal of the soundtrack is much simpler: put you CLOSER to the sound stage. That’s what the rear channels do 99% of the time, and even in full-fledged action movies there is only a scarce usage of sweeping sound effects and subwoofer rumbles. Oh well.
Bringing the sound stage closer affects all viewers, so this is probably more a consideration for properly-built cinema halls, to make all spectators equally happy of (or oblivious to) the sound.
I guess that proper home-cinema fans are simply treated like a strange minority, like audiophiles. Outside of the VERY small local audiophile community, I actually don’t know of ANYONE with a proper surround setup, surely not in terms of equipment. It is quite understanble, the receivers are a never cheap and the investment in the living room is substantial.
Now that I think of it, I know some guy that has managed to get a nice setup with a Marantz 1600-something reciever (that was a long time ago) and Mission M-74/M-72 speakers. The amount of bass those speakers put out is overwhelming for most living rooms, this is one feature I couldn’t forget. Nice sound, though.
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Day 76 - mediatior
I’ve run a fun experiment with the kids: watching together a funny yet full-length movie in English (a language they do not understand) while serving as a mediator to both the script and the too-strong emotions that are triggered by frightening scenes and evil characters. Kids differ greatly in their capability to handle frightening scenes, and the role we can play as parents could be crucial for the more sensitive ones.
I wonder how would that whole situation would look like if I had used their native tongue’s soundtrack (which is some lame stereo, difficulties of a snob dad). We’ll never know…
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Day 75 - keep your promises
Well, there’s one link between physical health and mental health: keeping promises (and making good promises in the first place) is both good in itself, and makes the body benefit from it.
That 3-week hiatus has badly impaired my writing skills, they are quite rusty. I should probably take some time later to proof this post and previous ones.
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Day 74 - behavior
Following the re-collapse into Netflix’s binge watching, all kinds of positive behavior have suffered a great deal - especially the sleeping habits, which I failed to appreciate correctly thus far. Eating frenzies haven’t triggered yet a weight gain, but as we already know, delayed consequences are the real problem here - I could potentially gain weight two months from now whithout understanding the cause.
Why I am doing this to myself? What is triggering us to intentionally lose control? Why is the mind/will so weak?
Health / habits updates
- Weight: 78.5-79.5 kg.
- Exercise: Started walking from work to bus station, about 40min, 2 times a week. Not bad.
- Calories intake: Quite bad lately, when I am overstepping it, it is always a ~1000 calories penalty.
- Sleeping habits: Probably linked to the calories intake, worse than ever.
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Day 73 - damn you, Netflix
First post after 3-week hiatus. As it is customary to blame someone/something else instead of admitting to your shortcomings, I accuse Netflix.
The “official” trigger to re-apply to the service was the much needed (ahem) check of their surround capabilities, especially via the 1st generation of the chromecase device (which holds up surprisingly well for a 1st generation device of any kind). As expected, the comparision to some of the lossless DTS-HD-something blu-rays I have is unfair, but nevertheless the Dolby Plus sounds perfectly fine, a very noticeable improvement over the poor old Dolby / Surround (which is, quite frankly, terrible).
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Day 72 - 20 million $ question
The kind of craft you do “for the kids”. Too tedious for most ages, yet impressive - the flowers unfold in a very gracious manner.
I was asked (again) this strange question the other day - if you would suddendly receive a nice inheritance that would take care of your financial stress, let’s say 20 million quids, what would you do?
I stopped a long time ago to bother myself with pointless “what if” questions, the honest answer is: “I haven’t got a clue”. Living in regret is a common subject of great conflict in various dramatic genres, but in the real world it is a sad condition. People that just accept the reality while having a balanced attitude towards wishes and yearnings are happier and more positive. Argh, that poor word, “positive”, it has suffered so much abuse, you can’t use it anymore.
Another plausible answer, which is even more honest: “I would probably make some very bad decisions that will cause me much trouble”. In short, this falls under a favorite category of mine: “wrong question”. There are good questions, bad questions, and wrong (usually unfair, sometimes loaded) questions.
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Day 71
Nice glimpse of autumn. Already washed away by a heat wave, unfortunately. The bright thin line in the horizon is actually the sea, a rare sight.
I actually managed to involve the children in a coffee roasting session, which is by definition a boring task. Usually, I overcome the boredome by watching my subscribed channels in YouTube, it works like a charm. Good kids, always full of enthusiam. And I bet these are the only kids in a significant radius that could describe to their baffled teachers the roasting process in an elaborate fashion, down to color, smoke and popping stages…
Health / habits updates
- Weight: 78.7 kg.
- Exercise: About one streching session per week, better than nothing, I guess.
- Calories intake: Under control.
- Sleeping habits: Better than usual.
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Day 70 - enough of everything
I call that “the ego-sandwich”. Home-made rye sourdough bread with home-grown tomatoes, peppers, sage and oregano. Later (undocumented) examples feature also home-made cheap roastbeef cuts.
The cleaning cycles at the end of the summer revealed not only forgotten tools (not much) but especially forgotten materials. From building materials to electronics and whatnots. I have a bit of EVERYTHING, really - e.g.: eleven good-quality epoxy kits. Eleven. WTH?
Time to build something, aye?
These “latest findings” align well with the frugal/financial year I am expecting. The fixed spendings are tough this year, I should avoid buying anything that’s not necessary. Not because I can’t. Not because I don’t need something. Because I already have it… 🤦
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Day 69 - when sharp enough is actually sharp
The miserable oak species we have around here.
This is a thing I’ve been doing for a long time, but I am still only beginning to get better at it: When the handplane’s blade feels dull (not nicked, only dull), just remove the blade, clean everything, and hone the blade quickly with a 6000 grit diamond stone (the one that seems to do absolutely nothing).
Oh, wait, I’ve skipped the most important part of the process: break the invisible wire edge by stropping the blade on your BARE SKIN (inner palm, outer, does not matter). It will suddenly feel very sharp, and you’ll gain a whole full session of, errr… sharpness (?). This process takes about two minutes, really.
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Day 68 - routine adjustments
One can learn a thing or two from cats on the subject of sleep.
Interstingly enough, the first week of combined return-to-school and return-to-work forced a change in the sleeping habits, since the waking hour switched at once to a strict one, usually 06:30am. The holidays will test this change, as always, but that is temporary. One of the side effects is, unsurprisingly, a collapse from exhaustion earlier in the evening, but that also may come from the sudden usage of the brain at work. Really, it’s like I haven’t been properly exploiting the full capacity of my brain during the end of the summer.
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Day 67 - clean workbench
This is not a workbench.
It took about two hours to complete something I’ve been delaying for almost six months - cleaning the workbench in the workshop. I immediatly proceed to make some shavings, sure enough.
You cannot really separate the action from the mind, I guess. I could not really clean the workbench before because the mind was simply not cooperating. The timing is not accidental - that was the first occurence of that rare moment in the week when the kids are at their place, and I am home-alone, but not because I was forced to (sickness etc.). The sane side of the routine.
