November 2007 Archives

my yeast ranch is growing. i've now got 3 slants each of two belgian ale strains, and two slants of a german lager strain. those all appear to be viable and uncontaminated.

last night i went through the process of making plates and slants. i now have 7 malt-agar plates and four uninoculated malt-agar slants. i'm getting better at it. part of the better was procedural, part of it was new equipment (beakers work much better than flasks -- easier to stir in the agar, and much less prone to boilover), and part of it was experimental (how about i remove from heat before adding any powders?).

i didn't get any bubbles in the slants this time. i suspect the problem last time was overfilling. these ones are a little underfilled, which i doubt will be much of a problem.

my inoculating technique clearly needs work. that will come with more experience i reckon.

the plates got all sticky on the outside, as some of the malt-agar spilled out (as with last time) into the water of the pressure cooker. last time, I was autoclaving only sealed culture tubes, but they were covered in agargoo, so that explains that. this time there was no spillage (hooray for my $3 turkey injector!) but there were agar filled plates. i suspect the heat of the autoclave expanded the liquid agar right on out of the plates. or maybe some spilled out as i took the cooker to the sink for cooling. unclear.

also unclear is whether i have enough malt-agar in the plates. how will i know? i'll find out when i try to culture something.

it's Frobuary 3, YOMHC 0x21.

i went in (heh) for a trim to shore up the hawk. i don't think i can have anything else before the brows grow back. the mohawk distracts nicely from the lack of eyebrows, which, otherwise, is quite disturbing.

i made a stranger jump in surprise today just by walking past. that's been happening a lot, lately.

there's a guy at the office who i think, now, is actually scared of me. a coworker suggested that this is because the guy is jewish and i look like a skinhead. i explained that i do not look like a skinhead, and even if i did, i'd make a terrible nazi, though the best kind of jew, which is to say, of course, a self-hating one.

the longer i keep it, the more fond of the haircut i grow. which is a bad thing, since the joke of my license photo really is diminished if i actually look like that.

my hair, actually, is now the longest it's been in many months. the strip, that is. the rest is as short as the clippers (money's worth gotten, woo!) will let it be.

my plan is to let the strip reach the point where it's curly. no spiking goo for me, thanks. we'll have to wait and see what that means for the rest of the do.

passed the 30k mark. had another semi-inspired bit, i guess, depending on your idea of inspiration. details follow. if you replace "spock" with "me" and "samson" with "victor" then i have pretty much plagarized myself. but then, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so i guess i've flaterhyd myself.

I'M THE LORD OF THE DANCE!!!!

QED.

okay, that's done. i'm now officially a yeast rancher.

after bungling a starter (that's gonna be a(nother) dark tripel if i don't decant that carmelized, oxidized, darkened DME wort outta the flasks) i pitched most of my two yeasts into the starter flasks, but managed to get a bit into a couple of empty slants. i may have cross contaminated the starters, which is okay, but i am quite certain i did not cross contaminate the slants, which would have been very bad.

once the starters were off to the stir plates, i did my best to inoculate 3 slants of each. out of the 8 slants i made the other night, only 2 were really looking good. i wiped instead of stabbing, and i did one yeast with a flamed inoculation needle and hte other yeast with a disposable plastic loop. we'll see if any of the stuff makes any difference at all.

i've got more lab gear on the way. this is actually, even with all the screwups, quite fun.

one of my favorite albums ever is by a decidedly punk band: flogging molly.

i'm really digging "the offspring"'s americana right now, which, according to wikipedia, is a punk album.

also, i'm on the fence about green day, but they definitely qualify as punk.

and finally, i've got a mohawk.

when did this all happen?

the thing that i find interesting is that the lyrics on flogging molly's album, swagger, are not just excellent in the sense of being well thought out non-pap non-drivel, they also happen, coincidentally, to seem to speak directly to me. example:

I don't eat I just devour, everyone in every hour 
All is me, is all I need and that's all that I care 
Propelled through all this madness, by your beauty and my sadness 
I'll never change or rearrange, till I've finished what I've started.

