Thought Bloggles

My recent bread-making has been plagued by a series of disasters, punctuated by not-quite-disasters, but hardly ever anything great like my original 1:1 bread . I read up on various aspects of baking, tried adding less liquid, using warmer water, adding more flour, and various other tweaks, all to no avail. The pattern was that the first rise would be fine, the second rise so-so, but then instead of a great oven spring, the bread would actually deflate in the oven. A very sad experience. Today I looked back at the old recipe, and noticed that it had used flax-seed flour instead of sunflower seed flour ("sunflour"). I changed to the latter because I found the taste of the flax seed flour to be a bit more savory than what I was shooting for. However, looking at my flour tests , I realized the sunflour seed hadn't risen nearly as well as the flax-seed flour. So that could well be my problem! Before going back to the flax-seed flour, I tried one last trick that I had seen i...

I needed a new workbench. One where my printer could live, where tools and spare parts could be organized, but also where the work surface wouldn't get cluttered or take too much of the space in my room. I started looking around at secretaries and similar, which have the right concept, but never the right size. Eventually I realized I had to do it myself. These are my notes. I used an IKEA Hemnes side table, two Hemnes night stands, and the top part of the two-part Hemnes writing desk. The two night stands on top of the side table, and the writing desk part on top of them, like the cross slab of a megalith, done in wood plank furniture. That part was simple enough, except I didn't want the gaps under the night stands, so I cut a bit of the logs, but cut too much, so now I need to fill some gaps. I'll probably print something eventually. But here's the basic setup: Hemnes, Hemnes everywhere. But they are clearly not designed to go together like these, the sizes don...

Despite taking a minor in mathematics, I never really grokked matrices. I didn't even realize why it's called linear algebra (or at least I forgot quickly). These blog posts do a good job of making them more intuitive to me: The basics of matrices: https://dhruvp.netlify.com/2018/12/31/matrices / Eigenvectors: https://dhruvp.netlify.com/2018/12/31/matrices /

Yoghurt with müsli is a fixed part of my breakfast since I was a kid. A morning just isn't right without it. Unfortunately, the müsli makers are not exactly trying to make low-carb müslis in general - mostly they combine cereals with sugars and call it healthy because there's a smidge of fiber in there. A few high-protein müslis have started to appear, mostly based on soy protein, and so far universally boring in taste and texture. So, following the lead of my mother, I have started making my own, adding things for texture and protein as I feel fit. According to my calculations, this has a 2.27:1 carb:protein balance, 1.83:1 if you count fibers as negative carbs ("effective carbs"). That is already a lot better than the typical 6:1 or 7:1 of standard müslis. Effectively Carb-Balanced Müsli 100g coarse oats 100g fine oats 100g raisins 100g hazelnuts, whole 100g sunflower seeds 50g flax seeds 50g corn flakes With ingredients from our local grocery store, thi...