Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Jon Singer's LiveJournal:

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Monday, October 10th, 2011
11:37 am	Salad, with accompaniments [including a bit of technoid scunge] GREEN bus, YELLOW sign... Clearly, it’s the PURPLE line! Ahem. Yes. Well. [Some of us are easily amused. I count myself fortunate in this regard.] “Astoria Salad” I had an obscure hankering for a Waldorf Salad. (It boots not to ask why; I do not claim to control, predict, or understand these things. I merely count myself fortunate that nearly all of my hankerings are easily met.) I faunched, anyway, after a nice turkey Waldorf until I decided to do something about It. I’m going to describe version 2 of the result, which I am eating even as I type this. Version 1 was very similar, though maybe a bit too rich, so I used a bit less mayo this time. Those of you who are familiar with my cooking style will find none of what follows the least bit surprising. A little of it was necessitated by food allergies (I do not mess with raisins, because I am allergic to yeast), but I’m fairly sure that most of it was driven by whim except the fennel. That was suggested by lisajulie. It was obviously The Right Stuff, and I was happy to accept the suggestion. Ingredients: 2 duck breasts [the package said net weight 12 oz] 1 midsize to large fennel bulb [see notes] 2 midsize to large apples [see notes] pecans [I didn’t feel like walnuts. You want walnuts? Use walnuts. You want hazelnuts? Use hazelnuts. If you are completely insane you can use macadamia nuts, but don’t blame me if the result is too rich to eat.] dried cherries [see above, about yeast; you can use whatever dried fruits you like] calamansi juice [see notes] caraway seeds [optional] mayonnaise [preferably homemade, or at least of high quality] Method: Slice the duck very thin, and marinate it in the calamansi juice for a while. I think I left it for about half an hour. Mince the fennel and cook it until it has softened enough that you are comfortable eating it. I used the microwave for this. Sauté the duck. You can reduce the resulting liquid a little, but you will need it, so don’t evaporate all of it. Mince the apples. Mince the dried cherries. If the nuts are not already chopped, chop them. Mix everything in a large bowl, being careful not to add too much mayonnaise. (If you think you will be wanting rather a lot of mayo, you may want to remove the skin from the pieces of duck before you put them in.) This should be enough for approximately four normal adult humans, two very hungry people, or one teenager. If the latter, have some dessert ready; the teenager will express much fullness after finishing the salad, but will probably want a little something about 25 minutes later. [I know, anyone who has a teenager in the house doesn’t need to be told that. I included it for the sake of completeness.] Here is a largish serving: Notes: 1) I am still seeing Florence [bulbing] fennel [finocchio in Italian] mislabelled as “anise” in supermarkets. This plant has very little to do with anise, other than a distantly reminiscent flavor and the fact that they are both members of a botanical grouping [Umbelliferae] that includes carrots, dill, caraway, cumin, ajouan, and various other things, many of them fragrant. 2) I used ‘Gingergold’ apples the first time; one ‘Honeycrisp’ and one ‘Mutsu’ this time. It’s all according to your taste, and what’s available. If I’d been able to get my hands on ‘Karmijn de Sonnaville’ fresh off the tree, or ‘Belle de Boskoop’, either would have been my hands-down first choice; but nobody seems to grow them commercially in this area. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Karmijn in a market. I would have been happy to mix in a few ‘Dolgo’ crabapples as well, though that would have necessitated a bit more sweetness somewhere in the mix: they have a lovely rosy fragrance, but they are very tart. If you are familiar with ‘Dolgo’, you will get an index of my sourness tolerance from the fact that I eat them out of hand. 3) I get Manila Gold fresh-frozen calamansi juice, which is packaged in little plastic packets in a resealable bag. Nothing has been added to it — no sugar, no preservatives. It is sour as hell, and it is absolutely lovely. I used two of the packets each time I made this salad, and that was about the right amount for my taste. You do not, btw, want to use sweetened forms of calamansi (of which there are several) in this recipe/method unless you are having the salad for dessert. ...Well, okay, you may be able to get away with sweetened calamansi juice if you are using only ‘Dolgo’ or similarly tart crabapples. Picklemasters, Bless ’em lisajulie and I went through one of the local Korean markets a while ago, and (as usual) made a pass through the magic pickle section, where we discovered that they had pickled Japanese ume [crab-apricots, Prunus mume]. I couldn’t