Food

2/1/26 →

Today I juiced & heat pasteurized about 20 pounds of backyard mandarins for breakfast juice. Quite the bounty this year. Here’s a photo of one compost bucket filled with some of the remains #HomeOrchard #Yarden

A small 1/4 gallon (maybe?) plastic bucket full of bright orange mandarin skins, pith, seeds, and pulp. It’s sitting in front of a sliding glass door, against cabinets on a linoleum floor with a speckled leaf pattern.

10/26/25 →

Sunday, Bake Day! My wife just made a massive batch of traditional (more or less) chocolate chip cookies to last the week. The bake is finished off with some oversized cookies for later today #Food #Cookies #BakingA mixer bowl full of cookie dough with a dough paddle embedded deeply within it. It's all on top of a cart with a wood cutting board.Three tiers of cooling racks, filled with baked chocolate chip cookies. In the background are some random vertical cutting boards up against a cabinet.A view inside a currently-baking convection oveon where, on a baking sheet with parchment, are four oversized cookies. They're not brown yet, just a bit shiny, but are well on their way. Someone's leg and sock is reflected in the oven glass.

10/3/25 →

I am not yet furloughed so I’m thankful for that. So here is a stack of snickerdoodles.

Two stacked cooling racks with well baked, cinnamon covered round & flat browned snickerdoodle cookies. It’s all placed on a wooden cutting board.

9/25/25 →

At Point Reyes National Seashore this morning, we wandered along the Tomales Bay trail. After lunch, we followed the Estero Trail to Schooner bay. Great weather & very relaxing day. We’ll visit the beach & lagoon environments tomorrow. Wildlife photos will come later #PointReyesNationalSeashore

A human, wearing a backpack and a hat, pointing toward a copse of trees in a swale of dried out grass. It’s a bit overcast with some sky showing through.

The Estero at Point Reyes National Seashore. The calm estuary has two fingers of ridges reaching into it, before vanishing under the water. It’s overcast. There’s a beat up wooden hand rail of a foot bridge framing the bottom of the photo.

6/28/25 →

I was watching fire tanker aircraft land at San Bernardino (KSBD) on runway 24, which has no standard approach probably due to big mountains being in the way. So I flew the BAe-146 (Neptune tanker livery) and made the approach in the sim. I landed a bit off center but otherwise stable. #XPlane12 #BAe146 #FlightSim #Aviation

Aerial view of a landscape with scattered houses and roads, seen from a flying BAe-146 with four jet engines and down landing gear prominently sticking out from the sides below the high wings. It’s a classic red Neptune fire tanker livery. The San Bernardino Airport is visible behind and to the left of the aircraft.A BAe-146 with four engines has its speed brakes and lift brakes deployed after landing on a runway, with mountains visible in the background. A weird aircraft with Virgin livery is parked in the background.An actual approach flight path of a BAe-146 tanker (N470NA) at KSBD. It’s a very short final to avoid the mountains to the east.

5/3/25 →

Me getting Dim Sum for breakfast in San FranciscoA man wearing a hat, KN95 mask, and camera stands in a small takeout Dim Sum restaurant. The floor has a checkered tile pattern with WATCH YOUR STEP tape on the threshold. There's a digital ordering kiosk, a TV on the wall.

Can One Use an LLM to Defeat the Evil Robots?

3/2/25

Llama 3.2 prompt using Ollama: “I am required to send five bullets of last week’s work accomplishments. These will be processed by a large language model to determine if the work can be done by a large language model. Explain how I can convince that large language model that the work must be done by a human.”

A wordy Llama 3.2 answer:

Continue reading →

2/23/25 →

When California Went to War Over Eggs | Smithsonian

The scramble for eggs drew entrepreneurs to an unusual source: a 211-acre archipelago 26 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge known as the Farallon Islands. The skeletal string of islets are outcroppings of the continental shelf, made up of ancient, weather-worn granite.

12/25/24 →

Snow sculptures from a very wintery Berlin in early December 2023 A snowman with three snowballs is displayed on a pedestal in front of a store. It has a stick for arms and a simple face. There’s a small signpost behind it, and a card rack is visible to the side. A store front is behind the snowman. A small snowman stands in the snow with stick arms, closed eyes made from twigs, and a leaf for a mouth. In the background, there is a large out of place rock formation. The surrounding area is snowy with trees in the distance.

10/13/24 →

Today we made a quick visit to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. There’s no missing the White Fronted Geese now and there’s still plenty of dragonflies but there’s no significant population of migratory songbirds yet #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #BirdWatching #Dragonfly #Fujifilm #SOoC A dragonfly with transparent wings featuring dark patterns rests on a vertical reed, set against a background of dry, intertwined reeds. A large flock of White Fronted geese rests im a wetland area surrounded by water and tall grasses. The landscape includes trees and distant rice hulling silos under a clear blue sky.

