My first thought was to check the oven. It goes down as low as 80 degrees F (great for letting dough rise). The oven doesn’t have every 5 degree interval on it, instead having every common temperature. Unfortunately getting yogurt cultures to do their thing didn’t make the cut. The oven jumps from 80 to 100 to 125.

The next idea was to use the induction cooktop. The cooktop can go way below normal settings you would get on a gas cooktop unless it is the really old kind that has the always-on pilot light.

In all of these cases you need the milk and cultures in the container with a lid on. I used a remote bbq thermometer in the pot to measure the temperature. First up was a quart of water in the tall sauce pan on the lowest setting. The remote thermometer showed it climbing well over 115 in no time.

Next I decided to try half a gallon in a large sauce pan. The climbing temperatures were slower but they also passed 115 without too much time passed.

I then decided I needed more surface area to dissipate heat so the big skillet was up next. Luckily I could just dump this water from one vessel to the next for each test. On this one the temperature dropped the most before the heat was once again applied so maybe it would work. Unfortunately this one had the fastest climbing temperature. Yes there was more area to eliminate heat, but there was also a lot more area to absorb heat!

I thought I was out of luck when I remembered the cast-iron wok. It has a small area base and a wide open top, perfect! I put two sheets of foil on top for my lid and after heating in a slow climb the temperature held steady at 114 degrees F. Figuring there must be a way to make it work I reconfigured the foil into a a very crude cone with an opening in the top. After some more tweaking I got it to stay steady at 107 degrees F for 45 minutes!

So, can I make yogurt? Probably. I think that it would have an iron flavor to it by the time the batch was done though. Also there’s a significant setup time needed for that foil cone to see if it is just right. It’s probably better off to get a yogurt maker.

Other things to try:

• We have a portable induction cooktop that might be able to go lower, but probably not.
• Using a mason jar in a water bath. An uncovered pot might be able to keep the temperature low enough.

I’m not moving anywhere, it’s just an observation.

1. More graffiti! I know that sounds counter-intuitive but when you think about most graffiti as being territory markers then you start to see it as someone’s personal calling card. So the idea is when you wake up in the morning to find some fresh graffiti you add something like “eats ass” to it and then have the police wait that night for the tagger to fix the amendment. Cost is fairly low for the extra spray paint, and the wall already needed repainting so no extra cost there. The main cost comes from the stakeout and the social cost of having obscene message in highly visible areas. Chance of success? Probably not very high. I don’t see a lot of back and forth when rivals deface their tags so why should a little insult matter to them?
2. Video cameras. Basically this is the obvious appraoch where businesses would have tog et video cameras, mount them in a hidden or out of reach area, and make sure it’s high enough resolution so the perpetrator can actually be identified. The problem here is that video cameras like that are expensive, they are easily defeated with masks or just taken out directly.
3. RFID tags. I came up with this when I decided video cameras were too expensive but it involves more infrastructure. First you need to get spray paint makers to put RFID tags in the cans, then when you show your driver’s license to buy your spray paint the RFID gets linked to your driver’s license number. Business owners need to buy a series of readers (about $20 each) to monitor the taggable parts of their building and when graffiti happens they can get the RFID that did it and give it to the police. The downsides to this plan are privacy concerns about purchases being tracked. Also the RFID signals can be blocked but then a tagger has to carry around jamming equipment which I don’t think is very likely; tagging seems be somewhat a crime of convenience.
4. Honey pot. I just thought of this one last week after seeing another under-construction building tagged. Incomplete buildings always seem like a good target. An incomplete house will be tagged but a completed house gets avoided, though fences always seem to be fair game. So the idea is to find an empty lot and put up some very cheap non-permanent pre-fab structure. Then use a stakeout or  cameras to catch those that show up to do their tagging.

Any other ideas?

See that windowed deck/bar that goes across the front and hangs over the sides some? I’d put a moving red light in there to make it an ocean cylon or an ocean Knight Rider.

Do foot fetishists have to work at keeping their cool going through airport security?

From when I was brushing my teeth last night:

If we develop intelligent machines, are we going to ban and destroy all copies of movies and books about man/machine war? Seems like you wouldn’t want them to know you’re afraid of them.

