Escape From Mogadishu

It was the last day of class before a break for Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr. The student worked through a reasoning exercise and continued writing an essay about her uncle who escaped war in a boat that sank. He was in the water a long time, but eventually was rescued.

Twitter Independence

Woke up to the news Elon Musk may buy Twitter. Spent much of the day developing a replacement microblog capability in WordPress. When I add a micropost with WordPress, a Tweet automatically posts to Twitter.

Iterative Design

The setting sun bounced off a prototype LEGO pneumatic machine I’ve been building. Today, I finally got it to go through all the correct motions. Now, comes refinement, which may involve taking the whole thing apart and starting afresh, yet again.

Categorized as LEGO

Endorphins

Cranked up the endorphins with sun, warmth, and the first cycle ride of the year. (Garden of Iron Mirrors, University of Minnesota, East Bank Campus.)

Categorized as Cycle

Try Again…

A mechanism was not working to my satisfaction this afternoon, so I worked on improving it. One step forward, two steps back.

Categorized as LEGO

Farmers Kitchen

Yum. Breakfast at Farmers Kitchen and Bar: ingredients from MN farms, owned by the MN Farmers Union. Dwight then went to his Thursday gig (volunteering in a University of MN greenhouse) and I went foraging for best prescription medication prices for both of us at two pharmacies.

Categorized as Eat

Puddles

At the furthest point on my walk, the heavens opened. Kept my head down as I headed back home. A hot shower made it all good.

Categorized as Walk

Getting Richard Simmons Going

Connected a friend’s VCR to her new TV using a video-to-HDMI converter so she can play one tape: an exercise routine she enjoys. The aspect ratio is wrong (stretched) but it’s not distracting: Richard Simmons has had many girths over the years.

Categorized as Friends

Zoji’s Limits

I love my Zoji, Japan’s leading rice cooker brand. Fuzzy logic and induction heating produce great rice. However, the fuzzy logic doesn’t detect the type of rice and I forgot to change the setting from (short-grain) brown to sushi. It was edible, but rather aggressively cooked.

Categorized as Cook