Homemade Marshmallow!!!

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by Lisa

We made homemade marshmallow using Alton Brown’s recipe (with hazelnut extract instead of vanilla). We built a fire pit out in our woods, and I wanted to make smores.

It got surprisingly thick while whipping it – I was worried that it would get too hard, and I may have stopped whipping it a little too soon.

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The end result, though, was spectacular. For future reference … they melt really quickly over the fire when they’re still fresh. Supposedly if you let them dry for a few days, they toast up better.

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We have a HUGE tray of marshmallows – supposedly they freeze well … so I used maybe 1/10th of them & froze the rest. This might be a lifetime supply … but I’m kind of looking forward to hot cocoa this winter with hazelnut marshmallows!

Serving Custom Error Pages From Apache

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by Lisa

At work, we are in the process of retiring an old password management web site. We want to direct users to the new site, and I don’t particularly want to handle each possible entry point an individual may have bookmarked. It seemed a lot quicker and easier to just move everything out of the directory and throw up a custom 404 page.

I am certain that I’ve used just “ErrorDocument ### /file.xtn” in Apache configurations to serve custom error pages, but when I set this up in our staging environment … I got the generic 404. Three days of Googling and reading Apache documentation later, and I have a configuration that actually serves a custom page when error 404 is encountered:

        ErrorDocument 404 /customized-404.html
        <Files "customized-404.html">
        <If "-z %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS}">
            RedirectMatch 404 ^/customized-404.html$

Voila, a pretty page that doesn’t in any way indicate 404 / not found / etc but rather says “hey, this web site is being retired. please go over yonder to manage your password.”.

Sometimes, math *is* hard

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by Lisa

A recent meeting included a call back to “math is hard barbie” — back in 1992, Mattel produced a ‘talking’ Barbie that (among other phrases) said “math class is tough”. They ended up recalling the doll – a process which I assume cost the company quite a bit of money. And bad press. As a sophomore in high school, I didn’t understand the controversy. I was concurrently taking both Algebra 2 and Geometry (allowing me to complete two years of Calculus at graduation), so I had some experience with math classes.

The thing that struck me — the actual phrase is not untrue. Sometimes math class was hard. As someone with hand-eye coordination issues, art class was hard too. As someone who is tone deaf, music class was really hard. People who take offense at someone declaring something to be ‘hard’ have themselves declared difficult things as somehow negative. Not worth doing. I understand that the offense was people familiar with existing stereotypes extrapolating the statement to mean “girls think math is hard and girls avoid difficult academic subjects” or “females think math is hard because their brains don’t work that way and males have an innate advantage”.

I worry that we’re selling people false hope by refusing to tell them that something is hard. At some point, you’re going to encounter reality. I studied theoretical physics – gravitation, specifically gravitational phenomenon brought about during binary black hole collisions. Had someone told me it was going to be a super easy way to earn money – head into a computer lab for a few hours a day, drink some coffee, do a little typing, and head home … wow, what a shock my first day would have been. Why don’t we work on teaching people that a lot of things are hard. And each person makes their own effort:reward analysis. Raising chickens is a lot harder than picking a carton up at the grocery store; but if you like fresh eggs, or if you like to ensure the welfare of the animals providing your eggs, if you want to avoid using fossil fuels to transport your food, or if you just want to be involved in the process of generating your food … you decide to get some chickens. If you want to understand the mechanisms of the universe, you learn the math and physics. You do the research.

Multi Party System

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by Lisa

I’m eternally hopeful that a viable third party will emerge from the chaos that is the American political landscape. Movements with sufficient momentum (e.g. the tea party who think taxation with representation is just as bad as taxation without) get absorbed into one of the two traditional parties. And while I am still certain a viable centrist party would provide a truer picture of American’s actual will, the Republican primaries serve as warning against dividing the electorate among dozens of parties.

In the UK, there are hundreds of parties. A good dozen of them are represented in Parliament. But there’s no national vote for Prime Minister – if no party garners a sufficient majority in Parliament, then parties agree to work together (a coalition government) until a sufficient majority is created. And failure to abide by the agreement can force a PM out of office. Unless a plurality of Britons chose to elect the same party, the most extreme views of any party are tempered by the views of their coalition partners.

In the US, however, there is a nation-wide vote for head of the Executive branch. What would an American election look like with a dozen viable political parties? The Republican primary has shown us – last cycle and again this year. The lesson from last cycle is that a dozen people researching and publicizing the worst about each other diminishes them all. If half a dozen people spent six months digging into every single action or interaction you’ve had in your lifetime and assembling a worst-of list … I doubt anyone would look good. But this year the lesson is more dangerous — splitting your electorate in so many pieces allows an individual who is not the majority’s preference … a charismatic individual, an individual with divisive enough views to appeal to a “their” segment and  a small fraction of other voting segments … to win the election. If 120 million people vote in the presidential election, but split their votes across a dozen parties, someone could win with thirteen million votes. 89% of voters don’t want the person in office, but there they sit.

I still wish for a viable centrist third party, but many party systems are probably best left to Parliamentary systems.

Update On The Hoop House

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by Lisa

There have been wild temperature fluctuation, so we haven’t actually gotten plants into our greenhouse yet! But there have also been some MAJOR wind storms – 50+mph – and I can say the structure is holding up well. I had to add some binder clips to each support – four wasn’t enough and they’d pop off as the plastic would get blown around. Which meant we had several binder clip scavenger hunts – but adding a few extra clips seems to have alleviated this issue.

The other problem I’ve experienced is that one side would get pulled out from the mulch & bricks that were holding it down. Temporarily solved this by using soil instead of mulch on that side to hold it all down, but I am certainly going to buy a greenhouse plastic that is two feet wider. It would be easier to mount the material along the side if there was more overhang.

