My Coursera Android class is finally, at long last, complete and the final grading and awarding of certificates is underway. The professor provided some statistics about the class today and I put them in this table. Fewer than 3% of people who signed up earned a certificate and slightly more than 1% did so “with distinction”.
Category: Personal
time machine
It is chilly, foggy, and dark outside this morning. My drive in to the office was long and slow, quiet and uneventful. Our coffee makers have been dormant, laid low by the building electrics taking advantage of the holiday weekend. I have been walking to Halcyon a block south to get my cup filled after I check mail. Halcyon is in an old rail warehouse building on 4th street and has tall ceilings with exposed rafters, wooden floors over a storage basement, big, heavy front doors. It reminds me of the 24 hour coffee shop across the Drag from campus, Metro, where I spent a good piece of my free time and money in college minus the cloud of cigarette smoke pre-dating the indoor smoking ban. It is staffed by pleasant but slightly aloof baristas who, never the less, will give you the refill price on your insulated stainless mug whether or not it has their logo screened on the front. The speakers were playing Portishead, Sour Times as I walked back out. I am even wearing a plaid flannel shirt.
I’ve been taking some classes on Coursera. One was Interactive Programming in Python which was half intro to Python and half UI Library event programming. The weekly projects were little games which was half the reason I took the class. Our final project was an Asteroids clone. Here’s a link to mine for as long as it lasts.
http://www.codeskulptor.org/#user38_7rT6kprKlN_0.py
The other class, for which I finished my final project with 14 seconds remaining on the clock Sunday night, was Programming Mobile Applications for Android. They asked us to make a screencast of our application in case the graders couldn’t get it to work properly in their emulators. That video is on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymlyk06uyk8
Last night I started my next class, “The Data Scientist’s Toolbox”. This is the first of a nine class sequence. I’ve paid for the “Specialization” which means my grades get verified somehow, I’ll be eligible to complete a capstone project at the end of the sequence, and if I pass all of that I get a slightly fancier digital participant ribbon. At least the company has agreed to pay for it.
All of this has combined to leave me in a very 1997 state of mind.
complexity
I ended up not lifting before bed last night. I think it was the right decision. I didn’t sleep well again and have been a little stiff today which would no doubt be worse if I’d done anything. I did get the stupid callback problem solved at work with a substantial amount of help from Zach. The problem was even more complex than we had imagined at first because the program requires additional services to be available but does not complain if they are not. So not only do you have to properly manage the callback bridge between python and c++ but you have to expose the service ready check in the base class of one of the components and then override it in the one subclass that requires these additional services. It’s not even documented badly or anything, it’s just a bunch of interconnected stuff.
The Halloween Candy Problem continues. I bought a bunch of candy for work trick-or-treaters and they were light on the ground and were admonished to take only one piece each as if there were some kind of horrendous Butterfinger shortage and we were all hoarding our ration coupons. So I’ve been picking at the bowl all day and that’s not a great way to be.
Tonight is probably going to be a bunch of video watching for my second class and more PT homework. I managed to do my first set of plank for 3 minutes last time. I doubt tonight will see a repeat but I’m getting better slowly.
broken
My blockade lasted until about 9:00 PM tonight and then I got back into it again, at least on twitter, but the break did me good and I’m satisfied with what I’ve learned so I think I’m going keep going with no internets for a little while. I managed to get a fair amount done at the office today but was prevented from finishing my project by a powerfully obtuse and difficult callback bridging C++ and python problem. I gave up around 6:15 and came home and did homework. Still have not managed to do my lifting experiment. Some of that is being worried and some of it is getting stuck back down the rat hole. I may do a little before bed just so I can say I did something.
on a break
I managed to get myself all wrapped around the axle today for no good reason. I’m taking a break from the social medias for a little while.
0.0.0.0 tumblr.com
0.0.0.0 www.tumblr.com
0.0.0.0 reddit.com
0.0.0.0 www.reddit.com
0.0.0.0 twitter.com
0.0.0.0 www.twitter.com
0.0.0.0 facebook.com
0.0.0.0 www.facebook.com
I have the phone so it’s not a complete blockade but I think this will do me some good.
