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NASA – STS-121
It looks like the next scheduled Shuttle launch is right near my birthday this year. I’m seriously thinking about making the trip. Update: Looks like they’ve moved the target to July. Ah well.
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Playing with Windows Vista
So I’ve started to play with Windows Vista Beta 2. I’ve got a machine at work (dedicated but sucky integrated graphics) and a machine at home (dual-booting my primary gaming system with XP MCE 2005) and so far the experience has been a pretty good one. I had some initial trouble with the machine at work and ended up doing a whole bunch of memory swaps to finally get stable and usable memory in the machine.
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TiVo to Offer Tighter Rein on Children’s Viewing – New York Times
Tivo’s “Big Announcement” this morning is likely to be a yawner for those of us looking for something actually interesting technologically, but I’m guessing some parents might be happy: TiVo to Offer Tighter Rein on Children’s Viewing TiVo today announcing KidZone parental control service TiVo to Offer Tighter Rein on Children’s Viewing (New York Times) The thing that I’m slightly aggravated about (besides the continued absense of an HD compatible Tivo, though that’s at least some fault of CableLabs and their overly stringent policies) is that this feature could be implemented 2 ways, but they took the IMHO slightly more stupid route of making it kids only.
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Small site issues
I’m running into some problems with comment posting on the 2 sites that I’m hosting on this box. I think it might have something to do with the configuration of MySql, which is used as the backend for both sites. If you see a “fatal error: : timeout” if you are trying to post a comment, I am aware of the issue and trying to figure it out. The comment will be posted, you’ll just have to refresh.
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Honey as a topical antibacterial agent for treatment of infected wounds
On the drive in to work this morning I had been musing a bit about the relative success of the carbonation of the batch of African Skies versus the batch of root beer, and it occured to me that I had once heard that honey had some antiseptic properties. So I finally got a few minutes free at work and started to do some net research, and there it was: Honey as a topical antibacterial agent for treatment of infected wounds, among other references.
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Batch Update: African Skies
I’ve had the chance to taste 2 of the chilled African Skies bottles, and it is good. The yeast is still a bit forward, but giving it a day or two to settle out should make a big difference. It still isn’t quite as carbonated as I would like, but it is definitely good enough, and the significant reduction in sweetness shows just how much. It is however still pretty sweet, but not too much, and the honey flavors are nicely subtle.
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Lessons Learned: Pictures
It’s a good thing I bought that digital camera the other week, so now there’s even photographic evidence of the mess this morning.
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Lessons learned!
Before I got into the shower this morning I figured that I would dispose of the 2 batches of soda that were still remaining in the cases that had failed to carbonate. I checked them 3 times last week, most recently on Friday morning, and they had been the same carbonation level the whole time. Until today. The African Skies is just about perfect. Possibly still a touch under carbonated, but the flavor is about right, and what remains of the yeast flavor should dull quickly after a day or two in the fridge.
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Tarhun!
A friend at work gave me a bottle of Tarhun for Christmas! It’s Russian tarragon soda, so completely unlike anything made domestically. It’s also quite tasty, though possibly an acquired taste. The company that produces it also produces quite a few other sodas, several of which I have tried and they are all fairly uniformly interesting and good. (Tarhun is the third in that list)
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MSN Messenger
The company I work for has recently been very pushy about insisting that people use MSN Messenger as the only “approved” IM service. I had been proxying through IMSmarter, until they went belly up last week. So this week I am using MSN Messenger v7.5, and finding it to be: adequate. But a coworker was able to figure out how to solve my biggest irritation: That damned tab bar on the left side!
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