2025-06-11 19:55 - General
Low quality image, because it's a skittish wild animal and I could only get the shot well zoomed in. But: I saw what must be an albino squirrel on my walk this morning. Those can't be too common.
2025-05-21 07:28 - General
For a while now, but somewhat rarely, I've noticed a strange jittery sort of sawtooth pattern to the graph of the temperature in my kitchen. (I've got sensors scattered around the house, to enhance decisions around comfort and energy expenditure.)
More recently, I added an energy sensor to the refrigerator. (I was doing some specific appliance energy measurements, as part of research into a solar power project.) Given a relatively stable outdoor temperature, so little baseline change, the kitchen temperature jaggies showed up. And I just realized: I'm measuring the waste heat of the refrigerator! It kicks on roughly once an hour, and the temperature jaggies turn upwards with the same cadence. (With a little delay, because the sensor is in the opposite corner of the room as the fridge.)
2025-04-24 21:13 - Making
When I moved here, I knew I'd be without a dishwasher — which I had grown accustomed to. It's not really a big deal, but it is an inconvenience. I survived that way just fine for a couple years. I knew about "countertop" dishwashers. But they seemed to all require either a very awkward and probably destructive plumbing-in process, or used awkward sink faucet attachments (which would get in the way, needing to be hooked and unhooked each time). Possibly more hassle than the chore they'd be replacing. But then I learned about the existence of no-plumbing models: A drain hose simply runs towards the sink (or a bucket!), and water supply is simply poured in top, e.g. from a pitcher. I managed to find a cheap used one (~$300 new, $100 for the one I got) and have been enjoying it since.
But it does take four-ish round trips, waiting for the pitcher to fill, then carefully pouring it in without spilling. I've enjoyed the dishwasher enough that I put some thought into plumbing in the supply line. My used appliance didn't come with the original supply line, so it took some creativity. But I got a bit lucky!
The supply for the sink is a ⅜" plastic line. After some measuring and research, I was confident I knew the thread (¾" BSP) for the inlet on the appliance. And I found an adapter from that to ⅜" push-in fitting.
So with that adapter, and a hose and fitting kit I put this together: The existing incoming water supply now goes to a tee, which feeds the sink and also (via a shut off valve) the dishwasher. From there, it only takes two inconspicuous holes through the very back of the cabinet towards the fridge.
And there it is! Hooked it up with a 90° fitting to ensure there's no stress on the line, and set it back in place. If you look close, you can see the drain hose passing behind and then to the left of the faucet. When the dishwasher turns on, it opens a valve to fill its internal tank (which takes surprisingly long, perhaps it wants a bigger supply line) and from there it's all automatic. Worked first time, no leaks.
I've been thoroughly enjoying Balatro lately. I've proceeded through the challenge mode, and completed 19 of the 20 challenges. The last one, though, seems very difficult. Enough that I went looking online for suggestions of how to beat it. I found a post claiming that the four of a kind hand is the winning strategy. I immediately scoffed. Drawing a four of a kind is just too hard! Right? Right??
I felt the need to validate my intuition, that it's too hard to draw a four of a kind. I tried to look up the chances online, but I have a problem. I want the chances for this game. It's a little like poker, but barely. Specifically: you draw a hand of eight cards. Then you get some number (three, normally) of discards, of up to five cards. Then you get some number of hands to play (four usually, so three can be "throw away" fake discards). Or: what I really want to know is how likely it is to: A) draw eight cards, then B) as necessary discard up to five of them, up to six times, and end up with a four of a kind in hand. Nothing I could search up quickly gave me the answer, but the "real answer" was to simply simulate it. I got nerd sniped, and as a result I did. Simulate it.
import collections
import random
DECK = list('23456789JQKA' * 4)
N = 10000
def draw_from(deck):
i = random.randint(0, len(deck) - 1)
return deck.pop(i)
results = []
for _ in range(N):
deck = list(DECK)
random.shuffle(deck)
hand = []
for _ in range(8):
hand.append(draw_from(deck))
for i in range(7):
cnt = collections.Counter(hand)
com = cnt.most_common()
if com[0][1] >= 4:
results.append(i)
break
elif i == 6:
results.append(None)
break
else:
for _ in range(5):
d = com[-1][0]
cnt[d] -= 1
com = [x for x in cnt.most_common() if x[1] > 0]
hand.remove(d)
for _ in range(5):
hand.append(draw_from(deck))
for result, freq in collections.Counter(results).most_common():
if result is None:
print('Failed %.2f%%' % (freq / N * 100))
else:
print('Success with %d discards %.2f%%' % (result, (freq / N * 100)))
This is some quick and dirty code. I wrote it in almost exactly half an hour. (As of reading this post, I realize I shuffled the deck, so I didn't need the extra step of randomly choosing a card to draw. I could have "drawn from the top". Probably other minor mistakes of that nature. But I think it's a valid simulation.) And it tells me:
$ python four_of_a_kind.py
Failed 42.50%
Success with 6 discards 15.02%
Success with 5 discards 13.09%
Success with 4 discards 11.59%
Success with 3 discards 8.99%
Success with 2 discards 5.69%
Success with 1 discards 2.72%
Success with 0 discards 0.40%
Indeed: using "all six" discards results in only a slightly-under-60% chance of finding a four of a kind. In a standard 52 card deck. (Changing slightly each run, as this is a random simulation, not exact probability.) So this might be a workable strategy, but it requires some luck in manipulating your deck, to be able to make the four of a kind hand regularly.
