Am I becoming a GUNSHIP fan? Are they time travelers from an alternate better 80s?
However the next few days turn out, I hope you are ok.
New Bike Day
Wow, that got here fast! Got my new Priority Continuum Onyx.
I’ve barely ridden it yet, but it seems amazing.
Added my fave retro reflective tape on it for style and to deter thievery.
But it will shine shine shine at night.
Going to get a rack put on it and then I’ll have a perfect commuter and arrive without the classic backpack sweat. Too bad I have to go on a work trip this next week and I can’t use it.
If you are looking at an apartment in a building with a gym, make sure someone uses the gym equipment while you are in the apartment. Are you ok with that noise during the hours the gym is available to use?
New Bike Time!
I’ve been riding a Vivi e-bike that I won in a contest for a while now. It’s been… ok. I’ve gotten some great use out of it – especially hauling Max around before he could ride his own bike to school.
I really liked riding an e-bike – but I found it hard not to crank up the motor all the time and go super fast!
Trouble started for me when the spokes started giving out on the wheels. I got them repaired on the front wheel. Then I noticed some broken on the back wheel. I went to my local bike shop, Habitat Bicycles, and they said they couldn’t repair it because too many spokes were broken and they didn’t work with these kinds of e-bikes.
Hell! I had to get it repaired! I bought a replacement wheel for a few hundred dollars. Then I took it to a shady repair shop to move the motor over from one wheel to another. It was not a good job. The motor didn’t properly engaged. Then I went to London for a while and when I came back the battery stopped taking a charge.
So, for months I’ve been riding what is basically a very heavy non electric bike. That’s fine! I have strong legs. Then the rear shimano shifter dropped a spring while riding so now I have a 3 gear heavy regular bike.
I’m not very happy with this, though I’m generally really happy riding a bike. I don’t want to pour more money into fixing more things on this bike.
I just discovered that my work has a health reimbursement for bicycles!
So I’m finally going to buy a nice bike. I’ve never had a nice bike. I’ve always been proud of making do with old bikes and making them last forever. When I got hit by a car in South Carolina, I got the fork re-straightened and kept riding that same bike for years longer.
But I really think I’ll get something out of a nice bike.
I had to decide – do I get an e-bike again?
I’m not getting an e-bike. I like pedaling, I like getting stronger. E-bikes aren’t serviceable everywhere and are complicated. My experience of getting someone else to take care of an e-bike was not very pleasant. E-bikes are really expensive. I have to remember to charge the battery. Many days I’d have the battery upstairs and realize I’d forgotten to bring it down when I was heading out.
So what kind of bike? A commuter bike describes me perfectly. I’m a commuter. I read 8 miles or so to work and 8 miles back with a bridge in each ride.
The next big choice I made was to go with self-service simplicity or high tech offerings. If I get a bike with front and rear cassettes, a chain, and caliper breaks – that’s a machine I can service basically any part of. I’m also interested in what seem like good recent advances – continuous variable transmission internal hubs and belt drives, disc brakes and the like.
I decided to go against my usual self-service simplicity because I’ve noticed I don’t have the time. I just can’t be arsing around with my bike as much these days – so fixing it myself isn’t something I’m prioritizing.
I just put in an order for a Priority Continuum Onyx.
- It’s got a carbon belt drive – no more grease stains on my pant legs when I forget to roll up.
- Continuously variable transmission internal hub. I’ve tried this on Citi Bikes and it seems pretty sweet. An internal hub is also one less thing to maintain. It is sealed from the elements and should be fine unless things go seriously wrong – but then I’ll HAVE to take to a bike shop.
- Dynamo powered front and rear lights. I like not having to take my light off to recharge it.
- Hydraulic disc brakes should work in all conditions – but I won’t have the tools to fix them.
I’m eager to get my hands on it and decide if it’s right for me!
mclusky – Icarus Smicarus
Short and not sweet at all
Sous Vide Berbere Ribs
My buddy Frankie turned me onto Berbere spice on popcorn (it’s perfect). I got some from Sahadis before hanging out with the beer club boys and it sat on the shelf until this last week.
