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Last night Madalene and I went over to Caroline’s for a little get together. The highlight of the evening came when a girl named Randy brought over a watermelon. Watermelon is one of my favorite foods, simply because of how fun it is to eat. Randy admitted that she wasn’t safe around knives, and suggested I help her get the watermelon open so we could eat it.

Now, as a little aside, I want to mention something primal that lives within all carnivorous animals. A desire to take something, bash it open and eat it raw by shoving one’s face into it and pulling out mouthful after mouthful of red dripping goodness with one’s incisors. Its an instinct that can’t be ignored. I however, have a little problem. As a vegetarian, I choose not to bash open and eat animals, which are the kinds of things one might think of when they get the urge to bash something open and feast on it. Watermelon however, is a perfect food to smash open and eat with one’s bare hands, scooping handful after handful of red dripping goodness from its center. That is why I like watermelon.

With that in mind, we began to search the house for implements suitable for opening a watermelon. Caroline’s house (which is also Dennis’s house, even though he isn’t in town at the moment) is a unique place of both sophistication and savagery. They didn’t seem to have any suitable knives for some reason. The best knife we could find was a 4 inch paring knife. Hardly appropriate for opening a watermelon.

A little more searching revealed a boon. Caroline is of viking heritage, and as such, owns a few weapons that emulate the types her ocean-faring ancestors would have wielded. One of these weapons was a huge claw made from welded steel, with three wicked tines, each over two feet long and 3/4 of an inch thick. The ends of each tine had been crudely sharpened and firmly welded to the steel hand grip. Here was our watermelon opening tool.

Feeling like Wolverine, I picked up the mighty claw. With one jab, I skewered the watermelon on the tines. I hefted it high and shouted a primal scream, as the others gawked from outside and took pictures. I carried the wounded melon out onto the porch, set it down, and began to jab at it furiously with the claw until we were able to rip it into two pieces. With the aid of the paring knife, I hacked off several large hunks of melon, handing them out to the waiting tribe. We ate well that night, with juice dripping from our faces and hands, and the soiled claw set off to the side, waiting for its next victim.

Friday I bottled some of the beer I’ve been making. Last week I had racked the beer to the secondary fermenter, but I had five gallons of beer, and only a 3 gallon secondary fermenter. How this had slipped past me before I am not sure. Needless to say, 2 gallons of beer had to remain in the primary fermenter. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, since many people advocate not using secondary fermenters at all, and just bottling straight from the primary.

One problem with leaving the beer on the primary fermenter is that is that beer likes to condition in bulk for as long as possible. Conditioning is the part of the fermenting that takes place after all the sugar has already been consumed. Most of the yeast goes dormant, and the little that is left runs around cleaning up byproducts of fermentation, many of which aren’t very palatable. This improves the flavor over time.

However, only a small portion of the yeast is doing the conditioning work, most of the yeast has gone dormant and fallen to the bottom of the fermenter. If you let beer condition for a long time in the primary fermenter, then all this dormant yeast and precipitated protein on the bottom of the fermenter (called the “trub”) can cause trouble. The proteins can get shaken back up into the beer, potentially adding undesirable flavors. These proteins can also be eaten by yeast that hasn’t gone dormant yet, which produces unpleasant flavors. Also, the yeast can autolyze, which is a form of yeasty suicide, which releases so much disgusting stuff into the beer that it usually becomes undrinkably bad.

Moving the beer to a secondary fermenter keeps only the small amount of active yeast that is still in suspension, and leaves behind the potentially trouble causing trub. Now conditioning can progress unhindered. I had to bottle the beer that was still on the primary fermenter this weekend, before something bad happened. However, the beer that I got into the secondary will be bottled next weekend, benefiting from another week in fermentation. My hope is that the two sub-batches will both be of equal quality. Theoretically, the beer that made it to the secondary will be a little better, but that is just theory. This is actually a good thing, because it will give me an opportunity to directly compare beer that had a chance to ferment on a secondary fermenter with beer that had gone straight from the primary to bottles. With something as variable-rich as brewing, theory sometimes has to take a back seat to a simple taste test.

