We Have the Technology

So here's the problem:

I created a recipie for beer that is incredible in flavor. Very chocolate, very roasted coffee. Problem? It didn't carbonate. I left it in fermentation too long, apparently, and the yeast wasn't strong enough to carbonate. It pressurized some, but not enough to make the gas stay in suspension.

My solution?

I'm going to buy a tube or two of yeast and priming sugar, and make varying concentrations of mixture that I will add to bottles of water, possibly grained water.

What do I hope to learn from this? here goes:

Hypothesis: there exists some concentration of yeast-to-sugar that results in a bottle's worth of carbonation.
Test method: produce five or so concentrations of said mixture, adding each to a bottle. Let sit for a week.
Evaluation: pour each solution. Based on fizz, choose a solution mixture suitable for adding to each bottle of flat beer.

Success? I'll keep you posted.

NERRRRRR

Nat: powers of jealousy, vulnerability, and some other power you don't get to choose ACTIVATE!
Jeff: ?
Nat: well, you're all jealous, then sauron looks at you and you're all "OMG MY HEART SI BURST!!!" then hobbits become invisible because they're shifty and avoidant, while that giant thing was... well, I guess super strong or something.
Nat: I don't know
Nat: I want a ring to give me the power to print money
Nat: or the power to throw explosions
Nat: i get the impression viggo mortensen kind of sucks.
Jeff: yeah
Nat: i bet if he put the ring on, he'd become a geranium.

File this under "apathy"

So I'm in class, and we're talking about abuse/neglect statistics with regard to children in the state of maryland. Funny story, we should be learning material... instead, I get to hear from a classmate "umm... like, my mom told me about this one time in maryland recently some kids were duct taped together."

Why do I come to class? It's nothing but punishment, after all.

I'm a contributor

Look here for the following (which is reposted both because I wrote it and because I don't know that they'll keep it):

Dirt Farming

Dirt Farming is currently the state's primary employment opportunity. Use of the term "farming" is perhaps a generosity; the same 40 cubic feet of dirt have been moving about the state's roads for 5,000 years. Counties often trade dirt back and forth by way of subcontracted dump trucks. These trucks are Maryland's most populous life form, accounting for 84.6 percent of the state's poulation. Most of these large, mild-mannered robots are immigrants from Japan; they chose to reside in the state after growing weary of repeated taunting by Gamera. Sadly, this led to frequent bed wetting once the trucks realized their new home had a slight turtle infestation. Newer models have overcome this disability.

The current going rate per load of dirt is somewhere around 31,200,000 Yen. This fluctuates wildly according to the whims of the state, although a large part of the proceeds go to fueling the 13.4 million truck fleet. Rob Reiner has been implicated in a price fixing incident believed to have funded his 1994 consumption of a castle, but many prominent Baltimorons deny the use of general dirt farming funds for the purchase of snack food items.

Building Apple's ChatServer 37.1

Since google was of absolutely no assistance to me on this, I've taken it upon myself for adding drections on how to build the ChatServer-37.1 as found here in Apple's Darwin Open Source project listing.

First and foremost, the project doesn't have the traditional configure - make - make install build path I've come to expect from open source projects. For this tarball, Apple includes all dependencies (apparently) and the process is rolled into the main Makefile.

The end result of this seems to be that, in order to install this package (providing jabber and iChatServer), all you have to do is cd into the ChatServer-37.1 directory and tell it to make install.

That should be it... I'm currently waiting for the make process to finish. I think the process should result in a fully functional Mac OS X service, but I'll let you know. Not that you care. Like I said, public service.

[appending:]
So this didn't work right. The build failed for a file called membershipPriv.h. This is annoying because nobody else on the internet had this probelm and had google find a result for them. However, further contributing to the public good, I found an alternative: use darwinbuilds.

I have yet to see this complete successfully, but # darwinbuilds ChatServer seems to be doing well for itself.

[appending:]
A lot of things don't work right. I tried to manually install the necessary libraries after darwinbuilds failed to complete its installation properly. As it is now, I got it to compile fine, apparently, but the installation fails during ditto because I already have python 2.3 installed.

Joy. Mucking about with makefiles is enough to make me stay up until 1:30 for no reason.

Also I'm surrounded by suck at the moment.

Grammar Accident

Nat: were you around when I told you someone reached my website by searching yahoo for "content of whiskey" and that not only am I in such a search, I am the first result?
Jeff: I think I was
Nat: ...
Nat: "were you around when I told you"
Nat: great
Nat: good job
Nat: F

Cartoon Network Sucks

haha! this post will be twofold! but I'm not explaining myself until after you read this.

So at 10:30 every night, cartoon network has been showing Dragon Ball Z. I find this compelling and have made it a part of my nightly routine since sometime in June or July. In fact, for various stretches of time, DBZ has been pretty much the only thing I have to get me through the day. Now, instead of something nice at the end of the day, I'll be treated to half hours of Cheap Seats followed by "Why the hell am I awake?" because Yu-Gi-Oh GX is now on every night at 10:30. And every evening at 5:30 or 5:00. And a two hour block on Friday. And I think a couple times every saturday and sunday. DBZ will now be on saturday nights at 7:30.

Not that I have anything better to do, but go to hell, cartoon network. This crap and full metal alchemist and god knows what the hell else, it doesn't matter.

Now. Part I of explanation: I'll get more traffic! God, can you imagine? Search results for Dragon Ball Z, DBZ, cartoon network... wow. Go me, it's my birthday. :-!
Part II of explanation: all the people I used to know will read this "i'm watching dragonball" nonsense and hate me! less work for me! huzzah!

Generalizations

So on slashdot today, someone ranted about how "specs are this and that, but there are in fact distinct cases of each; 'this' specs are good, 'that' specs are bad." They closed with the thought "Generalizations = false."

Yes, yes they are.

However, someone needs to teach the internet an important fact: just because something is not universally true does not mean it's universally false, and that implies that generalizations can be useful, especially if they are true in a majority of cases.

Example, you ask? Gravity! Newton's laws are invalid in cases on the level of quantum physics, but we're still taught them and use them in the majority of cases.

Generalizations! Shut the hell up, Internet!

Oh, uncyclopedia!

The bermuda triangle gets such a bad rap.