resist getting some of these, and I am happy to report that they are the usual Korean pickle excellence: tart, sweet, hot. Yum! [[Aside: Don’t let anybody hand you any crap about ume being “Japanese plums”. A plum is not fuzzy like a peach, and a plum does not taste like an apricot. (If you don’t think an ume is an apricot, you haven’t tried eating a ripe one off the tree. Very different from the usual umeboshi, which are pickled when they are green.) Besides, the Japanese have plums, and they are ...plums.]] Concerning the Improbability of Banana Ketchup Operators I used to like banana ketchup a lot, but when I read the label on the usual commercial versions I find onions (which I like, but to which I allerge) and artificial coloring (which I don’t much like, and to which I object), so I decided to make my own. Unfortunately, the recipes on the Web all seem to involve not only onions, but also raisins (yeast, feh) and things like cider or malt vinegar (more yeast!). [I react far more vigorously to yeast than I do to onions.] I am clearly going to have to wing it, at least partially. Banana ketchup involves bananas (which I have acquired for the purpose, though they don’t appear to be quite ripe enough yet); “spices” (this appears to cover things like cinnamon and allspice and maybe a clove or two, though in some recipes it also seems to mean black pepper and nutmeg, and I found at least one that calls for ginger...); something sour (I will probably use either Japanese rice vinegar, which is made by the Koji ferment rather than the yeast ferment used in the West, or distilled white vinegar); and, if necessary, something sweet (kinda depends on the bananas, and on the aesthetic of the maker). Some people add tomato products, some don’t. Some add chiles, and a few add a little ripe bell pepper. Some add a tot of rum, preferably dark. [[Followup: I made two batches. The first one accidentally got an excess of cloves dropped into it, and was not entirely successful. The second, however, isn’t bad at all.]] Chapter 39B, part VI: In Which I Resort to the Abuse of Fundamental Constants I wanted to know how accurate the timebase on our old Tektronix 7104 oscilloscope is, and as I do not have ready access to NIST (they are some miles from here, and I’m sure they have better things to do than calibrate my antique 7B15 timebase for me), I decided to fall back upon fundamentals. I have a nice room-pressure nitrogen laser here that I built a while ago: (Yeah, I know, it looks like a pile of bricks. The fact that very little of it is tied into place makes it easier to tweak, and also easier to fix when it craps out, which it did a bunch of times when it was newly constructed. Once I got it stabilized it didn’t crap out for many weeks, but that is not necessarily an adequate predictor when high voltages and thin plastic sheets are involved.) A TEA (Transversely Excited, Atmospheric [pressure]) nitrogen laser puts out a pulse that is approximately 1 billionth of a second long. I ran one of the output beams (if there are no mirrors at the ends, this type of laser emits two beams) into a structure rather like a Michelson interferometer, but with unequal pathlengths, which I built on top of the oscilloscope because the cable on the photodetector is short... (Sorry about the view angle!) Please to note the carefully chosen “close-in” reflector. I couldn’t use a real mirror, because it would have swamped the detector, so I picked a piece of hardware that’s a vaguely specular reflector but not a very good one, and lucked out — it worked quite nicely. Note also the beamsplitter, which is a sapphire sewer-camera window. Again, I didn’t have a proper UV beamsplitter, so I made do with what I did have. The pathlength difference here is 38 cm, but we have to double that because the light goes off to the mirror and then returns. The speed of light is now defined as 299,792,458 meters per second (a wee bit less in air, not that it makes any difference to me for this measurement), so it takes just over 2.5 nanoseconds for the light to traverse the path. [Note: if you measure the speed of light and you get a number other than the one I’ve given here, your ruler or your clock or both are out of calibration.] Here’s what the scope gave me, after I got everything aligned and applied a bit of optical attenuation at the far-end mirror: I’ve marked the peaks; the scope indicates that they are just over 2.8 nsec apart, which means that my timebase is about +10% off calibration when it is displaying 2 nsec per division on the screen. [There is an adjustment for this, but I already have it at one end of its range, so the actual cal error is even worse.] Such is life; at least now I know how large and in what direction the error is. (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 27th, 2011
