A long time ago I posted one of my bread recipes, honey wheat berry bread, a clone of a bread I sometimes like. That was a time of increased interest and study regarding bread dough, and I posted much of what I learned in the comment section of that post. The Internet really opened up the information available to average folks! Much gratitude to the computer and Internet architects, and to all the folks who’ve added their knowledge!

Unfortunately, study and reading can take one only so far, sometimes you have to actually do it to learn more. So, after getting a scale to weigh ingredients, a vast improvement in the consistency of batch-to-batch results occurred, but then more questions arose.

I decided to increase the moisture of the white bread recipe that I use for toast and sandwich slices from 51% to 53%, where the water weight is expressed as percentage of flour weight, and further, this percentage doesn’t include all the water, as vinegar presumably is mostly water. Some may prefer to conceive of this 51–53% change as a 53.35–55.35%, or imprecisely by rounding to zero decimals, 53–55% change. The recipe is given below for further analysis. For a number of years I have put some amount of vinegar in my breads because I’ve noted the bread takes longer to stale when it has this ingredient added, or restating, gives it a longer shelf life, and I’ve never been able to taste it, so I see no downside to doing so.

As it happens, I ended up rising and baking this batch on a rainy and somewhat colder day, the rise took longer (around 5 hours) than it typically does on a warmer day (3.5-4 hours). I’m not sure how much of this change is related to the dough’s moisture change. (We get so little rain in Southern California, I decided to take an umbrella for a walk while I waited the extra time. Thank you Gaia, I love your rain!)

I prefer the french-bread taste of sandwich-style white bread made from dough that has aged in the refrigerator overnight, this isn’t done so much for the yeast to have a slower rise (though that is an effect), it is said to break down some of the carbohydrates differently, and the results are both tasted in an altered flavor, and seen as a slightly different color of crust in the baked product.

I rise the refrigerator-temperature dough in the pans it will be baked in, in the same room temperature oven in which it will later be baked. Because the oven is not humidified without the addition of heat, the weighed and pre-shaped dough pieces, before they’re put in the pans, are smeared with oil, and so too are the pans. This prevents a skin from forming during the rise in the absence of a humidified and temperature-controlled rising chamber, as well as providing a release agent for easing the removal of the baked loaves from their pans.

It seems one trick is to be patient with the rise, however, with this 53% moisture dough, I was quite surprised with how much it rose during the initial portion of baking, sometimes referred to as oven spring.

For each loaf, the dough weighed approximately 1300-1400 grams (which is 1.3-1.4 kilograms), this provides a nicely-sized sandwich slice that really is larger than a typical soda cracker! It takes 1 hour, 35 minutes of baking to reach 199F internal temperature, in a thermostat-reported 300F degree oven, and this includes our oven’s warm-up time. Higher baking temperatures seem to result in a crust that is too dark and thick for my sandwich-slice preferences, at least when baking these rather large loaves. (more…)

On Sunday, February 8, 2009, I attended a medical-marijuana presentation at San Diego’s Central Library. The Marijuana Policy Project showed us a documentary movie called Waiting to Inhale, and with local activists taking part, had a short talk afterwards.

San Diego County has apparently decided to not issue Medical Marijuana ID cards to patients, and it’s now been about 12 years since the California ballot proposition legalizing medical marijuana passed. F. Aaron Smith, California Policy Director of the Marijuana Policy Project, said during the Central Library presentation, that when medical-marijuana patients have an ID card, and they’re discovered with marijuana in California, they will not be arrested; while if they only have a letter from their doctors, it means they won’t be prosecuted. That’s kind of an important distinction, it seems to me. San Diego County’s decision means that patients and caregivers can still be arrested, and all the hassle that entails, even though at the end of this forceful, demeaning, and fearful process, often reportedly involving unfriendly strangers wearing black and frequently carrying assault rifles, the police victims won’t get a day in court, and presumably, no apologies either, they simply won’t be prosecuted.

So, to get their property back, they must presumably sue in civil court, and potentially wait years to see justice (if they’re dying, how likely is that?) from the greater police machine.

So much for Pursuit of Happiness.

[begin edits 2.11.09] During the open-to-the public meeting of Feb 9, 2009, one of San Diego County’s Supervisors claimed the county has won lots of awards over they years. This certainly seems to be a true statement.

