Author: dbeeby

A healthy, waxy chain


Though some sites poo-poo it, I’ve been a fan of wax (paraffin) chain lubrication for years.  This image (p 13) illustrates a double boiler like the one I used,  but I opted for a large frying pan and a pie tin in which I placed the chain and one four-ounce stick of wax (1/4 the recommended amount).  One stick will suffice for a standard road/racing chain and a 9″ pie tin.  After the boiling water melted the wax I removed the tin pie pan and gave it a few twisting shakes (which lets all of the accumulated chain gunk seep out into the hot wax bath).  When it’s cool, the sticky wax takes all the dirt and leaves a like-new chain.  I’ve never experienced drivetrain/shifting problems using this technique and, after a short time, the chain accepts liquid lubricants normally (e.g. tri-flow).  A couple of tips:  place the tightly curled chain squarely in the middle of the tin with the extracted pin pointing up.  Place the tin on a hard surface and push the paraffin onto the extracted pin (which holds it in place as it melts and keeps the whole contraption flat).  Fold the edges of the pie tin upwards to keep water out.  

t610 pwns razr


I had a trusty sony-ericsson t610 for about four years, but I gave it up last August for a Moto Razr v3. Initially I was impressed with the Razr’s reception and sound quality, but the user interface and battery life are so bad that I evetually had to switch back to the t610. The only thing I have to give up is music playback (which the v3 facilitated nicely with a micro SD slot).

Brooklyn Pizza Tour

My friend Chris was in town from Cambodia this weekend so I planned a Pizza Tour of Brooklyn. Of the places on the map, we hit four (plus we made our own home-made pies).

We had two categories for the pizzas we sampled: “paper plate” and “gourmet”. The former were slices, the latter where what our friend Deana would call “not pizza” (since it’s too thin and froo-froo).

First stop: Pizza Plus at 359 7th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215, (718) 768-5327. The “local” pizzeria. This is where I buy fresh dough as well as an occasional slice or entree. Pizza Plus is one of the friendliest eating establishments in Park Slope and they make a really nice slice. We each had a half slice on a paper plate as a reference point and appetizer before hopping on our bikes. Pizza Plus still charges only $1.75 for one slice, plain cheese pizza.  An 18″ pizza goes for $14 or $.05/inch. Crisp crust, excellent sauce, “too much cheese”.

Next stop: Franny’s Pizza at 295 Flatbush Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217, (718) 230-0221. Franny’s is a decided step up from your average pizzeria. The bartender was attentive and the pizza was very good, but pricey. We enjoyed the tomato and buffalo mozzarella pizza (which cost $16 or $.14/inch). The sauce was good and the crust had a nice chewiness, but it did get a little waterlogged and there was a bit of char (which is not unusual at brick-oven pizzerias, read: “Anthony’s on 7th Ave”). Overall Franny’s serves a solid gourmet pizza.

After Franny’s we coasted down 4th Ave (passing many other storefront pizzerias) to Peppe’s, a newcomer to the neighborhood, at 597 4th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215, (718) 788-7333. Though we had slices on paper plates, Peppe’s pizza is definitely high-end. There was a generous sprinkling of Romano on top, which lent the sauce a creaminess that took some getting used to. Peppe was gregarious and he stopped to chat with us between deliveries. An 18″ large pie costs $16 ($.06/inch) making Peppe’s the value winner. (Read a serious review).

Our final stop before returning home to try our own hands at pizza-making was Toby’s Ale House at 686 6th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11215, (718) 788-1186. Toby’s just opened up a few weeks ago, but already they’re churning out excellent pizzas. Our group had grown to five at this point so we sampled three of their pizzas. Toby’s pies are small and priced similarly to Franny’s so bring lots and lots of cash. Though all of the pies were too salty, the buffalo mozzarella pizza was the taste winner in the gourmet category and it goes quite well with their Toby’s Cheap Ale (which, at $3 a pint, is cheap indeed).

A couple of hours later and many dollars lighter, we trekked back to 7th avenue and made some pies of our own. I put together two 14″ pies for under $20, which puts the home-made-pizza-price on par with Peppe’s (though mine did use fresh mozz and included spinach). My pizza was decidedly blander than the others and had a sweeter tomato sauce since I use canned crushed tomatoes alone. The addition of spinach and subtraction of salt make this pizza the health-conscious pizza-eater’s choice, which met with general approval from the judges. However, with Peppe’s in the neighborhood, it’s going to become harder and harder to fire up the “Mark Royal” and make it myself.

Update: 7/19/08. M and I went to Di Fara’s today. What you’ve heard is true. The pizza may be the best in the world. The ingredients are top-notch and the place… well, let’s just say it’s hard to describe.

