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First time soldering headers
The last time I tried to solder something, it was just a few pins and it gave me so much trouble and took hours. So, when I was thinking about how how I was going to redo my BBQ thermostat with Adafruit Circuit Python and Stemma QT, I was afraid to get the FeatherS2 since…
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Last Few Days in Programming: Python and Arduino
Python Spent the last few days finalizing the 5.0 release of my Extra Life Donation Tracker and then pushed ahead to get version 5.1 out. Here’s the PyPi page if you want to use it for your Extra Life live streams. Arduino I got back to my BBQ Themostat project and did some minor programming…
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2019 In Programming
This was a VERY busy year for my coding. This year I had over 769 commits to GitHub; my previous best was 58 in 2014. The commits were very unevenly distributed. If you look at the graph of my commits, outside of a busy week in January and another in May, I didn’t really start…
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Review: Make: LEGO and Arduino Projects: Projects for extending MINDSTORMS NXT with open-source electronics
Make: LEGO and Arduino Projects: Projects for extending MINDSTORMS NXT with open-source electronics by John Baichtal My rating: 4 of 5 stars I had been waiting to mark this book as read until I finished all the projects, but the reality is that might take years; not because the projects are hard, but because I…
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Review: Korean Home Cooking: Classic and Modern Recipes
Korean Home Cooking: Classic and Modern Recipes by Sohui Kim My rating: 4 of 5 stars Beautiful photos and well-written recipes fill this book. I’ve added lots of them to my to-cook list. My only disappointment is that the BBQ section is more about grilling indoors than true BBQ. View all my reviews
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Review: Project Fire: Cutting-Edge Techniques and Sizzling Recipes from the Caveman Porterhouse to Salt Slab Brownie S’Mores
Project Fire: Cutting-Edge Techniques and Sizzling Recipes from the Caveman Porterhouse to Salt Slab Brownie S’Mores by Steven Raichlen My rating: 4 of 5 stars Last summer I made the grilled breakfast quesadillas and just that item is worth the cost of this book. Also, grilled bacon turned out to be pretty awesome and way…
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Review: Churrasco: Grilling the Brazilian Way
Churrasco: Grilling the Brazilian Way by Evandro Caregnato My rating: 3 of 5 stars The book starts off with a biography of the author, one of the founders of the Texas de Brazil restaurant chain. It then gives a brief history of where Churrasco came from in Brazil. After a primer on the tools and…
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Review: The South’s Best Butts: Pitmaster Secrets for Southern Barbecue Perfection
The South’s Best Butts: Pitmaster Secrets for Southern Barbecue Perfection by Matt Moore My rating: 3 of 5 stars I gave this book a three, but it’s really more of a 3.5 rating. The stories of all the pitmasters that Matt Moore interviews are a 4. They really bring to bear the diverse people who…
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New Dishes I cooked in Jan 2019
In January I made a lot less new things than in previous months, but I did prove that even in sub-freezing temperatures I still BBQ and Smoke. My least favorite were the macadamia nut, white chocolate, and cranberry cookies. I’ve liked white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies in the past, but this was my first…
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New Dishes I cooked in Dec 2018
It’s hard to say which dish was the best one, because lots of them came out great. But it’s pretty easy to say which was the worst – the roti canai came out very much unlike what I was trying to replicate despite following a recipe that went along with a youtube video. Second worst…
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New dishes I cooked in Nov 2018
The biggest success of the new dishes in Nov 2018 was the grilled chicken fajitas. We already had a recipe we often used for grilled chicken fajitas, but I wanted to stretch out and used the recipe from America’s Test Kitchen Mexican Recipes book. The biggest disappointment was the Georgian Chicken Soup (Chikhirtma). It was…
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2018 in Books
This year I continued last year’s trends of reading cook books and stories I’d purchased as part of a Humble Bundle or Story Bundle. This led to some great surprises like Singularity Girl, which I really liked and Kissing Booth Girl which had a bunch of haunting short stories. Because it was the 200th anniversary,…
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Reviews: Babylon’s Ashes; Katamari Damacy; Milk Street: Tuesday Nights: More than 200 Simple Weeknight Suppers that Deliver Bold Flavor, Fast; Zeroes; Oathbringer; Nightflyers & Other Stories; Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from the Pit Bosses; The Alloy of Law; Allomancer Jak and the Pits of Eltania; A Planet for Rent ; Adrift on the Sea of Rains; Shadows of Self; The Bands of Mourning; Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell; Cook’s Illustrated Magazine 2018
Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is probably the most direct sequel so far in The Expanse. It pretty much picks up right where the last one left off (not counting the interstitial novella). One thing JSAC use for great effect in this book (and I think…
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Reviews: The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan; Cibola Burn; Edgedancer; Sixth of the Dusk; The Virtuous Feats of the Indomitable Miss Trafalgar and the Erudite Lady Boone; The Churn; Altered America: Steampunk Stories; Dungeon Hacks: How NetHack, Angband, and Other Roguelikes Changed the Course of Video Games; Nemesis Games; Legion
The Future is Japanese: Science Fiction Futures and Brand New Fantasies from and about Japan by Masumi Washington My rating: 3 of 5 stars Another anthology. As usual, I’ve included my status updates with some spelling fixes. Overall it was a very uneven collection in terms of what I enjoyed. The stories all seemed to…
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Reviews: The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon – The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World; Food Processor Perfection: 75 Amazing Ways to Use the Most Powerful Tool in Your Kitchen; Planet Barbecue!: 309 Recipes, 60 Countries; Prepare to Meet Thy Doom: And More True Gaming Stories; Abaddon’s Gate; Damnation Alley ; The Improbable Rise of Singularity Girl; The Perfect Cookie: Your Ultimate Guide to Foolproof Cookies, Brownies, and Bars; Words of Radiance
The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon – The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World by Steven L. Kent My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a very comprehensive look at the history of video games going way, way back. I’m familiar with a lot…