One of the attendees does what’s called sketchnote taking. This is basically doodling notes. He sent me a picture of his notes afterwards, and I immediately thought “That is flipping COOL!” My second thought was “was I THAT boring?” My third thought was, “I wish my presentation was as good as this guy’s notes!”
See for yourself!
Bayesian Filters Sketchnote (click to enlarge)
How cool is that? He’s got the high points of the presentation right there. Anybody that was there will instantly remember just looking at these notes. They will also get a good chuckle out of the subtle wit that is embedded in the imagery.
We recently moved the Fridge from where it was when we bought the house. This left a wonderful area for a pantry.
A friend picked up a bunch of scrap wood from freecycle, and dropped it off in my garage knowing I am always looking for good junk. Part of my new found lumber loot, is a bunch of tongue and groove car siding. I decided to use this to make the pantry shelves.
I did up a plan in Sketchup and showed the wife as she sometimes doesn’t understand my vague handwavings and usage of generic terms.
[NOTE insert image here]
Everything so far is being cut on my table saw. It’s really a pain in the neck too, as my garage is so full of junk that I don’t have the proper space I need. I have other saws, a jigsaw, a circular saw, but I can’t cut a straight line with them like I can on the table saw. There’s a radial arm saw in a shed at my folks for me, I just gotta go up and get it.
I started with uprights so I have a good, strong support for my shelves. The shelves across the back will be 2 pieces deep, and I will have a 1 piece deep shelf on the left side eventually. That explains the funky wooden corner. I can run shelves both ways. I pinned the uprights to the walls with some finish nails, but those are just to keep everything from sliding around, the shelves wedged in is what will really hold everything together.
The shelves will have a raised nosing for added strength and so stuff doesn’t want to fall off. Not much of a nosing, maybe an eighth of an inch or so. I cut the outside of the uprights at a 45, so the nosing will be cut to match. It will be quite a pain in the butt to finish out the shelves, but I think it will be worth it in the end. The side shelves will also be cut with a tongue on the one end to interface with the back shelves. Not easy to describe, but when I get it done at some future date, a photo will clear up what I mean.
The back of the back shelves will need to be cut on the left corner so they slide all the way back to the wall. Another pain to cut – probably will happen with both the table saw and a jig saw.
I’ve got the back shelves up, and put a bunch of stuff on them just to get a feel for it. They are all going to come down and get re-hung at a different height once I figure out what exactly goes where. It’s a matter of re-arranging the rest of the kitchen around the holes we opened up and deciding what’s really going to go into the pantry. Items will be measured, remeasured, and then heights padded because somebody is going to make that ONE box that’s an inch taller than all the rest.
All in all, I am quite pleased with the progress so far. I’ve scrapped a few big ideas I had, and am tweaking others to make the space work.
I am trying to decide if I want to leave the pantry open or close it. If I closed it up, I would probably use a bi-fold door that opens to the left. I potentially have 5 cabinet doors that I can free up and use as the face of the bi-fold, but they are of 2 different sizes, so I don’t think that will work very well.
I frequently give presentations on topics related to web development and related technologies. Tomorrow, I am going to be doing a presentation on Bayesian Statistical Inferencing for the Fox Valley Computer Professionals. This is the second time I am giving this presentation, as I gave it about a year ago for the local PHP Meetup group. I’ve revised the presentation with some of the things I have since learned as well as for the new PHP library b8 which I use as an example implementation.
I’ve used this library at work for over a year now for SPAM filtering several email accounts as I process them using PHP. It’s worked quite well for the most part.
I’ve been meaning to make beer bread for a while. Today, today was the day. I was munchy, looking through the fridge, and found some beer way in back. Now, I don’t much like beer for drinking, but I do like cooking with it.
Beer Bread Recipe
3 cups flour
1 tbls sugar
1 tbls baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 bottle beer
Bake 3:50 for about an hour.
A bottle of beer is about 22oz, but I only had cans. So I used 1 full can, and most of a second can. I added the second can until it was about a thick pancake batter consistency. It was still a bit lumpy like a pancake batter should be. It might have been a bit too much beer, as I had to bake it for about an hour and a quarter before a knife came out mostly clean.
I am also still getting used to my gas oven. I’ve got a bed baking stone on the bottom rack. I’ve had good luck with this in my old oven and won’t bake without them any more.
The extra baking time gave it a really nice golden crust.
I am not sure if it is the recipe or the silicone pan I used but the crust was almost leathery on the outside and very moist and dense on the inside. Almost a carrot cake or boston baked bread type consistency
I thought the bread was only OK. My wife LOVED it. She loved how it smelled.
It’s been crazy, since we bought the house. I can’t believe winter’s almost here already!
So much to do, so little time to do it. Especially considering I was sick and knocked on my back for about the last month. That was miserable. I am finally able to do stuff, but I still wear out too quickly.
The ‘big project’ for the last month has been insulating my new attic. When the place was built over 40 years ago, it was insulated, but remodeling, age, and apparently some kids running around have re-arranged and settled the insulation down pretty bad. So I’ve had 76 bags of insulation sitting in the garage for the last month waiting on me to get it into the attic. It’s amazing all the little things that need to be done before you can blow in the insulation!
Build a box around the attic access hatch so the insulation can be full depth and not fall into the room when you access the attic
Close up open electrical boxes because people did a lousy job when they did the electrical
Run a duct from the bathroom fan to somewhere… I don’t know where yet, but I am not allowing it to blow against my rafter anymore
Cover any recessed lighting so the insulation doesn’t contact the light fixture. I am just going to use a largish cardboard box.
Wrap fiberglass insulation around the stove pipe for the furnace so the cellulose bown in insulation doesn’t contact the pipe and start a fire
I am also going to staple string under the roof on the rafters that follows all the electrical runs so if I ever do need to fix something, I don’t have to rut around in my insulation like a pig after truffles.
I have managed to get a few things done around the place. We changed up the wonderful kitchen a bit. There was an island that they used for the kitchen table. They had also had the fridge about as far away from the stove as you can get it. We moved the fridge, moved the island and picked it up a tad taller. There’s more room for a table now. We also have space for a pantry too!
We finally got Internet at home. Hence, this blog post! A good friend of mine also gave me a ‘new’ computer. It’s 8 years old, but better than what I had. I set it up in the library for now. My dad had made his dad a Cherry Desk way back when he was in high school. It’s a beautiful piece of furniture. Not exactly designed for a computer setup, but it’s big enough that I can manage.
I’ve the materials to start a few other projects, but not to finish the one’s I’ve already started. But I won’t start more until I’ve finished some important ones like the insulation. The garage is going to be interesting this winter, as there is no heat in it. I just brought home some materials to address that, but I need to make some solar heat panels and duct them in. I’ve the expensive bits for free (otherwise I wouldn’t have considered doing it this way) but the cheap bits I am lacking will be expensive enough.
So much to do! I had best not be sitting here wiggling my fingers instead of working on some of it.