2024-12-24 18:31 - Making
I find something cozy and pleasant about having a candle burning, during the winter. I've managed to find old partially used bits of various candles from a few places. So for a while I've been remelting these into the containers for other candles. Over time I've figured it out and can generally produce a candle that burns nicely and consistently. Or at least I can fix it part way. (When necessary, which is getting more rare.) The hardest part is getting the wick nicely centered. My most preferred method now is to stick a metal rod down the middle, with some paper card at the top to keep that end centered. When I remove it, the wick has the perfect spot to go to. Since the wax shrinks as it cools I usually want to add a top-up anyway, and this fills the remainder of the hole.
I also prepared some christmas cookies. These are "M&M Magic Bars". They didn't come out as pretty as the pictures, but they sure look scrumptions!
I took up home brewing this summer. I started with a very basic kit, then I tried making a hard cider (both turned out well), I made a mead (just bottled, haven't tried it yet besides tiny sips, seems good but strong), and then most recently I did an "all grain" brew. Above is the gathered ingredients and equipment, then the "mash in" step, where the grains are steeped in hot water to convert the starches to sugars. After these are carefully removed the "wort" as it's now called is boiled. Finally, it all goes in a vessel with some yeast to ferment. Since it was my first time with the full process, I had some learning opportunities, but I'm cautiously optimistic that it will turn out well. The yeast are definitely doing their work.
2024-12-13 11:04 - Linux
I've known about gentoolkit for a while. For that time equery has been my standard way to inspect portage. Turns out there's (a whole collection of useful portage tools, including) also the "q applets". These Q applets are typically faster, and one of them will report the installed size of packages.
$ qsize -m | sort -t , -k 3 -n | column -t -s ,
...
sys-devel/gcc: 1746 files (1742 unique) 100 non-files 282 MiB
dev-lang/rust-bin: 131 files (125 unique) 31 non-files 474 MiB
sys-kernel/linux-firmware: 4204 files 379 non-files 1218 MiB
sys-kernel/gentoo-sources: 81770 files 5322 non-files 1291 MiB
I've got reason to inspect installed package size and I just found this. And it executes in only a few seconds on my machine with nearly 800 packages installed.
2024-11-14 23:02 - Making
The History
Years ago there was justin.tv (with an interesting history, read the linked WikiPedia page!). The very short version is that it was focused on transmitting live video across the internet when this was very novel, generated success primarily around live streaming of video game play, and eventually became twitch.tv. I watch there somewhat regularly. Since it's live, it's possible and typical for viewers to interact with the streamer (typically viewers text chat and streamers speak/reply out loud).
One of my favorite streamers features a gimmick of using a dance pad to play games that were not intended for it. This is, to put it mildly, quite an impediment to the game play (and thus a source of extra challenge and entertainment). Situations (i.e. too difficult parts) arise where it becomes necessary to change to a regular controller and then back. To do this, the system menus must be opened and closed, and the game resumed. Often, the in-game settings must also be tweaked. A tedious process. At some point, I realized I could probably do something about this. And a useful project to hack on would be nice. So...
The Thing
More specifically, this situation involves a Nintendo GameCube Action Pad plus a GameCube Controller Adapter, to allow the GameCube native dance pad to be connected (via USB) to the Nintendo Switch console.
First just like the commercial product (though I'm not providing four ports) my project also allows a (any, but intended for the dance pad) wired GameCube controller to be plugged in, adapting this controller to instead act like a wired USB controller for the Nintendo Switch. To this we add the ability to configure button mappings — choosing which pressed button triggers which virtual output button. Specifically, the way some games expect the face (A/B/X/Y) buttons to be used on a typical controller don't mix well with the dance pad (which has A and B, but not X nor Y). There is a physical switch on the adapter, to choose between two of these custom mappings, for example one tweaked to work with a specific game but another that passes buttons through by default (the most direct possible translation).
Next, it also allows a wired Super Nintendo controller to be plugged in at the same time. Both of these controllers are always active, and either one (or technically both, though this would be confusing) can be used at any time. This allows switching to a more standard controller for more difficult game play sections, with no need to tweak any settings. It's the real "killer feature" that makes this adapter specifically better for this unusual situation.