I can also say I’ve known a lot of great people over the years that I’ve lived here, quite nice, generous people. [end edits 2.11.09]

Recently I watched a good friend and neighbor in home-hospice care slowly die of cancer. While he said it was legal for him to use marijuana (I don’t know all the details), he was concerned about using marijuana. From what I could tell, he never did try it, though I do remember telling him it was probably worthwhile to see if it helped. He was probably part of the Reefer Madness generation, and likely his mind had been conditioned against its use by our many generations of Authoritarian overlords. His wife, who’s still alive, said they got some Marinol pills, synthetic THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, and she said each pill was billed $30 by the pharmacy! (hmm, seems some folks are getting rich selling those, that’s a ridiculous amount of money for one pill!) On a recent visit of mine to see her, a hospice nurse was also visiting at the same time, we got to talking for a few moments, and this nurse claimed that many patients didn’t react well to the synthetic pill form of tetrahydrocannibinol.

The movie, Waiting to Inhale, claimed that with marijuana, patients are able to modulate their own dose much better than a single pill of a fixed dosage, and further, impurities in the plant may contribute to its better outcomes, and therefore general acceptance, among patients using it. The movie had a short scene that asserted patients actually feel a difference between Indica and Sativa varieties of Cannabis, clearly this is not something a single pill based upon a single-synthetic chemical could provide patients, regardless of its alleged highway-robbery retail-price.

While it’s just a guess and logical aside, I’d bet a $20 bag of marijuana would probably last most patients several days, if not longer.

During the meeting, two caregivers, who claimed to be medical marijuana dispensary operators or possibly growers (their precise function was unclear to me from the brief presentation), said that local police had been targeting caregivers, claiming that they themselves had recently been arrested. One claimed the police had taken all their property in the process, and the other that the local news media simply wasn’t covering these stories, or their frequency of occurrence. Both of them were clearly angry: so much for their pursuit of happiness and human desire for harmony.

A local activist, Rudy Reyes, said that San Diego County residents could show up at weekly meetings of the County Board of Supervisors in support of the patients and caregivers who are following the laws implemented since the passage of Proposition 215, in order to pressure the County to begin its issuing of ID cards, and to stop the harassing of dying and sick folks, and their caregivers.

From the Board of Supervisor’s meeting calendar:

A regular meeting of the Board is held at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday and 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday of each week in the North Chambers (Room 310) or Conference Rooms (Rooms 303 or 335-A), located at the San Diego County Administration Center, 1600 Pacific Highway, San Diego, California.

Perhaps showing up at the local television media stations would also get some attention paid to the police raids. Perhaps the FCC should be required to rule that local TV stations are themselves required to cover all police actions in their own jurisdictions (not one locality covering another’s) as a condition of their licensing, the police should separately be required to video tape all arrest and confiscation actions and further be required to routinely forward all police audio-video to the local TV stations, to insure the local populace is fully informed of the truth of their own local Authoritarians. Perhaps local TV News stations need citizen review boards to filter through all this police video and to further have the authority to tell the stations what particular pieces they’re required to air. That could insulate the reporters and talking heads from the ire of advertisers.

It seems The Supervisors are on the wrong side of the law. Can you imagine a few ten thousand or even hundred thousand local folks (why not dream big!) showing up there on one of those days when The San Diego County Board of Supervisors are conspiring against the ill and their caregivers? Maybe then they’d listen to the people they’re supposed to represent, instead of promoting an ideologically-driven political-agenda that seems to represent a minority view.

According to the the Wall Street Journal, referenced in the freepress.net e-newsletter regarding grants for high speed internet services, telecom carriers will be getting government grants to expand Internet access into underserved and underdeveloped areas:

“The Commerce Department’s Internet buildout grants carry several conditions, including a contentious requirement that Internet networks built with the government grants be open to all devices like cell phones and laptops, regardless of the manufacturer or provider.

CTIA, an association of wireless companies, sent a letter to committee leaders Wednesday asking that the “vague, undefined, and unnecessary ‘open access’ obligation” be removed. CTIA said carriers will be reluctant to apply for the grants if they are uncertain of their open access obligations.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D., Calif.), an ardent proponent of an open Internet principle called “net neutrality,” brushed aside the carriers’ concerns. “These are public dollars. Networks built with this funding should be open,” Ms. Eshoo said.

