bla.darkcutter.com

Tabs open right now 000

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:25:23 +0000

From left to right
Google voice: would be nice if it was on the top left along with documents and calendar. Can one customize this part? I don’t think so.
Gmail: not seeing much action these days
Google reader: the third of three tabs I almost always have open
JWZ-youtubedown: handy but changes frequently. I had to make a script to keep up, my own sekrit rss.
Twitch review of Evangelion 2.0: zomg want
Twitter/some guy complaining about diapers at WFM: not sure why i do this to myself
Food coloring: for when i do fluid RGB filtration experiments
Google search for glass trays: see above
Indigo instruments: I was going to shop for a measuring cup but graduated cylinders are cooler
B&H photo: looking for C41 kits
Giantmecha: dude evan just get a tumblr or something
BDC: how meta of me
Noritz tankless water heaters: dude hot water forever. if by forever you mean “until we exhaust the earth of all natural resources”
Craigslist iphone search: what?
Tanknot: creepy tankless propaganda
Google search for glass caulking: maybe it would be easy to build a little fluid filter box?
YouTube Mutabaruka: not sure what to think yet
Muta seh: still not sure what to think. plays fine in VLC though

TODO: Scripting

Tue, 11 May 2010 01:48:59 +0000

So this hardly qualifies as much of anything really but I figure it worked for me, maybe it’ll work for you? I have a Canon A470 which I bought specifically because it was one of the cheapest cameras available that can be CHDK‘d. It’s also nice that the A470 takes regualr old AA batteries instead of some $30 battery pack. I honestly haven’t gotten all that far into scripting aside from using the auto-bracket feature to make HDR images, but that’s partly because it seemed to run out of juice quickly.

I work at Whole Foods, and we sell these rechargeable batteries which seem to be ok for game controllers, flashlights, clocks, and so forth but not so hot for cameras. In retrospect I probably could have chosen a battery more suited to this application but whatever. Of course if I had read the aforelinked wikipedia article I would have known that but whatever whatever. In any case that’s what I have and I wanted to make them work.

As it turns out it was an interesting exercise because now I have something I can stick just about any AC -> DC power supply into and get the correct voltage out of. It involves a linear regulator (in this case the LM317) and a couple resistors. So yeah, not exactly rocket science but pretty handy all the same. I used a battery holder but I will probably make one with an AC adapter and/or different/better batteries for kicks.

The schematics are basically the same as the datasheet shows but it took a couple tries to get it right– at one point I had it in sideways– kind of embarrassing. I am pretty pleased since this is the first thing I have made that didn’t come in a kit form. The top is remarkably pristine while the underside is not so much. I’m still kind of impressed that I made such a mess for such a simple project.

Notes:

Yes, the wires attached to the plug are swapped. Oops.
Things that helped: Ladyada’s DIY power supply, the handy online LM317 calculator, the wikipedia article on DC power jacks, specifically the Radio Shack Adaptaplug conversion chart (spoiler alert: the A470 uses Digi-Key part number CP-012-ND if you’re curious)
It’s probably not worth it to make one of these if you just want longer battery life. Just get better batteries.
6V in (from the battery pack) makes the regulator pleasantly warm. 12V (from the first AC adapter i grabbed) makes it smoke and get really hot. Just FYI.

Tabula rasa

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:28:50 +0000

There sure are a lot of periodic tables but I think this one is my favorite.

Somewhat far off

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:16:06 +0000

A combo wall-wart/FM transmitter/memory stick MP3 player.
NextBus scrolling marquees. That twitter.
Altimeter/GPS path finders for efficient route planning in San Francisco.
GPS warwalker
Powder coated waaaaahmbulance or possibly wa(xn)hmbulance
Even adjustable lighting

Ramen alpha

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:18:00 +0000

So I think I’ll just keep updating this as I go since new information seems to surface more or less constantly. New stuff at the bottom.

The story is that I’m going to attempt to make ramen from start to finish. We’ve been eating at some really delicious ramen restaurants lately and while excursions out of town are fun and all it’d be nice not to have to go to 408 for a bowl of noodles.

Please note that I’m acutely aware of the impracticality of making ramen at home. The nature of ramen seems to lend itself to ~~large~~ huge quantities, lots of prep beforehand, and esoteric (for US procurement anyway) ingredients. I’d just rather spend five hours in the kitchen than three on the road is all. Also note that while I certainly don’t want to take anything away from instant ramen (like I could anyway) what I’m talking about is (for lack of a better word) “fresh” ramen.

I decided more or less randomly that I’m going to try to make a tonkotsu style ramen, which is native to Kyūshū. A more specific style may develop depending on how things go.

So. The first thing I got hung up on was the kansui (かん水) which is an alkaline solution rumored to be similar to water found in Chinese lakes where ramen-style noodles originated. Most people nowadays seem to think that it’s a combination of Sodium Carbonate (AKA Na2CO3, washing soda, soda ash, etc) and Potassium Carbonate (AKA CK2O3, potash, pottasche, perl ash, etc) with Potassuim Phosphate, Phosphoric acid, and a few other things given as additional or alternate ingredients.

Online searches yielded nothing except other people who were also trying to find kansui. I tried searching in Japanese, with chemical names, on food blogs, you name it. I don’t know if it’s illegal to sell it for use in food in the US for some reason, or if there’s just not enough demand but I’m pretty sure there’s no American manufacturer or importer. I asked in Asian markets to no avail.