Some ribs came in our CSA, so I got excited to make a Berbere rub and sous vide the ribs. I was really sick and bored before, so this was a really fun little project and the sous vide turned out perfect ribs with a complex flavor. The berbere rub is just salt, sugars and berbere spice mix, so it’s great to toss on popcorn as well.
I put the sous vide berbere ribs recipe up on cooked.wiki if you want to try it. No pictures because I was hungry and didn’t think I’d be documenting it!
I’m Pickle Matt
My new passion is pickling. I’m taking perfectly nice things and, because we have too many of them, I’m sticking them in vinegar, salt and sugar solutions.
Get out of my way, because I’m brining my onions. Now I have pickled onions at the ready for any emergency burritos. Here’s my pickled onion recipe on cooked.wiki
Duck your head in respect, because I’m pickling jalapenos. We messed up and got way more jalapenos than we can consume fast enough. Now we’re going hog wild with the vinegar and the jalapenos will last and be stuffed into every chili or recipe when we have time.
I’m pickle Matt.
Finally a good recipe site
Recipes have a real problem on the internet. Everyone wants to share them, everyone wants to know them. But recipes are hard to monetize. They are not copyrightable!
A narrative, however, IS copyrightable.
And while most folks just are interested in a recipe, the surrounding text is important to food bloggers for multiple reasons:
- They need places to put advertisements which they use to fund their writing
- They think Google ranks recipes with stories higher
- They actually want to share interesting information. They are excited and want to share what they know, not just edit a recipe for you, a stranger!
It’s similar to how youtubers shoot ten minute videos where they mention the sponsor in the first 40 seconds, then talk about how they will give you some information but first… They are serfs, sharecroppers doing what the lords of the internet have dictated is needed to get a buck.
But I really just want to keep and use the recipes themselves. As damage appears, we figure ways to route around it. My new favorite example is http://cooked.wiki – it’s a way to collect recipes and edit them. I’m building a little cookbook of my fave recipes there under my cooked.wiki profile.
The killer feature of cooked is not just the user interface, it’s the recipe importer. Find any recipe you like online that you’d like to use.
For example – I made this Instant Pot Firecracker Chicken recipe. It’s great because you can prep everything ahead of time, freeze it and cook it on a night when you are busy and don’t have lots of time. It’s pretty good for that kind of freezer bag meal! Here’s a screenshot of the page, I’ll see you at the bottom of that.
So that’s a LOT. But I just go to the url bar and add http://cooked.wiki at the front of the url like so:
https://cooked.wiki/https://littlesunnykitchen.com/firecracker-chicken-recipe/
And that turns into something SUPER easy to read, super small that I can save in my personal recipe book.
It’s SO user focused. Any step you click on highlights the ingredients needed – it auto scales your portion sizes and you can create a shopping list from the recipes you are going to cook.
I can only assume that at some point this will get bought by a private equity firm and plundered. Until then, I’m using it and hoping they let me pay for the privilege.
Unlockers
My new office is the nicest place I’ve ever worked. It’s gorgeous.
As part of a more intentional office strategy, not everyone comes in at the same time. For occasional “everyone in at the same time” events we have extra overflow space.
But since all the desks are shared, there’s a clean desk policy. Anything you don’t want to take home goes in a locker. You pick an empty locker, put your stuff in, set the code and lock it. When you return, unlock it with the code. Simple!
I love lockers because I can use them as dead drops. When I had to return a kiteboarding kite or send someone a present it’s more fun to put it in a locker and message them the combination. Sneaky fun!
But I just found a terrible hack:
The lockers unlock for any code.
I discovered it accidentally when I went to open the wrong locker and put in my code. It opened and I, a fool, thought “That’s so weird that they put in the address of our last office as the code!” Then I moved on, until I did it accidentally again. Then I went hog wild and tested that ANY four number opens it.
I’ve let the admin team know but I also feel the need to go put presents in every locked locker until they get it fixed.
Gunship – Blood for the Blood God
This is a bonkers Warhammer 40K / AI banger. It’s hard to watch and there is an interesting making of video.
None of the other songs by this band seem to sound anything like this.