7:15 pm	Sadness -- Any of you who knew Scott Scidmore will be distressed to hear that he died (in his sleep, apparently from a heart attack) on Saturday. If you want any further info, please email me. I don’t have any words right now. (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 1st, 2011
10:19 pm	Last-minute item: It seems that the FDA is seriously considering making it illegal for us to have access to our own DNA information unless we go through a health professional. I do not entirely understand this, but they appear to be afraid that people will have a greater propensity to do precipitous and stupid things if they have direct access to the information. There is an article in WIRED, however, which claims that there does not appear to be any evidence to support this notion. It also discusses the issue in far more detail than I can manage here & now. (...Besides, they think that people will refrain from doing precipitous and stupid things just because a doctor tells them about the information?? I mean, really...) In any case, to whatever extent I understand this, I am not exactly amused. It further seems that the window for public comment had closed or would have closed, but they have extended it a bit; the window, however, ends either tonight or tomorrow (I’m hazy on this), so if you are reading this on the evening of Sunday, May 1, 2011, you may want to comment. Here is a direct link to the submission page. Good luck to all of us... (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
2:45 pm	Sounds, Flavors, Bright Lights... Dr. Dino Patti Djalal, Indonesia’s Ambassador to the United States (shown in the photo with his wife, Dr. Rosa Rai Djalal), has an idea for a nice little project: as one small part of an ongoing effort to increase our awareness of and interconnectedness with Indonesia, he would like to set a new World Record. On July 9th, on the National Mall in Washington, DC, A Rather Large Number of People will have the opportunity to play a piece of music on bamboo instruments called angklung. (There are lots of images of these on the Web.) I would guess that this is a family event, but young children probably won’t get to play, as the Guinness World Records folks only give you three chances to get it right, and there won’t be much time for rehearsal. (Speaking of which, Bapak Dino says he’s bringing an angklung teacher over from Jakarta.) This may seem a bit frivolous, but I suspect that it has a fair chance of accomplishing its little corner of the larger agenda, and it should be fun. Sunscreen and some sort of hat (DC tends to be very warm in July) are almost certainly advised... I will note, in passing, that Bapak Dino and Ibu Rosa are brilliant and articulate, and that they are quite fluent in English. ( A bit of background on the Indonesian language, if you want it... ) The Happy Alkaloid fishbliss, who found ChocoVivo chocolate at TED, and furtech have conspired to provide me with some samples. This stuff is not conched, so it is kinda gritty, but I think we should agree to regard that as a characteristic, not a problem. I’m not sure I have encountered any other chocolate that tasted so fresh, and the flavors are rich, complex, and splendid; ChocoVivo is very impressive. Don’t bother to check for “snap”, though — that comes with conching, and is not relevant here. Lights (but not in the sky) I have lased two more fountain pen inks (Noodlers’ Firefly and the ink that is ordinarily paired with the transparent yellow Pelikan M205 pen in the M205 Duo package.) Both of these are highlighter inks. This brings the number of inks on my page about accessible and affordable laser dyes for DIYers up to five. [[Note, added later -- the Joss Research Institute site has been redesigned and rebuilt, and they are still working out some kinks and bugs. The link here goes to the old version, because the new version is not accessible. When everything is fixed, you should be able to go to www.jossresearch.org, click the “TJIIRRS” button, and then chose report 10.]] Of these, the one I find most intriguing is Noodlers’ Bay State Cranberry, a regular writing ink that happens to be based on something that is magnificently fluorescent (perhaps one of the Rhodamine dyes), and lases like crazy: Notice the green halo. I find it rather puzzling, because I don’t see it by eye. I have photographed the output of the laser with two very different cameras, though, both of which picked up the halo, so I doubt that it’s an artifact. I am hoping that viewing it through a diffraction grating will help illuminate the issue. [Ahem.] This ink is also of interest because it lases beautifully when I dilute it into alcohol, but I have yet to get it to lase in water. This probably relates to the fact that it is, after all, ink, so it presumably contains various additives, and is not just a pure dye solution. [There have also been lights in the sky lately (auroras related to recent solar events), though not this far south.] Tom Whitmore and Karen G. Anderson were in town a week or two back, and as a result I got to attend a curator’s tour of the Canaletto and his Rivals exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, which was led by Dr. Eric Denker, who did a brilliant job. I also got to attend Dr. Denker’s lecture, at the Italian Embassy, about several artists who worked in Venice in the early part of the 20th century. I believe that the prints he discussed are on view at the Embassy’s Cultural Center for several weeks, and if you care about such things they are well worth seeing. At the dinner that followed the lecture Karen took this photo, which I offer without comment except to say that the lady in question is entirely charming: (20 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