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Day 66 - the forgotten old
Old salvaged drawer. It is most probably mahogany - very dry, light, yet planes beautifully. What a gorgeous wood.
Just had an enjoyable evening with the “Ten Commandments” blu-ray version that was issued around 2011~. The remixed sound is valiant effort, but not much could be salvaged from those 1956 recordings. The image, on the other hand, is jaw-dropping. The original resolution is a good place to start (35mm stock film running sideways instead of vertically), but the eye-popping colors are the real surprise here. This six-decades (!) movie is ripe for the 4K edition. As simple as that. Staggering.
About the movie itself - a fun pot-pouri of realistic (yes, realistic) scenes with thousands of extras, combined with awkward acting, especially from the female part. Those 50s’-style romance scenes just look odd, the last remenents of the transition from the stage to screen.
Modern movie making is much more concerned these days with inner struggles of the protagonists. That movie used an older way of portraying the inner struggle, using symbolic characters - like Mephistofeles. On one hand, it’s a bit funny to always SEE the representation of the inner struggle as an external character, but on the other hand, it is quite realistic. More often than not, the pivot that triggers the good or malicious action is an external, real person, the one that dares to shout the word that everyone else utters silently.
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Day 65 - exactly two months to change
Good news - weight has been steady for the whole last week on the 78.7 kg mark. Still far from that nice 70.0kg round figure, but comparing to the 82~ I’ve been carying around for the last few years, it is definitly an improvement. When looking at my non-existent exercise schedule, it’s easy to affirme the cause of the change - a single, simple decision: limit calories intake to ~200 after 18:00.
Once could also argue that I’ve stopped to stuff myself like a pig during lunch, and that’s not entirely untrue, but I don’t consider this as an important factor.
Conclusion: I’ve been experiencing this two-month delay between change and result over and over. This is quite baffeling, honestly. Two months? two months to assimilate a change in the body? One possible guess: maybe, before the deep change kicks in, the body is resisting the change by triggering other “survival” mechanisms? I’ve read some theories along this line.
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Day 64
I was surprised to discover that this summer hasn’t been a financial disaster. As always, I am the biggest spender, with this totally unecessary audio/video upgrade… oh well. It appears that little kids don’t need ANYTHING except spending quality time, alternating between indoor and outdoor activities.
Somehow I managed to resist buying some tools, although I could crack anytime. The “woodshop” is clean but the workbench still needs much TLC. Getting there.
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Day 63
Previous summer, other world.
Guess what? The automated “magic view” of your camera roll only process the last ~1000 images or so. You’ll search in vain for your former cat, it will never appear. I haven’t had high expectations to begin with, but still… there is not a single photo storage / backup / business / whatever that can REALLY help you find older pictures, forget about organizing them. I’ll continue relying on the combination of my failing memory and random searches. Sheesh.
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Day 62 - upgraded audio & video
My appologies for the lousy shot. Yes, it is that big. That’s how those are build nowadays (?).
After a funny/sad episode with some bureaucratic elements, I’ve decided to return the order from Amazon that never got to me. What ALWAYS happens in these cases, is the inevitable “upgrade” in both prices and features. When I think of it, EVERYTHING started with the cancellation of Netflix. Yikes, scary.
Anyhow, I got this nice receiver now, which is capable of handling everything you throw at him. You can search the web for its back side, it is hillarious, an infinite array of audio connections from any possible kind, even an AM antenna (why???).
Only now, after switching from random 2.0 downmixes, I can really appreciate the sound quality of blu-ray discs. It is jaw-dropping, really. Only now I fully understand how DVDs sound bad. I should be very careful with my choice of prints and re-issues though, the situation is as bad as ever, you can to this day get SD material with unsynched sound, exactly like the old CD re-issues. Classic corporate stuff.
Recommendation? The same movie I’ve been watching for the 7th time, approximatly: Inception. The subwoofer channel is quite active in this movie, and with this proper setup you can fully appreciate how the music acts as the binder/vehicule for the whole plot. Inspiring. Deeply moving. Really, honest.
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Day 61 - end of summer
Yes, totally unrelated. I am only beginning to grasp the usefulness of good backgrounds. This is a phone shoot of a cute mechanical knob - each complete turn advances the single enclosed digit by a step.
That was a very mild August, weather-wise. Autumn will be hotter, for sure. Kids are happy, parents are quite crushed. Long distance. This is a long distance run.
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Day 60 - calories catch up
Health / habits updates
- Weight is surprisingly stable, considering the fact that I haven’t did a single exercise for the last ~3 weeks. After about a week of losing control on the calories intake, things got back to normal, and it’s a simple calculation that you just cannot ignore.
Highly hypothetical calculation just to make a point
- Assuming the average calories intake before introducing the regime was 800 per evening (not far fetched), it’s about 500 less calories per day, multiplied by 60 => whopping 30,000 calories. Even when considering the body’s re-adjustments, this is an extraordinary figure.
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Day 59 - cheese #3 update
That’s how ~7 days of air-drying looks like
Link to recipe: Cheese no. #3
Well, the photo speaks for itself. Nice range of molds, at least three different kinds. Behind the beautiful yet deadly rind hides a sharp cheese, very close to a blue cheese. Nice random success.
I won’t have much time in the near future to deal with cheese, but I am quite satisfied with this proof-of-concept. Note for future reference: Cheese needs A LOT MORE attention than it seems, even when just air-drying. Daily inspections, flips and salt rubs are an absolute must.
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Day 58 - first Habanero in 2018
That Habanero was !@@$*^%$@#@ HOT. Phone picture (not mine) mangled by some messaging app, sorry.
We had an unusual temperate summer around here. Higher humidity but almost record-low maximum temperature. Very beneficial for the garden, which reacts badly to dry weather.
Most peppers have emerged but only a few have matured, in my experience it takes a lot of time, especially in a shady garden. Nevertheless, that particular speciment which was picked from a surprisingly small brush matured early, to perfection 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️.
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Day 57
Aaaah, fresh and cool glacier water.
Lower back is slowly recovering, today was significantly better. Still taking deep breath whenever moving between postures, just to get the spine moving to a comfortable position before applying the necessary pressure when rising up. Do I feel like an invalid? Yes, a bit :/
Health / habits updates
- Weight: stable, 79.5 kg
- Exercise: quite active physically, no proper HIIT exercises yet due to stiff back.
- Calories intake: Regained control, back to feeling hunger.
- Sleeping habits: More sleep than ever, but badly divided into random naps / exhaustion collapses.
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Day 56 - first pomgrenates
Fall is near.
One has just falled, the other one started to burst while still on the tree. The taste is quite bland, I never managed to get a decent fruit from this somewhat neglected tree. Should probably invest more time & money in proper composting and soil aeration - this tree is at the edge of the garden and doesn’t get much attention (full sun, though).
