We were out of sourdough once again, so it was time to make some fresh! About halfway through I realized we didn’t have enough of the bread flour I needed. Instead of 375g, I put in the 200g we had, then about 75g whole wheat flour and 100g all purpose flour.
And how did it turn out? The dough rose as normal, baked as normal, and tastes almost normal. The result is maybe a little tougher than usual, and slightly darker. It’s still great though.
… Read more »I just finished reading the SWAP study. The thrilling congressionally-mandated “Software Acquisition and Practices” study conducted by the Defense Innovation Board. 292 pages of discussion about the US government’s software acquisition practices.
It’s actually quite a bit funnier than you’d expect. Admittedly, it helps to be in on the jokes.
These are the same folks that brought us: Detecting Agile BS. A document which is unexpectedly funny, for a government report, and accurate.
… Read more »I was thinking this morning about how I might manage an Air Force unit that provides networked server management services. For some reason. I realized that, while I know a bit about some of the technology used to provide cloud services, and manage a server farm - or at least what’s used by some cloud providers - I don’t know much about how they organize their business. I started to wonder if someone from Rackspace, or AWS, or DigitalOcean had written a book about their management practices, or company organization.
… Read more »Alright! It’s Christmas! I meant to do this a week ago, but the turkey was still frozen, so we’re doing it today. If it turns out terrible we’ll be eating Chinese for dinner.
I got a pre-brined 12 lbs turkey for less than $1 per pound, put olive oil on the skin, then sprinkled on the rub I use on pork butt because it’s similar to what this person recommends anyway. We’ll smoke it at 225℉, and it should take about 6 hours at that temperature. We’ve got temperature probes in the turkey, so we should know when it’s done.
… Read more »15.5 pound brisket, $3.78 per pound, Sam’s in Idaho Falls, 4 Tbsp salt, 4 Tbsp pepper, 2 Tbsp garlic powder. Gonna put them on at 225℉ to start.
1810, 9 Nov: brisket on the smoker.
1830: sourdough is fermenting.
2200: flat is at 160℉, point at 142℉.
0210, 10 Nov: flat is 166℉, point 164℉. Crutched it!
0730: flat is 186℉, point 187℉. Turned temperature up to 250℉.
0845: put the rest of the ingredients in the bread. I’ve continued doing the 1 tsp regular yeast along with the sourdough starter, and doubling sourdough starter over the Josie Baker recommendation.
… Read more »CybatiWorks is an educational and research tool for learning about Industrial Control System cyber components. I haven’t used it much, but it looks like it’ll simulate a PLC controlling a process, and it’ll do it on a Raspberry PI, GPIO-connected hardware, and a controlling HMI (Human-Machine Interface) desktop. You can buy the hardware pre-setup, then use it in a course.
The person who runs the company is Matthew Luallen, and he’s quite responsive over email. I’ve been trying to look into the system a bit, and CybatiWorks offers the RasPI image for free through their “Community” program. Unfortunately that’s run by Google+, and is now a broken link. Emailing the responsive founder, however, will get you a link to the necessary image.
… Read more »I’ve done some small research about blockchain recently, and just want to put my thoughts down on paperblog so I can stop thinking them. Most of this is rehashing information I’ve read, but the “signed code verification” piece towards the end is an idea of mine that I’ve not read about elsewhere.
Blockchain is a hot term these days. It’s a popular management buzzword, and as such it can get thrown about as a cure for just about all that ails you. All businesses need to store data, and blockchain is known as a data-store, so everyone wants to make sure you’ve considered their (probably expensive) blockchain solution for data storage…
… Read more »Time to make sourdough again! The starter has been going for a couple weeks, but during that time it never adopted the stinkiness I associated with the early starter stages last time. It does seem to grow after feeding, it produces some alcohol on top… It’s probably doing it’s thing enough to make some bread, so it’s time to try that out.
I was trying to diagnose the difference between the starter this time and last, and the best I can come up with is that the whole wheat flour is pretty old this time. It’s only a couple months away from it’s best-by date, so it has been sitting on the shelf for almost a year. I think in that time the natural yeasts and bacteria in the flour maybe mostly died. This, the harder time starting out. If this loaf is sour and good, perhaps this is really the better situation. Maybe the yeast just went into suspension, and the bacteria died, for instance, letting me skip the “stinky gym socks” state of starter. I don’t know.
… Read more »Well, we’re still unpacking things, but we’ve been here for a bit. One of the things I was most excited to have arrive is the smoker - not gonna lie, that was a top priority. I’ve been looking forward to having some smoked Salmon again, and Sarah has mentioned it a couple times too.
There’s a Sam’s Club more convenient these days, so I picked up some salmon there. They had Sockeye for about $12 a pound, and “Atlantic” for about $9. I went with the Atlantic to see how it’d go. This looks like the same fish I was buying back at Costco in MD. I’ve heard the Sockeye is amazing - maybe next time. At that price though, I’ll probably smoke some other fish to see how it goes. Trout? This time I picked up two fillets totaling about 5.5 lbs.
… Read more »Idaho National Labs has a program right now called “CO-STAR”. Their researchers do great work, but as with any research group they are constantly advocating for funding, and researchers are constantly advocating among themselves for time.
Everybody spends time advocating for something. “Pitching” something. You want your boss to consider a smarter way of working, one that you’ve come up with? You pitch it to her. You want someone to use an open-source project you’ve created? You pitch it to them.
… Read more »