So literal

Interesting drip pattern on my windshield

When driving into work today, I noticed an interesting way a raindrop ran down my windshield. It's a little difficult to see in this picture, but it would drip down in little steps; sometimes going more across than down, sometimes more down than across. I'm talking about the left-hand fork of the drip.

The angle is a little wonky, but you can sort of see it clearer here (it's the drip on the right fork here):

The "across" paths basically track the path of my windshield wipers. I wonder if sand or salt or something got dragged across the windshield by the wipers, and basically etched micro grooves into the windshield that channel the water.

Turn 2 cats into 1. Because Internet

So I made a website recently, just for the fun of it. What do you think?
http://www.concatenatez.com

Sous vide burgers

Quick on the heels of upgrading my sous vide controller last week, this past Sunday we had some friends over for a "barbecue" where I made sous vide burgers. The recipe was "simple," it only had two ingredients:

1. grind up a bunch of meat (sorry, didn't take any pictures of this)
2. add an amount of salt equal to 0.8% times the weight of the meat
3. shape into 160g patties, seal in bags (with about a teaspoon of oil [fine, three ingredients]) using the water-displacement method, and let sit in the fridge for an hour
4. cook sous vide at 131F (55C) until burgers reach a core temperature of 129F (54C)
5. sear on grill or with blowtorch
6. eat!

Here are all the burgers cooking:

Although it looks like the temperature is actually 2.2 degrees too hot, I haven't fixed the offset on the PID yet. It's actually at 55C.

The final result, perfectly medium-rare through and through, on a bun with mustard, tomato paste and vidalia onion:

Slacktivism and Boston Strong Social Media

I have lived in Boston for about 5 years now; I call it home. There was some kind of distance as the newscasters speculated, a sort of loneliness thinking about how tons of people would hear the news, but so few could actually relate to how I felt as a Bostonian.

But then people started changing their profile pictures on social media. Completely unexpectedly - seeing them actually made me glad.

 

Even though a #prayforboston tweet takes all of 5 seconds for someone to post - reading it makes me know that for at least those 5 seconds, someone cared about Boston - and that makes me happy.

The experience made me think of some other ostensibly shallow internet-only campaigns like the recent gay marriage avatar-changing "slacktivism"

Does the Supreme Court of the USA care about facebook profile images? I'm pretty sure that they don't. Do people who are gay care? I'll bet that they do.

Does the Israeli or Iranian government care about photos their citizens are posting? Maybe not. But do the citizens of those countries care? Yeah, they probably do.

This is so awesome - should we change our profile pictures for everything? Lets not get carried away.

DIY Immersion Circulator -- Version 2

I decided to upgrade my previous method of cooking sous vide. As I noted in that post, the original version left much to be desired in terms of safety and reliability. Although I originally intended to pack all the electronics into a PC power supply case, as a test of concept I used a plastic storage container:

With this arrangement I had a lot of space to fit everything. You'll also note the outlet on the front. This outlet is controlled by the PID-SSR combo, and leaves me a lot of flexibility for heating elements. Basically, instead of hard-wiring the heaters to the SSR, I wired them with a plug on the end, and it just plugs into the outlet. This leaves me the option of using the controller to regulate the temperature of other devices, like my smoker.
Now, the formerly-packed case just has the heaters and thermocouple attached:

This version also has a cooling fan for the SSR (I cut slots in the side of the container for airflow).

Thus far, I'm much happier with this version. After I've tested it for a bit and am sure that I really like this arrangement, I'm going to try and jam all the stuff into a PC power supply case so it takes up less space. Stay tuned for future updates.

Boston Marathon Update

I am okay. As far as I know - everyone I know is OK too.

Last night I took part in a midnight bicycle marathon, which took me right past the site of today's explosions. I really love this annual event (I've previously written about it here). It is usually filled with strangers encouraging and helping strangers, basically everyone is overjoyed about Boston's special holiday.

Not today.

My friend Sam Novey understands the marathon more than anyone. He's run it several times dressed in a patriotic burger costume to raise money for citizen schools - actually he's organized a group that does this every year. They were at the marathon today.

This is what Sam had to say this evening.

Skipped my first Boston Marathon in 5 years today.

The Boston Marathon is not only a great athletic event, it's one of the greatest community events in the world.

What happened today is not just an act of violence against individual people, it's an act of violence against all of us who seek to live meaningful lives where we approach our neighbors and public spaces with joy and love instead of fear.

If you have comments you can leave them below or directly on his post.

My favorite books and CRC Press Update

CRC Press open letter update

Last week I wrote an open letter to CRC Press because they used a photo of mine without my permission. Not too long after I received a very kind and well written response from them - politely offering "as a measure of goodwill"

$300 worth of books from CRC Press

I'm impressed with the speed, and manner in which they read and replied to my letter. I'll have to speak with my lawyer friends before responding officially though.

In the meantime, I thought I might use this post to talk about a few physical books that I'd recommend reading.

The Almagest by Ptolmey, first chapter

It is a scientific analysis of the Earth's position in the universe that is mostly rigorous and entirely consistent with itself (as far as I can tell). Using basic geometry and Aristottle's laws of motion Ptolemy demonstrates that the Earth is a sphere, that it is definitely not spinning at all, and that there is a celestial sphere with stars on it really far away. I couldn't understand anything past the first chapter.

Flatland

This is a good fun read (I haven't read it in a while). Also its fiction ... folks love fiction.

Information Theory by Gordon Raisbeck

An understanding of information theory paved the road for the Internet as we know it. It is just about 100 pages so really tiny. Also, you can buy this old book for like a dollar which is amazing.

Visual Complex Analysis, by Tristan Needham

This is my all time favorite book. It reduces a complex topic to basic geometry! Read this and you will never see imaginary number the same way, they will become your imaginary friends.

Understanding Analysis, by Stephen Abbot

This is another great small book, I read it in college and although I have since probably forgotten most of the details - the way infinity is explained in the book sticks with me. See the book doesn't explain infinity, you just end up with an understanding of infinity while understanding the main material. It is small too so I love it for that too.

Feel free to share your favorite books in the comments

A response from the Port Authority

I contacted the Port Authority after my blog post last week about the GWB Bus Station. And, I got a response:

Dear Mr. Lansey,
Thank you for contacting the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.  The modification you appear to be suggesting  for our current jitney operation was examined several years ago as a result the 181St Street Study.  We agree that reversing the access to 178th St and egress onto 179th St does make perfect sense, reducing the number of loops by half. Unfortunately, that would require significant modifications to the structural slab which also serves as the ceiling for the Trans-Manhattan Expressway below.

As you may be aware, we anticipate renovations to begin on the GWB Bus Station later this year.  The renovated layout  will remove jitneys wishing to access the Station from the Bridge, from the 178th/Broadway/179th Streets loop entirely.  We hope that you view this as welcome news.

Sincerely,
 [Name Redacted]
Customer Relations

I replied to get info about the significant modifications they need to do; as far as I can, jitneys can angle in the other direction to the curb without any construction needed. I've also asked for more details about the renovated layout. We'll see if they reply back.