3:38 am	Blogged again! (Accessible laser dyes this time) I got onto the Make Magazine blog again yesterday, courtesy the redoubtable Gareth Branwyn, Senior Editor. Here is my entry, which is moderately amusing: I recently lased several fountain pen inks, as part of a continuing effort to find decent sources of viable laser dyes for DIYers. With luck, btw, I should be able to lase two more inks within the next few days (they haven’t arrived yet). This other entry, however, is exquisite, and is far more interesting than mine. Cheers — jon (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 15th, 2011
11:41 pm	...and I missed them, dammit. During the last century, when I was volunteering in one of the plant propagation groups at the Washington Park Arboretum, in Seattle, somebody brought in seeds of Chaenomeles cathayensis, a number of which I planted. I bought one of the resulting seedlings, and dragged it out here when I moved. It has been in the back yard at my boss’s place since then, and has grown into a small bushy tree perhaps 8 feet tall. I have never seen it flower, but it must have done so this past spring, because when I was out in the yard there yesterday I happened to glance at it and saw these: I could swear that I examined this bush during the Autumn and did not see any fruits on it, but I am clearly misremembering. They didn’t just appear out of noplace. I am grumped, because I want to know what they taste like, and now I’ll have to wait until next year to find out, as these are far gone. I took one back to the lab and disassembled it; think I got over a dozen potentially viable seeds, which I will try to plant within a day or two. (If anybody wants any possible C. cathayensis or hybrid seeds (I have no idea where the pollen came from, and the seedlings may or may not be true to type), they should probably get in touch via email.) A Wee Bit of Surplus Magic: I’ve been wanting a second thermocouple vacuum gauge so I could get at least some sense of the pressure in the laser head I’ve been building & fussing with. I even went so far as to buy a used Varian 531 gauge tube on eBay, figuring I could move our controller back and forth between it and our existing tube; but it was seriously off calibration, and when the vendor (“gaj”) sent me the other one he had, it was even worse. (Sigh. At least he’s an upstanding and ethical vendor. I’d happily buy from him again.) I keep checking for tubes and controllers on eBay, but controllers are typically about $125, and tubes add $15-30 to that, more if they’re new. Then, last night, I decided that I should go down to the University of Maryland surplus outlet (“Terp Trader”) today, and get one there. I have no idea why this idea popped into my head; I have been to Terp Trader lots of times, and as far as I can remember I have never seen a TC gauge tube or controller there. It didn’t make any sense to go running down there for something they never have, but sometimes I find useful items, and it’s always interesting, so this afternoon I got in the car and took off. I was well on my way before I realized that I had misremembered their hours, and was going to arrive just a few minutes before they closed, if I made it at all. Argh. I actually walked in the door at 2:57 and ran to the back. Answered a question for a guy who was looking at computers. (“What does ‘NOHD’ mean?” “Hmmm. I bet it means ‘No Hard Drive’.” “What’s a hard drive?” ....) Once I got past that hurdle (“What’s an operating system?”), I walked over to the shelves where they typically put small scientific instruments, looked around, and picked up the TC gauge controller (with gauge tube!). I kid you not. Here’s what it looks like: I chucked the tube into a test rig and put it on the roughing pump. Here’s what it did: (Sorry that’s slightly fuzzy; handheld photo taken with my telephone under suboptimal conditions.) This is a slightly higher reading than I’ve been getting with our existing gauge, but after I took the photo I realized that I hadn’t actually set the “off” point on the new one, and hadn’t reset it on the old one since I tested the two bad tubes, so the difference probably isn’t meaningful. I don’t have a calibration setup, but we do have one pump that I got to see on the bench at the repair place; it went to about 2 microns on a calibrated digital gauge, and I can probably use it as a sort of standard. I still have no idea how or why it occurred to me that I should go down there, but I’m certainly glad I did. (19 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 1st, 2011