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Day 55 - cheese #2 update
Common green mold. Does not contribute to the taste, unfortunatley. It is the same mold infecting stale bread. Apparently, and contrary to the popular belief, it is 100% edible (people with wierd alergies aside) - just not palatable.
This is how cheese no. #2 looked after a few days in the bottom part of the fridge, unturned. According to the condensation inside the plastic container, the humidity was 100%. That’s quite a tough problem - the fridge is usually too dry for anything, but most attempts to rectify the humidity results in hairy results, like above. In this case, I discared/scraped the mold, cleaned the container add poured a significant amount of salt over.
That cheese was “infected” with 20 gr only of Danablu cheese, and it started as some strange flavored ricotta. Much to my surprise, a week later the taste got a bit sharper / stronger - did the infection succeed? I cannot see any streaks of blue Penicillium roqueforti though, so maybe there’s another change or fungii strain involved here. All in all, it actually WORKS: take a cheap, bland cheese, mix it with a strong blue cheese, wait a bit, and voilà.
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Day 54 - kites adventures
Just an informative picture, to show the size and color.
Well, that was quite stupid - it hasn’t occured on my mind that kites were more-or-less invented in China, and that they are to this day a very, ahem, Chinese thing. Those two came from some kite capital in China, and unlike other marketing mambo-jumbo, I totally believe that. There are only tiny flaws in the construction, and the purple kite is flying very well, as expected from a proper delta-type kite.
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Day 53 - IKEA hack
I hope I won’t be sued for that one.
The original cases are the rectangular ones, the squares are the hack. It’s not the first time I carefuly remove the staples, cut to length, and hammer the staples back. Works like a charm, every time.
I am still struggling to get a good picture of the finish itself - it started as a thin layer of 100% coconut-oil soap, and was later smeared with a very thick coat of the franken-recycled-soap, which is a combination of about 7 types of oils and a few milliliters of lovely essential oils (rosemary, lavender, frankinscense and eucalyptus).
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Day 52 - cheese #3 - plain
This is an experiment in progress - trying to press as best as I can some salty Ricotta, and letting it air-dry in room temperature until it is bone-dry, without any refrigeration. We’ll see about that.
The makeshift press I’ve made a few years ago is giving me all sorts of problems, I should probably give up and get a proper plain and simple cheese basket, and rebuild a much simpler wooden press without concrete craziness. Ha! When I think about it, I could go full retard and even discard the metal parts - just tap and thread a real wooden screw. Another sad example of a tool that was bought ~2 years ago and never used :(
Yield
- ~460 gr after initial press. Quite high! I expect it to reduce significantly after drying.
Ingredients
- 3 l milk (3%)
- 90 ml acetic acid (5%)
- 20 gr salt
How to:
- See cheese no. #2 - same procedure except nothing was added to the curds here.
- The goal is to let it air-dry completly, covering with salt accordingly when needed. Maybe a brine wash?
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Day 51 - hot process soap
That’s one ugly soap. You shoul’ve seen the hot process vaselin stage, though, it was even worse. :)
That was long overdue: recycling some old soap (too soft / stale / crumbly) using hot process and a large amount of oils that contribute to a harder bar - coconut oil and palm oil. In my very limited experience in soap making, I’ve discovered that hot process soap yields a better-behaved soap comparing to cold process, although that might have been purely accidental. Nevertheless, since this batch consist of at least 50% old soap, it will mix much better using the hot process anyway, so that’s a no-brainer. Using every last available round whisky container available… :-)
Side note I: An important discovery I’ve made since starting with soap making, about two years ago: Aim for the thickest possible soap bar. Both adults and kids handle those better than tiny/flimsy ones.
Side note II: The soap ended up looking so bad, that I’ve added the last few bits of dried-out titanium oxide I had at hand (at least 20 years old), which only made things worst. Too funny. :)
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Day 50 - great photoshoot
Totally unrelated
Got a terrific photoshoot of the family thanks to my talented sisters. The kids responded extremly well to the direction and some pictures are just a joy to look at. Now, how do I add a matching yet secure picture to prove this? Grumbl grumbl.
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Day 49 - some achievements
Although that seized back has crippled me quite badly, I nevertheless accomplished a few tasks:
- Move all rosemary cuttings to pots
- Get all lavender cuttings and some rosemary cuttings to shoot properly
- Get decent coffee roasts from Columbia variety only (a mix of dark and light roasts)
- Clean the workshop (except the workbench, but from now on it’ll be easy)
- Maintain house in good order. It is actually tidier than ever.
- Long-overdue soap making (hot process)
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Day 48 - total collapse
Health / habits updates
- Weight: stable
- Exercise: nothing
- Calories intake: catastrophic
- Sleeping habits: catastrophic
Oh, and also managed to seized HARD some muscles in the lower back / tailbone area. Just bended over some morning and ZAP. That hurts. Really. On the up side - the body is recovering faster than before, using other muscles (actually, the right one!) to maintain the postures. Still, I expect a few WEEKS of seized muscles, this is annoying beyond description
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Day 47 - reminders
- Give some kind of score to cheese recipes.
- Update tags of previous blog posts.
- Typos / spelling / grammar.
- CSS & layout refinements.
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Day 46 - almost crumbling apart
That kid is just too dang talented. It took a couple of hours to document a small portion of his huge modeling clay collection.
How was it done? Picture below. Really, it is THAT simple. The key? a small, almost invisible extension mount just to get a bit closer to the subject. It seems that the dust particles come from the filthy lens, hopefuly not the sensor, ouch.
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Day 45 - almost crumbling apart
Things like this tend to keep you awake all night, or worse - juggling like crazy in daytime hours.
Health / habits updates
- Weight: stable, 79.0-80.0 kg
- Exercise: nothing
- Calories intake: Almost catastrophic
- Sleeping habits: Catastrophic
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Day 44 - future cheese experiments
Should be brave enough to try:
- Leave cheese to ripe at room temperature for more than 2-3 days.
- Let some cheese REALLY spoil, hopefully with the right fungi.
- Infected white mold cheese.
- Wash rind with brine / wine.
- Restrain myself from tasting things, just let’em ROT. :)
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Day 43 - cheese #2 - infected blue
Technically, not a cheese.
Well, it is actually a batch of pressed ricotta that was mixed with a strong Danish Danablu cheese. Whether or not is this an actuall infection which promots Penicillium roqueforti growth or just a stupid mix (that Danablu is very strong…) - only time will tell. In this particular experiment I had a problem with the pressing, so it was not nearly as firm as cheese no. #1.
Yield
- ~330 gr
Ingredients
- 3 l milk (3%)
- 90 ml acetic acid (5%)
- 25 gr salt (that’s a bit too much, actully)
- 20 gr Danablu (store-bought commercial variety)
How To
- Heat milk to 88°C while swirling continuously to avoid scorching.