And life leads me here 

It shows me, I have never really loved no one but me 

Like the time, you slipped through my hands 

I'll never understand why I'm such a Selfish Man

or

So go and bow your head and weep 
For your world won't change while you sleep 
Yeah, go and bow your head and weep 
For the summer that was lost, now is gone

likewise, from the offspring:

Have you ever buried your face in your hands
cause no one around you understands
Or has the slightest idea what it is that makes you be
Have you ever felt like there was more
Like someone else was keeping score
And what could make you whole was simply out of reach, well, I know

Someday, Ill try again

And not pretend, this time forever

Someday, Ill get it straight

But not today, have you ever

and also:

When we were young the future was so bright (whoa)
The old neighborhood was so alive (whoa)
And every kid on the whole damn street (whoa)
Was gonna make it big and not be beat.

Now the neighborhood's cracked and torn (whoa)

The kids are grown up but their lives are worn(whoa)

How can one little street

Swallow so many lives?

to a lesser extend, green day manages to produce some lyrics that rise above the usual garbage of modern music, but part of the reason i'm so on the fence with them is that i really can't tell whether they mean it. most of the time they sound to me like highly polished fakes.

in any case, (light, i make no bones about it) punk seems to be the pop music de jour. the rest of hte time, it's beets for me. beets was punk, wasn't he? check out the hair. yep, definitely punk.

passed the 25k mark, after i'd decided i was done for the day, i was inundated with an additional 1600 words that i had to write. so i wrote them. they're crap, but they're also among the best stuff that i've written so far. i seem to be at my best when writing of dreams, and it gets tiresome because writing about dreams keeps me from writing about the "actual stuff". it's hard to write a novel about dreams.

anyhow, in case you're wondering what constitutes "the best so far" of my crummy novel, posted for your curiousity is what i just wrote, which is a good indicator of the themes of the novel, on account of its about the tenth recapitulation of the central plot point of the story.

weapons of wort destruction.

at least, they will be, once i scrape some yeast into them.

also: everything i need to make a nice, dry hopped, desert date beer: lots and lots of homebrew with which to r, dw, and hahb.

okay, it's not enough to have control over the entire brewing process, it's not enough to grow our own hops, now i've gotta be a yeast rancher. i've had the equipment sitting in brewery storeroom #2 for several months now, crying out with loneliness every time i opened the box to get DME for a starter. plus, this next brew will feature double yeasts, so i figured, now is really the time to get at it.

so last night i made slants. slants are tests tubes that get filled with a sterilized malt extract and agar solution, heated to make the goo runny, then put on their side (slanted) to let the goo harden in a way that exposes lots of surface area. then, later (that is, tomorrow) i'll take some yeast and put it on the surface of the goo and it will grow, and i'll have a yeast colony from which to draw for future beers.

that's the idea, at least. making slants is really quite simple, but i ran into every problem imaginable.

first, of course, the flask that i wanted to use would not fit on my burner. so after searching for and melting several grates, i gave up and went with my backpacking stove. that worked well until, of course, i got a boilover. how could i have forgotten that i'd get a boilover? it's guaranteed for homebrewers. the camp stove is not exactly stable, so i could not easily remove the flask when the boilover hit. but i pushed on, and added the agar, and got another boilover, this one, enormous. that was the end of that.

so i got my 2L flask and redid the procedure in that with a different burner, upon which the 2L flask fit just fine. it had boilovers too but they were a little more manageable. what was not manageable was melting the agar. the gorram stuff just clumped and clumped. "stir it" said the internets, but you know, it's really really hard to get any kind of stirring implement down to the bottom of a 2L flask. eventually i dumped everything into my smallest all-clad pot and finished it up in there. i never did get rid of all the clumps by the time i'd decided to pour.

pouring. bleh. i don't have a funnel small enough for the slants, much less a steady hand. agar goo everywhere. fortunately, once it hardens, it is quite easy to clean. and once we got them into the pressure cooker (to sterilize them) everything seemed to go well. heck if i know whether i did 15psi, but i sure did 15 minutes.

at the end, there was DME everywhere (can't stand that stuff), burned chunks of goo stuck to the bottoms of two flasks, wort all over, and several dirty pots. hops graciously cleaned it all up, even the inside of the 2L flask, which is impressive.

after pressure cooking i slanted the slants and went to bed. this morning, 3 of 8 look "perfect" and several of the others have lots of bubbles. i dunno if the bubbles will matter: i doubt it.

anyhow, i took copious notes and next time everything will go smoothly. i can buy slants preloaded with agar but i'd feel like a tool, because making my own is supposed to be so "easy".

