The Hydrogen Project

Less QQ more BBQ

2010-06-28T17:46:25Z

Last night I made the best Q in like a year. Raw data follows.

THE MEAT: A three-pound slab of beef chuck sold as pot roast.
THE HEAT: Oak logs and lump charcoal. I started off at 400 degrees until the meat reached an internal temperature of 140° then wrapped the meat in foil and moved the logs to the firebox. Then it started raining and I moved inside to the oven. I turned off the heat at 190° and let the meat rest for a half hour.
THE RUB: Salt, pepper, cayenne, paprika, chili powder, cumin.
THE MOP: 1 12 oz. can of beer with 4 oz. each of Worcestershire sauce and apple cider vinegar and a touch of salt and pepper. I stopped mopping after the foiling point.
THE SAUCE: Once I finished mopping, I added about a cup of ketchup, some blackstrap molasses, onion powder, garlic powder, mustard powder, and peach juice to the saucepan of mop sauce I had brought to the boil. To thicken it up, I added the usual cornstarch slurry. The peach juice made all the difference.
THE SIDES: Potato salad and garden salad because of CSA vegetable overload.

Using keychain on Mac OS X

2010-06-15T14:26:44Z

I use keychain to manage my SSH keys on every system. This means I don't use SSHKeychain, and I don't use launchd as an ssh-agent front. Unfortunately, this makes it impossible for graphical Mac OS X apps to use the keychain; the SSH_AUTH_SOCK environment variable is set when your shell starts up and any custom environment variables for your graphical apps are set in ${HOME}/.MacOSX/environment.plist. To get around this, add the following or something similar just after your shell reads the keychain script.

source ~/.keychain/${HOSTNAME}-sh



# to allow p4v to use keychain instead of launchd

cat < ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist









	SSH_AUTH_SOCK

	$SSH_AUTH_SOCK





EOT

The one limitation is that you must start your Terminal before launching anything that uses keychain, but since I start Terminal as soon as I log in, that's not a problem.

Peter Gabriel and Other Events

2010-05-07T17:50:23Z

For my birthday, my wife sent me packing to New York City to see Peter Gabriel perform at Radio City Music Hall. The last time I saw him perform was in 2002. I was still in college, and he was performing with his band and his usual cast of props and effects. The current tour, called 'New Blood,' was completely different. About the only thing in common between these two tours was the presence of Peter and his daughter Melanie as a backup vocalist. This tour is based on the 'Scratch My Back' project, which is a set of 12 covers of rock bands old and new released earlier this year. Each song was arranged for voice and orchestra by John Metcalfe, a former member of The Durutti Column. The songs involved include the likes of Paul Simon's Boy in a Bubble, Lou Reed's The Power of Your Heart, David Bowie's Heroes, and The Magnetic Fields' The Book Of Love (from the Strictly Ballroom soundtrack) Each artist represented is also covering one of Gabriel's tracks. These will be released piecemeal as companions to each single from 'Scratch My Back' and later on a companion album called '...And I'll Scratch Yours'. The sole unfortunate exception is that David Bowie won't be performing a cover. Instead, Brian Eno will be performing a cover of Don't Break This Rhythm.

If you will allow me one indulgence, I would have liked to see Ryuichi Sakamoto and Underworld involved in this. Gabriel would cover 8-ball and either World Citizen or See-Through, Sakamoto would cover Here Comes the Flood or The Drop, and Underworld would cover Excellent Birds. God, I am a nerd.

Although the marketing for the tour claimed a total absence of drums, guitars, and opening acts, the show opened with a short two-song set from singer/songwriter/guitarist Ane Brun, who would later serve as the other backup female vocalist. The orchestra also clearly had a bass drum on stage. The orchestra for the NYC and Montreal shows was apparently the the Orchestra of St. Luke's, augmented by some additional players. (For example the OSL has no tubist but there was one on stage) Conducting was Ben Foster who apparently writes music for Doctor Who and Torchwood. They played through the entire 'Scratch My Back' album, followed by a short intermission and an hour of rearranged Peter Gabriel back catalog (setlist here). Apparently Lou Reed played his cover of Solsbury Hill the following night.

What an incredible performance. After nearly every song I was emotionally exhausted, especially during the second half of more familiar material. Unfortunately, for Signal to Noise there was no attempt made to replace the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's voice, either with a recording or another singer. Given that the song had dead space specifically to let him improvise, it fell a bit flat. This was more than made up for by the inclusion of Red Rain, a stunning duet adaptation of Washing of the Water, and Ane Brun's excellent interpretation of Don't Give Up (better than any save Paula Cole, maybe).

Anyway, further musical goings on. I will be playing some records between live acts at the Megapolis Festival opening concert and then for the rest of the weekend, my installation, the Republic of Nynex will be showing in the lobby of WYPR Public Radio.

My daughter bought me a copy of Hiromi Uehara's album 'Place to Be.' What a precocious 11-month old! She can't even walk and she is such a great shopper! :)

Beer Notes

2010-04-14T01:36:28Z

With regards to my last entry, here are notes per beer:
- Chateau Jiahu was really good the second time around.
- Sahtea was OK. Too syrupy and cloyingly sweet in flavor. Didn't notice much juniper.
- Pangaea - wtf? BORING
- Schlenklerla - did not taste super bacony. Actually quite good. Drank it with smoked brisket, though. Maybe that made the difference.
- Pretty Things - really good.
- High and Mighty was partially used in a sauce and partially drunk by my wife! Oops. Sauce was tasty.
- Biere de Noel was skunked :( Spilled everywhere due to its enormous head but also went into the sauce above.
- Nogne was misery in a bottle. I am done with wild ales, ugh.
- A guest drank one RIS. I drank the other. Over-hyped much like other Stone products. One bottle left. I'll drink it a few months to see if there's a difference, but since aging beer is kind of over hyped too, meh. Stone's Bastard and Smoked Porter are good. Everything else I've tried is just marketing.

The Southern Tier and Bourbon County are still waiting for me. :)

I am participating in a homebrew swap through Metafilter. The barleywine will probably be sent out because the Sam Adams LongShot contest is only open to beers that don't belong in any other BJCP category. (protobeers like sahti, weird hybrid styles, etc. etc.)

However, I have a plan. It began with a wild hint of an idea and then slowly became fleshed out in my mind. The concept is: GINBEER! A beer with all the magic and meanness of gin. A beer that they would give you in the city of Lynn in response to an order of soda.

Here is the plan, so that in case of my death someone can continue this legend.

Start with a California Common (à la Anchor Steam Beer). Discard the caramelized malts and replace with flaked rye and wheat. Use a California Lager yeast, with noble hops for the aroma hops (I am thinking Saaz). Not sure what to use for the bittering hops yet. When primary fermentation is complete, prepare one or more combinations of the following botanicals:
- juniper berries (duh, either direct or via juniper tea or juniper infused vodka)
- coriander
- angelica root
- orris root
- orange peel
- lime peel
- lemon peel
- licorice powder
- cloves
- fennel
- cardamom
- cucumber
- cinnamon
- rosemary

I now have a glass carboy and a couple large plastic science-y containers, so I can try four different tinctures. Rack the beer on top of the botanicals in the secondary container, then prime and bottle after one additional week. To try a number of different blends I'll need a co-conspirator. (or at least I'll need to go for larger than a 5 gallon batch)