- Remove from heat, create a fast swirl and pour acetic acid.
- Let curds rest for a few minutes, drain, salt, combine with the Danablu.
- Press for 12 hours.
- Remove from press and poke a few holes from top to bottom with a clean skewer.
- Air-dry for 2 days, flipping cheese every now and then.
Notes
- I haven’t had the guts yet to leave a cheese completly untouched until it REALLY begins to grow mold, any kind of mold.
- As stated earlier, this is actually a flavored ricotta, it doesn’t seem the cheese was actually infected.
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Day 42 - cheese #1 - squeeky yoghurt
Very firm, crumbly cheese with a distinct yoghurt taste, keeps over a month. When heated, it browns instead of melting, creating a funny squeeky sound when munched. First experiment with lots of unfounded/unconfirmed steps, so take everything written here with a grain of salt.
Yield
- ~360 gr
Ingredients
- 3 l milk (3%)
- 200 ml yoghurt
- 50 gr citric acid (diluted in water)
- 1 tbsp salt
How To
- Warm milk and yoghurt to 46°C, cover and let ripen for an hour (this may be totally wrong since both the milk and the yoghurt were from the commercial pasteurized variety).
- Heat to 88°C while swirling continuously to avoid scorching.
- Remove from heat, create a fast swirl and pour diluted citric acid inside.
- Let curds form for the next 5-10 minutes.
- Add more citric acid, or white vinegar if the “whey” is still too bright (should be yellowish & almost clear).
- Gather curds carefuly inside a cheese cloth, drain, add salt & mix
- Press for 12 hours.
- Air-dry for about 12 hours.
- Salt if necessary, turn a few times in-between saltings.
Notes
- The yoghurt step was meant to mimic some termophilic culture, but it actually only affects the taste. We shouldn’t expect any microbial activity after heating to 88°C. Yes, it can be omitted.
- Could use more salt, more like 15-20 gr.
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Day 41 - ultimate soap calculator
Saturation cranked up to eleven
soap calculator link
Nothing beats HTML v1.0 sites with square forms and tables. This is about the only soap/lye calculator in the net, since it is SO better than anything else out there. They didn’t miss even a single vegetable oil, and the “soap qualities” chart is very useful (i.e. bubbly vs creamy vs bar hardness etc). Highly recommended.
I have two personal favorites:
- Pure coconut oil soap, hard, durable, shiny and bubbly
- Random mix of about 6-7 oil types, including the base oils which are found about everywhere: Palm, coconut and olive (unrefined). Other soaps which included a higher ratio softer oils like avocado / almonds turned out either too soft or rancid.
I also encountered a big difference in terms of hardness and durability between cold process and hot process - the latter being very stable for years - but it may be unrelated and due to other factors.
Site updates
- Added tags for future usage, like search and categorizations. For some reasons, the category thing in
Jekyllmeans another thing from what I had envisioned, but that’s ok - I’ll be using tags anyway.
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Day 40 - site updates wish-list
What I would like to add
- Categories / keywords for future search
- I didn’t exactly get what is going on here with
Jekyll, some strange static file generation. Actually, you could keep all keywords necessary for search in the single index page, the total number of strings is still laughabable when comparing to any client-side javascript framework…
- I didn’t exactly get what is going on here with
- Refine styling
- Not 100% happy with the serif font. There’s gotta be a serif font which fits the bill, not giving up. Yet. :)
- Refine embedding
- YouTube is using iFrames, I don’t know where I can ease/speed things up here. I am sure more can be done. Same with Flickr images, I am still not sure wether should I keep the surrounding container which include some javascript code, or switch to pure images only.
- Categories / keywords for future search
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Day 39 - setbacks
I wish I had the time & energy to complete the other shelves units. In picture - the most complex part of shelf I out of IV, fitting the back planks and the upper inner rail (deserves its own post)
Health / habits updates
- Weight: stable, 79.0-80.0 kg
- Exercise: had one this week! Core (hips/glutes) feels quite good
- Calories intake: Not careful enough, probably due to spending too much time in the kitchen, far from past feeding frenzies, still
- Sleeping habits: meh
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Day 38 - soap finish
An invisible finish?
This is a finish what was once common in Scandinavia, and mentioned by Chris Schwartz in “The Anarchist’s Design Book” (nothing anarchistic about this book, the logic behind the title can be found on the net).
The recipe is simple: take pure soap flakes, dissolve in water, spread like wax, sand or polish, repeat if necessary. I use homemade soap, made from NaOH and Coconut oil - this is the hardest type of soap (palm oil is a close second), with a brilliant white hue which doesn’t spoil like vegetable-oil-based soaps.
The resulting finish looks like a low-luster wax finish, which looks especially good on lighter woods, the complete opposite of the common yellowing oil/varnish finishes. Like wax, the protection offered is miminal, but unlike any other finish, the re-application is extremly easy - no need to sand or strip anything, just grab a towel, fill with watery soap and rub in.
Actually, it’s the only finish I could think of that is self-cleaning. Worth a try.
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Day 37 - cheesy hobby
This table cloth is awesome.
Some old recurring hobby: quasi-cheese making. Why quasi? Because I’ve never gone beyond the step of heated milk and vinegar / citric acid. Basically, all I’ve ever made was heavily-pressed milk Ricotta. No rennet, no cultures, no dedicated cellars with controlled humidity etc.
The recipe is simple: 2-3 liters of milk, 200ml of yoghurt (for flavor), ~50ml of white vinegar (acetic, 5%, synthetic). Heat milk & yoghurt to ~88c / ~185f, remove from heat, pour vinegar, and from then on slowly filter/remove whey (not really whey technically, but never mind). When the curds are dry enough, combine with salt and put in a makeshift press overnight.
The result is not great, yet not bad - it tends to become a very dry and crumbly cheese with a faint yoghurt flavor. Putting more salt or covering in brine results in some fetta-like cheese, where the dominant flavor is, well, salty-acidic (yawn). I had a cheese once that got a bit rancid, like white mold, and it was actually great (I would be probably put to jail in the European Union for that). I also wrapped once a cheese with a mix of candle wax and beeswax and from some reason the taste of the waxes seeped inside (that one was terrible).
As a first step, it may be wise to find the limits of this method, e.g. for how long can the cheese be aged in room temperature, like anyone else did barely 100 years ago. The internet is full of how-tos and opinions but it seems that no one dared to cross the boundaries, out of curiosity. Why not? This is an inexpensive hobby.
Ideas to explore
- Build a ripening box / closet / just keep it in some dark place in the kitchen, will ya?!
- Varying doses of salt
- Omit yoghourt
- Infect with blue/white mold
- Wash regularly with brine etc.
- Oil wash
- Wine wash
- Incorporate herbs (sage/thyme)
- Give up and buy rennet / calcium chloride / mesophylic culture / a goat
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Day 36
“6 bass trombones, 6 tenor trombones, 4 tubas in the middle and 6 french horns above…” - Hans Zimmer, 2011
Will this cure my obsessive attraction to Zimmer’s music?!
