Skellington

I got an Antec Skeleton case from Newegg.com today.

Case out of the box. Cat in the box:



Empty case, front view:



Empty case, rear view:



Full case, up and running Gentoo Linux of course:



Yes, the computer booted in less than 5 tries. Connectors were the main culprit in lack of bootage.

The documentation that came with this case is absolute crap. I had to google and find a review site to find out how the HDD mount system worked. I pity the noob that tries to assemble one of these from scratch.

Total time for disassembly of the existing Linux box and reassembly in the new case and successful boot: 2.5 hours.

Butter!

I made butter today. Took half an hour including cleanup. Detailed instructions are found at Cooking for Engineers.

I started with 2 quarts of heavy cream and 2/3 cup of cultured buttermilk. The cream and buttermilk mixture fermented for about 12 hours. Into the KitchenAid with the whisk attachment, rinse off butter, and viola!



Yielded 777g of butter and a bunch of buttermilk. I will use the buttermilk to marinate chicken for fried chicken tomorrow. It costs about $6 per pound for butter this way. I am going to see if I can find a raw milk supplier and skip the whole heavy cream purchase next time.

Addendum:

Fresh butter on homemade sourdough bread, 'nuff said.

Brotforms

I got some brotforms, also known as bannetons, from the interwebs last week and tried them out today. I made David Klatte's recipe for 50% Whole Wheat Sourdough and made it as 0% Whole Wheat Sourdough because whole wheat gives you cancer.

I divided the recipe in half at the loaf forming stage and let each half rise in its own form. I tried a method I found on Slashfood for increasing the steaminess of the oven. I used rocks from the yard. Much steam was made.

It is cooling now. Looks and smells yummy.

My Favorite Liberal Newsperson

Is the super awesome MSBC guest and guest-host Rachel Maddow. But I am really glad Keith Olberman is back on Countdown.

More Vintage Russian Advertising Posters as iPhone Wallpaper

Thanks again to Avi at Dark Roast Blend

Vintage Russian Advertising Posters as iPhone Wallpaper

original images from Dark Roasted Blend

Second Haggis Post!

Here's a link to whole bunch for haggis recipes. Enjoy!

According to my sister, a large cat can be substituted for a sheep for the constituent innards.

Bonaire, redux

I put down the deposit and sent in the paperwork for the East Coast Divers Bonaire trip in January 2009. The first trip was in 2003. Seems like I am on track for taking this trip every 3 years. My gear should be plenty dry by now :)

Twitter

So I am slowly easing into this new-fangled Web 2.0 thing. I joined twitter and added a twitter hoobie to this page. I will prolly just skip the whole 2.0 web and move to the 3.0, the one without the tubes.