More malt

Banana malt vanilla milkshake...

Did not work.  Do not attempt unless you are a trained professional.

Honestly, I'm not quite sure what went wrong.  Despite reducing the amount of milk I added, it came out kind of watery, and the malt and the banana just did not work well together.  Alas.

Don't ask

Turns out, SPITBOL programs actually look a little bit like Perl scripts. Not enough to be really useful, but enough that I can recognize some of the bits.

Don't ask me why we're using SPITBOL.  I won't like the answer.

Death to the Wild Parsnip!

Everyone knows that you should stay away from poison ivy.  Many people even know what it looks like.

Hint:  (image from http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-Poison-Ivy).

Many people have also heard of poison oak and poison sumac, and know to stay away from them as well.  But are you aware of the danger that the wild parsnip can pose?

The stem and leaves of the wild parsnip (essentially the same plant as the cultivated parsnip that we eat) contain chemicals called furocoumarins.  These chemicals are not strictly speaking dangerous on their own, but when they are absorbed into the skin, through contact with a broken plant, they can react to ultraviolet light (from the sun, presumably) and damage the nearby cells, essentially acting as a sunburn accelerant.  The problem is complicated by the fact that the damage typically takes a day or two to show up, so often a victim will just sort of spontaneously develop a burn and have no idea why.

The good news, such as it is, is that the burns aren't even as bad as poison ivy, most of the time.  If it does happen to you, keep it clean and loosely covered.  The blisters will fade pretty quickly.  And of course, if you do manage to recognize the plant, washing yourself off promptly will help a great deal.

Source: http://dnr.wi.gov/wnrmag/html/stories/1999/jun99/parsnip.htm

How to shrink a skyscraper surreptitiously

In Japan, especially in the major metropolitan areas, the laws and regulations regarding construction are EXTREMELY strict.  The amount of noise, disturbance, and physical detritus that can be generated all seem to be much more rigidly controlled than they are here in the States.

And yet-- sometimes, that large building does have to come down!  It might be old, and not up to code anymore, or perhaps the owners can no longer afford the taxes and no one will buy it, or it simply might need to be removed in order to make way for a new bypass.  Over here, it'd be roped off, and depending on how close it was to other buildings, (carefully) knocked down or (carefully) blown up.  More often the former, naturally, since this isn't the movies, but still.

In Tokyo?  They install humongous jacks and a set of screening scaffolding.  The jacks hold up the building while behind the screening (that keeps the noise, dust, and construction unsightliness to a minimum) workers will carefully dismantle the bottom two floors of the building, trucking the bits away for recycling.  The building will be slowly lowered to the ground, the jacks will be reset, and another two floors will be taken away, and so on, until the whole thing quietly disappears.  Sometimes they'll do it from the top down instead, just for a change.


Source, including a time-lapse video of one such demolition:  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/science/tricky-ways-to-pull-down-a-skyscraper.html?_r=3&

Fun to play with, not to eat.

Play-Doh Brand Modelling Compound began life in 1927¹ as a substance for getting soot off of wallpaper. For some time, housewives had been rubbing a homemade goop against the walls to clean them.  I guess the soot had a tendency to stick to it more than to the walls?  Naturally, companies began selling premade mixes of the stuff.  Sadly for the manufacturers, though, the increased use of electric appliances was doing an even better job of removing the soot from the walls of homeowners.  By the mid 1950s, the manufacturers were practically broke.

But in an unexpected reversal of their reversal of fortunes, some of their compound fell into the hands of some Cincinnati schoolchildren. After the shrieking died down, the adults realized that if they removed all of the horrible poisonous cleansing chemicals (boric acid, mostly) from the stuff, and add some friendly dyes, they could market it all over again as a plaything!  You still shouldn't eat it, though, even if it does have a "subtle almond scent."¹

¹http://books.google.com/books?id=jftapGDTmYUC&pg=PA115#v=onepage&q&f=false

Frank's 2000 inch computer monitor

This is the sort of discovery that will make anyone in the audience under the age of 24 go, "Well, duh."

I was moving some papers around the other night, and uncovered the manual that came with the "new" flat-screen TV.  It's a very rudimentary manual-- most of the relevant info is online, things being what they are these days-- but it does have all of the "How to Hook Various Things Up To Your New TV" information.  And one of those "things" was "Your PC."

I am old enough, and our previous TV was old enough, that I have to admit the possibility simply never occurred to me.  The old TV just had a coax and some component video inputs, after all.  Piping a computer into that would clearly have been more trouble than it was worth.  But the new TV has HDMI inputs, and... "Dear?  Can I borrow your laptop for a moment?"

Roughly 10 seconds later, we have a 40+" high-def computer monitor.  I have to admit, I am now sorely tempted to pick up a wireless keyboard/mouse combo, haul the tower downstairs, and see what it's like to play Borderlands 2 on the Big Screen...

Date night

I return from an unexpected hiatus with a completely banal food post!  Oh well.

So my wife came home the other day with a traditional Spanish cookbook (that is, a cookbook of traditional Spanish recipes, not a cookbook written in traditional Spanish).  Most of the recipes were either not especially surprising (patatas bravas, paellas, etc) or impractical for the typical American cook (jugged hare, partridge pâté).  However, one recipe caught my eye, and I just had to try it out.  The name was Tortilla de Dátiles-- Date Omelet.  It gets weirder than that, though.

Basically-- 2 eggs, a couple of chopped dates, a bit of chopped ham, and 4 medium shrimp, sauteed(!).  Lots of butter.  Mix ingredients in the egg and then dump everything into the pan, cook, fold and plate (or plate and fold if that's easier).  Top with a spoonful of tomato sauce.

Definitely peculiar, but oddly compelling, too.  I may actually make it again, although I may try the alternate "cook the eggs by themselves and then fill" technique.  It was also extremely full, so I might try 3 eggs for a slightly larger portion but with better balance.

Milkshake recipe

By weight (use a scale!):

One (1) part malted milk powder.

Three (3) parts milk.

Six (6) parts ice cream.

This makes a nice, medium thick, strongly malty shake.  From here you can adjust as per your own individual tastes.  The actual measurements I ended up with were 33 g malted milk, 100 g milk, and 200 g ice cream, because that was about the minimum for the stick blender to handle effectively.  It was a little on the large side, though.  I ended up splitting it with the wife.

Aircraft Navigation in Five Letters

According to FAA guidelines, a pilot of an aircraft approaching or leaving an airport must use a five-letter heading that designates a particular waypoint.  These designations are assigned more or less at random, but there's nothing that prevents the appropriate official from choosing a particular as-yet-unclaimed set for a particular approach.  For example, pilots flying into or out from the Charles M. Schulz Airport in Sonoma County may do so on SNUPY, LUSEE, PIGPN, or WDSTC.  The list for Portsmouth, NH includes ITAWT, ITAWA, PUDYE, and TTATT.  And those for Kansas City, naturally, include SPICY, BARBQ, SMOKE, and RIBBS.