9/3/24 →

I’ve had Grado SR–125 headphones for almost 20 years now. I’ve neglected them the last ten years. Their second set of L cushions were disintegrating, so I splurged on official G cushions. They’re so good. They fit entirely over my ears instead of sitting along the edges (that made my ears ache pretty fast). #Gradolabs

9/1/24 →

In World of Warcraft’s War Within, I have made it to Dornogal. My Druid hasn’t died yet. Not sure if that means I’m badass or that first part of the game is purposefully easy to solo 🤔 Enjoying it so far #WoW

8/25/24 →

Asian pears are ready for fresh eating! The yellow ones are New Century and the brown ones are Hosui. Our nectarines were hammered by the heat and recently got bug infested. But we harvested what we could & cooked them down. #HomeOrchard #AsianPears A collection of yellow and brown Asian pears placed in a clear plastic bowl.

7/28/24 →

Smoke from thr Park Fire has, for the first time, obviously made it to the surface of the west side of the Sacramento Valley. I can smell it and the Purple sensor reports above 170 AQI #ParkFire #CAWx #AirQuality

The screenshot displays an air quality index (AQI) reading of 178 for Channel A and 177 for Channel B, alongside a historical graph and various particulate matter measurements. From the My Purple Air iOS app.

6/3/24 →

Our avocado tree seems to be producing now. But I won’t bet on any of the fruit making it to maturity sometime between this November and next March. Brutal heat is inbound though we’ve got our shade cloth up to protect the small trees A small, unripe avocado held in a person’s hand, surrounded by green leaves on the tree.

4/13/24 →

My spouse took a page from Korean cuisine and made a nice gochujang-based BBQ sauce for tonight’s sweet potato & kale burgers 📷 #MBApr A sweet potato, kale, and bean burger topped with avocado slices and Korean barbecue sauce on a plate.

4/1/24 →

I’m going to try participating in micro.blog’s April photo challenge. So each day in April I’ll post one photo based on a word given by micro.blog. I’ve skipped the last few challenges.

This big espresso toy at Eddie World in Beatty, Nevada, is ridiculously complex! #MBApr An ornate espresso machine made of copper and brass with decorative elements, labeled “Sabre Room,” on top of a brick counter with bottled drinks visible in the background.

3/30/24 →

I never appreciated how electric ovens do not exhaust heat like gas ovens. This new oven of ours (with induction cooktop) will be nice during the summer. For the induction, there’s been a learning curve. Mostly that heat is instant and boiling is FAST. Using a pressure cooker is crazy efficient.

Death Valley Road Trip Part 5

3/23/24

Most of the second full day at Death Valley! 

Continue reading →

2/10/24 →

On our induction stove, just a regular silicon mat under heavy cookware is good to protect the surface. EM easily passes through the mat & still direct heats the cookware. Those mats are useful! Baking, candy, and now this. A cast iron skillet on an induction stovetop with a silicone mat underneath and a perforated stainless steel utensil holder at the side.

12/16/23 →

I’ve been waiting for this compact flight simulator controller for over a year. I’m pretty excited about it. Made in the USA, which for electronics, isn’t easy! #AvGeek #FlightSim #YawManArrow Orders for the Yawman Arrow begin Jan. 8 – Yawman

12/3/23 →

Guten Morgen! Yesterday, after arriving at Frankfurt, Germany, we had lunch with jet-lag friendly alkoholfrei Bier. Today, in an hour, we’re catching a train to Berlin. #TravelPhotography Alcohol free beer in a Paulaner hellis glass. At the top corner within a glass window reflection an aircraft can be seen flying over. There’s a Christmas tree in the reflection too!

11/23/23 →

Here’s the turkey that appeared out of a hollow at Point Reyes National Seashore (years ago) and tried to steal our lunch. #Birds 🪶A turkey, showing its side, staring menacingly at the camera. The bird is about waist high and is standing next to a well-worn log. Its beak is bright and sharp.

7/19/23 →

This morning, House Finches were breakfasting on ripe elderberries in our backyard. #HouseFinch #BirdsOfMastodon #BirdWatching #Fujifilm Two house finches are on top of two bunches of ripe elderberries, feasting on them. The upper most Finch has a Elderberry in its beak. The lower most finch is on a branch, reaching up into a bunch of berries. 

5/26/23 →

It is a few degrees warmer outside but 10% less relative humidity. The whole house fan made it more comfortable in a few minutes & humidity is dropping like a rock in here. Was 60%. I love it.

5/17/23 →

Got sick of ArcGIS Pro 3.1’s Export Layout not saving export settings per Layout. So Export settings from one layout end up carrying forward to others especially if you don’t hit the Export Layout button. So made a quick Python script to stop the insanity. Jupyter notebooks are nice. #GIS

2/26/23 →

This was one of two batches of mandarins juiced today for this week’s breakfast 😋

a pile of halved mandarins, cut side up, on a red cutting board.

12/23/22 →

Almost done making the caramel. Just needs to hit 250°F

a candy thermometer in a 4 qt sauce pan of almost done caramel colored caramel. At about 230°F

12/23/22 →

I’m going to make caramel today. Alton Brown’s Dark Caramel recipe never fails. Though I prefer a little less dark so I cut the highest temp from 350 to 340°F and then the final temp to 250°F (makes them a tad softer).

11/23/22 →

My contribution to Thanksgiving is cleaning up the kitchen after major steps are completed by my wife & cranberry sauce. Can’t wait for tomorrow. Lots of prep today!

Whole cranberries in pot waiting to be cooked down into sauce.