Color Stages of Caramel
I use Alton Brown’s dark caramel recipe with some minor modifications to suit taste. First, the mixture always gets to 230°F a few minutes faster than expected and it takes 10 minutes instead of 6 or 7 to get to 300°F. Then, I heat to 340°F instead of 350°F because that’s too burnt for friends. I combine the broken up butter with the cream in a Pyrex measure cup so all of that goes in at once – making it less stressful with one less step. Finally, for a softer caramel, I pour it out at 245°F. YMMV 😁🍴
Front yarden update: California Buckwheat’s dead flowers are showy red and the Blue Oak has decided it is winter. California fuchsias still have flowers for the hummingbirds. Front of the house illuminated by mostly bug friendly amber lights. 🐞🐝
To HomePod: “How’s the timer?” HomePod: “The timer is cancelled.” 🙀🤷♂️📱
The [iRobot Braava m6 has a threshold problem](https://homesupport.irobot.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/21012/kw/Threshold) and it is a bit frustrating but workable. In my case it can easily go from laminate (higher) to linoleum but not the other way. It’d perhaps take just a quick rev of the wheels to hop back over up to laminate.
Dear iPadOS notes: I’d love a default where a new single Notes window launches when I tap your springboard icon instead of the last split screen I used with 1Writer.
Nest Cam vs HomeKit Secure Video
There’s been some frustration with the current state of HomeKit Secure Video, but coming from a very pricey Nest Cam IQ Outdoor that basically is useless without another subscription (cancelled when they removed camera features), HomeKit Secure Video is a revelation. I’m using a Logitech Circle 2 with HomeKit Secure Video and its non-delayed, non-lagged, over the LAN, live video starts… every… single… time. Compare this behavior with always having to toggle the Nest Cam IQ Outdoor Cam off and on to get past the blue spinning wheel and get a several second delayed live video. So HomeKit Secure Video’s direct over the LAN live video coupled with video clips as a value add with an iCloud storage subscription, HomeKit Secure Video is great. But yes, be careful about those notifications and the sensitivity of people/animal/car detection. I’ve had people detected across the street, which frankly, is more impressive than annoying. And yes, you can only get one live stream at a time with the Circle 2. That’s workable.
Test from MarsEdit - does RichText convert to MarkDown? Does it bold? Who needs Italians when they steal arctic circle candy? Is underlining for chumps that know nothing of hyperlinks? All these answers and more… to come.
Sometimes my Sonos goes out of sync with the HomePod. The HomePod appears to then go through a process to resynchronize — maybe 75% successful. They’re within earshot of each other so makes since a HomePod might do some fancy sync.
Just cracked open the homemade boozy eggnog that’s been aging since September 8 2019. It’s delightful, smooth, and not gloppy.
Birds gorging on sweet basil seeds.
The birds are gorging on seeds in our front and backyard gardens. So happy to provide them sustenance rather than a lawn desert!
I didn’t end up with even one permission prompt after installing MacOS Catalina & launching various apps. Maybe I accidentally turned off SIP? No… that’s not it. Or it’s not so bad in the current installation version. 👍👍📱
So MacOS Catalina’s SideCar feature requires the Mac user and target iPad to be signed in to the same AppleID even if the iPad is connected to USB. 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎📱
HomeBrew and SuperDuper! just released MacOS Catalina support so I suppose I will try to upgrade today…
- Valencia sloooowly ripening & 2) mandarins rapidly coloring but still a month out from peak sweetness
These Extra-crispy Parmesan-crusted roasted potatoes by J. Kenji López-Alt are pretty great.
So my iPhone has started detecting The Annie Cat as a focus area!
One more month until these mandarins are perfectly sweet. Patience!
Armillaria mellea. Honey mushroom 🥾
Very pleased that HomeKit Secure Video streams live video on the LAN. No more stream to cloud and download, adding many seconds of video delay & failure points. 📱