Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Chester County Homebrew Fest 2012
June 26, 2012

Many people I knew were brewing beer, and it seemed like something I wanted to try. For my birthday a couple of years ago, Berta took me to the homebrew store in Downingtown and we brought back a bunch of equipment to make beer. The brewing went pretty well, and in the spring of 2011 I heard of a homebrewing-related event taking place involving some people I knew in Philadelphia, called Beer Camp. We decided to participate, taking a Dunkelweizen of our own to compete against the others. I invited our friend, Ken, to “help” us set up and serve beer out of a vacant lot next to the Jamaican Jerk Hut on South Street with a few other brewers. The event went well, but I think it lost money, possibly due to the high cost of the property rental for the afternoon.

After Beer Camp, Ken and I started talking about bringing such an event back to Chester County, using the Elks lodge as a place to host. We’d keep the same general format as Beer Camp, invite home brewers to share their beer for free, serve a nice dinner to the attendees, play some music, and have a good time sampling the beer. We joined up with our fellow Elk, Troy, and started to plan the Chester County Homebrew Festival.

Microsoft Filtering
June 21, 2012

Undoubtedly you’ve seen Microsoft’s Surface announcement? I’ve been following some of the news on the topic, and specifically have been watching who is saying what.

I saw the preview of Windows 8, and was completely underwhelmed. I recognize that mobile computing is the future, but desktop computing isn’t going anywhere. Windows 8 seems like a clumsy stumble into slapping a mobile finish onto a desktop. Even when functioning in only a tablet mode, why does the system need to be “Windows”? The branding, interaction design, and presentation all look to me like a train wreck, and I’m no Apple fanboy (although, if this keeps up, the only viable place for a commercial operating system looks like it might come from those quarters).

Coursework
June 06, 2012

welcometo5thgrade.jpgAn idea struck me this morning that needs fleshing out and maybe you can help. Abby’s homework last night (with only 4 days of school left in the year) was to create a brochure for next year’s 5th graders on their first day, to tell them all of the things they’ll like about their upcoming year. She did good work, and I commented on how this is probably one of the few things she’s worked on that she wouldn’t get to keep.

While we were setting up the camera to remedy this problem, I made a few comments about how the mistakes she made in the brochure were things she could work on over the summer if she drew every day. “Just think about how many days there are in the summer, and how you’ll be able to fill a whole sketchbook with drawings if you even did only one per day!” I told her. I started thinking about the structure of the school year, and how lessons are planned out and take a finite amount of time.

Fixing Audio Transmission
June 05, 2012

I’ve been using a couple of Windows programs for quite a while that make my life better in small, but significant, ways. The first is Power Mixer. The second is BlueSoleil.

Power Mixer allows you to take better control over the audio configuration on your system. It replaces (but doesn’t disable) the internal Windows volume control, which has never worked great for me. There are a couple of things that Power Mixer does that I find very useful. First, it has a concept of “presets”. A preset allows you to set the volumes for all of the audio devices in your system all at once. This may sound a little strange for people that only have one audio device, but I imagine many people have more than one audio device on they system and don’t even know it.

Atmospheric Office
May 23, 2012

One of the many perils of working at home is not having anyone to blame but yourself when the atmosphere in the office goes completely haywire.

I found my office this morning in a sad state. A thick fog rolled in while we were asleep last night and burned off quickly as the sun arose this morning. I left some small fans in my window from yesterday, since it was cooler outside than inside (why does this happen??), and all last night they pumped thick, foggy air into my little office.