Great again?

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by Lisa

We’ve been seeing a lot of political ads and campaign rallies – and I am constantly struck by Trump’s slogan. Make American great again. I know there are people who dispute it because “we’re already great”. Whatever, never been a big fan of exceptionalism in any country. What I want to know is … to which “great” time period does he want us to return? Just before Obama – embroiled in two military offensives that were doomed from the start? The 90’s – wait, that was Clinton. 80’s – run away deficits and a nuclear arms race? The 70’s with the oil embargo? The 60’s – well, they’ve got good music, good drugs … but they’re also about as close to nuclear annihilation as we’ve ever been, a president who was assassinated, and a lot of racial turmoil. The 50’s – not the TV fantasy, but the reality – Brown v Board of Education was a good step, but the actual desegregation process was ugly. Outside of schools, it isn’t like Rosa Parks sat down and ended segregation. Women – well, we were allowed to vote, but didn’t have a lot of options that provided economic independence. Maybe back to before women could vote? Or how about when people could be legal possessions? Maybe he thinks we went wrong breaking away from England and we should request our colony status back?

His slogan, at least to me, has an a priori assumption that you are a white dude. Old white dudes gave up a lot — more voters mean less power per vote, more people vying for jobs means it is harder to get a job, independent women mean you need to be more cognizant of your partner’s needs. Young white dudes didn’t get to experience the “great” before, but I could see wanting to return too. But, seriously, half of the country isn’t a dude. Some other significant percentage isn’t white. Maybe you’ll get lucky and a large proportion of white dudes will show up to vote. But how can you govern an entire country when your entire platform is focused on the needs of maybe 40% of the population?

Extending The Gardening Season – Low Tunnel “Greenhouse”

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by Lisa

Using a combination of techniques I’ve found on the Internet, Anya and I built a low tunnel greenhouse yesterday. The whole process took about ninety minutes, but we aren’t quite done (the plastic needs to be snugged up, and I want to bury the plastic along the ground).

Last year, Scott built two raised bed garden areas – one is being used for composting until it gets full enough to be a garden. This is the second one – the veggie growing area.

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We wanted to extend our growing season – and have a convenient place to start a *lot* of plants, so I researched easy to build greenhouses. I found two types I like – the low tunnel and the hoop house. A low tunnel is basically PVC pipe bent over your ground with plastic run along it. How “low” is the low hoop? Well, that depends on the length of PVC and the width of the tunnel. The HandyMath.com complete circular arc calculator will take these valeus, then the “height of arc” is the height at the highest point of the tunnel. The lowest point is 0″ (it hits the ground).

A hoop house seems to be a low tunnel on “stilts”, so I decided to make a low tunnel this year … see how it works out for us. If we want it taller, we’ll add the “stilts” next year and have a hoop house.

The materials we used – sourced from the local Home Depot and Staples – are 2′ lengths of 1/2″ rebar, 10′ lengths of 1/2 PVC pipe (used for drinking water – so in theory it shouldn’t leach not-food-safe chemicals), plastic painting dropcloth, and large binder clips. Total cost was just under 55$ for a 25′ run.

After placing the PVC and rebar along the garden bed to make sure everything was spaced as desired, we used hammers to drive the rebar into the ground. Anya started the rebar, and I finished driving it in with an ~8 lb sledge.

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After the rebar was firmly in the ground, we slipped one end of the PVC pipes over the rebar.

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Anya grabbed the pipes and pulled them over to me, and I slipped the other end of the pipe over the rebar. At this point, it kind of looks like I’m  building a Conestoga wagon on my garden. I tied a rope along the top of the arches to make a ridgeline, but I don’t know that this is actually doing anything structural.

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We then spread the plastic drop-cloth over the arches – it isn’t as clear as “clear plastic” sounded to me 🙂 But after visiting two local Home Depots, neither of which had “greenhouse plastic” … it’ll do. I used the binder clips to hold the plastic onto the PVC pipes. Right now, there are four clips on each arch, and eight clips on the arch where two pieces of plastic are joined.

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Unfortunately, a thunderstorm came up pretty quickly … so instead of tightening the plastic, I laid bricks to hold the plastic down along the ground. Once the plastic is snugged up, I will put the bricks back and completely bury the edges in dirt or mulch to avoid wind getting under it. I still need to make a door for an entrance too – right now, you have to unearth and unfurl quite a bit of plastic material to get into the tunnel.

Possible upgrades for the future:

  • A sturdier hoop can be made from electrical metallic tubing – it’s more expensive, and you need to bend it on a pipe bender (we have one, so that isn’t a new cost. For someone without a pipe bender in their workshop … that is a non-trivial investment. We got ours from Harbor Freight with a lot of discounts). The metal hoop is good for higher wind areas. Our garden is sheltered pretty well by trees, so I am hoping the PVC will be sufficiently sturdy.
  • Real greenhouse plastic! I had wanted something completely clear to allow more light to enter and for better visibility.
  • If this height proves to be inconvenient to use, we’ll probably get five more tubes, cut them in half, slip a 5′ length over the rebar, then join the tunnel part to the top of the 5′ section. This will give us a structure 5′ at the low point and ~8.5′ at the high point. Plenty of room for any of us to stand upright. That would mean adding quite a bit more plastic sheeting too.

We’ll either replace the plastic sheets with a bug netting later in the Spring or just take the whole thing down & put it back up in Autumn to (hopefully) extend the growing season even more. If we are really lucky, we will be able to grow some greens throughout the winter.

I think I’m going to place the little seed-starting pots into the greenhouse, then transplant them into the ground as they get a little bit bigger.