1:15 am	Mexican Faisinjian -- I described the dish of the previous posting to lisajulie, and when I mentioned the fact that I hadn’t thickened it because I wasn’t willing to go haring off about the countryside after walnuts or pecans in the middle of the night, she paused for a moment and then suggested that I could perhaps thicken it with ground-up pumpkinseeds. !! This was just bril, and not something I would have thought of any time soon, despite the fact that I really like combining elements from disparate sources/cultures. I didn’t have any pumpkinseeds, so I knew I’d have to acquire those; but the pumpkinseeds suggested Mexico, and of course I’m out of quince honey, so I immediately thought of substituting membrillo, which I have seen many times but do not recall having tasted. This was a shining golden (well, okay, pink and green) opportunity, so yesterday we went cruising about, and I acquired both. I am mildly distressed to report that membrillo is candy. This is not to say that I don’t like it; to the contrary, I think it’s very pleasant. I suspect, for example, that it would be nice in a pb&j sandwich. ...But it lacks the tartness of anar, which I think is essential to the dish, so I cheated: I put some sumac into it. Not really as much as was needed, because I didn’t want to overdo it right off the bat, but enough to tell whether it would be viable. It is. Next time I make this, however, it will involve actual quinces (I have two of them, but I wanted to try membrillo first), and as little sweetening as I can get away with. I roasted the pumpkinseeds in a dry frypan, which I then cooked the duck in, so that any oil they released while I was roasting them remained to contribute flavor to the dish. This, though, brings up one other little caveat: do not put hot, freshly roasted pumpkinseeds into a burr mill unless you are prepared to deal with pumpkinseed butter, which has a hard time getting out. [Note, added the following day: I am cleaning my burr mill. It is a protracted process...] I suspect that a few of you are scratching your heads and asking what kind of twit would put hot pumpkinseeds into a burr mill in the first place; but I am exploratory enough that I probably would have done it even if I had thought the process through very carefully and realized how large the probability of seed butter was. (I did realize that it could happen, but it was not something I dwelt or brooded upon.) I will also point out that seed butter made from freshly roasted pumpkinseeds has a pleasant and interesting flavor, and suggests various possibilities including psb&j or psb&b (banana) sandwiches. ...But I digress. Having eaten the first half of the dish (I only made one duck breast, for the obvious reason that there are two in a package and I had used the first one when I made the previous posting), I added more sumac. The conjoined flavors in the sauce now remind me, at least vaguely, of some sort of bizarro-world pistachio cream, and I have to say that even though it is much too sweet, it complements the duck nicely (that’s an understatement). (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 27th, 2011
7:37 pm	A Variant Faisinjian (or however you want to spell it) Several years ago, when I arrived at the abode of the Nielsen Haydens for a visit, I found Teresa at the stove, stirring a small vat of thick brown liquid that turned out to be the result of something invincible she had done to a considerable number of quinces. As I recall, I thought it smelled wonderful, so I asked her whether I could taste it. She looked a bit forlorn, said it was quite bitter, and noted that of the people who had tasted it up to that point, she was the only one who could stand it. [I partially misremembered this episode; see note, below.] I don’t mind bitterness as long as it’s reasonably friendly (a notion that is regrettably difficult to pin down, but bitter-melon and quinine both qualify), so I tasted it... ...and when the angels stopped singing Palestrina in 36-part harmony and wandered back off to their day jobs, T filled a small jamjar with the stuff and gave it to me. I have husbanded that jar carefully, but we had clearly reached the point at which there was only going to be one final fling, so I decided to try it in faisinjian. Quinces being what they are, it is not as tangy as anar; but it is rich and deep and aromatic, and I figured I had a good chance. There was about enough left for one duck breast, so that’s what I used. I didn't bother to do the usual thickening maneuver at the end, as I didn’t have any walnuts around and didn’t have the time or energy