All posts by Ed

Ed Marsh is an experienced technical communicator, a podcaster, a lover of beer. This site is the home of his thoughts, as well as the Content Content podcast.
Music

Bamboozled!

So there’s this huge, two-day concert at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ called The Bamboozle. You can tell you’re getting old when there’s a list of 100 bands for a show and you know maybe seven of them.

The concert is literally in Secaucus’ backyard. Secaucus, of course, is where I direct the marching band.

A former student, who is also an alumni assistant, emailed me a month or so ago, indicating that his cousin is one of the organizers and wants a marching band to help open the show.

Score!

After lots of emails, a conference call, numerous emails to the Board of Education office, and a bit of stress, we are approved to perform tomorrow morning! The band is supposed to be part of the “Photo Finish Pep Rally” and “Parade of Nothing” and be there when the opening band performs.

Everyone gets free tickets to both days of the show, and to tonight’s “secret show”, in addition to a donation to the Band Parents  Association. Not bad for an hour’s worth of performing, and a couple hours of rehearsal. They want to make this an annual thing, so it’ll be nice to use that as a recruiting incentive.

random thoughts, Uncategorized

Green Day

1 Comment

Not long ago, a cow-orker asked me what “green” things I do. I told him that I hiked, and he said that didn’t count. Since then, i’ve been thinking about all the things that we do, and have done. In the wake of yet another Earth Day that no one pays attention to, here’s as complete a list I can think of on a Thursday morning:

  • Pay for a share to an organic, Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm.
  • Reuse paper, especially the backs of documentation drafts I print out
  • Take mass transit to work
  • Recycle everything – bottles, papers, cardboard, plastics with 1 or 2 in the recycling triangle
  • Give away stuff we don’t need to our local freecycle.
  • Reuse beer bottles for my homebrew 🙂
  • Wash and reuse plastic flatware at work
  • Use only natural cleaning products at home – vinegar, borax, washing soda.
  • Make our own laundry detergent
  • Pay into NJ’s Clean Energy program; part of our bill goes to wind power.
Beer, Homebrewing

Ah, homebrewing

It’s nice to have a Friday off where I’m not sick to the point of incapacitated.

I’m brewing a Belgian Wit today. Getting a late start, but that’s OK.

I’ve not brewed in a few months, so it’s a good feeling to be boiling, cleaning, and sanitizing again. I formulated my own recipe, with a few aspects slightly out of style, but I think it’s going to be a good brew.

Formulating recipes is probably the most enjoyable and most frustrating part of brewing for me. I don’t know a lot about it yet, and often, I feel like I shouldn’t ask for input, because I’ve not contributed enough to a forum. I don’t know the individual ingredients (hop and malt characteristics) well enough to know what goes well with other things, but I’m learning. It’s definitely fun, though, to start a recipe in BeerTools Pro and add and subtract different ingredients, the time during the boil to add them, and how much of each to add.

This recipe is a completely original creation with no input from anyone, other than reading other recipes and combining the best of each; which is usually how I cook, anyway. It should be a good summertime beer, though the alcohol level (a hair over 6% ABV) is a bit higher than it probably should.

 

Wazzup Wit

16-A Witbier
BeerTools Pro Color Graphic

Size: 4.36 gal
Efficiency: 75.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 203.9 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.061 (1.044 – 1.052)
|================================|

Terminal Gravity: 1.015 (1.008 – 1.012)
|================================|

Color: 2.57 (2.0 – 4.0)
|============#===================|

Alcohol: 6.02% (4.5% – 5.5%)
|================================|

Bitterness: 17.0 (10.0 – 20.0)
|===================#============|

Ingredients:

6.6 lb Liquid Wheat Extract
16 oz Cara-Pils® Malt
.5 oz Styrian Goldings (4.2%) – added during boil, boiled 60.0 min
0.5 oz Saaz (4.40%) – added during boil, boiled 20.0 min
0.5 oz Saaz (4.4%) – added during boil, boiled 7.0 min
1 oz Bitter Curacao/Bitter Orange (Peel) – added during boil, boiled 5 min
.5 oz Corriander seeds – added during boil, boiled 5.0 min
1.0 ea White Labs WLP400 Belgian Wit Ale

Notes:

