The wheat beer I boiled up with a ton of nice spray malt extract and a tin of wheat beer syrup has finally started fermenting noticeably, after about 20 hours of sitting and doing nothing in the primary fermenter. Whew, is all I can say. I was worried that one was going nowhere! It’s true, what they say: don’t freak out if it doesn’t do anything right away. It’s not necessarily a bad sign. Tomorrow or Friday, I’ll be boiling up a pumpkin barley wine. After that, I’ll need more malt extract but that’s the least of my problems — …
Category: PERSONAL
Soon to Return to Perhaps More Programming than of Late
But not tonight. It’s my last night in St. Louis, and I’ll be catching a plane tomorrow. My cat-nap this afternoon means I’ll probably only sleep four hours tonight, but that’s cool. I need to get to the airport early anyway. Here’s hoping I get an emergency exit seat on the plane back to Korea. If not, I think I’m gonna lose it… My paper was fine, just too short a time to present enough of it; but I met some neat people and ate some good food. I think next time I’ll probably apply to a conference somewhere I’d …
나비 and Shower Heads: Should I Just Ask A Korean?
A few questions occurred to me today. I don’t know whether anyone who reads this blog will know the answer, but I’m going to post them anyway.If nobody seems to know, I’ll go ahead and Ask a Korean, and see if that guy can come up with any sensible answer… but first, I’ll post here. The first thing I’m wondering about is the cat name “나비.” (For those of you not living here in Korea, the stereotype name for a cat is 나비. The Korean word for butterfly is the same.) I’m wondering: Is the name actually butterfly, or just …
Brewin’ Up a Sturm
So I mentioned a LONG time ago that I’d been inspired by the Homebrew Korea blog, and had begun home-brewing beer. The first batch I finished for the end of last semester, and handed out bottles to a bunch of people before leaving for my summer trip. (And if you have any of my bottles, I’d like ’em back! Those swing-top bottles aren’t cheap, folks!) My first attempt was a stout which was pretty alright, though not very foamy and not very strong: It turned out okay, but there was something a little off. Not contaminated off, just, not as …
Happy Worldwide Dungeons and Dragons Game Day
It’s today, and while I no longer play, it’s worth noting or celebrating if you like.
Didn’t Do Hallowe’en This Year
Free Hallowe’en PDF at GUD — stories from the first four issues. (Available for now.) Plus some other stuff too… Didn’t do Hallowe’en this year, beyond watching Inglourious Basterds. Stuff to say about it, which meshes pretty well with what I have to say about another SF film, District 9. SF? Why yes, Inglourious Basterds is an alternate history, after all. Need one make a spoiler alert at this point? Well, wait, I’ll save it for when I actually post about that. Today, however, I must send in my paper, plus it’s beer-makin’ day. So… more on both those films …
Nutters in Bloom, and Comments From Today, and a Song
Nutters: Wow, people on the internet are crazy. I’m not going to taunt Happy Fun Freak any more than to say that, despite temptation, except to note that when one knows absolutely nothing about a topic but insists on talking about it and pretending he does know about it, it’s absolutely clear to the people who do know something how little one actually knows. Comments: A few comments from today which need to be preserved, from a meeting on student presentation proposals, a chat with a professor about the Ministry of Education, and a chat with a teacher in another …
Google Docs? Impossible!
I’m busy working on a paper that should be done in a couple of days — whew! — which is the main reason I haven’t been posting here. When I reformulate it into a “talk,” I post the contents here in some form or other. (Possibly with slides, possibly just the audio, I’m not sure.) Anyway, in the meantime, it struck me that back when I was an undergrad, I was talking with a computer science major about the way the Internet might change our thinking (and use) of software. At the time, I suggested that eventually we might be …
Banned in China: Your Assurance of Quality Content
The title of this post is a throwaway comment Bruce Sterling made in his lecture, “The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole” (mp3, video with terrible audio), in the course of mentioning that most scientists who are able to do the scary stuff that frightens Bill Joy are unlikely to be willing to take up residence in the caves of Afghanistan or up in North Korea just to get the freedom to research things that have been banned by everyone else. It reminded me of a funny thing an ex-student in Beijing told me — this blog is blocked …
SETI Workshiop at Daejon KASI
As part of the 60th Annual International Astronautical Congress hosted by KASI in Daejon this year (which is, by the way, the International Year of Astronomy!), Dr. Rhee Myung-hyun (an astronomer I met while taking part in the SOAO workshop earlier this year) organized a workshop on SETI and sent me an invitation to it. I decided to set aside a couple of classes (with makeup classes to be held, of course) to make the trip down to Daejon and hear what the discussion would entail. My friend Mark, also known as the physicist down the hall, joined me and …