Anyway, I’ll probably be using the bottles as gifts for people who aren’t in St. Louis, because of their universal portability. For the St. Lunatics, I’ll be kegging the beer, saving me the trouble of saving up, cleaning and washing another 30 bottles. I’ve ordered a small keg-like system, called a Tap-A-Draft that uses 6 liter bottles and a small CO₂ injector system that is used to keep 15 PSI on the beer at all times, keeping it fresh and carbonated. Instead of using big tanks like real kegging systems, this one uses 8 gram cartridges. The system is pretty cheap, and has gotten some very good reviews. It looks ideal for someone like myself who wants to keg beer, but doesn’t have the money or the space for ‘real’ kegs. It can theoretically ‘force carbonate’ beverages, which means taking an uncarbonated beverage and exposing it to high CO₂ pressures while chilled in the fridge, with the effect of carbonating the beverage overnight. However, its ability to do that is suspect, because typically more pressure and better regulators are required for such a process. However, I will be keg/bottle conditioning my beer anyway, which means adding a bit of corn sugar to the brew immediately before bottling or kegging. The few remaining yeasties eat the sugar and make a tiny bit of alcohol and some CO₂. Because they are now sealed tight in the bottle or keg instead of being in a fermenter with a bubbling airlock, the CO₂ they create carbonates the beverage automagically. The process takes between 2 and 3 weeks. After that, the beverage is either consumed all at once, as in a bottle, or consumed in a system that can maintain CO₂ pressure on the container so that the carbonation isn’t lost, like the Tap-A-Draft. I’ll let people know how the system works once I get it.

Like every other damn blogger, I’m going to review the Matrix: Reloaded, just because I can. The full review will contain spoilers, so only read the extended entry if you don’t mind them or if you’ve already seen it. If you haven’t seen it, here is my mini-review and commentary just for you.

Don’t listen to all those people saying it doesn’t have the magic of the original. If you take a book, and open it up one third of the way in, and read it until you are two thirds of the way through, it won’t seem very magical. In a story, there is an introduction, where the story is set up, the characters are introduced, etc. Its called the exposition, I believe. Then there is the continuation of the story, then a climax and a denouement. The Matrix trilogy is not a series like the Naked Gun series, or Diehard or anything. Those are essentially movies that are just different films with different stories, they just happen to have the same characters and occasional transparent references to the previous films. The three movies of The Matrix are linked so closely that you can’t watch one without seeing the ones before it. It would make no sense at all (even less than when you actually watch them together). They are actually parts of one huge six hour film, broken into three pieces so that short attention span consumers can take it. Keep that in mind, because it is a critical distinction from many of the ‘sequels’ American cinema often produces. The Lord of the Rings trilogy would be another recent example of the same idea, and the Star Wars movies as well (though their success as creating the interwoven stories is debatable at this point).

But I digress. The second movie is the continuation of the whole story. There is a lot of meat here, and a lot of great movie, but the ‘magic’ isn’t the same, because exposition ended in the first movie. The exposition is where all the great discoveries and revelations come, now we get to the heart of the matter. If each movie was just mystery after mystery, then there wouldn’t be any deep story. It would be easy to just throw curve ball after curve ball and keep everyone in the dark, but it wouldn’t be a good story. Don’t get me wrong, there are some amazing ideas, discoveries and mysteries in Reloaded, but they aren’t of the same character as the mysteries from the first movie. This isn’t a bad thing. In fact, its a good thing.

So don’t worry, and go enjoy the movie! My strong recommendation to you is to go watch the first Matrix shortly before seeing the new one. Madalene and I saw The Matrix eight days ago in a theater by our house that was showing it as a midnight movie. Seeing it so recently made me think of the sequel as just a continuation, jumping in right where the last left off, rather than a different movie that was somehow supposed to stand on its own in competition with the first. The Matrix is a movie in three two hour acts, not three separate movies. Remember that, and many of the artistic decisions will make more sense to you.

Also, stick around for the entire credit roll. At the very end, after the credits are done, is a trailer for the final movie in the series, Revolutions. Its a neat thing to see, and a good way to psych up for the next one.

So, if you dare, read on for a more detailed review and thoughts that will contain spoilers. Continue Reading »

Tonight I’m going to go see the new Matrix movie. I’ve staunchly avoided reading any spoilers or reviews on it, and while I know some people didn’t think it was that great, I’d like to see it with as few preconceptions as possible. I’m seeing it at the Chase Park Plaza Cinema which is a very nice theater with stadium seating. They even sell beer there. Its a classy venue, and relatively close to our house.

Also, Barb, if you read this, you should email me your phone number so we can hang out. I have no way of contacting you right now! There is chilling that needs to be done, and snacks that need to have us get them on, etc.