It is unreasonable to expect outputing a truely original one-minute musical sketch each week. All the greatest composers learned by copying previous masters, and way back in the past I liked very much “cloning” other composers in the study of orchestration - especially Beethoven. Ludwig’s method of spreading chords in the orchestra is still unique in my opinion.
I am quite surprised by how well it sounds, even though this version is heavily auto-clipped (great feature of Caustic). I couldn’t find any machine that was remotely close to that brass sound, but nevertheless, one particular machine inside gave the proper “fat” sound, some kind of string/lead mixture.
Funny, though; We may have used every possible combination of diatonic/harmonic/melodic progression ever, yet it feels that in terms of sound we are still exploring, thanks to the endless variations and combinations of live, physical instruments and electronic instruments.
Done in 40 minutes on phone, while commuting, plus another 40 minutes or so of struggle with iMovie and YouTube…
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Day 35 - double exposure
A surprisingly common scene during the summer around here. I haven’t managed yet to capture the true colors in this kind of scene, it is not only a matter of precise exposure.
First photo session ever with the extension tubes, before mounting the ring light. Technically terrible, but I like shoots (pun intended). This blog is rapidly transforming into an Instagram clone.
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Day 34
So much to write about, yet nothing to write about.
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Day 33 - sleep
For a short period of time, there was NO competition with the Fuji F31/F20 CCD sensor in low light situations. Brilliant little camera.
Health / habits updates
- Weight: stable, 79.0-80.0 kg
- Exercise: about nothing last week, but muscles are not sore anymore, it looks like the body recovered at last (took more than a week).
- Calories intake: OK except weekend which was wilder than usual ;-)
- Sleeping habits: that has to be fixed, not getting enough sleep
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Day 32 - obsession - Hans Zimmer's music
Let’s see for how many days/months/years will this link survive
Last week was marked by a total obsession by Zimmer’s soundtracks, or to be more exact, by the four and a half chords that are played repeatedly in “Inception” or “Interstellar” or any other recent movie, actually. I felt like a madman, hearing again and again, over and over, the same repetitive themes, and getting deep satisfaction from every single moment.
I have yet to find to words to describe how minimalistic music affect the brain / thoughts / feelings. It is NOT a spiritual thing. Specifically in Zimmer’s music, there is a very precise, rather slow tempo which plays a crucial part, coupled with the characteristic repeated bass on the 16th and extraordinary sound image. Image? What image? A cathedral.
Much of the best music that stood over time is composed of simple elements - that’s the glory of western music, actually. Take Beethoven’s fifth, for example. Four notes, endless repetition and reconstruction. Zimmer is doing the same with four and a half chords. Why a half? Most of the themes use a 4-chord progression, in which one of the chords could be interpreted in two different ways, depending on the weight that is pressed upon one of the “colorful” seventh/ninth.
So simple. So good. And the tempi are so perfect. I am hooked.
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Day 31 - first month complete
Agile little hands (not mine)
Tough weekend, blog-wise. Added “go to index” to the single blog post template. I could’ve used some
location.goBackInHistorySomething()via javascript but I found out more than once it is nice to have a complete, exact history, even when it includes getting back several times to the same index.Also made another one of those endless font size & styling modifications. Serif fonts are tricky to set up right, even in modern laptops/phones screens with crazy PPI.
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Day 30 - mobile quirks
No wonder setting up web pages has become so complex - here’s a perfect example.
When changing the index template of the site to present whole blog posts instead of excerpts, I added a “go to top” link at the bottom right side of each blog post. Nice idea at first, also nice-looking placement, but when using an actual hand-held device an interesting problem surfaced up immediatly - when scrolling down with your thumb, sometimes the thumb accidentaly tap the “go to top” link and… well, losing your scroll position is not much fun, right?
Anyway, moving the link to the center. Perfect example of an aesthetic choice that collides with usage (or yet another difference in css between mobile and desktop).
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Day 29 - updated site index
Wonders of static sites: instead of showing posts excerpts in the landing page, I’ve change the template to render ALL blog posts, as a single list. About ~1600 bytes per post. Yeah, BYTES.
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Day 28 - static to the rescue
Well, it appears that I cannot paginate using
jekyll-paginatoringithub.iounless using some hack to install the updated gem. It’s not a bad hack but still, I prefer not to start tampering things over here unless utterly necessary. The irony is that even an index page holding 365 post excerpts would never bypass a single modern javascript-driven site in size. For the current ~30 pages, the html+css size is 25+9kb - meaning a full year won’t exceed even 500kb. Absurd. There are some embedded images, iframes and various javascript junk, but that’s left for the browser to optimize.More
jekyllgoodies can be found in this cheat sheet - not 100% compatible with the github’s particular setup, but good enough.
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Day 27
Health / habits updates
- General: feeling exhausted
- Weight: back to 80.0+ kg, I should probably ignore ANY change in the 2 kg range due to… fluids management issues? :)
- Exercise: muscles still sore, 5 days (!) after a single exercise session (!!) that lasted 8 minutes (!!! WTH). Flexibility is decent, though, but I am not happy with this condition overall.
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Day 26 - Eclipse
Not much today, but at least I tried - a heavy crop of the full moon eclipse using the 35mm lens on the Sony - which was much sharper than the kit lens on the 55mm side.
Health / habits updates
- Weight: 79.0kg, sometimes less. Encouraging!
- Exercise: still getting sore muscles for DAYS, even after 8 minutes of excercise. I am either in a REALLY sore shape or the exercises are just brillianttly focused. Anyway, keeping the focus on the big core hip/glutes muscles.
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Day 25 - quick musical sketch
Done in a single day, two 40-min sections, phone and headphones only.
There’s no way I will ever match the “one blog post a day” pace in the music department, but even putting down a single musical idea during a random daily commotion is satisfactory. I wonder if I can do that weekly.
This theme / idea desperately asks for a “B” section and complementary vocals, but interestingly enough, it has already the rhythm section “baked inside”. It is not just a chord progression, the heavy 90s’-ambient-inspired drums are inseparable from the rest.
That Caustic app is impressive, I’ve bought it ages ago and it matured well - unlike the majority of music softwares out there, it is intuitive and doesn’t get in your way. I especially liked the ability to modify the volume of individual percussion instruments inside each pattern - it immediatly softens the mechanical repetition and gives a “breathing” natural quality.
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Day 24 - what I would like to do
Actually, some of the things in the following list have been done, but it would be nice to re-do a second, improved run.