Would that then extend to media with scenes of violence against machines like the destruction of the fax machine in Office Space?

Anyway, they still manage to have good things from time to time (not good enough to subscribe anymore) but an interview with Newt Gengrich they ran in the October 2006 issue is one of the highlights of the past year. I didn’t know that he was a strong supported of sciences and probably would have ended up in a science related field had he not gone the history/politics route. After his time in congress he went to universities for a few years to catch up on what he had missed in science while he was in congress.

I thought the most interesting point of the interview was his suggestion that we pay kids to take math and science classes. I’ve heard pay schemes for kids before but this one sounded better to me because the kids would only get the payout if they got a B or better. The idea being that instead of kids spending time after school in a minimum-wage job, they can earn the same minimum wage and put the time to studying. I can see a few problems with it, especially as fights begin as to what is worth paying for, but the idea has potential I think.

A creative person is not someone who has the occasional neat idea. A creative person is someone who takes those neat ideas and expresses that idea in some medium. The implementation doesn’t have to be good, quality of the implementation is a technical skill that can be learned by anyone. Of course, how that skill is applied will very from person to person like finger prints, but the basic skills of working in a given medium are learnable.

In playing jazz I can’t improvise. I can’t think of a story line to write. I can’t think of something to draw.

Sure, I have the occasional idea. Sometimes I put enough dots on a piece of paper that I can see a shape and put more dots in to make the shape more noticable. I have on a handful of occasions thought of fun ways to wrap gifts. I have even made a few things from chicken wire. That doesn’t make me creative though. Creative people do this realization of their ideas on a regular basis. Not that they realize all of their ideas, but their density of idea realization is quite high. When one idea is completed, there is another one waiting to get started.

I can perform “creative” tasks given directions, but I’m not the one to come up with those directions or what to make.

I would have thought that humor was perceived as more intelligence, but a survey I read yesterday showed that the impression women had of the humorous men was that they were less intelligent. It seems that if you are doing more verbal humor which would attract the verbal humor loving female that more intelligence would be required, but I guess a sense that the male is a clown takes over and the humor is just appreciated for humor. Also, since some researchers now think that intelligence is completely determined by the woman I guess selecting for intelligence isn’t really necessary and whatever leads to humor can be the focus.

I woke up at 5:30AM (no alarm), hopped in the shower, got ready and then called Terry. Terry said he’d be ready so I went over there and picked him up and handed him the Fry’s ads so he could prepare. When we got to the store that had cops out directing traffic. We got out of the Disneyland parking line and parked a block away.

We got to the store and saw more people there than we had ever seen before. We got a cart in case we needed it for bigger stuff and headed to the LCD monitors because there were some sweet deals there. I decided I could hold off on one so I went to get a free 80GB hard drive while Terry looked at the LCDs. Then Terry called me so he could find me (in the networking aisle (I was there mostly because it was quiet)). Terry called his brother from there to ask his advice om LCD panels and I went to look for the SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Video Edition so I could finally record these laserdiscs to DVD (especially the original Star Wars) when I heard an employee yelling that the line started on aisle 13. I went back for Terry and put him in line and continued my search. I found what I wanted and headed back to Terry who was now on aisle 15.

Then we waited in line and got to snake through the video game section (XBox 360 was looking nice!) before I saw that some CDs were on sale. I excused myself and picked up the new Madonna album and the new Enya album for $6.77 each. Terry was still in the video game section when I returned. We finally passed out of the video game section to the computer section where the manager’s special was getting a free printer (a nice one even) if you bought a laptop or desktop computer. The funny part is that he was standing right next to the line and YELLING the deal to everyone who passed. If someone stopped and asked a question about it he would yell the answer even if they were face to face.

We finally made it past the computer section to the A/V section. We envied the huge wall-hanging LCD panels, and continued with the line. A few employees were walking around with hand-baskets full of batteries asking people if they needed batteries. We declined each time.

We finally made it through the appliance section and could see the checkout stands. Yay! And then a few more feet and we could see that the line actually turned left and went across the front of the store and back again before being able to check out. That was a problem since I had to be home by 9AM to take Nicole to work. I relayed this to Terry and he asked “So we have to abandon everything?” I said “Yeah, unless you want to wait here while I go take Nicole to work.” He said he had nothing to do that day so we went ahead with that. I stashed my pile of stuff so I could get it later and went home.

