Mostly Harmless

OK, this is how to cook a turkey.

Any questions?

I saw that episode on FoodTV and I couldn’t help but notice that I’ve never had a turkey prepared that way. Coincidentally, most of the turkey I’ve been fed has been on the dry side.

They had the temperature probe that Alton used in that episode at Byerly’s so I bought one to use for cooking the stuffed, boneless chicken that I picked up for $10 (not $19.95 like on the website).

I just cooked that chicken tonight and lemme tell ya sumthin, that is some good shit.

If they’ve still got the Turducken Roll ($20) next time I go shopping I’ll snag one.

The thermometer is a joy to behold. It shows the countdown timer, food temp, and alarm temp on the display at the same time. I set the temperature alarm for 165 degrees for the chicken, per the instructions, and waited for the alarm to scream bloody murder (which it did).

I don’t recall the total cooking time but I know I stopped the oven timer about 20 minutes early. That’s 20 minutes of dryness saved!

Oh yeah, Alton believes that those built-in pop-up timers are evil, and I agree. Apparently they’re set for about 180. By then all the bugs are dead — but all the moisture is gone too. Just use the probe and ignore the pop-up timer. And don’t baste! Basting and stuffing and pop-up timers are the work of the devil.

I just got back from the eye doctor and boy are my arms tired… erm, sorry, wrong punchline.

I’ve got the dilated eyeballs workin’ and I’m very thankful for the “I’m freakin’ blind” magnification feature of Mac OS 10.2.

So lunch was blurry but still tasty!

I got a FREE hunk of dark plastic from the Optometrist to act as fake sunglasses so my retinas wouldn’t get burned outta my head, so that’s nice.

A couple of years ago when I did this the dilation didn’t do jack to me, as far as insane brightness was concerned, so this is a sign that my adrenal system is bouncing back after the decades of wheat poisoning. Skippy.

The cure for your deviated spectrum.

A couple of days ago I was particularly unhappy with my computer speakers so I decided to have a go at some acoustical calibration.

I snagged some pink noise and set it loopin’ in iTunes. Using the built-in mic on the TiBook and the real-time spectrum analyzer in Amadeus II I was able to visualize the offending frequency response curve for my speakers. I used the 10-band EQ in iTunes to flatten out each band as much as possible — because, surprise, the curve wasn’t anywhere near flat to begin with.

Now, of course, the mic built-in to a laptop computer isn’t the ideal microphone to be using for audio calibration, but it was all I had and it worked out fairly well.

This raises the question: How does one calibrate a microphone without having a calibrated speaker, and vice-versa? I assume the answer involves an oscilloscope and a tone generator. I don’t have any of that stuff so I’ll just make do.

The speakers sound much better now, but they’re still not quite right because, no doubt, some of the frequencies are off since the calibration involved a 10 cent microphone. The end result still is pretty nifty though considering the very small amount of effort involved.

Now I have a baseline EQ setting for those speakers on that Mac. The next step is to combine that waveform with the other EQ presets in iTunes so I end up with usable presets that take the evilness of the speakers into account.

Unfortunately, the data for the EQ settings looks a lot like 20k of this:
AAAAAAAAAAAAADQBWAG8AYwBhAGwAIABCAG8AbwBzAHQAZQByAAAA
Some decoding will be necessary, it seems.

Alternately, I could use Audio Hijack to add another 10-band EQ into the mix (as it were), thus providing some global equalization; which may or may not work — iTunes already has some problems with distortion because of the software EQ. Other options would be to buy some good speakers in the first place, or run the output through a real stereo with a big honkin’ parametric eq.

The only preset I ever use though is “Rock,” so I’ll just tweak that one by hand and see how it goes.

Here’s some fun stuff if you want to get really carried away.

The Big TV has finally blown its diode (or whatever). Now all I get is a very bright red screen for a few seconds before it shuts itself off.

I’m in the process of failing over to the redundant, and much smaller, TV in the bedroom. Which basically means that I’m moving the VCR to the other TV since the VCR is utterly impossible to program if you can’t see the menus — not to mention that it’s impossible to watch of course.

I could dig up the Witness Protection Program VCR for the other TV. It’s a better VCR in every respect except for the dirty head which causes a horizontal bar of video static right at eye level, but only if you watch the tapes on another VCR, or watch tapes recorded on another VCR (i.e. rentals). So that’s more of a sub par solution.

Anywho, this part is most likely about $10-20 but it will probably cost $200-300 to fix. Since the TV cost almost 6 times that amount it’s still much cheaper to fix it than to replace it with anything comparable.

I just hope I can find a TV repair guy that makes house calls because this TV doesn’t go anywhere without a block & tackle, or a spotter (or two), since it weighs 197lbs and is not what you’d call “easy to carry.”

(everybody sing!)

Just a tube full of pudding helps the medicine go down
…the medicine go down
…the medicine go down

Just a tube full of pudding helps the medicine go down…

(etc., etc.)

Look! It’s pudding.
In a tube!