- Soap making: second batch with tougher bars
- Cheese: maybe use rennet? with current cheese prices that’s actually stupid
- Extract rosemary essence / oil
- Iceland! I would also settle with a greek island, though
- Trestle oak table for the kitchen: I have all the material
- Complete SYP bookshelves project
- Fun woodcarving
- Less relapses
- Convert grandma’s recording and upload for everyone to enjoy
- Refinish mom’s coffee table with proper Danish soap (original finish)
- Music: Got material, no inspiration
Actually, that music topic is interesting. I could compose in the past electronic music without any vocal, but that has switched - I just cannot for the life of me think of some music that just stands alone, per se, it has to have some extra-musical meaning.
That leads to other strange problems - first, the language (composing in English seems silly since it’s not my native tongue or my THOUGTS tongue). Secondly, the lyrics. Oh boy, the lyrics. Finding lyrics that I can relate to and that were not used at least 784 times already in innumerable songs is nearly impossible. I did some preliminary experiments in writing lyrics and those were quite awful, as expected. Maybe that blog thing, where I force myself to write everyday OUTSIDE of the internet forum realms will help release this “writer’s block”, LOL. Writer. Come on…
Another very old problem - vocals. Like many musicians, I dislike my voice and although it got much better lately, it has still that nasal tone combined with some weird accent that is simply not what I would like to hear. My wife’s voice also doesn’t quite fit the idea I have in mind. There are wonderful professional vocalists out there that I can connect to, but getting in contact without having material first is silly.
Lyrics. First the lyrics. I would be very happy to use a modern reflection / adaptation of the Bible’s psalms, especially because the original meter used ~4000 years ago cannot fit ANY current beat. It is the most crazy unregular meter you could think of. Yup, big challenge.
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Day 23 - markdown
Markdown quick reference from the original markdown creators - I’ve been using markdown for years, actually, it is still growing on me. The ability to switch anytime to oldskool-html is great, although the more I use markdown, the less I resort to html-hacks. It’s a good example where the tool dictates your way of processing thoughts. When writing down thoughts, or architecture, or whatever, the writing has to follow some rules or basic classification. These rules are not that much applicable for blog posts, but for documenting stuff they are invaluable. OK, let’s try to use some of that wonderful markdown stuff in the next section.
Health / habits updates
- Weight: unchanged, 79.5kg
- Exercise: nothing at all in the last two weeks
- Sleep: not there yet
- 200 calories limit: keeping diligently this good habit
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Day 22 - holes in the system
Back to the old days, when the camera of the Samsung Note MK I wasn’t scratched (it lasted like that about a year). I eventually resorted to the front-facing camera at some point in time. Poor design flaw of a rather nice phone.
Well, I should probably call this “diet update” but it may be better to describe it as “habit forming update” instead. Diet is usually percieved as some goal-reaching process with an end, but I am trying, like many good folks out there, to make a change that is intended to last.
Keeping the calories count has been quite successful. I get the occasional growling noises of an empty stomach in the evening, but it is more funny than annoying. Hey, I am also saving money because of this, no kidding! It is unbelievable, the amount of resources that can go just like that, evaporate in the thin air.
Speaking of money, I am still suffering from that shopping spree which I have yet to put under control. This is probably connected to the sleeping habits which are still not formed. For example, yesterday I actually completed the tasks I’ve set for the day (quite a feat!), and all the remaining tasks were marked as either “nice to have” or “too complex to start”. I should have gone to bed but wasted valuable time instead in endless surfing. Better change that.
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Day 21 - a bit of order
Having all posts inside the same
_postsfolder was getting cumbersome, so I moved everything inside subfolders. It werks!! I guess that’s mentioned somewhere in the Jekyll documentation. I really like this tool, it is flexible enough exactly where it should be.Also replaced the site’s description with the Public Domain Mark. I had tough time finding an svg which not… errrrr… wait for it… drumrolls please… UNDER COPYRIGHT (?!) - are you kidding me? Anyway, eventually found what I needed in Wikipedia.
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Day 20 - bowl of cereals: stick to the facts
This is something I absolutely fail to understand - why people all around the world keep talking about diets and meal compositions in general terms, while COMPLETELY overlooking the facts. Just plain, simple, observed facts.
It all started with a missing feeling of hunger in the evening, which was an unexpected surprise. Since it’s the weekend, I must break the 200-calories rule, right? Not because I’m hungry, just because I ought to. Yeah, it’s quite stupid. Anyway, that led to a simple, really dead-simple weighting of the ingredients composing a standard bowl of cereals - an exact copy of my typical breakfast. Just facts, kapish? Bring it on:
Granola Cornflakes Oatmeal 450-580 370 370
Shocking, isn’t it? Again, simple methodology: 200ml of 3% milk (consistant across cereal types) = 120 calories. Weight of ingredients vary between the light Cornflakes that easily fill up the bowl and the heavier Granola / Oatmeal. Just to compare, a plain simple 500ml beer (the reference), which by all means quiet down even the worst of hungers, is worth 210 calories. What about swallowing 1500ml of beer in one gulp?!Among other things, this plain-dead-simple check is yet anothera affirmation that the term “beer belly” is utterly false. One can drink beer all day long without gaining weight, the (quite severe and unnecessary) intoxication will get him first.
Well, for me a simple stride down the memory lane reveals countless evenings in which I gulped easily 2000 calories as some late night treats. Just like that. I should probably re-consider my breakfasts - the quantities I measured are not exagerated, and if I fill only half of the bowl (actually, a third instead of two-thirds) the portion would be a bit ridiculous.
I bet that a piece of bread smeared with a heavy layer of butter or jam is much more diet-friendly. Another measuring session should follow, I guess. I already confirmed that switching to yoghurt (or some kind of buttermilk, to be exact) along with a tablespoon of jam is also worth about 200 calories (a 500ml beer in the morning? I don’t think so…). Fascinating stuff.
N.B.: Just replaced all
<blockquote>html tags throughout the blog with the>markdown syntax. Better late than never, aye? Also surrounded the YouTube embedded partial with a much-needed<p>tag in order to keep a consistent look.
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Day 19 - consumerism
With all the moderation and restraints and balance I’m trying to acheive, I fell yet again into some consumerism trap due to an idea or thought that I simply could not get out of my head. Damn you, Christoper Nolan. Anyway, some kind of proper A/V setup is underway, which includes a receiver with a powered subwoofer channel (rare) and two surround speakers.
Speaking of speakers, that was an interesting search - there is a nice market of powered monitors which sounds great according to the reviews and boast a dirt-cheap price tag, like the JBL LSR305. Their price tag here is simply insane.
Anyway, this particular setup of powered monitors is not playing along well with standard receivers that don’t have pre-outs. Big honking receivers are out of the question in my living room setup, there is no point of filling the whole cabinet with a single device. Oh well, how did I get here?… Ah, yes - I’ve done a search for available cheap passive speakers here, there are some nice options but not enough, and the second-hand market is… errrr… tragic as usual - people rip out plastic speakers from boom boxes and try to sell those at a higher price than the original boom box. Sheesh.