Ciao, Italia

M and I spent a week with her family in Rome. The weather was brutto, which kept us inside most of the time, but the food and conviviality were, as usual, molto bene. We made two short day trips into Rome (Trestevere and the Pantheon plus some other sights).  We also went out to V’s folks place in Grotta Ferratta for Paella.  More photos.

iPod Video (aka 5th gen iPod), We Hardly Knew Ye!

I have had a pretty, black, 60GB ipod “video” until this morning. As with any disk failure, the worst part isn’t losing the device, it’s losing the data. I was plugging it in so I could back up all the work I did last weekend, but spent most of the day re-doing it from an earlier backup since everything was lost.

I think I have a problem with my mac Mini since a number of USB devices have started working erratically shortly after being plugged into that computer. It’s making me think that the recent trouble I had with the Sandisk Cruzer might have been caused by a spike or something (though I’m not prepared to apologize for maligning Sandisk yet).

Beeby’s Broth

I was listening to a podcast of Science Friday the other day (yes, I am a nerd), and Michael Pollan was on talking about his new book In Defense of Food. He actually came across as a reasonable fellow in the interview — all of the other press I’d heard about the book made him sound like a very unreasonable, local-only-organic-granola freak. During the show a whacko caller mentioned something called “Bieler’s Broth“, which I vowed to try next time I was feeling under the weather. Well, today is the day.  I made a slight variation on the recipe linked above:

Beeby’s Broth

  • 1 cup water
  • 2 cups green beans
  • 3 cleaned stalks celery
  • 2 zucchini
  • 1 handful parsley 
  • 1 tbl sp olive oil
  • 1 pinch salt
  • a touch of hot sauce

Bring the water and salt to a boil and steam the beans for 5 minutes. Chop the celery and zucchini and add to the pot. Cook for an additional 5 minutes (or until all of the vegetables are tender). Pour into a food processor and puree. Add the parsley and olive oil. Puree the hell out of it. 

The result isn’t the best tasting recipe in the world, but it’s a lovely green color when it’s done and I get the feeling that it’ll do great things for me. The consistency isn’t what I would call “pea soup” because the parsley is still rather crunchy.  Try at your own risk.

Go Get the Ax

My grandfather had a very vivid imagination. He was a superb story-teller who was constantly making up stories about creatures in the forest around our ancestral home in northern Michigan (subsequent posts will highlight some of them).

When my brother and I were about ten years old, grandpa taught us the following song:

Peeping through the knothole in father’s wooden leg
who’ll wind the clock when I am gone?
Go get the meat ax, there’s a fly on baby’s bean
a boy’s best friend is his mother.

This is another set of lyrics for the same verse, which grandpa called “The Harvard Version”:

Peering through the aperture in father’s artificial appendage
who’ll tighten the chronometer when I cross the bar?
go procure the viand dissector, there’s an insect on baby’s cerebellum
one of the greatest sociological factors of the development of the male of the species Homo sapiens is his immediate maternal ancestor.

Anderson (in Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications the textbook for my current TC course) would call this song a semantically “anomolous” specimen, but it was always fun to sing a cappella with grandpa.

Update: Hal Beeby’s song is a variation of “Go Get the Ax” by Lesley Nelson-Burns (which according to contemplator.com dates to the early 1900’s). That site had a midi file, which is an approximation of the tune that he taught us (Go Get the Ax – midi).

IBM ThinkPad Transnote Sans “Note”

There wasn’t much I could do with Audrey in my network “closet”, so I retired the old girl this weekend. I figure that I’ve gotten my seventy dollar’s worth in the four years I’ve owned it, so it doesn’t hurt too bad.

In its place, I installed a 2001 vintage IBM ThinkPad Transnote. The last time I tried to start this ill-fated piece of technology was over a year ago and it wouldn’t boot. It seems that a deep battery run-down solved its OS problems; this time Windows 2000 started without a hitch.

I knew I’d never be able to wall-mount this goose-necked, touch-screen marvel unless I were able to take off the portfolio cover and paper pad assembly. There are a number of screw covers and tiny screws around the periphery of the case, which I removed. The faux-leather binder and paper pad came off easily. After disconnecting the notepad cable, I connected the battery, plugged it in, and crossed my fingers. The stand-alone tablet booted without a hitch. I was able to use Audrey’s mounting hardware (a $1.29 set of “heavy duty” mirror mounting brackets) to attach the ThinkPad to the wall.

The battery life isn’t great, but I can take it down anytime I need a wireless Windows machine (to test a Web site in IE6 or whatever). Additionally, I loaded it up with free software (Gimp, iTunes, OpenOffice, Arachnophelia, etc), so it’s actually a pretty competent little bugger. And jeer all you want, but at just over 3/4″, this thing is as thin as a Macbook Air.