While the above grants are said only for underserved areas, one has to wonder if areas already served by a few big providers couldn’t use a little more competition.

We know the huge telecom ISPs don’t seem to care nearly as much about service as profit. Today’s example is from an article titled Cox . . .  BitTorrent Users with More Slowdowns:

“In February, Cox will trial a brand new throttling scheme that aims to slow down so-called “non-time sensitive” traffic when the network is congested. This includes all P2P, FTP and Usenet traffic. Although Cox announced the trials – which will start in Kansas and Arkansas – on its website, details are scarce.
. . . 
Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, is also concerned with Cox’s new plans. He said in a response to the news, “The lesson we learned from the Comcast case is that we must be skeptical of any practice that comes between users and the Internet.” Indeed, network neutrality is at stake – again.

While I don’t generally use bittorrent, I do use FTP quite a bit when working on the websites, and I used to love Usenet, particularly the astrology channels, some 15 years or so back. Unfortunately, the astrology Usenet groups seemed to get taken over by activity which, for me at least, was distracting, though I know I’ve read recently that some still love Usenet, and if true, why should they be “slowed down”?

On the momentary topic of “slow downs”, recently I did some maintenance work for an old friend that required room & board (to keep commuting costs down) for a few weeks. This was in a BIG Southern California city, one with well-developed broadband markets! I took my laptop, as the residence had cable-delivered Internet and a router. Wow, what a slow down it was that occurred in the evenings, slow downs on webpage requests, and this was so-called premium Internet service! Very irritating. I was able to fix the issue on my computer by wiring around some of their systems, but how many of their customers just figure that’s the way it is and nothing can be done about it? Much better if people watch TV in the evenings is possibly the big-company “incentive” of intertwined interests we’re talking about here.

Could local public school districts provide Internet service to their surrounding communities at a competitive cost to that of the current broadband ISPs with sufficient incentives provided by the Federal government to do so? It seems the path of local school as ISP has been done in the past (link dated 1999) with dial-up Internet service:

“Although the Williamsville Community Unit School District already received Internet access courtesy of the state, reselling this access was not an option, explains Marty Benner, a board member in the district. Instead, the district installed a leased satellite system to acquire additional Internet access that could be resold. After an initial investment of $33,000, the district began selling the Internet access to the community last April. “That’s really why we did it,” Benner says. “It was not meant as a money-maker, but rather as a service to the community.”

As long as our government continues to grant corporate welfare to the largest telecom providers (privatize profits and socialize risks), it seems the likely answer is that local schools could not offer the service competitively. Can public schools receive federal government grants so they can be just as competitive in the ISP arena? If so, this might be something that schools could do to help fund their goals of educating the local community’s children, without needing to take more money from those of us without children, instead we could choose to purchase Internet access from the them.

I’d bet a lot of folks would LOVE to get high-speed broadband from the local schools, but it would have to be competitive price wise with current cable and DSL providers in order for this model to be successful. You can bet the corporatist would fight this one: ahem, only going for “underserved” areas, such as that reported by the WSJ’s article linked above. The more corporate welfare telecoms can get, the less competitive local ISPs, such as schools, could be.

Can you imagine the economic stimulus for local communities if tax monies taken by the federal government were given back to local communities as services for the commons?

It is undoubtedly true that the schools of the future will be much different from the recent past and presumably current model of Absolute Authoritarianism or Prussian methods.

Is this white paper a glance at the future of the new schools of the 21st century?

“As important as it is for physical structures to be adaptable, “it is even more important that class time be elastic. Instead of assigning a certain amount of time for teaching one subject per day, teachers need the flexibility of bigger and more adjustable time slots to truly impact learning,” said Charles Fadel, global lead for education for Cisco Systems. “There must be a renewed focus on increasing the quality of teaching by [giving] teachers more time and opportunities to plan, collaborate, and work with advanced technology systems.”

Local public schools as broadband ISPs, perhaps wireless to the local surrounding community, could be an incremental step in that direction, though it would have to be applied not only to undeveloped and underserved areas, but also to already developed broadband markets.

