Box Canyon Hike
Sun Oct 30 2005 21:13 MST #Today we went up a bit north of Abiquiu , to Ghost Ranch, and the box canyon hike. It was a very very good choice. A few years ago we had done the Kitchen Mesa which leave from the same parking lot, so we knew the terrain was very nice, but wow. This hike rocked, we had canyon, river hiking, the rock scrambling and then the high desert stuff. Pretty much every New Mexican hike rolled into one. Plus this was ther perfect time of year --- the leaves were changing is some very pretty ways .....
Brooke and Jamie
Sat Oct 29 2005 17:48 MDT #My sister Brooke and her husband, Jamie are in town for a week. They landed in ABQ - and we've already had some Margaritas at Maria's, done the Farmers, the plaza, and and day in town with Thor (which is a pretty unique experience). Lots of fun. Tomorrow we'll probably do a hike at Bandalier -- and they've already got a hike in the Jemez and in Tent Rocks planned out. Should be a fun week!
Flu and Time Magazine and Flu.lanl.gov
Tue Oct 25 2005 14:04 MDT #Time.com (and it looks like Time magazine) just published a "Notebook" piece on Flu.lanl.gov, (the website of Influenza Sequence Database), going subscription . A solid piece that includes the following:
Barack Obama--who helped win Senate approval for $3.9 billion in flu preparedness and response plans and wants Bush to appoint a flu czar "so that things like this don't slip through the cracks"--says that making the site subscription-based only is "an example of the insufficient investment" in U.S. readiness for a pandemic.
Hopefully the attention will also generate some revenue for the ISD !
Turkey Photos
Sun Oct 23 2005 22:06 MDT #This is the last of my series of selected vacation photos, this time: Turkey. It's also the largest set which is why it took so long to get together. But they are now up, and they include some very nice shots indeed, including this classic "Nathan at a Cafe" shot, that Rachel snapped on our last day in Istanbul. 
Evil - National Park Service Rules - Part 2
Sat Oct 22 2005 13:35 MDT #Just aboout exactly 2 months ago I blogged about some Evil National Park Rule Changes. Those rules where put on the shelf due to the resulting hue and cry. They went back and formulated new rules (this is once again a NYTime editorial.) This proposal is less bad, but still very very bad, removing preservation for the goals, adding fundraising as a source of income and requiring what the New York Times calls "a political screening" for upper management positions. The Southern Oregon Mail Tribune has a short story as well. And the draft is available here . Comments are accepted at waso_policy@nps.gov until January 19th 2006.
IPA - The Bottling
Fri Oct 21 2005 13:16 MDT #This morning I started the day by boiling some 40 odd beer bottles, all of which had been pre cleaned. While doing that I sanitized siphons, tubing, and the bottling bucket. After a cat walk,and some coffee I started to siphon the IPA into the bottling bucket. After that we moved to the kitchen and set up out 2 bottle caps, with rachel and I taking turns capping the bottles. And then it was done :)
DRM and "Freedom to Tinker"
Thu Oct 20 2005 15:44 MDT #I regularly read the excellent Freedom to Tinker blog which covers IP and "Make" technology (by which I mean homebrew tech, mix and match tinkering with tech -- much of the stuff Make Mag focuses on). Today they cover Walt Mossberg's article on DRM. As they point out a good way to tell weather a CD has DRM is to look and see if the CD logo is missing - if it is it probably has DRM.
Anyhow both articles are worth a read. And the blog worth subscribing to.
Beer: Racking the Cream Stout
Sat Oct 15 2005 22:46 MDT #So today I racked the cream stout to the 5 gallon carboy. Which is to say I siphoned it from the 6 gallon bucket it went through primary (read really active) fermentation into a small carboy with less air and less junk (dead yeast, hops and other organic material that settled out) for it to do it's secondary fermentation. I'll bottle the stout after about 3 weeks. Hopefully it will mellow out in this time, as the sample I tried - was beyond being obviously flat (the bottle fermentation give it the carbonation), watery, alcoholic and strongly flavored. IE not well balanced -- but conditioning should help.