In the mean time, I have completed my self-mandated one month of thrice weekly Physical Therapy Homework. I told myself that once I did a month, and provided I kept doing it. I would allow myself to add some weight training back into my routine. When I first lost the weight I lost back in 2008-2009 I did mostly stuff on my rowing machine and a program based on the 1995 American College of Sports Medicine 1995 Recommendations for Resistance Training Exercise. It advocates work outs consisting of 8-10 exercises covering all of the major groups doing one warm-up set at 50% of the target weight, a short rest, and then one set of 8-12 reps of the target weight. I’m going to ease into a routine like that rather than going back to a 3×5 progression like I’d been doing. Since I did my homework tonight I should be able to try out my plan tomorrow.
I’ve been taking a couple of classes at coursera.org for fun and personal / professional development. One is Interactive Programming with Python and the main draw of that for me was that we make little games as our weekly projects. We made Pong last week. It was pretty fun. I’m also taking an intro to Android programming class because I think I’d like to try to write a simple app and I’m not going to just wade through documentation with no direction. The homework for the second class has been substantial and there have been issues with the grading / test servers not being powerful enough to meet demand so I got a late grade on last week’s labs. I’m kinda mad about that but it was only 5% off so it’s not the end of the world.
Bill and I made a starter with our new magnetic stirrer and Erlenmeyer flask and used it to re-pitch the w00tstout which had managed to get into stuck fermentation territory. It apparently started up again Sunday so it’ll probably finish and be OK. We’re going to transfer to secondary this weekend and start a Winter Warmer as well. That will be two beers going at once for those of you keeping track at home. This weekend is also the Flying Saucer BeerFeast which should be a good time.
Beer and ice cream
It My birthday was a little while back and we ate at El Alma which is a fancier
restaurant from the El Chile people. I had duck mole enchiladas and they were
very good. The mole was a pasilla mole and was a little less sweet than what
you usually find around here and was noticeably spicy but not irritatingly so.
It is beer season. We went to the annual Texas Craft Brewer’s Festival. The
weather was much better this year in that it was about 10 degrees cooler and
overcast. It drizzled a little but did not actually rain.
The samples I had at the event were:
No Label: Forbidden Lavender Wit,
Texas Ale Project: 100 Million Angels Singing
Adelbert’s: Vintage Monks
Real Ale: Scots Gone Wild
Real Ale: Barrel Aged Blakkr
Texian: 1824
Saint Arnold: Divine Reserve #14
Grapevine: Lakefire
The Flying Saucer BeerFeast is October 25th and we’re going to that too. That
has been fun in years past but has always had some black mark on it for one
reason or another. The first year I went it poured rain for about an hour
turning the grounds into a muddy mess, for example.
Then, to top all that off Bill and I have started our fourth, and most
ambitious beer to date. It is a mini-mash version of “w00tstout“.
It has an astonishing amount of
sugar in it putting the Original Gravity at 1.108. If it ferments properly it
will be 13% when done. We took a very small sample from the fermenter last
weekend for measurement and tasting and the gravity is already down to about
1.035 after two weeks in primary and it tastes good but very alcoholic. I used
the phrase “Jet Fuel” to describe it. In addition to all of the various sugars
it was mashed with 8oz of toasted pecans, has 3oz of unsweet cocoa in it and
will be “barrel aged” in secondary by putting in 2oz of bourbon soaked medium+
toast oak cubes.
In addition to beer, it is also decorative gourd season. There are so many
good pumpkin recipes on the internet and I want to try them all but they’re
basically all terrible for you.
I have started with pumpkin ice cream. Ice cream has become much easier now
that I’ve learned to make the custard in the sous vide bath instead of trying
to temper egg yolks with hot cream like some kind of barbarian. I looked up
like 6 different ice cream base recipes and averaged them all out and the
added the pumpkin specific pieces. I came up with this:
1 2/3 cups heavy cream
1 1/3 cups whole milk
7 egg yolks
1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cups dark brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup pumpkin
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp Grand Marnier
It ended up very custardy. A bit too thick. I think one less egg yolk and
equal cream:milk ratio would be more ideal. It’s very tasty though. One pint
has some home made brownie chunks in it. Another pint has crystallized ginger
and the last pint is just pumpkin.
The next thing is to make another batch of coffee ice cream and I’m
experimenting with making some Earl Grey tea ice cream also.is beer season.
Dark Days
The company I work for has been losing money and yesterday afternoon we had layoffs. The details are, of course, extra secret and confidential and I’ll probably be executed for even mentioning it on here but I am fresh out of fucks to give. One of my friends was let go. Naturally I disagree with that but not just because he is a friend. However, as my manager said, none of it was for cause and they dismissed people they would rather not have.