What better way to learn computers is there than to have students help maintain the technology infrastructure alongside true computer engineers and professional teachers?

“Dear Ken Klaser:

Yesterday — with the leadership of the Department of Justice in flux while Attorney General-designate Eric Holder awaits confirmation by the Senate — Bush administration holdovers raided a medical marijuana dispensary in South Lake Tahoe, California.

President Obama vowed repeatedly during his campaign to stop such raids if elected, and we have every reason to believe he will make good on that promise. However, four top positions at the DEA are still filled by Bush cronies, who are attempting to undercut the president’s pledge.

Would you please take one minute to use MPP’s easy online system to e-mail the president and ask him to get his new leadership in place at the DEA quickly, so that these cruel and outdated policies finally end? Visit http://control.mpp.org to e-mail the president.

President Obama has promised that arresting patients and raiding clinics in states where medical marijuana is legal won’t be acceptable on his watch. Getting political appointees in place takes time, but yesterday the Bush holdovers showed that we must move swiftly.

[snip]

Thank you,

Rob Kampia Executive Director Marijuana Policy Project Washington, D.C.”

Dear President Obama,

RE: Medical Marijuana IS LEGAL in California!

On January 22, the Drug Enforcement Administration raided a medical marijuana dispensary in California for the first time since you took office. During your campaign, you pledged to put an end to this unconscionable practice, saying, “I would not have the Justice Department prosecuting and raiding medical marijuana users. It’s not a good use of our resources.”

This raid is only the most recent in a string of nearly 100 raids on medical marijuana dispensaries operating legally under state law. Would you please move swiftly to bring an end to these medical marijuana raids, as you vowed in the campaign? As president, you could start by appointing new leadership in the DEA and making it clear to the Department of Justice that this practice is no longer acceptable.

Last winter, the American College of Physicians issued an endorsement of medical marijuana, which, along with stating scientific support for marijuana’s medical efficacy, pointed out that “a clear discord exists between the scientific community and federal legal and regulatory agencies over the medicinal value of marijuana.”

Please help bring our government back in line with the scientific community by ending these raids. No one should suffer criminal penalties simply for using a medicine that works for them.

Sincerely,
Ken Klaser

From MPP’s letter to me:

“P.S. As I’ve mentioned in previous alerts, a major philanthropist has committed to match the first $2.35 million that MPP can raise from the rest of the planet in 2009. This means that your donation at http://control.mpp.org will be doubled.”

Playing music on your own instrument is a transitory experience, one in which higher levels of the heart and mind are accessed. While this higher-level experience may be so subtle as to be missed by many beginning musicians, struggling as they are with their chosen instruments, struggling with rules and limitations, struggling to understand the notes or sounds and training the fingers and breath to respond accurately, trust those of us that have been there when we tell you that if you keep at it for long enough and desire it, you too shall hear the subtle music within the sounds your instrument makes.

In the case of the notation system described below, the subtle music I heard was an issue regarding how my brain and body’s nervous system worked, with respect to the dynamic process of reading the notes then pressing the keys, that showed me an inefficiency in the mass-disseminated, and or common, fingering notation used in musical score.

A couple of years ago I purchased one of the least expensive electronic pianos a major music company manufactured, a Yamaha CLP-115. This wasn’t my first piano, but that’s another story. The CLP-115 has weighted keys that feel much like an acoustic piano, they are the same standardized size and shape as those of the great piano builders’ artistic era of the early 20th century, with the same number of keys, 88 I believe. At some point, this new electronic instrument fostered an interest in Johann Sebastian Bach’s music, and the lessons he left for so many of the past and present keyboard greats among us.

While learning to play Invention 1, there was Bach, either in all his full glory or at least some of it, teaching me as I learned. Expressing gratitude outwardly has always been a difficult thing for me, everyday we are given many great gifts of love from others and forget to give them our thanks, taking those gifts for granted, but any day is a good day to begin. Therefore, I’ve named this fingering notation after J.S.Bach. Perhaps others will find it as useful as I do.