I got home in time, took Nicole to work, and got back to Fry’s to find Terry waiting outside. We went back in to find my stuff which was still where I stashed it, and I check for any deals on the NintendoDS. There was a bundle with two games I had zero interest in, but they also had the standard Nintendogs bundle, and Nicole wanted Nintendogs so that was a good deal. I picked up Trauma Center: Under the Knife because it sounded fun. The checkout line was normal sized at that point so we checked out right away.

What did I learn in case I want to do something similar again? Go with someone else (we did that), park a block away, and get in line as soon as you enter the store. Then you can take turns shopping and be ready to check out at the end.

In addition to that, the visual ad has a www.worldchill.com url that takes you to not the greatest Flash site, but I really like the idea behind it. You can select your own “chill” level and make a thumbtack where you are with your chill level. That in turn gets averaged by localities and regions up to the world level so you get a “chill level” for the entire world. The screen saver cycles through areas showing the chill level of that area.

The makers had the idea that you could have a map like weather maps that showed changes in “chill” over time and perhaps watch trends. It’s definitely not wide-spread or well implemented enough for that. The Flash that lets you place your rating is tricky to use and doesn’t let you easily update your info. It should just be a simple applet, maybe a part of everyone’s instant messenger program. Just a slider that when changed sends the update. It has to be easy and always there.

The more minor problem is the screen saver. It starts at the top level and then steps down to a region and then to parts of the region. When a part is done it has to go back to the region level before going to another part so you end up seeing regions a lot. I understand that it is following it’s internal tree representation of the data but it can skip those things it has been to before pretty easily.

I probably should have invented that instead of writing it here.

I also took a walk to the library to look at their videos. They had an extensive collection of non-fiction VHS tapes, including a number on local history like a ten tape set on the oral history of Davenport and another 10 tapes from the discussion about rebuilding Santa Cruz after the earthquake or 1989 (still two holes in the ground (am I rambling too much here?)). Anyway, their total number of DVDs is maybe 50 tops. They didn’t have any current VHS movies either which makes me think it’s 100% donation. Maybe I should start giving them movies I don’t care for. Or since I just bought this 20 kung-fu movie collection for $15 (on 6 discs) and if I don’t really want to own them after that (but $0.75/movie is worth buying initially) I’ll hand them over and then 1/3 of their movies will be kung-fu movies.

Many people seem to feel that you either have to belive in evolution, or in creationism, or in intelligent design which is the newest form of creationism. However, there is room for these things to complement one another.

Let’s say life was created. From parents to children, one generation to the next, the children are combinations of traits of the parents. Like all changes, some are better than others, and in the long run and over many sets of children, the better things are going to be more well off than the things that aren’t as good. We have seen this with people immune to diseases and with bacteria becoming resistant to drugs. That is the basis for evolution, but in no way does that discount creation. You can say the system that we call evolution was created. We don’t know why, but we also don’t know why we were created in the first place. We just know we were created in God’s image. To us an image is a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional scene. It’s not perfect, and obviously is not going to have all the qualities of the original. We, being in three dimensions, perhaps are limited renditions of a higher dimensional nature of God.

Science neatly sidesteps the why because they have no idea. All science is saying with evolution is that this system is in place and has been identified and that can be used to build more knowledge about the world we live in. This all fits since we were also created as curious creatures who also happen to be excellent at manipulating symbols and information. We can’t help but try to figure stuff out.

I think Sawyer will end up dead.
Nicole pointed out to me that the craxy French lady said she heard they were coming for the boy, we didn’t think the boy was Walt though. Is this why Walt knew they had to leave the island? Because his capture was something that was going to or needed to happen?

Locke and Jack confronting each other made me see them as a pair or opposites fulfilling a similar role overall. That made me start thinking about how other pairings go on the island with the characters we know so far. Not in who likes whom, but in the parallels in their roles.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:
Jack – Locke
Kate – Sawyer
Michael – Jin
Sayid – Boone
Hurley – Walt
Charlie – Shannon
Sun – Claire

Spray candy is liquid candy in a spray pump. The beauty is that you feel like you just had candy and it’s such a small ammount that it’s effectively zero calories.