Madalene’s parents have been in town for the last few days, and to be honest, while it has been fun, it has also been very tiring to spend all my time with them. On friday, the day of Madalene’s graduation ceremonies, I was with her parents from 7:30am ‘till 10:00pm. We went to this ceremony, then that ceremony, then lunch, and a reception, and dinner and chatting and so on and so forth… I earned my sleep that night. Then a day of shopping for a new desk chair for Madalene, and other shopping, and dinner. They have been very generous, and bought us nice meals at several restaurants we were wanting to try, but hadn’t been able to afford. It has been fun to try the new places, but I’m not used to all this rich food. We had a chance to take them around St. Louis some, and we even got to go to the Science Center and see the new Omnimax movie as well as tour around and see some behind the scenes stuff.

Anyway, its been good, but it has kept me very busy. I’m looking forward to going back to work tomorrow where things are much less hectic (I never thought I’d say that about a science museum filled with hundreds of screaming kids and noisy exhibits, but somehow, its true).

Not mine, but Madalene’s. She’s finally done, and will be awarded with a Master’s in Biomedical Engineering today. Her parents are in town, and about to arrive at the house. Thus begins a day of ceremonies, celebrations, and strange looking gowns. Masters graduates have to wear this odd hood-like thing in addition to the standard adornments. Its so odd that we aren’t even sure how it works. However, I’m sure there will be people at the university who can help us figure it out. Its funny, I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent and resourceful person, and Madalene is graduating with an advanced scientific degree, but we still got stymied by the hood. Its a sobering reminder that as smart as you think you are, someone out there has something that will stump you good.

Ok, time to go. I hope it doesn’t rain today.

Lazyweb, I invoke thee. We are looking for a book Madalene remembers from her childhood. The book contained photography of women’s breasts, and then a story about the woman, her life, her experiences, etc. on the next page. It was paperback, though hardcover versions may exist. The title was something like “Breasts” or “The Breast”. She would like to get this book for inclusion in the Washington University’s Women’s Resource Center library. If anyone remembers or has a book like this, that would have been published earlier than 1994, we would love information on it, such as author, title, ISBN number, etc, so we can hunt down a copy. Thanks!

UPDATE: The book has been found! Good suggestions in the comments yielded some very interesting books, but the exact book we were looking for was finally revealed to us by Madalene’s mother who was actually able to produce a copy for us. She’s, you guessed it, a librarian! Here is the information on the book, in case anyone is curious:

Title: Breasts: Women Speak About Their Breasts and Their Lives
Editors: Daphna Ayalah and Isaac J. Weinstock
Published by Summit Books, New York in 1979
ISBN: 0-671-40021-5 hardcover and 0-671-40095-9 paperback.

This evening I prepared a meal for Madalene and I consisting of lemon pepper artichokes, fresh Brie cheese with crackers, an assortment of fine European olives, and freshly made mozzarella cheese served with thick slices of tomato on a bed of spinach with fresh basil and lightly drizzled with olive oil vinaigrette dressing. I poured her a glass of fine Australian wine, and we sat together in the dim light to enjoy our delicious meal… Then I learned that I could put the wine cork in my mouth, put my mouth over the wine bottle’s neck, suck the air out of the bottle, and pop the cork in with my tongue, thus eliminating the need for those fancy ‘wine savers’ that keep wine fresh by pumping the air out of the bottle.

Aren’t I romantic?

Tonight Madalene and I saw The Matrix at the Tivoli theater near our house. They were playing the original as a midnight showing, partly to get everyone hyped up for the release of Reloaded next week. I wasn’t particularly excited about Reloaded before, I mean, I was intending on seeing it sometime, but I wasn’t very juiced up. However, after seeing The Matrix again, I’m looking forward to Reloaded a little more.

Also, there are photos up from the Tour de Fat beer/bicycle festival I went to on April 27th. The pictures include art-bikes, old fashioned bikes, and me riding one of those 1800’s bikes with the huge front wheel and the tiny rear wheel. Check the photos out in the gallery!

I discovered late last night that a huge tree branch had fallen from the tree that Madalene’s car was parked under. It landed right over the rear window, shattering it, and crushing part of the window supports. At first foul play was a possibility, but with nothing missing, and chipped wood everywhere, and a broken off branch stump about 20 feet up the tree, directly over the car suggested otherwise. A neighbor confirmed the suspicion; she had seen the large branch sitting next to, and partially on top of, her car earlier. The city is very quick to clean up the branches, but is unwilling to send people out to trim the frail and brittle old trees.

Damn you wind! Damn you for crushing Madalene’s car! The same thing happened to our neighbor in October, so she gave me a tip on who to contact to repair the damage. For now, however, I have to take the car to get some plastic to cover it up, since it looks like rain today. Madalene is still out of town, and won’t be back till tomorrow night, either. I’m not sure what to do, in terms of insurance… I’m going to try not to move the car or clean up yet, in case they need to send an adjuster out to look at it.

