ToasterWaffles

For Valentine’s day this year I decided to make a present for Jess instead of buy one. Well, OK, I bought the parts, but still! I got the Open Heart Kit and the Arduino from the Maker Shed. After that there was a lot of soldering, which was fine, and then a lot of cursing, which was not so fine.

Jess is very happy with the results and is going to show it off on her desk at work. Yay!

I made a short video that shows it off.

So I got an iPhone on monday and I have to say it’s a lot of fun. I’m still getting used to the keyboard, but the thing is pretty smart about typos.
Now I need to find a skin for it and an invisible shield for the front — these finger print smudges aren’t that pretty.

This is taken straight from allrecipes.com. I’m only doing this in case I can’t find the recipe later. These cookies are amazing. Quote one commenter on allrecipies.com:

WARNING…DANGER AHEAD…do not make these cookies unless you are on an all cookie diet. You have been warned.

Yeah, they’re that good. What’s below is the doubled up version that makes about 48 cookies. In the instructions she says to make them “wallnut sized” on the cookie sheet. I found that using a 1 tsp spoon worked really well, just be a bit generous and you’ll be set.

Sift all of these together and mix

• 4.5 Cups all purpose flour
• 1 tbsp + 1 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1.5 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• .5 tsp salt

Put these in a mixer until light and fluffy. God help you if you don’t have a mixer

• 1.5 cups margarine/butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar

Add these one at a time, slowly

• 2 eggs
• 0.5 cup molasses + 2 tbsp water

Then very slowly add the dry stuff. That will probably take a few minutes.

Like I said above, using a 1 tsp measure will get you pretty decently sized cookies if you’re a bit generous with the scoops. Put them about 1.5 inches apart on the sheet so they don’t run in to each other.

Get the oven up to 350°F and bake for 8-10 minutes. When they come out of the oven they’ll be pretty squishy and puffed up. They’ll firm up and flatten back out if you let them sit on the sheet for a few minutes. After that put them on a rack/parchment/paper bags/whatever to finish cooling, then into baggies.

When I built my gaming machine I bought the AMD Phenom 9850 Black Edition (2.5GHz) which has an unlocked multiplier. That means it’s easy to overclock. I also bought a Gigabyte MA-790GP-DS4H which is very good at overlocking. I naively thought I could just set the multiplier to 15x and turn my 2.5GHz processor into a 3.0GHz processor.

Turns out doing that makes the machine unstable when you push the CPU to its limit. You get BSOD’s or applications crash or whatever. I eventually figured out that taking the CPU back to it’s default clock settings made life much much more stable. Once I did the overclock properly (increase multiplier and voltage) things worked better, but were much, much hotter.

Fast forward to today. My new Xigmatek HDT S1284 arrived and I was ready to strap it on. This new heatsink/fan combo is very highly rated, and quiet. It’s also very tall. You can see the difference in the pictures below.

The new cooler is a beast, but the results are impressive.

Stock system: 2.5GHz; 50°C idle → 71°C fully busy (Prime95)
OC’d system: 3.0GHz; 39°C idle → 54°C fully busy (Prime95)

The new system is 20% faster and 22-24% cooler. That’s a win in my book!

UPDATE: Real world testing (encoding 5th Element from Blu-Ray to mkv) is 15% faster! (4h 29m 54s versus 3h 49m 24s)

Jess and I went to an anti-prop-8 march last night. There were lots of people out (some estimates say 7,000 -> 10,000 people!) and a great atmosphere. It was a giant party. We walked with candles down University Ave and shouted and held up “No on 8″ banners and such.

Those of you not in California may not know about Proposition 8. It’s a proposed amendment to the California Constitution that would only recognize marriages between a man and woman in the state. It’s something I simply can’t support for two major reasons:

1. I can’t support ammending the constitution to discriminate against people based on anything they were born with: skin color, hair curliness, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
2. I need to know that my children will be able to marry, with the same rights and responsibilities their parents enjoy, whomever they fall in love with.

I’m also quite discouraged by the Yes on 8 campaign’s reasoning behind their proposal:

California voters passed Proposition 22 in 2000 by more than 61%, saying that a marriage in California is between a man and a woman. Earlier this year, four activist judges based in San Francisco wrongly overturned the people’s vote, legalizing same-sex marriage.

I’m not sure how kind of thinking comes up:

1. These judges were never considered “activist” until they did something the campaign disagreed with.
2. The judge’s job is to uphold the state constitution, which they’ve done the best they know how.
3. There is precedent (the 1948 Perez v. Sharp case) that “marriage is a fundamental right and that laws restricting that right must not be based solely on prejudice”. That’s why prop 22 failed, not because they want to overturn the people’s vote, but because the people voted yes on a law that is illegal.

The Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage did not just overturn the will of California voters; it also redefined marriage for the rest of society, without ever asking the people themselves to accept this decision.

In fact that is not what happened. Prop 22 is what was redefining marriage; overturning prop 22 returned it’s definition to what it’s been for decades in the state of California.

For example, because public schools are already required to teach the role of marriage in society as part of the curriculum, schools will now be required to teach students that gay marriage is the same as traditional marriage, starting with kindergarteners.

Indeed. [Begin sarcasm] I am shocked, shocked, to think that schools will be required to teach what is legal and what is not in the state of California [End sarcasm]. Further; being a product of public education in California I cannot remember a time when marriage was discussed in any great detail. Further, if you fiercely oppose anything taught in school (sex education comes to mind) you can have your child pulled during the material you find offensive. California law has guaranteed that right for years.

By saying that a marriage is between “any two persons” rather than between a man and a woman, the Court decision has opened the door to any kind of “marriage.”

If by “any kind” of marriage you mean one of the three possible combinations: man-man, man-woman, woman-woman.

This undermines the value of marriage altogether at a time when we should be restoring marriage, not undermining it.

This final line irritates me the most. It has to be the most base form of thinking in the entire analysis. There are precisely two people that can undermine the value of any marriage: the couple. Nobody else has that power. Only the couple can make a marriage work. Only the couple can break it. Only the couple can make it stronger and beautiful and something to marvel at. I am simply disgusted to think that the Yes on 8 campaign belives it has any influence what so ever into the strength or value of my marriage. Their audacity is beyond compare.

Vote YES on Proposition 8 to overturn the outrageous Supreme Court decision and restore the definition of marriage that was approved by over 61% of voters.

I can’t argue with this; that’s exactly what Prop 8 will do. It will also tie the hands of the court in a way that cannot be challenged without another proposition to overturn this amendment (think of ending prohibition).

Gays have a right to their private lives, but not to change the definition of marriage for everyone else.

In California, Yes on 8 is changing the definition of marriage for everyone else. That is the very essense of Prop 8.

From /wg/ on 4chan.

Available at /wallpaper

From penny-arcade.com

Available at /wallpaper

Yes, that’s right, Jess and I have been burglarized.

Monday night, around 10pm while we were watching TV in the living room, somebody opened a window into one of the bedrooms, came in, and took both of our laptops. WHILE WE WERE HOME. We filed a police report and immediately cancelled/changed all our financial information. We reset all our passwords: email, wifi, work, etc. etc.

It’s been a major PITA, the police are doing what they can but obviously they have higher priorities. I think we’ll be able to put this behind us pretty shortly with some home security improvements, but it still sucks. If either of us have been a bit wonky/spacy this week, now you know why.