I still have a job but I have to admit that’s cold comfort. It’s not been an especially good few weeks. We all knew something had to give and that something like this was probably going to happen. There is some other personal stuff I’ve been trying to deal with and Whitney’s dad passed away last week so I went to the memorial service on Saturday.
It feels sort of liminal. Like being weightless but you don’t know if you’re floating or falling. I’ve been through this before a few times and I’ve never seen it get better. I suppose it must be possible but I don’t know how to distinguish the two cases.
I guess that’s it.
Seaworld
Dad has been scanning old pictures recently. This one is of me and Dolly Parton who was a friend of my grandfather’s. She invited us to Sea World where she was performing during a summer concert series they were doing and she put us on the list to get back stage and visit. At the time I was wearing a Fiesta Texas hat because they had opened recently and we had gone and I bought a hat there. When the Sea World people caught wind of it one of them ran over to a merch stand and got a cheap Sea World hat for me so that my picture with Dolly would have me in their hat rather than Fiesta Texas’s.
Eclipse
There was a lunar eclipse last night and I took some not great pictures. This is a direct consequence of my not having a zoom or telephoto lens. My longest is the Canon 50mm f/1.4 which is on an APS-C crop so it’s more like an 80mm in big-boy cameras.
The telescope does a decent job of looking at things like the moon and the larger planets but mars was just an indistinct bright spot even though it is very close right now. I could have gone to the 8mm objective but a) that’s not a very good lens and b) the amount of shaking makes it hard to see anything anyway. Maybe some day I’ll get a better scope but I just don’t use the one I have enough to really justify it.
Bill and I made beer again. This one is a clone of Fuller’s London Pride which we are tentatively calling Austin Smug. The final gravity ended up almost 10 points low (1.006 vs 1.015 target) and was only 12 points with the priming sugar in. We did see something interesting during the initial brew. We got a real, good cold break which was probably facilitated by adding a coagulant Austin Homebrew recommended. I have a video of the bits and pieces settling out. Sorry for the iphone quality video.
Finally, I got a second iSi cream whipper so I can make waffles and put whipped cream on them at the same time. But as a side benefit I also have some CO2 chargers now also so I made some carbonated grapes. I have a video of those too.
Snowboarding
I’m back from my trip to Colorado. I had a great time and I’ve finally gotten to the point I can snowboard greens somewhat competently. I took my camera along and took some pictures. I’m particularly happy about the night sky ones but I think they all turned out ok.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thwartedagain/sets/72157641841254804/
http://thwartedagain.com/zenphoto/Beaver-Creek
Learning to snowboard involves a lot of sitting and then a lot of falling. For all of the time I spent on the ground only a few of them actually hurt at all. The worst one was Friday which was also the best day I had on the mountain. It was snowing, starting a little before sunrise and continuing all day. There was fairly deep powder everywhere. I had taken lessons on Sunday and Wednesday with Monday on my own just practicing on the beginner runs. Friday I went back to the long greens at the top of the mountain we visited in my Wednesday lesson. I had so much fun just doing those and learning to run downhill instead of just traversing across the hill. I had lunch and then went back up top and I was most of the way down the longest green and fell coming onto my toe side edge. I’m “goofy footed” meaning I lead with my right foot so I would have been moving to the right looking uphill and fell onto my front. My right elbow caught the snow and I got a minor pull in my right triceps as my top rotated and my bottom tried to continue to the right. It wasn’t awful but I knew I was tired and that continuing would probably just mean an actually bad injury so I continued back to the condo and called it a day. It’s already feeling better two days later. I’m really happy I was able to go up the mountain and board for real on my own. It’s a real sense of accomplishment.
Saturday we got up early in anticipation of an ugly drive back to Denver because of all of the snow. However, the roads were plowed and the traffic was light and we made great time. That meant that we were back in Denver with several hours to kill. We stopped for good coffee and lunch at Crema and then managed to catch the first tour of the day at the Breckenridge Brewery. They have quite the operation there and all of the people were really nice. Then off to the airport and back home. Arriving in Austin was funny because Bergstrom was packed full of visitors for SXSW which started this week. The line for Taxis was comically bad but we were parked so we didn’t have to deal with it.
Today I got up late, had Girl Scout Cookies and hamburger and have spent the rest of the day being useless. Back to work tomorrow, and for a good long while too since I’ve used all but three days of vacation for the year already.