Anyway (2), after checking the options in ebay (as appaling as the local options), I got back to the old and faithful (or demonic?) Amazon, and re-discovered the Dayton Audio options. They have 4” and 6” speakers that are DIRT CHEAP, so no matter how bad they are, it won’t hurt. The intended use is back/surround speakers anyway. Finding a matching pair to my Mission speakers, either bookshelves or floor-standing, is expensive, and I actually don’t need more bass - the M71 have a nice mid-bass and my scrap-subwoofer (scrapwoofer?) fills the lower frequencies quite well when powered properly.
I hope that’s the last major dent in the budget for 2018. Oh, wait. We are going to IKEA in a few hours. Uh-oh.
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Day 18 - efficient at last
Fall in Ontario. Yes, it’s real.
I suddenly felt like recovering in the middle of the day. That was a nice feeling of a sudden focus in thoughts, that helped me in a particular annoying debug chase at work. That sensation followed into the evening/night - I managed to transplant a pot, clear weeds, keep the kitchen intact and even wash the car (?!?). Classic convalescence stage, I guess, some over-reaction of the body.
Eating behaviour is well controlled lately - same 200-calories cap after 18:00. Hunger is almost non-existant, the body is indeed adapting (and probably compensating for that in another time frame during the day).
I have some crazy unfinished story with some Amazon order that got stuck due to an over-zealous international shipping company: A receiver from Amazon.de that requires a permit from the ministry of telecommunication… Long story short, I should prepare a bunch of papers and somehow email those to some obscure address, or basically do UPS’s job. Fun fact: the ministry’s offices are located within walking distance from my workplace, but there is only a single day in the week that could match and I think I should rather go through the standard procedures. Tempting, though.
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Day 17 - moderation in movement
I had the privilege of attending one of Paul Sellers’ workshops (was that two years ago? already?!) and while listening I also scrutinized every tiny movement he made with his hands and upper body - that was fascinating to watch, to say the least. Seemingly effortless, that was the first impression, but that’s only one part of the picture.
I am not too fond of Paul’s writing sometimes, they are bafflingly not as articulate as his real-life presence or as his instructional videos. Nevertheless, this blog post struck right in: In the beginning exercise restraints.
This subject connects very well with the issues I’ve described here in some posts - the need to re-learn how to move. I am getting better at that, but I still have much to learn, e.g. in garden chores. Digging in hard loamy soil is a nice workout but it could be a much more efficient workout if I had ever cared to sharpen my shovel and practice systematic digging movements.
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Day 16 - one task complete
Can’t get cheaper than that: Cheap ring lighting (quite visible in the dropplets reflection) paired with flimsy plastic extension tubes. The inherent sharpness of the 35mm helps to save this photo from total disaster, but the one thing I am perfectly proud of is the pitch-black background (plain simple black cloth).
I finally got my act together and completed arranging the seeds in proper containers. It appears that I have enough good-quality lettuce seeds for an entire state, that particular vegetable sprouts easily. Also got some celery seeds - those sprout all year long but suffer from a short growth period (like almost anything else) during the summer. Looking forward for autumn.
Will be probably back on my feet and at my desk tomorrow. Not really looking forward to that, but gotta bring some bread to the table. I’ve just completed a rather disastreous shopping spree while being ill, so better end it right now by simply having something else on my mind!
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Day 15 - rooting rosemary
It’s full summer here, and any plant robust enough to stand the heat and low humidity is thriving.
In these hot days, rosemary is shooting roots very fast, by simply putting cuttings with relatively soft stems in a jar of water. Just make sure to replace the water every 2-3 days to suppress the green algae grow. Woody stems take longer to shoot roots but they do so eventually, but the best type of cutting are where the branches split - apparently that’s where the growing hormons are concentrated.
Speaking of hormons, I’ve put a few dozens of rosemary cutting directly in potting soil after covering the stem with proper store-bought growth hormons, but the results are poor - most of them just whither away and die. The jar system is much more efficient - not only it is FREE, but you also get to sort the cuttings and plant only those that have grown a healthy bunch of roots, like the magnificent speciment pictured above.
It’s funny how I treat the α6000 as a point-and-shoot camera. Just organize a scene, don’t think even for a second of the low-light conditions, pick your depth-of-field / IOS ratio and BANG, shoot. ISO 2500? Pffff… nothing. I also over-expose 90% of the time by 1/3-2/3 stop - in this lens the over-exposed areas do not create any artifact, you only get a brighter scene, a bit like real-estate shoots that over-expose everything just to get a brighter feel of the house intended for sale.
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Day 14 - lagging behind and goals
This blog is already being written at a two-days delay. I’ve wondered before if it’s ok to write ahead some posts, just in case (Jekyll won’t show those to the end-user before the set date in the settings). Oh well. 😮
That lag is, as expected, in all fronts with the zillions of tasks I’ve been given/taken, but due to the constant writing down of almost any possible idea/task/to-do/whatever, usually on some “notes” app, I am able to keep track somehow. I am actually not bad at prioritization, especially for the immediate / short term tasks, it’s the long term goals that I’m struggling with. No wonder I am not a CEO of anything. 😜
Speaking of goals, the 200-calories limit after 18:00 is celebrating two weeks, with about 2 lapses in the meantime, not bad at all, and certainly a better start than anticipated. Weight hasn’t changed but that’s not something I should even bother checking before two months have elapsed.
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Day 13 - bullet journals
I’ve just filled up completly my notebook that was used as a bullet journal. A lined bullet journal, actually… Will be switching to an horribly expensive notebook soon, let’s see if that makes any differences (the dots, I mean). The system’s greatest strength is its inherent flexibility from one hand, and the adherance to layout principles. Better watch and check related videos.
The video that started it all. The concept was widened up significantly by other YouTubers (99.999% female…) into very creative and good looking journals, way beyond my artistic abilities.
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Day 12 - green
Did a round of sowing & transplanting. Not as green as the photo above, but green nonetheless. Apparently, given the right conditions, rosemary is quick to send out great-looking roots from cuttings. I should be following this with pictures 😣.
Sidenote: Just succumbed to a series of impulsive buys from the big A. I’ve managed to restrain myself quite well in 2018, up until now. Ouch. The excuse for that move was probably my mind has telling me that I should compensate for the cancellation of NetFlix. Ha! that compensation already cost me several years of Netflix usage. Classic. 😳
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Day eleven - vibrancy
phone picture, but a good one.
Feeling quite bad in the last couple of days, sore throat etc. Actually, I don’t recall feeling REALLY good & vibrant in the last years, since the first child was born. Funny thing is, during the only two occasions I could really relax in a kid-free environment thanks to some ultra-expensive pampering vacation organized by a wealthy workplace, I was terribly sick.
Not aging well, I should say. This is not really frightening because there’s nothing to be afraid of in the not-so-distant future, but it’s an uneasy feeling. Could I ever feel vibrant in this earthly body again? Or was it just a tainted, nostalgic memory?