At some point I realized I could build this with almost only parts I already have in stock, spares from previous projects. So I ended up doing no formal hardware design like I otherwise might have. Rather I simply planned out the wiring and built a single instance of it by hand. Since the spare parts I already had available were small, this turned out to be quite a challenge.
Here's that hardware. On the back side of what you can see is a (clone) Arduino Pro Micro. Added between its two rows of pins are a voltage regulator (the largest chip at the left) and a single transistor (the smaller chip to the right of that) perfboard — all the holes you can see are one tenth of one inch away from each other. This picture has the (green, black, and red) wires for the GameCube controller already present, near the top left. Later the wires for the Super Nintendo controller and switch were added. Towards the end of assembly, heaps of hot melt glue were added to keep everything in place.
These were installed into a 3D printed case, designed for the purpose. The Arduino's USB port is exposed on the back (not visible in this picture) while the front side has the two extension cords that serve as the ports to plug the controllers into. (These extensions are all I had to buy to build this. No better way to add a standard game console "controller port" to a small hobby project.) On the face is the switch to select which of the two customized button mappings are active.
The Process
This took around a month of spare time, beginning to finish. I learned a lot! A whole lot of open source already existed to take care of the more standard parts of this (reading the controller inputs, emulating the USB controller for signal outputs). Along the way I discovered the LUFA (Lightweight USB Framework for AVRs) library. Very impressive, it supports a significant amount of functionality all on a tiny (32kB flash, 2.5kB RAM) microcontroller. Specifically I use USB HID (for the joystick) and Mass Storage (to allow a computer to reconfigure the button mappings).
2024-07-26 11:56 - Making
I don't drink a lot, but some. Recently I got it into my head to try home brewing. After a while I picked up some cheap used equipment, and supplies including an easy ingredient kit at a local home brew shop. I've just barely completed the steps for my first brew, here's how it went. Above was the result of brew day: After boiling the malt extract and hops I had the wort, here pictured cooling down in the sink. Beside that are two fermenters: a pail and a jug style. I started with the jug. (Which is capable of a 5 gallon brew, but for my first go I did a one gallon batch.) In the first picture you can see it full of foam. That's the no rinse sanitizer. Brewing is all about convincing some yeast to work for you, and just about the most important part of that is keeping out the bacteria that want to ruin things. You don't rinse the sanitizer because if you did, it would introduce more new bacteria!
Once the wort was cooled down enough to not kill it, I pitched the yeast in and set up the airlock. The yeast will "fart" out a bunch of CO2, which needs to escape the fermenter (or otherwise the pressure will eventually explode). The airlock lets the CO2 out without letting anything else (bacteria!) in. Above you can see day one: some of the sanitizer foam is sitting on top of the wort. By the next day plenty of yeast has grown, and has bubbled some sanitizer out of the airlock. For this first go I was trying to follow the kit's instructions as closely as possible, but here's where it went wrong.
It takes a fair deal of time for the yeast to do their work. I had read up ahead of time, and had it in my head that about one week was the right time for this fermentation step to take. The instructions want me to do a secondary fermentation (which per my reading is not terribly common), but I did it. However I missed a detail: the instructions wanted primary fermentation to be 4-6 days and (emphasis theirs) before it completes — but it only said that in a note on the side, which I missed. I had been checking more or less daily, and ended up switching to secondary on day 5, but I believe it was too late. The instructions told me to wait "about two weeks" for secondary fermentation, but daily monitoring showed absolutely no activity. So I cut it short after just one week.
So after carefully sanitizing everything involved again, I transferred the beer (I think it is indeed beer now, not just wort) to the bottling pail. (It's got a narrower outlet, which the hose fits on, and more of a siphon inlet. The fermenter pail simply has a hole, a bit above the bottom, to facilitate transferring the liquid but not the sediment.) And bottled! The
Here's bottling day, complete. I planned to use a couple capped bottles (for longer term storage/comparison) but focused on my flip-tops. But did the math in my head wrong so I had extra bottles, which is better than too few! One of the more subtle steps of bottling day is to actually add a bit of sugar to the beer. The remaining yeast processes this, in the bottles, to add carbonation. So although I'm "done", the instructions say I should wait two weeks (and up to an extra week!) for this bottle conditioning to complete. Almost there!
My one gallon kit filled about ten and a half bottles. Or, a bit less than two six packs. This does not excite me, but a five gallon brew can be done easily for the price of two or three (quality) six packs, and if I shop carefully, for less than a (cheap) 15 or 18 pack. Assuming my first results here are good, I'll be aiming in that direction. Though, I'm still figuring out how/whether I can handle boiling five gallons all at once. (I think you can get away with boiling less, then topping up with more water after.) Also: five gallons is a lot of beer to drink!