(also i think i overpaid for the agar. they say it's a buck down at the asian supermarket, i got it for 7 from the homebrew shop. maybe the homebrew version is "lab quality" or something. sure.)

now with 100% more akg!

than there is on top, now.

professional help.

first, you need an assistant. an assistant with a snappy uniform. and a snappy uniform of your own.

no, we didn't coordinate. at least, not consciously. we just happened to be wearing the same shirts.

same on the back?

yep.

who are those two? do they look different from a weird angle?

no.
also, you need dates. or so i've heard.

it's Frobuary 1, YOMHC 0x20.

pics to come.

but now, my pimply scalp and burning, mentholated, former eyebrows are off to the DMV.

so, we went on down to the homebrew competition last saturday, me, hops, rictor/veg and luis. we met the proprietor of cheap and easy brewing co. there, and he took 3 places for 5 entries, not bad, not bad at all. his tripel beat mine, and mine got rather poor reviews, both from the official judges and from the off-duty judges who tasted a bottle at the event.

but, i was pleasantly surprised to find, i really, truly, really honestly was there for accurate "pro" feedback. and that is exactly what i got. my feelings were not hurt, and i wheedled the judges and tasters for more info. the great thing is, all the info i got was applicable, all the feedback pointed to flaws in my process (mainly: impatience) and all the errors can be corrected.

this weekend, of course. i'm making another tripel then, and it will be the greatest, or at least, most entertaining beer i've ever made.

i also think it's quite funny that although my beer was not a big weener, my star trek t-shirt (which was being worn in preparation for tomorrow's photo), the one what says "all i need to know i learned from watching star trek" and has a big picture of the enterprise a, and is two sizes too large; that shirt got two comments pertaining to its greatness.

beer people are nerds, dorks, and geeks. i fit right in. it were great.

i heard on the radio yesterday that normal mailer, whose works i have never read, would write 1500 words per day.

to make my target of 50k words this month, i need to average 1666 words per day. i'm supposed to do better than mailer?

i've begun setting myself a 30 minute timer. i find that in 30 minutes, with good flow, nonstop, i can bang out 1k words of horrific crap. if i'm still going at 00:00:00, i continue until the flow stops. i managed 1600 today.

hooray, i beat norm.

evidently it is headphone-swapping-month, which is saving me lots of money.

i got my hands on a pair of very-well-broken-in hd650s, recabled with expensive magic copper that lets electrons flow freely instead of all congested-like. that's right, this incredibly stiff, inconvenient, always-in-the-way cable turns the stock hd650s from the 101 in LA during rush hour to the 101 in palo alto during rush hour, you know, with a free-flowing diamond lane, rushing at 100 miles an hour in the proper direction. no restriction of flow!

okay, enough about the silly recabling. the owner says it makes an audible difference, and he's probably not making it up. i haven't had a real listen to hd650s without the recable so i dont know.

he's been listening to them for months, and says that although they color the sound greatly, adding warmth were there wasn't any, he's now gotten so used to them that he can't listen to any other set of cans without crippling disenjoyment. so i volunteered to take them off his hands for a while so he could go cold-turkey and return to his other, lonely, neglected phones.

so far, i have not been impressed. doing an A-B with the 701s is like having earwax removed: i can actually hear spaces and air and soundstage with the 701s, and at lower volumes. with the 650s, everything sounds "veiled", which is a term i borrow from the forums, a term which the owner denies exists, but is truly apt. i suppose my metaphor of earwax combines well with the "veil" description: listening to these cans is like listening to music through a thick veil of earwax.