I'm hoping to bottle the IPA this week -- it's been in secondary fermentation in it's original carboy for over a week, so should have had enough, if not an ideal amount of, conditioning. And if I get it bottled soon, Brooke and Jamie can try it out when they visit in just over a week from today. Which would rock as all this gear was part of a joint B-Day present by my Mum and Brooke.
In an effort to bottle it this week, I cleaned my 30 some odd beer bottles today -- in an effort that took near 2 hours. What I learned: Santa Fe Brewing Company' labels are EVIL and Paulaner's labels are very very easy to remove. And I should clean my bottles as I go .....
:)
DRM - Digital Restrictions Management
Fri Oct 14 2005 09:53 MDT #Digital Restrictions Management, or DRM (there are other back-populations of the Acronym - but they are less accurate), is software that controls how you use your digital property, in conjunction with encryption that prevents you from using the property without the software. So far this is mainly used for Audio and Video, and more rarely Text (in pdfs and the like). DVD's have a predecessor technology built-in, in the form of region codes, and the wrangling about the new DVD format is partially about the DRM. It's also built into every song you buy from iTunes, or Yahoo, or Real . And sometimes, but rarely, it's even burnt into audio CDs.
The problem with this -- other than the fact that you can't make mix tapes, or play you music on all you computers, or do any number of other things, is that the bad guys can. Because the encrypted songs have to be decrypted to play, the player has the decryption key. This means every new form of DRM is cracked instantly - and that anyone with a search engine, can strip the DRM from their property. So we're punishing the good guys only, the people who pay and play buy the rules -- cause anyone else just strips and shares.
But beyond that we are starting to punish people more, and make them spend cash on hardware to support this software -- the new version of windows will require new monitors (at least for some uses). This is because anytime after the DRM is removed making a copy is a cinch - no need to even crack the encryption. So the Movie studios and Record companies need DRM not just in the DVD Players and computers -- but in the screens and speakers and well everything.
There's not much you can do, except not purchase DRMed products when there are other options. We buy our online music from Emusic in DRM free MP3 format - rather than from iTunes (which has a saner DRM policies than others -- but it's still DRMed). Or we buy the CD and rip it.
The economics will win eventually.
And if you care about this stuff you should definitely check out this blog/column
Miers Politcal Cartoon
Fri Oct 7 2005 22:00 MDT #This won't last - it's not really a permalink -- but the cartoon is just too good.
Travel Photos
Tue Oct 4 2005 14:51 MDT #The first, very small set of pics from our vacation is up here: Nathan's London photo picks
Beer!
Mon Oct 3 2005 07:49 MDT #Last night at 2am I got up -- and noticed I had primary fermentation !!!!! Yipeee!!
I had scary first 24 hours with no noticable fermentation going on - and I was worried I'd have to pitch (use) my only other yeast, to the beer to go. But over the course of yesterday , using a mini heater I got the temp of the closet into the 70-75 degree range the yeast likes (from the mid 60's that the closet likes). And now it's a go!
This is a big deal 'cause 1) it's y first batch ever. 2) Due to it being my first batch ever I made some mistakes on Saturday during the brewing, and it took like 10 hours. Admittedly we spent a couple of those hours in Santa Fe waiting for 3 gallons of water to cool from boiling to room temp. - so they weren't all that hard hours. But there where a lot of them :)
And now it's looking like we're past the first hurdle. In a couple of days I'll have to decide on wheather to rack the beer. And then there will be bottle day in 2-3 weeks depending on the racking, or not. And the tasting will be in 3-5 :)
Serenity
Sun Oct 2 2005 09:52 MDT #Friday night Rachel and I drove down to Santa Fe to watch Serenity, the new Joss Whedon ( of Buffy Fame) film, on it's opening day. It basically finishes the story told in the first season of the sadly cancelled Firefly tv show. The cast, story, everything is the same. Which is excellent. As was the movie. Fun, fast, witty and interesting, it was a great movie, and I recommend the everybody go and watch it.
Some reviews said it might be hard to follow if you'd not seen the show, but Rachel had not watched the series, and thoroughly enjoyed the movie. As did a full theatre, not all of whom could have watched the show:)
So, Go! You'll have fun.
PS This is good interview with Joss by Time Magazine.