Bread, Small Computers, and Time

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My youngest requested that I make baguettes for their birthday. They turned out better than I expected. I meant to write down what I did. I still haven't but this is at least one place it can live until I do write it down

Baguette Notes

  • preferment

    • 100 g starter (all of it at the time)
    • 150 flour
    • 150 water
    • mixed together
    • removed 100g of dough to be starter
    • let hang out at room temp all day
  • before bed

    • preferment
    • 400 g flour (I think, targeting 1000g dough)
    • 260 g water (about)
    • 20 g salt
    • mixed together
    • put in fridge
  • next day

    • pulled dough out about noon
    • shaped into 250g balls at about 3:30pm
    • planned to form into baguettes at 4pm
    • actually did it at about 4:30pm
    • turned on oven with stone inside to 500F
    • put baguettes in about 5:30pm
    • pulled out about 5:50pm

Single Board Computers

A friend of the blog asked me about my work from home computer.

It's an odroid h2.

I also got the type 2 case. and a fan.

Strictly speaking you probably don't need either of them, but for about $12 it's a shiny case and a fan you can't hear.

I opted for the Samsung 970 EVO SSD 500GB M.2 NVMe drive. That was the one that could get to me the fastest during the start of the pandemic stay at home order mid March.

I also got a G.Skill 8GB 2400MHz DDR4 SO-DIMM. I already had 1 of these. The forums say that you get better performance with paired sticks.

I installed Linux Mint 19.3 on it, XFCE version, and have used it since I put it all together.

It doesn't seem laggy or anything.

The only weirdness is that it drops the webcam, Logitech C920, a lot more than I would like. It doesn't seem to like its microphone either so I have an external one. Something cheap one.

So, for about $300 you can have a very compact, quiet little computer.

I don't know if the Intel Celeron Celeron J4105 can run win10, but I bet it could. It's only about 2 years old. Which is about 2-3 years older than most of the CPUs in my house.

I did a quick test during lunch to see about running Zoom in a Win10 sandbox. My youngest was using the web cam so I couldn't test that. The audio worked fine however.

The problem was when I did start the virtual happy hour with some friends I go to gaming conventions with, the web cam wasn't recognized.

Which is totally reasonable that the web cam not get recognized inside the sandbox. I still would like to figure out how to use it. A task for another time.

The big thing today is a family tie dye party. We had planned for her birthday, pre-pandemic, to have friends over and dye a bunch of stuff. This is our alternative for that.

Speaking of, I need to get back to that.

kabobs and ghosts

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A relatively nice day in terms of weather. It started at about freezing but warmed up nicely. Windy in the afternoon and it looks like we should get some rain.

We decided to try carryout from a Mediterrean/Middle Eastern style restaurant. That meant for this order lofts of kefta, kabobs, and shwarma. Not the typically seasoning/spice profile but I liked it. A nice change from our usual cuisine. We ordered a lot and ate almost all of it. I'm still very full as I write this many hours later.

Watched an episode or two of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D with the kids. Then it was their bed time.

I finished an episode of Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045. I really love the series overall. I'm not sure about this particular incarnation just yet. Not really the animation style I like and the righting is...too much centered it current-ish or very near future politics. It felt much more...futuristic in prior seasons. I'm only about 3 episodes in. An acquaintance that was tweeting about it, which brought it to my attention, noted it got better by episode 7 or so.

All in all, not a day.

Pizza Day

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So, today was Tuesday.

Work went ok, just the fun associated with handling export control needs. Which to say is not fun so much and making sure you do everything right.

I had started the process this weekend to target pizza for dinner tonight.

As it turned out I worked it out.

The dough was better than the last pizza night. That batch was way too wet. This was better. It however it sprung back a fair bit when I was stretching it out prior to putting on toppings and firing.

I think that it might have needed to proof longer. I will need to do some research to confirm that. Other than that they turned out ok. A big accomplishment for me was to use only starter for this batch. I usually throw in some dried yeast. This was from a starter I've probably being keeping alive for about a year.

I still ate a painful amount of pizza.

I'm still getting to learn how to use the Ooni Koda better. I'm getting too much scorching.

Also, tonight was my online game. This campaign uses Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea (AS&SH). I ran 1e AD&D for a very long time and switched to this. Very similar to 1e but I think it files off some of the rough edges of 1e. Plus the setting is just gonzo.

In any case, I'm winding down from that and getting ready to go to bed.

Lazy Saturday

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I made some waffles for breakfast this morning. I fed my sourdough starter a bit extra last night. I took the discarded portion of my sourdough starter when I fed it this morning and added some crushed up sugar cubes. The resulting waffles were...very pale but still cooked and tasty. More savory than anything.

I handwashed some pots and pans while I was making coffee for me spouse and letting the waffle batter rest.

After breakfast I poked some more at some code for a post on my other blog. Some friends were kind enough to do a quick code review that I think better it better.

Did some garden bed planning. We are adding a second raised bed in a different location. It will be interesting to see how this one compares to the first bed.

I took a nap, which was nice.

I also did some sketching for a table for my gaming room. Mostly the legs and how I want to make them.

I did minimal helping my youngest make dinner. She did well.

Then I just watched some youtube, put the kids to bed, make a preferment for some pizza later this week, and got this post ready.

Oh, and I lamented people's reaction to stay at home orders and the incompetent or uncaring Trump adiminstration's handling of their covid19 response.

Chicago Italian Beef Opinions

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I tried a local restaurant that moved locations relatively recently.

I had stopped going to it because I was a bit unsatisfied on their take on their cuisine of choice: Chicago-style sandwich favorites.

Their Chicago Dogs were ok. I haven't tried their gyros. The Italian Beef is ok. However, when I ask for it wet...maybe the bottom third is actually wet.

Personally, I prefer to have the whole sandwich submerged in jus. It should be a pain in the ass to eat since it's failing apart.

The new location is ok.

The server hooch now.

The Italian Beef. Still the same.

:shrug: