Microblog

A flock of scooters had completely taken over the racks outside Whole Foods. I shooed one away to make room for my old hoss, and it promptly succumbed to gravity.

It was time for more slices of the cake Dwight had baked for my birthday to disappear. Not just any cake, but a French dessert called gâteau invisible, so named because of the way layers of thinly sliced Granny Smith apples disappear into a vanilla-bean flavored batter. Here it’s served with a dollop of cream whipped with brown sugar and flecks of cinnamon.

Cycled over to the U for treatment and scans, taking care not to collide with half-awake students. On the way back, the students streaming out of lectures seemed more animated.

Walked over to Owamni by the Sioux Chef where Dwight had reserved this window table for an excellent “de-colonized” meal with ingredients restricted to those available to pre-colonial indigenous Americans. The chef has won several James Beard awards at this nationally recognized restaurant.

Early in my bike ride today I paused before riding this section of wood plank trail. It was replaced in recent years, but it’s still like riding a washboard. To the left the stabilized ruins of the Washburn A Mill are a feature of the Mill City Museum.

Lined up recently introduced large LEGO worm gears as a conveyer for 1×1 plates, much like an Archimedes (water) screw. An unexpected bonus was that the plates were consistently flipped stud-side up. This replaces all my work in recent weeks on pneumatic devices to flip 1×1 plates. Click through for a short video I made today.

Dwight brought dahlias home from the Farmers Market, signalling an early start to my birthday season. 

Installed a super-quiet, low-speed fan to ventilate the closet by our front door. Next up: paint the grill to match the wall and design the perfect algorithm to control the fan. I’m considering factors like humidity and temperature inside the closet versus the rest of our home, and whether we’ve been outside, all using existing sensors, plus the weather and time of day. Or, I could just put it on a timer!

Tied up my trusty steed at the Minnesota State Fair’s bicycle corral then used skills I acquired in Japan’s mainline train stations to navigate the crowds. I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do it, but I followed the aroma to the hog barn to meet sleepy 902-pound Teddy Bear with his enormous scrotum (which I’ve tastefully pixelated). After that I watched cows being milked feeling grateful for small mercies.

It was glorious weather for a bike ride on part of the Gateway Trail then the Brown’s Creek Trail to Stillwater. Here we’re cycling back out of Stillwater after stopping for coffee and calories. On the left, the former railroad depot has unevenly morphed into a K-5 charter school. (Dwight took this photo of our friend and me.)

Popped into the rectory office of Our Lady of Lourdes, the oldest church in Minneapolis. They have a great side hustle: not only do they dispense religious services, but they also sell French meat pies, handmade by parishioners. I was reminded of this decades-old tradition today while looking for inspiration on the Atlas Obscura website.

Cycled our favorite loop via Lake Harriet where we stopped for breakfast at Bread & Pickle. Here I’m delivering the always-fresh coffee while breakfast sandwiches were being cooked to order.

Successfully prototyped a machine, shown here, that accepts a LEGO 1×1 plate, regardless of whether it’s stud-side up or stud-side down, and spits it back out stud-side up. (Motorized pneumatic valves, an air compressor, and a computer are off-camera.) This afternoon I worked on my next challenge: a feeding mechanism to supply this machine from a queue of randomly oriented plates.

Tonight: dinner and a high-energy evening with Aloe Blacc on his ‘We Stand Together’ tour at the Dakota.

Worked with an adult English language learner in this beautiful Carnegie library as I do most Friday mornings. The library, located in a disadvantaged neighborhood where 38% of residents live below the poverty line, was built with funds from a benefactor who accumulated immense wealth on the backs of working people and presided over the worst labor conflict in American history.

Almost home, this scene caught my attention. Behind the grassy berm, the gas company was burning off natural gas. AI assures me that “flaring” is a safe way to dispose of excess gas, though I imagine it’s best not to try this at home. Across the river from the flame, the chimneys belong to a university heating plant.