that's not to say they're bad. proponents of these cans laud their "smooth" "silky" "intimate" sound. they're plenty detailed, and have very pleasant presentation and a deep, lovely low-end. if i hadn't been used to the airyness of the 701s i'd be impressed. but with the 650s, there's just less "there" there. and i like a lotta "there".

they seem rolled off at the top. i've got a swell song featuring some of those finger clapper cymbals that bellydancers use. with the 701s you feel like you're in the room with the bellydancer. not so with the 650s. too much sparkle has been removed from the highs.

in their defense, because of this smoothed out, warmed up presentation, they're less fatiguing than the 650s. they sounded pretty sweet with some amon tobin last night, but i was a bit tipsy and swept up in crappy writing, so who knows how accurate my perceptions were?

folks say that once you get the 650s recabled for balanced operation. i could actually get those, as my DAC has balanced out, and even though the DAC's manufaturer scoffs at audiophiles who use his unit to drive balanced cans, those laughable audiophiles swear by the sound. balanced 650s go for, hilariously enough, $650. for that i could get two pairs of dt990s or a very nice tube amp, either of which i suspect would sound more to my liking.

speaking of which, someone needs to loan me some dt990s for a spell...

last night, lightly drunk on dubbel and tripel, i reached some sort of sweet spot, and cranked out 1000 words in 20 minutes. i have not yet reviewed them so i cannot say whether they make any sense. i recall thinking at the time that i was being a little more repetitive than usual, but not allowing this to stop me. flow was what i was after, and the liquor seemed to have brought that.

a proud, age-old tradition i joined last night, i reckon, of drunken writers banging away in a dark room at the keyboard, listening to electronica on their borrowed sennheisers, committing to paper bog knows what and hoping that some of it will be useful in the morning.

how special.

heh.

heh heh heh.

time for a haircut and a shave.

shave: tomorrow. haircut: wednesday.

i just made a character a lance corporal.

i dont really know what that is.

i wonder if that will come through?

say what i will about comfort, the merits of instrument separation, bass response, and all the rest: the k701s provide an unbelievable soundstage.

wide wide wide.

for this alone they are keepers, but they also have that super fancy instrument separation. neat.

threw a party this weekend. i guess that's something i do now.

also something i do: provide beer for parties. this time, the beer was far better than the beer i served at the wedding (depending on who you ask). it was also an actual beer, and not just "tea".

this is the first time i've had my beers sampled simultaneously by so many people. we had on tap the Black Death and the ORA. i've had mixed reviews in the past on the BD, but this time, the feedback was olverwhelmingly positive, even from some fellow homebrewers. that is encouraging, it was very experimental. they're positive about my ideas for improvement, too.

the ORA was disappointing in that there was no rye flavor component, and it wasn't red. yesterday's brew is more reddish, maybe, but overshoot. i still have yet to make a ruby beer.

aside from the lack of rye and red, it was also a big hit. it was "the one that doesn't knock you on your ass" (unlike the Black Death). anyhow, i'm kinda jazzed that it was appreciated, and felt like noting this before i forget it.

i'm 1/10th of the way there. i may actually make it. whether it will be coherent or not has already been decided: it will not be.

last night we watched the director's cuts of 4 of the last 5 episodes of NGE, and watching them, i despaired in two areas:

area 1) i realied how much i was intending to rip off the story
area 2) i realized just how poor a storyteller, characterizer, and writer i am

i'll try hard to be original, but that gets in the way of word counts. i'm trying not to edit myself much, that also gets in the way of the wordcounts (ast least, this much i picked up by my unthorough reading of the nanowrimo website).

i seriously wonder whether i'll have much to salvage at the end of the month. at the same time, i am pleased that i finally got the write a scene that's been in my mind for a decade, now. it was the first one i wrote.

another thing i find interesting: as i write, i'm coming up with new stuff. new characters to add, new characterizations of the characters, new ways to connect the characters, new ways to express the "themes" (term used loosely) of the "plot" (even more loosely used).

anyhow, this is kind of what it's like to be a writer, i guess. i imagine that after several consecutive monthly novels, i'll have gained teh writing disciple to actually produce something good. until then: more daily crap.