Every so often the thought crosses my mind to get a PVR like a Tivo or ReplayTV, or even a homebrew PC to do the job. I imagine all the cool features, and how people hack them to get new features, and pull the drives out to replace them with better ones, and so on and so forth. Then I come upon the crushing realization that because I don’t watch TV, that it wouldn’t make any sense for me to have a device that lets me record it. I can envision one of two scenarios occuring.

The first is that I would get it, set it up, and beam over it for a few hours, then forget it exists. I would remember it when people came over, then I’d tell them about its cool features. Then I’d forget about it again.

The second possibility is a bit frightening, and is best demonstrated through allegory. My friend Will’s dad, Bill, was once given a George Forman grill as a gift. The idea was that Bill could eat healthier, because the grill drains off the fats from the meat. The problem with the idea was that Bill didn’t eat much meat normally. He actually ate pretty well already. But along comes the grill, and in an attempt to use the gift, because it was fun and new, he began to cook steaks and pork chops for himself regularly. It didn’t matter that the fat was being drained off, because he wouldn’t have even made the fatty things in the first place! What started out as an attempt by a friend to help him out actually just fostered unhealthy habits. Thats what could happen to me and a Tivo. In an attempt to utilize its features, I’d probably end up watching lots of stupid TV that I don’t really like anyway, just so I’d be “getting my money’s worth” from the Tivo.

So, no PVR for me. And you know what? I already don’t miss it.

I wonder if in 164 years our current text books will sound this ridiculous and humorous. I can only hope so. Even if our science becomes dated and outlandish, at least people will get a good laugh out of our utterly false, yet quaintly charming, blunders though the world of the unknown. For an example of what we will sound like to our children’s children, read this excerpt below, emphasis added. They actually got quite a bit correct considering the time period, but missed the mark on a few amusing key points.

Solution of the Secret of Alcoholic Fermentation:

Beer yeast, when dispersed in water, breaks down into an infinite number of small spheres. If these spheres are transferred to an aqueous solution of sugar they develop into small animals. They are endowed with a sort of suction trunk with which they gulp the sugar from the solution. Digestion is immediately and clearly recognizable because of the discharge of excrements. These animals evacuate ethyl alcohol from their bowels and carbon dioxide from their urinary organs. Thus one can observe how a specifically lighter fluid is extruded from the anus and rises vertically whereas a stream of carbon dioxide is ejected at very short intervals from their enormously large genitals.

Source: Frederich Woehler and Justus von Liebig, Annals of Chemistry, vol. 29, 1839.

A poem, by Rob and inspired by Josh.

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graduates with car batteries and be a
little over 130 years, That all
around the tiny back on
it, to self actualize!
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fill the highlight
of other bicyclists, and by
the sound, as it to
make the bicycle, you give
attribution and the beer. was OK because
Saturday night I
looked quite a vga
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3.860 years. Join SETI@Home
but not a
vagrant on the evening.

Simply beautiful.

...and by cool, I mean totally sweet.” That was what I wore emblazoned upon my shirt, inspired by Real Ultimate Power, and crafted by Madalene. I wore the shirt for two days straight, because Saturday night I stayed at Dennis’ house. After work on Saturday, I went to the brewing fest, as mentioned in the previous post. Later that evening, after watching some cartoons, Dennis called and invited me over. I went over, ate some crackers and talked to Dennis, Barb, Caroline, Becka (sp?) and Dan. We watched Spirited Away, which is a fabulous movie, btw.

In order to watch the movie, I had to fix Dennis’ TV. It had far too much vertical overscan, meaning the bottom of the subtitles was dropping off the screen, making the movie unwatchable, or more accurately, ununderstandable. A few minutes with a screwdriver, and I had adjusted the overscan to make the subtitles viewable. We also tuned up the color a bit while we were at it. After watching the movie, everyone went to bed, except Dennis, Barb and I, and we chatted it up for awhile. Then I fell asleep on the couch, and they went off to bed.

Today was a busy day. After waking up at Dennis’, we did some cleaning, made fun of each other, and had an all around pleasant morning. Then Dennis and I scooted over to my house to make the brew for the beer. Everything went quite well, and I’m confident that this batch of beer will turn out drinkable, and possibly quite tasty! Another ‘lesson’ I learned was to check the bottom of pots and remove any labels one finds before filling them with 4 gallons of water and putting it to boil on the stove. We set off every smoke alarm in the house, and the landlord came up to see if everything was OK because he smelled the acrid smoke from outside. Oops.

