Weblog

This is my web log, or "blog". I'm not much of a blogger (yet, anyway), so don't expect to post frequently. I'm also not using blogging software, so there's a bit of extra overhead to posting stuff and don't have an RSS feed for the moment. Mainly this is an archive of "diary" type entries, as distinguished from the less time-specific stuff in my writing section.

Holiday Letter 2015

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Landscape outside Yoichi distillery

2015 was mostly more of the same with no big news, but brought minor improvements to my focus and energy. The weight I lost last year came back, and I haven't wanted to deny myself baking in order to lose it again. I did a little cross country skiing in the winter, and kept the running up once the snows cleared, resuming weekly trail running and building long runs back up to 18 km distance. The hot summer knocked me back though, so for the rest of the year I tried to maintain a minimal base. I still go to the gym with an expensive personal trainer, so my overall health has been good.

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Vinegar Mother

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Vinegar Mother

I just bottled the wine that I started making last September. There were dregs from decanting the clear wine, that I didn't want to throw out, so I filtered them and put them aside to make vinegar. I added a starter culture of some cider vinegar I had made a few months ago. This batch of wine vinegar has only been going for about a week but already the mother has formed on top. It was fascinating, rather than being the usual smooth gelatinous mass, this has formed a complex wrinkled surface.

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Attack in Ottawa

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A few days ago was the attack in Ottawa that woke Canadians up to the idea that terrorist activity at home was a real possibility, preceded by another attack against military a few days earlier. I had been expecting that some sort of attack was possible for some time, and wondered about the timing and how prepared the emergency services would be. To some extent this came sooner than I had expected. However, it turned out not to be a foreign attack and from one perspective was just a lone guy gone mad.

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Overzealous Anti-Discrimination Cases

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There have been a couple anti-discrimination cases in the news recently that seem to me to hurt the goal behind the complaints. A bakery in Ireland has had a complaint filed for refusing to make a cake that depicts gay marriage, and recently a bakery in Colorado lost a complaint filed against them for refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding.

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Site transformation

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I have decided to change this site's infrastructure from a manually maintained one to a content management system. This will make it easier to add content going forward. During the transition some content will be missing until I get it all ported over.

Chocolate Moulding

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The chocolates
The chocolates

I had occasion to practice making moulded chocolates for a birthday party. It was a lot of work for the occasion, but was good practice. My previous attempt at making these chocolates was less than successful. The chocolate was tempered, but lost its temper either because of the instructions I followed to warm the mould, or to refrigerate to help set the shell, made worse when I had to rewarm it in the mould when it set too much.

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