Anyway, I tried them in the parking structure and they held together well enough and thought it would be good for the dogs. We went home and took the dogs out side and blew some bubbles. They were a little nervous at first but after some encouragement they started to go after them. After they got a taste of them they wanted more and then it was just fun watching them leap all over the place trying to get the yummy bubbles! The only problem was the wind making things difficult. Also the bubbles don’t last nearly as long as regular bubbles, but long enough for playing with dogs!

In the past I’ve thought that the people today aren’t much different from the people in the past. One generation is always complaining about the upcoming one. But I think there are some differences and trends that do create differences between people today and those from earlier. And I think these things also made the previous generation the “people today” for the generation before them.

It’s all Hitler’s fault! Not really, but the differention that is at the heart of the complaints seems to have started at the end of World War II with the troops coming home. During that time there was a big push to the suburbs. Cheap suburban homes were built to accomodate all the troops coming home and instead of returning to crowded cities where you had to interact with people on a regular basis, everyone had a little space of their own. Aside from this new found personal space leading to the baby boom, it was also the first step towards personal privacy on a scale not seen before. People had their own retreat. People still talked to their neighbors and made friends with them because old habits die hard and people like to share their experiences.

Next came the automobile everyone had to have. The Model-T did its job and brought the cheap car to the masses, but it wasn’t something you would want to spend a lot of time in. The 50s became a time of explosive growth for cars. Cars suddently looked cool and with the prosperity after the war everyone could afford one. With the car mania can all the services that could support cars. Now restaurants had you eating in cars, you could watch movies in cars, and you could listen to the radio in cars. No need to eat with others, or interact with others in shared entertainment like gathering around the radio or sitting with others in a theater. You still had gatherings because televisions were expensive and the programming was only on for a few hours a day so everyone gathered to watch those shows.

Moving into the 60s radios got smaller and you could carry them with you easily. Stereos got cheaper so people could have their music in their own rooms. Cars continued their growth. All of these things work towards giving people the ability to isolate themselves to their own space even if their space is shared.

The 70s brought about more portable music sources in the form of cassette tapes and more portable playing devices, and headphones started to become common for more isolation from others.

The 80s saw computers start to gain acceptance in the home but there was nothing about them that the average person would want to use on a regular basis. Some people got sucked in but for the average person it wasn’t anything. Home video rentals and cable became big players and many people didn’t see a reason to go to a theater if they could just wait and watch it in their homes and away from the crowds. But small headphones showed up as well as compact discs. These weren’t any more portable than tapes, but they gave people the same quality they would get at home in any device that would play them. Less reason to be in your own space to be in your own “space.”

The 90s saw portable video games start up, portable digital music players which made music even more portable, and even small headphones. People can immerse themselves in their electronic entertainments without carrying too much. Home theaters became popular, giving people similar experiences at home as could be found in a movie theater. People found they could better isolate themselves in their home without the high prices, and hey, home popcorn is just as good for them.

The internet also burst on to the scene and had explosive growth. The internet allowed people to share their experiences with more people than ever before. People became glued to their computers with the new sharing freedom. At the same time it allowed them to share anonymously which means they didn’t have to care for the feelings of others or worry about any consequences for anything they said.

In the 00s digital music players could now carry hundreds of albums in the space of a pack of playing cards and could be listened to on tiny headphones. Complete immersion was possible. Video game devices were better and lasted longer on their batteries. The internet continues to be an outlet without much in the way of consequence.

So what is wrong with people today? People continue to want and continue to get devices andentertainments that allow them to be isolated from one another. When they are isolated they don’t learn or remember how best to communicate with others or interact in other ways. They become selfish since it’s all about them in their personal world of entertainment. In that personal world why do the others matter?

That wasn’t a difficult change, so how easy are handwriting changes in general. I think people usually consider that pretty steady but it does change. Mine gets worse at least. Maybe it’s because of a lack of patience to write nicely.

I said they were my Jewish stigmata. Then I started thinking about what form Jewish stigmata would take. 9 burn marks in a row. Dreidel letters raising up on your skin. “Gimmel! Damn! I’m going to get them all!”