Also while learning Invention 1, a problem that both irritated and intrigued me when I was a young piano post-student reappeared. One of the difficulties of playing any given piece is how best to finger the keyboard, or which finger to use on each note, so that all the notes can be strung together in a coherent and intended way when played at increased speeds. Everyone’s hand is a slightly different shape, some with thick fingers, others with thin, some long, some short, to say nothing of other biometric differences, etc., so piano fingering is ultimately the pianist’s individual responsibility to assign.

This is not an easy task, and every Bach admirer has their own thoughts on the subject, and all those thoughts are also Bach inspired, for this form of inspiration is something that we invoke when playing another’s song, even though we might not notice it when first starting out.

In what follows I’ll make use of some graphics to show you how I came to devise the Bach-inspired Graphical Fingering Notation System, and additionally I will present you with the notation as I have used it on the complete score of Invention 2. I have attempted a simple Internet search for any similar music-notation system: if such a system exists anywhere, I haven’t previously seen it.

Please note that what follows has a few very large images, so if you’re on dial-up instead of broadband, be forewarned!

Vector-based Graphical Piano Fingering Notation (more…)

This morning I noted a news item from Human Resource Executive Online, the article is titled: National Health Reform Begins. In short, the Obama Administration will begin very soon (if it hasn’t already by the time I press the publish button), and rising health care costs, as well as lack of health care for many, are on everyone’s mind. A paragraph “jumped off the page” while reading the article:

. . . along with the question of whether or not employers should be required to “play or pay” — that is, employers must either provide a certain level of health insurance or pay the government so that it can provide insurance-premium subsidies for low-income households. Two recent reports from the Congressional Budget Office are “must read” material for employers that want to understand what might happen, why it might happen and how it might affect their health programs.

This is a serious issue, with repercussions to last many generations into the future.

It seems common knowledge that health care in the United States is more expensive than in any other country, and it’s failing to provide the best health care (a point subject to debate) and universal coverage for everyone. Don’t believe it? An older health-care cost report from from the University of Maine circa 2001 (*.doc). When reading this, remember the inflation that has occurred over the last 8 years. Another health care report from the Common Wealth Fund, circa 2006, says:

Equity: Nine measures from the two surveys gauged the extent to which patients’ income affected their ability to access care. The U.S. scored last on seven of the nine measures of low-income patients not receiving needed care and had the greatest disparities in terms of access to care between those with below-average and above-average incomes. With low rankings on all measures, the U.S. ranked last among the six countries in terms of equity in the health care system. The U.K. ranked first, with no or negligible differences in terms of patients’ access to care by income. The U.S. is the only country surveyed with large numbers of uninsured, and this contributed to its low rating for equity in the health care system. But even among above-average income respondents, the U.S. lagged considerably behind their counterparts in other countries.

Not to make too fine a point regarding my own bias, Representative John Conyers authored H.R. 676. It has now attracted 78 cosponsors.

While I haven’t read the two Congressional Budget Office reports linked in the Human Resource Executive Online news item, I fortunately see that Medicare For All (see the PDF, page 13) is mentioned:

Provide individuals with coverage under, or access to, existing insurance plans such as the Medicare program, either as an additional option or under a “Medicare-for-all” single-payer arrangement.

More information about HR 676 can be found here, should you choose to and are able to help. From their front page:

• Every resident of the US will be covered from birth to death.
• No more pre-existing conditions to be excluded from coverage.
• No more expensive deductibles or co-pays.
• All prescription medications will be covered.
• All dental and eye care will be included.
• Mental health and substance abuse care will be fully covered.(1)
• Long term and nursing home services will be included.
• You will always choose your own doctors and hospitals.
• Costs of coverage will be assessed on a sliding scale basis.
• Tremendously simplified system of medical administration
• Total portability – your coverage not tied to any job or location.
• Existing Medicare benefits for those over 65 will remain the same or be vastly improved in many cases.
• No corporate bureaucrat will ever come between you and your Doctor to deny your care

While the Obama Administration and Congress struggle with the many problems currently facing our nation and the world, few can argue that health care is not one of the higher priorities to average folks, along with putting food on the table and keeping their homes if they’re lucky enough to have one. A Single-Payer Medicare for All (universal) plan would take some financial stress off small and large businesses alike, while improving health care access for all, including homeless folks.