After the label had finished burning off, the smoke died down, and we were able to get the grain going. We steeped a pound of Crystal Malt for half an hour, producing a rich malty tea. Then we added 5.5 pounds of Pale extract, and continued to boil. Everything that should happen happened; we got an initial hot break (not a big one), then added the three batches of hops at each pre-determined time during the course of the hour. The little nylon mesh bag I got made life easy, as we were able to use it for making the malt tea at first, without having to strain out the grain, and we also used it later for the hops, to keep them from becoming a huge yucky mess in the bottom of the stock pot.

We chilled the finished wort in a bathtub full of water and ice, circulating the cold water to maximize efficiency. We chilled a little over 3 gallons of wort (it had boiled down from about 4 gallons) in under 30 minutes, and got a nice cloudy cold break. Once we hit 75 degrees, we moved it to the primary fermenter, aerated it nicely, pitched a liter of yeasty starter, and sealed it up with an airlock to let the yeasties do their business. If all goes well, I’ll rack to the secondary fermenter in a week or so, then after two weeks bottle, then wait two more weeks for carbonation to finish. Then comes the day of reckoning. Just so you know, because of the cloudy moist day it has been, the beer is henceforth named “Rainy Day Pale Ale.”

Dennis will be missing out on the rest of the beer process, since he is leaving to return to Colorado for the summer in a little over a week. However, if he is lucky he and his mother will get to help me rack the beer when she comes in a week.

Dennis will also likely return to St. Louis the first week of June, since my very good friend and once roommate Berg will be coming out from Colorado to look for housing as he will soon be attending classes at Webster University. Berg needs someone to make the long drive with him from Colorado, and needs someone who can help him find his way around Webster Groves, a part of town I’m not very familiar with. Dennis fills both of those roles nicely. If they come out at the right time, they may get to sample the first openings of the beer. Though even if they can’t, I can send them back to Colorado with a couple of six packs that aren’t done carbonating yet, and they can try them out on their own time.

After we finished with the beer, we had a concert to go to. Dennis was actually performing in the concert, and I was going to watch it, and we were running low on time. We rushed to his house, grabbed his bass (the string instrument, not the fish) and his tuxedo, and zipped off to the cathedral where they were performing. The show was quite nice, the highlight being Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. It was held in the very stately Christ Church Cathedral, home to a mighty pipe organ, and some very impressive artwork, including a 20 foot tall marble frieze with life size and incredibly detailed sculptures of the apostles, and a life size crucifix with attached Christ. Its quite regal and creepy at the same time, which I believe is part of the intended effect. The cathedral has been there for over 130 years, and due to the marble construction, and incredibly high flying buttress ceilings, will likely remain for many more years. That same construction also gives it an acoustic decay time measured in the seconds, and a live presence that is quite astounding. A choir’s voice is able to fill the entire room, preventing you from actually localizing the sound, as it seems to be flowing from every wall and corner. Once again, I believe this is an intentional effect.

I looked quite the fool in the cathedral because I was still wearing the clothing I had been wearing for two days, which was just a dirty t-shirt bearing a silly quote and a pair of ragged khaki Ben Davis pants. I also smelled ridiculously like hops and malt. I’m surprised I wasn’t mistaken for a vagrant on my entrance to the elegant cathedral. Dennis had changed his clothes, but still managed to have a hoppy odor about him, probably from his hair. Barb didn’t seem to mind however.

Afterwards, we went out for a few drinks, snacks, and boisterous conversation about the concert, Tommy’s mother, and Dan’s perplexing and disturbing impression of a bass (the fish, not the string instrument). Then people went their separate ways to sleep off the excitement of the evening. Unlike everyone else, I don’t have any obligations tomorrow, since I don’t work again ‘till Tuesday. So here I sit, typing instead of sleeping. I also had a mighty cleaning job waiting for me when I got home, but that didn’t take as long as I expected it to. But its late, so now I bid thee good-night.

Work was good today, I’m finally getting assigned to real tasks, rather than just training and shadowing. After work I went by Worm’s Way, the local gardening slash home brew shop. They were having their annual brew fest, and people had set up propane burners, 40 gallon drums, big tubs, and were brewing all manner of beer. I sampled a few things (not much, because I was driving my scooter), and everything was coming along very nicely.

I’m hoping to do the next stage of my current brew project, make the wort and pitch the yeast starter. However, the yeast starter isn’t being very vigorous. I’m getting occasional bubbling, but not much action, and no head has formed yet. I may wait until tomorrow to make the wort. I may not have gotten very ‘happy’ yeasties, I’m afraid. Hopefully all turns out well.