There are a variety of chemical suppliers that sell both Na2CO3 and CK2O3 but I don’t know how to tell if they’re safe to use in food. Online sources are conflicting and inconclusive. I was tempted to go ahead and order but am holding out for now, because as it turns out you can make at least one of them at home!

This may seem obvious but Sodium Carbonate and Sodium Bicarbonate are not the same thing, despite some people’s confusion. However, by driving off the water and some CO2 you can convert (2NaHCO₃=Na₂CO₃+CO₂+H₂O) baking soda to soda ash. Supposedly it’s a trick used by photographers, housewives/husbands, and fish nuts but from what I could tell it hasn’t caught on with noodlemakers yet. I might try just this in a batch of noodles, or suck it up and order some CK2O3 to mix with it. In either case expect a report soon.

20100406:
Well a double check in Japantown yielded nothing but no surprise there. Koon Chun makes a pre-mixed solution but it claims to have “Sodium Bi-Carbonate” in it, which is not what we’re looking for I don’t think.

For the nettle-heavy there’s the DIY (Potassium carbonate) method although that seems a little involved. Might be fun but I wonder about toxic impurities. Making it out of wormwood would have a certain Lovecraftian appeal.

CK2O3 is apparently also used in making gingerbread. I looked on Amazon but all they had was a sold out Alba brand (Alba Pottasche/potache?) which looks like is sold out in a number of other places too. There’s a German grocer in Noe Valley that might be worth checking out. I also did some searching for baking wholesalers but didn’t have much success.

20100419:
Well as it turns out Lehr’s had potash after all. The packages are kind of chunky like they’ve been on the shelf for a long time, not sure if or how that would affect the quality. I’m guessing not much. There were two styles which I suspect are just different versions of the package. I got both kinds just to make sure. They’re different UPCs for the record– the newer looking package is 4 000151 334807 and the older looking one is 4 000151 004137 (4000151334807 and 4000151004137) but they appear to be the same otherwise in content and quantity. Lehr’s didn’t have a whole lot and a lot of the online places are sold out still so maybe it’s a seasonal thing?

Before I was able to make it down there I tried making a batch of noodles. The result was grey, sticky, and generally unpleasant but here’s what I did:

200g Baking soda in an All-Clad saucepan, cook for about 10min give or take until the bubbling stops, gives about 4.48oz or 127g
500ml water, then 250ml more since it didn’t seem to want to dissolve fully in 500ml. 750ml H2O total. ~~I’m going to look into subscripts here in a minute~~.

358g (12-5/8oz, or 20.625oz minus an 8oz bowl) guisto’s baker’s choice flour
200ml H₂O (well. that was easy)
15ml (1T) proto-kansui

We kneaded for 30 minutes, ambient temp was somewhat chilly. The dough never got relaxed the way it looks like it’s supposed to in the videos I’ve seen so I suspect there wasn’t enough gluten to begin with, the kansui was incorrect/insufficient, or we didn’t develop what gluten there was enough. In any case I feel like it was a good start.

I rolled the dough out by hand, folded it in thirds, and cut the noodles with a knife. I think If the dough had been more relaxed that part would have been easier. The noodles were much thicker than I’m used to seeing in ramen.

I should probably make sure that the baking soda is actually decomposing into washing soda before I go any further, although we did actually use some in a load of laundry which seemed to make things cleaner. Maybe more experimentation is in order.

Delicious ramen

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:35:38 +0000

We ate at Ramen Halu today! It was great! A spontaneous mobile-iPhone-Google-Voice review follows:

Juice FAIL

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:27:37 +0000

So I got a bottle of fig juice and was wondering what to do with it. If you find yourself in the same position do not visit the maker’s website. I wanted recipes, not a flash carousel. Dumbasses.

Obvious, really

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:33:50 +0000

1. Attended a thing tonight in which two ramen experts declared that there is no great ramen in San Francisco. I have heard this sentiment before.

2. One of the experts lamented the extinction of the Japanese ramen cart, which exists only to promote tourism and on ramen packages nowadays.

3. San Francisco seems to be awfully fond of food carts these days, health regulations notwithstanding.

The outcome seems pretty clear to me, I hope whoever undertakes the ramen cart hurries up, I’m getting hungry.

Failing that, there’s Santa, Halu, and Oyaji

Tech fail

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:48:37 +0000

From twitter, of all places:

@qwzybug and @smallsociety rocked out the @wholefoods app today! http://tinyurl.com/wfmiphone

My comment:

pyoon: hey good thing i read about this on twitter instead of hearing about it at whole foods WHERE I WORK

Srsly. Nothing today either. Funny thing, the store I work at is almost literally across the street from where WWDC was held a couple weeks ago. The people who wrote this application were probably there. They might work for Whole Foods. This place is lousy with iPhones. Huh.

Now we’re getting somewhere

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 01:10:54 +0000

According to the pedia, if you’re going to make ramen noodles you’ll need flour, water, salt (I assume NaCl), and either Sodium Carbonate or Potassium Carbonate, or both to make an alkaline solution (kansui). Supposedly this solution is similar to well water in the regions where these noodles were invented, and gives them their characteristic yellow color and springiness. I love that the Cereal Chemistry abstract reads like a recipe, and that they suggest a 9:1 ratio for Na to K.

Oh plus you can totally buy both of these chemicals online. They’re used in such low concentrations I have to admit not being all that worried about any potential contaminants, especially for the reagent grade versions. I just hope they’re not used to make meth or something, boy would that be embarrassing.