alternate state of awareness <= hilight tribe : jungle .o. lavry da10 .o. beyer dt880

direct brain beat injection.

neat.

i loves me my dt770s. they're great, and they're my first hifi cans, so all comparisons are consciously or unconsciously made to them.

via work i scored the opportunity to borrow some dt880s, in temporary trade for my k701s. i've been thinking for a while of getting some dt880s, then no-buy month struck and kind of stuck. try-before-i-buy is nice, and since i'm shaving my head anyhow in a week or two, i have no fear of lice (but while i'm rhyming, i should claim to like the rice (it's my only vice (i eat it without spice (at nearly any price (as long as its genes are unspliced))))))))).

i side-by-sided the 880s and 701s on my lavry, and side-by-sided the 770s and 880s on my headroom microstack.

one thing that really surprised me is how much better the 880s sound on the lavry than the microstack. now, that shouldn't surprise me, that's why the lavry cost more than the microstack, but nonetheless, i was not expecting so big a difference. honestly, it may have been the home vs. work listening conditions, but i don't think so. i can't quantify the differences, sadly, it just seemed to me that for the same music, the lavry made the 880s sound *better* than the microstack.

the 880s have more midrange and upper-bass than the 770s, and more bass overall than the 701s. compared to the 701s, the bass seems uncontrolled and a bit flabby. in fact, the 880s sound overall "warmer" than the 701s, and that's really my first experience of "warmth" in head-fi. that surprised me also, since the 880s were, by all accounts, comparable in sound to the 701s. i did not find this to be so.

the response curve of the 770s is a big valley, with humps at the bass and the treble. the 880s sound very different. the 770s have a big punch in the bass attack, the 880s are smoother. the 701s have amazing sound-space and instrument separation, the 880s do not have as much separation, but they still have a fair amount -- perhaps not more than the 770s. they are eminently more comfy than the 701s: cushy and light.

so, were i to get a pair of the 880s (and i think i shall not, the 990s now interest me more) they would not replace the 701s for analytical enjoyment of classical music. they might replace them for rock (green day's "american idiot" sounded so great on them i got to really focus on how intensely i dislike the lyrics and production) or for casual listening to classical -- background cans. they're certainly good at that, since they just melt onto the head.

overall, i like them at least as much as the 701s, but aside from the comfort, they're not different/better enough to warrant getting a pair for myself. i really do like they beyer "house sound", which perhaps is not actually a sound (since the 770s response curve is so monumentally different than the 880s) but more of a comfort philosphy. both 880s and 770s sound good at low levels, not entirely so much the 701s.

it'll be interesting to hear what hte owner of the 880s thinks of my 701s.

it's going. 3400 words so far, that's almost exactly on target. if i keep up this pace i'll be at 51k words by the 30th.

of course, i won't keep up this pace, and this pace isn't even my pace: i wrote far more yesterday than today. and sooner or later i'll run out of Great Ideas and have a fat block. and of course, november is the worst possible month for such an exercise, but that's the point of it.

i remember reading paulp's attempt, and he got off to an enthusiastic start too, which petered out definitely by hte end of hte month, and possibly by mid month. i'll attempt to avoid that, but no promises.

i've been meaning to mention it for a week or so, and i haven't come up with a better way of putting it, so i may as well stop procrastinating:

my brother's one heck of a good guy.

i didn't like him much when i was 8, or 13. and i probably didn't care for him much when i was 10. but now, he's quite the guy.

i think people fall into the habit of regarding people in terms of "he should"s and "she oughtta"s. i think we tend to look at the obvious shortcomings of others through the lens of our own lives and come up with Brilliant Plans That Clearly Will Work for "improving" other people. i used to think such things as "he should get a new job" or "he ought to move" about my brother, but i realized this weekend that he's really quite good the way he is, and whatever i think he should do (actually, *especially* if i think it -- what do i know, after all?) is really irrelevant, he's getting along very well by his own.

so, here's (where's?) to my brother, who in many ways manages to do better than my own best efforts, who makes me proud when i see how well he's getting on, and when i see how he brings happiness to those around him.

1600 words took me two hours.

yikes.