It’s important for citizens to understand these issues facing us, think about them, then communicate with others, your neighbors certainly, and particularly your Representatives and Senators, as well as President Obama, regarding what you’d like to see happen in the future in regards to the health care proposals being discussed. You can bet the insurance corporations’ executives are doing so, but their past systems have failed some of us, while enriching themselves and their shareholders, creating the most expensive health-care system in the world that fails to cover all of us.

It’s time for us to take back our power as citizens and create a brighter, more equitable, and healthier future.

The other day I was looking for a way to keep a window on top while entering its values in another window, and laying both windows side by side wasn’t the best option for one of the windows. So, I started searching for a Stay on Top utility.

PowerMenu adds a right click menu to each window’s title bar, adding the following features:
Priority
Transparency
Always on Top
Minimize to Tray.

Under Win98, the Transparency control is not supported.

While the Stay on Top feature was what I was looking for, I was surprised to also find a solution to an organization issue that has bothered me for some years: the inability to reorganize the order of the items in the task bar. When Firefox 2.0 added the ability to move the sequential ordering of tabs, it was a real breakthrough for users who wished to organize their browser’s windows.

With PowerMenu, by minimizing the various program windows to the tray, then strategically clicking on them in the order you wish them to reappear in the task bar, one is able to reorder task bar items!

This is definitely one of the handier utilities for Windows that I’ve seen: PowerMenu by Thong Nguyen.

This is a companion post to my prior post titled Ceiling Fan Capacitor Woes which details the search for a supplier of replacement capacitors to restore several broken ceiling fans to full working order. That post also linked to a number of reference sites, and if this topic is interesting, but confusing, it is suggested to refer back to its links. This posting details knowledge I’ve gained in the process of successfully replacing ceiling fan capacitors that had blown, but additionally, understanding of how to alter the fan blade’s revolutions per minute (RPM). To my knowledge and data searches, this speed-alteration information was not detailed elsewhere. Many sites offered hints, presented, to my mind, in a puzzle-like form of bits and pieces, and none of which showed the bigger picture which I felt I needed to both understand how the various capacitor values worked, and minimize the number purchased, unless I simply wanted precise factory-specified microfarad-valued replacements. Even the manufacturer of the fans didn’t seem to include either a detailed or basic schematic of their circuit, something that is historically quite common for appliances.

In some respects, my prior post created more questions as well as providing some answers, (more…)

When we moved, the house we moved into did not have forced air circulation or heating, so in order to circulate the warm air from the single wall heater into the various rooms, we installed 4 ceiling fans about 8 years ago, one in each room, and one in the central hallway, which is closest to the wall heater. One of the issues we’ve encountered over the years with these 3-speed reversible ceiling fans is the fact they have speed-control capacitors that occasionally burn out. So far, it has always been one of the two in control of the lowest speed circuit, which uses the least power when it’s working properly, and it’s also the speed that the fan is operating on most of the time it’s on. The factory module is an integrated three-in-one unit, molded into a single, insulated plastic housing, with five wires. These fans are now about 7- or 8-years old.

While on our monthly grocery shopping trip, we stopped by the store where we purchased the fans. They either no longer carried these replacement capacitors, or never carried them in the first place. (more…)

Here are some aerial photos of the Greensburg tornado damage by Jaime Oppenheimer of The Wichita Eagle. This is major damage that, while different in cause, is reminiscent of Katrina and New Orleans.

In the middle of the devastation, it appears there is a grain silo, or perhaps some other type of building, that escaped relatively unharmed. A sequentially earlier photo, in the upper right quadrant, shows some less-damaged commercial (presumably) buildings, on what may be a main street, judging by the street’s apparent greater width, running diagonally towards the grain silo. It appears to me the two photos are taken from opposite sides of the silo.

In areas subject to tornadoes, perhaps all buildings should be constructed similarly to those that were less damaged. From the photos, it appears the worst damaged buildings were possibly people’s homes, judging from cars amidst the timber debris (that suggest former garages).

The cynic in me says that nothing will likely change, local building codes will probably continue to approve the same types of construction for rebuilt homes, possibly because, while tragic, rebuilding is good for certain business sectors.

It is quite curious that what seems to be business or commercial buildings seem less damaged. Perhaps those were buildings constructed in an earlier era.