Sidenote: Getting appropriate titles is proving, as expected, to be an arduous task. Reminds me of the Pet Shop Boys album names - those are always, without expection, a single word which has never appeared in the lyrics.
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Day ten - YouTube inspirations
Two almost unrelated channels I’ve been following for quite a long time: My Self Reliance and Pure Living For Life. Both channels are documenting building a house in the wilderness with top-notch filming and editing, but that’s about where the simmilarities end.
Almost a timelapse of the build
The Canda / Ontario channel is situated in a real jaw-dropping frozen wilderness. It’s some kind a weekend project of some very talented and insightful guy. Actually, it’s one of the most serious weekend projects I’ve ever encountered in the YouTube space. Really worth a shot, I especially like the long silence that accompanies most of the videos - just depicting Shawn at work, usually with hand tools only. Inspiring aesthethic experience.
The “yound couples in Idaho” channel is simply one of the most detailed builds depicted everywhere, coupled by excellent editing skills. The couple sometimes ramble endlessly and I can assume that every possible (and costly) mistake has been done in this house build, but that is to be expected in any first-house build. I wouldn’t dare do such a thing, let along documenting it for everyone to see. Their Instagram account is also a fine one.
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Day nine - how to bend
There are dozens of videos out there explaining more or less the same things - basically, learn how to rotate your hips “inwards” to prevent stress on the back.
I’ve discovered about a year ago I need to re-learn how to stand and move. Just “keeping your back straight” is not enough, unless one has extraordinary good reflexes and a natural posture, these things needs to be learned, like holding your fork.
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Day eight - wiggle that tailbone
One-legged bird 😮
Nice tip from an osteopath (bones wiggler?) - when breating, try to breath deep until your tailbone moves. Opera singers will know immediatly what I am talking about - lay a support for the breathing control. This is a simple way to force your muscles/bones to move, especially for seaters. Shallow breathing will barely move the abdomen.
Back to usual 200-calories restriction after 18:00 & tight sleeping schedule. I feel tired but not extremly so, so not bad overall.
Also discovered that innocent-looking cheese slices pack a great deal of calories, making beer look like some kind of weight-reducing diet drink. More 🍺 then!
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Day seven - some workout at last
Troll turned into stone or drinking Rhino? I’ll vote for the Rhino.
Finally got some workout yesterday. Collapsed after 15 minutes but at least got some nice stretches. It still amazes me how easily I get sore muscles from core workout - is my core THAT weak (yup, probably it is).
Diet-wise the weekend has been a predictable disaster, as are all weekends, but I was quite prepared for that. Back on track, continue with that balance. Sleeping time is not stable yet either, it looks like I need to restrict even more the number of tasks I allow myself to complete each day.
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Day six - a taste of Iceland
Canon’s 18-200 is a surprisingly bad lens, unfortunately. I guess the Rebel T5’s sensor is not brilliant either, but in those sunny condition I wouldn’t blame it.
No, it’s not my trip, but it sure looks like an amazing place. :)
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Day five: balance
Balance. Keep the balance. Always walk straight and do not lean when standing. Fight to keep the weak side aligned. Don’t try to compensate by exercising the weak side, it’ll only make matters worse. Just balance.
Unrelated: I’m actually 81.5 kg / bmi 27.4 - the usual 2kg variation range.
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Day four: why my muscles ache
I’ve been following two exceedingly good channels in YouTube: Fitness Blender and Athlean-X. Classic example that will put you out of breath in a jiffy:
Tech note: first usage of partial
includein Jekyll - a nice wrapper for embedded YouTube videos that fills viewport’s width.Jeff from Athlean-X has given some very thourough explanations about postures and his understanding of muscles is exceptional, highly recommended.
Fitness Blender’s couple have simply the best HIIT workouts out there - I can barely complete most of those 20-minutes videos. Intense and concetrated on core - hips/glutes, the most beneficial type of exercises for those who sit on a chair for the majority of their lives, like me. Another pro - most of the exercises do not involve any equipement. It may be nice to beef up later with weights, but it would probably not be wise to try to puff up without the perfect posture first.
Balance. Keep the balance. Always walk straight and do not lean when standing, especially when you have a weak side (I do).
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Day Three - dealing with hunger
Just trying something - back to the ‘ol calories count, but with a twist: Only 200 calories after 18:00. Arbitrary number and arbitrary time, but you have to try something, anything, to control those evening/night feeding frenzies.
I am also trying to frame the sleeping hours into some pattern, but nothing conclusive yet.
Muscles are still aching from the 8-minute exercise I did on day one (yes, 8 minutes only…). Nevertheless, I should be able to do another round today. I can no longer do a full-steam-ahead restart, and exercising a few minutes for each session is probably wiser - the last restart was actually successful.
I am really beginning to like this Jekyll stuff. For example, this is the link to the First day stats. It just works.
Still not sure whether to put the image on top or bottom. Maybe when those images will match the content, some day.
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Day Two
Looks like I solved the streched image issue - just remove height & width from the
<img/>tag, duh.
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Restart: Day One
Well, here’s the point of reference / starting status:
- Weight: 83 kg
- BMI: ~27.5
It’s hard to find a subject that causes more concern than weight gain. There are good reasons for that, it’s not only a matter of external appearance or health, basically it drills down to control, and this ominous feeling of losing control, even before your body stops responding to your will.
Funny things is that the hidden/unspoken truth about weight loss is that in the end it boils down to a simple equation of calories in vs calories out. The answer is: “eat less”, yet, for some reasons I just cannot understand, that’s one of the hardest thing in the world to do. There is something in that feeling of hunger that somehow makes us go nuts.
OK, going nuts. Eating less. Let’s see if we can manage to make any change before the end of the year.
Testing an embedded image from flickr - anything but those dreadful automated hipster gifs from Medium (shudder…)
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Subfolder test
This is a test for putting posts inside subfolders. I came back from the future (20180723, actually) and inserted a blog post inside a directory.
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Day one - using Jekyll
Yeah, this seems a bit weird as a blogpost, but it's always useful to keep some intruction page like this around.
Auto-generated stuff
You’ll find this post in your
_postsdirectory. Go ahead and edit it and re-build the site to see your changes. You can rebuild the site in many different ways, but the most common way is to runjekyll serve, which launches a web server and auto-regenerates your site when a file is updated.To add new posts, simply add a file in the
_postsdirectory that follows the conventionYYYY-MM-DD-name-of-post.extand includes the necessary front matter. Take a look at the source for this post to get an idea about how it works.Jekyll also offers powerful support for code snippets:
def print_hi(name) puts "Hi, #{name}" end print_hi('Tom') #=> prints 'Hi, Tom' to STDOUT.Check out the Jekyll docs for more info on how to get the most out of Jekyll. File all bugs/feature requests at Jekyll’s GitHub repo. If you have questions, you can ask them on Jekyll Talk.
Test: image hosted in flickr
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