-= Beep | Bleep =-
I finally got a photo of the cardinal at the birdfeeder. I also got a ton of him sitting around in tree. Cardinals are really red… I know that sounds dumb, but it is really pretty shocking to see in person. You gotta wonder how they evolved like that…
Well I got my Kill – A – Watt electricity meter in the mail. It really is a lot of fun… in a nerdy, penny pinching way. It lets you measure two main things, the electricity coming out of the socket and amount being used by a device.
It can tell you the Voltage and Hz of the electricity coming out of the socket. This should tell you the “quality” of the electricity you are getting. It should be around 120 volts and 50/60hz. If it is off from this then various appliance might not work right.
It also tells you how much juice a device is sucking and how much it has used over time. You can look at how many amps or watts a device is using. It also shows the amount of kilowatts it has used and for how long it has been measuring.
So far it seems pretty acurate, I am going to have to play with it a bit more and report back on how much different things use. Off course I am not too smart with this stuff, so I have to figure out what it all really means.
One interesting thing is that all of those black box that you use to charge cell phones and what-not all use power, even if they are not connected to anything. Crazy huh?!? Well stayed tuned for more crazy facts!
Do you lie awake at night wondering how much electricity your TV is using even though it is off? 
Well if you had the Kill-a-Watt you would be sleeping a little easier at nite. this device monitors how much electritcy an appliance is using. Simply plug something into it and it will tell you how much it is using and how much it has used in the past day, week and month. Also tell it how much you are paying for power and it will compute how much it is costing you to run that stupid soothing waterfall…
I managed to get a photo of the male Cardinal that has been hanging around our birdfeeder. 
There is also a female, but I couldn’t get a good photo of here. The females are sort of a brown-orange with an orange beak. It seems like they have coupled up and hang around a bit together. Who knows, maybe in the spring there will be some baby cardinals at the feeder!
There are always those dishes that you put aside because they seem really tough, take a long time, and probably won’t come out all that well when you are done… or atleast that is how you have always imagined them. Anyhow I am working up a list of these dishes and hopefully I will give all of them atleast one try. I may not ended making something safe for human consumption, but I will atleast find out if they are really as tough as they seem.
There are many more things that scare me, but I should stop here. I don’t want to go on talking about things I will never… it is very unlike me. Besides I can always add to the list! Rock on ‘05!
ABC has a show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”. It is a reality show where they bring in a team of people and completly redo a house in 7 days or something along those lines. The show supposedly documents all of this, showing all the work that goes into and all.
Well, ABC has a new show this season, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, how’d they do that?”. This show documents all the work that goes into making a reality show. Now this strikes me as a little recursive… This is a Reality Show on the realities of making a Reality Show. A little weird right? Next there is going to be a show on deciding what programing choice go into scheduling a Reality Show on a Reality Show. You can see where this is going…
To some degree I think this reflects an increased in the How & Why as opposed to the What… One example of this would be America’s Test Kitchen, PBS most popular cooking show. Half of the show is spent explaining why certain choices where made in crafting a recipe. The shows focus is on why ingrediant and recipe choices were made. In a sense, it is a show that documents the process of crafting a recipe. I think we are as interested in the motivation for a descesion as we are the actaul descesion .
I wanted to create a playlist of only songs that are part of an album. I am sort of lazy so I haven’t gotten around to making 20+ playlists yet. I thought it would be easier to simply have most of the songs grouped into albums and then I could just pick an album I wanted.
Anyhow it is really easy to make a playlist of only songs that are part of an album. First goto library and make sure the browser is turned on. It is that three pane thing on the top of the library that list songs by Genre, Artist and Album. Now make sure that Genre and Artist are set to All. Now click on the first album in the Album pane. Hit Ctrl+A to select all Albums and then drag that selection to a playlist… and there you go!
The Twist and Chop by Kuhn Rikon is a great little device. So far I have tried dicing onions and garlic with it and it has worked great. The great thing about it is that it is small, 
easy to clean and quick. I think it is much more useful than similar sized electric choppers from Cuisinart and Kitchenaid. I wouldn’t hesitate to use this, where as I might be a little reluctant to haul the others.
Since it is compact you have to pre-cut some items, but it is still quicker to quarter an onion and throw it in, than it is to dice it. I also think it works better than the piston like choppers that you push down on. Those seem to mush things up, while this devices chops them.
There are two blades in the bowl, that are attached to the base/top (the green part). When you spin the green part, the blades spin around. You can also rotate the bowl so things don’t stay at the edge away from the bowl. There is also some gearing in the green part to make the blades spin faster.
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While I was home for the holidays I got a fun House Sparrow Stuffed Animal. 
It is not only cute looking, but plays it’s bird song when it is squeezed. Unfortunatly it song is rather annoying, but I thought I should get this one since they are always at the feeder.
It is made by Wild Republic and they have lots of different (more fun) types of birds available. And they all play their authentic bird call. What could be more fun?!
Wild Republic – Audubon Bird with real bird calls!
It has been shown that eating cheese can slow tooth decay caused by an acid secretion from relatives of the yogurt bacterium. At the end of a meal acid production is on the rise and adheres to the teeth. It is unknown why, but if cheese is eaten at the end of a meal, calcium and phosphate from the cheese help decrease the acid rise.
- Page 67
On Food and Cooking
Harold McGee
Kill – A – Watt: From Amazon ~ $29
Kuhn Rikon Twist and Chop