Partial Mash – 30 mins @148 degrees

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.0b

Motorsports

f1 tech

“With each car producing 2GB of data per race from 125 sensors – which is often received in an unstructured way via telemetry – this kind of technology is vital to make sense of the information.”

http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39170241,00.htm

interesting to see McLaren F1 is a beta tester for SQL Server 2008. I can’t imagine what’s in that 2GB of data. too bad they couldn’t just buy a $30 CF card and put that on board the car.

random thoughts

song and temperature

When you come out of the World Trade Center PATH station, the Century 21 clothing store is across the street. Perhaps as a remnant of the bank which owned the building, there is a clock on the outside of the building that also displays the temperature.

this morning, as i emerged from underground, Dave Matthews Band’s “#41” (best. song. ever.) was playing, and as i looked over at the clock, it was 41 degrees.

ah, parallelism.

random thoughts, Technology

New HDTV!

2 Comments

i bought the pioneer 50″ plasma i wanted – pdp-5080hd. there was a price drop, and i’ve been wanting to buy it, but was kinda waiting for S. to look at furniture for it.

on wednesday i went to j&r’s site, which has had the lowest price on it, and it was no longer listed.

fuuuuuuuuck.

so after work yesterday, i trudged up there (it’s only a few blocks from here), saw the TV (again), then went to the sales guy. there’s one left in the warehouse. price was $500 more expensive than on the web site. he didn’t know why the price went back up. but, he could talk to his manager…

comes back with a price that was $100 more than the price i saw on their site. i’m still not sure, but i tell him it was a no-brainer at the web site price. so he matches the price. delivery’s like $150, and no tax on the sale.

i looked at the comparably rated samsung and panasonics while i was waiting for the guy to work his deal, and they just weren’t the same. plus, the samsung was more expensive. they had america’s test kitchen on when i was there, which is most likely what we’ll be watching most of the time…
so i’m going to have this huge freakin’ tv delivered next saturday. it’s going to look really out of place in our apartment, but once we upgrade it will be awesome. or so i’m hoping.

it’s only a 720p set (768p, actually), but as i was waiting at the cashier with the sales guy, i asked him about the 1080p vs 720p thing. he told me that he and a colleague actually set up two blu-ray DVDs next to each other – one on a 720p and one on a 1080p. said that unless you were like 6 inches from the tv, you’d never notice a difference.

Food

Today (and tomorrow’s) lunch

it’s farking cold here in NYC. we’re supposed to get snow tomorrow; today it’s just… cold. it’s days like these where you don’t want to travel too far to get lunch. while the past few days’ lunch consisted of an excellent roast beef, made with a recipe from your friends at Cook’s Illustrated, with garlic mashed potatoes, i needed something different.

the “farmer’s market” still runs on tuesdays and thursdays. well, one of the apple vendors, and two bakeries still make a presence in the cold outside . long story short, one of the bakers had a ‘pizzette’ – essentially a little pizza with various toppings. for three bucks, i bought a particularly awesome-looking one covered with blue cheese and caramelized onions.

to supplement, i finally splurged for The Soup Man. previously, i walked over there to find their selection isn’t as varied as Hale and Hearty, and is quite a bit pricier. however, their New England Clam Chowder (my favorite!) was vibrant and delicious, with nice color added from red bell pepper and carrot. and for your $9.70 (tax included), you get a piece of bread and a banana!

overall, a hearty and delicious meal for a damn cold day.

random thoughts, Technology

edmarsh… .com?

so edmarsh.com was up less than an hour and a half after i changed the nameservers.

i played with wordpress all day (and now looking at drupal again). i’m surprised the ease with which everything is configured; although i have uninstalled and reinstalled both wordpress and drupal a few times already, and broke the themes folder in WP once. i modified the template, and had a little fun. and the cpanel is a whole lot nicer than the windows-based helm.

i find it amazing that a few years ago, i would’ve hand-coded a whole new site. now i simply don’t have the time or inclination. getting this new site up has given me an interest in mysql, so that’s something i’ll learn enough of to just get me in trouble. or disinterested.

my problem, as always, is that i’m diving right in. i need to plan this site out and figure out just what i need it to do. i’m sure i’ll fuck up wordpress again, and i will never be completely satisified of the outcome. and then, after awhile, i’ll lose interest, and move on to something else.