to go haring off after them, but I’m sure that would be fine. (I might be tempted to use pecans in place of walnuts, though, if I could get nice fresh ones.) It was, no surprise at all, extremely pleasant (not to oversell this, but that’s an understatement), and in a few more moments there will be none left. Now I have to go back for another visit and ask T how the hell she made the quince glop (it was quite viscous) in the first place, as it has been too long and I’ve forgotten. I look on the bright side of this: more cooking, more food, more conversation, more music. Maybe even more quinces, though the prices I’ve been seeing lately are distressingly high. Note, posted a bit later that same evening: Pursuant to requests in comments, I have now spoken with T. We tossed it back and forth for a bit, and she recalled that she had been making quince honey, possibly from Dorothy Hartley’s recipe (“Food in England”). The recipe says that you should cook the stuff until the quinces turn pink, which hers refused to do, so it stayed on the stove considerably longer than it was supposed to. She eventually gave up and strained out the fruits, which left her with dark quince honey that had a rather strange flavor. (I may have misremembered about bitterness, but she did say that people did not like this material.) I have not seen the Hartley recipe, but my offhand guess is that quince honey recipes probably do not vary all that much one from another, and that following any of them to excess should produce a result resembling the contents of my little jar. There was, she said, also a very bitter glop at that same time, which is probably why I remember bitterness — I did taste it. It resulted from the use of one batch of sugar syrup to candy several batches of citrus peels. At each iteration the syrup picks up both pectin and bitterness, and by the end of several rounds it is capable of more than mere-smear cynicism. Just sayin’. |\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/|\V/| On the Project side of the fence, I can now create a happy little electrical discharge inside the device I’ve been building. With a few Torr of helium in there, it looks about like this: Cute, ain’t it? (34 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 17th, 2011
7:12 pm	Haiku series: Once Upon a Network Out[r]age O Network, my Net — ...Where the hell is the Network? Give it back, dammit!! The Cat5 cable Languishes, devoid of its Lifeblood of data. Hours and hours later, And still no Network. What do They think they're doing?? Life just isn’t the Same without bandwidth. I am So small and scared... What is Spring, without The humming of packets in The blood? Bleak despair. Oh, what I wouldn’t Give for a reliable Network... (Don't go there.) [ Alternate: Is there no cure, no Reliable ISP Anywhere at all? ] But wait! What data Through yonder interface breaks? Can it be? O joy!! ...Only one problem: I am writing this on my phone, because nothing is actually coming through the DSL modem yet; we are still offline. They said we’d be back up before 3:45, and it is now well after 7. Grump. Note, added at about 10:30 PM: they apparently screwed up the restore order, and of course nobody who can take care of the problem will be there until tomorrow. Feh. (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 20th, 2010
2:25 pm	Two Small Items The Three-Dollar Faucet Two of the bathroom faucets here have been misbehaving, and I have to deal with one of them rather frequently, so I decided I would commit replacement. I was going to go look for something at the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store that I particularly like, which is one of the ones in Baltimore, but I didn’t get a chance: a couple days ago I stopped at a thrift around the corner from one of our local organic-type markets, and saw what looked like a fairly decent faucet of the right size. It was marked “3-”. I couldn’t see anything horrendously wrong with it (there was a bit of scale inside the pipes, but nothing else obvious), so I figured the worst that could happen would be that I’d either face A Project, or be out three bucks. I actually had three bucks and a desire to Do Something About The @#$@[[[#^@ Faucet, so this was not a terribly difficult decision, despite the fact that there was likely to be a reason why this object was sitting in a thrift store with such a ridiculously low pricetag. When I went to remove the existing faucet I discovered that the canonical bathroom-faucet-exchange-procedure protocol is so cleverly worked out that it doesn’t even require any tools, ...unless something is wrong. (Ahem.) I turned off the water at the wall, unscrewed the water attachments from the pipes on the bottom of the faucet, and went to unscrew the hold-downs; but they would only turn through a few degrees, because they didn’t actually fit in the available space under there. Grump. In order to rotate them I had to go get a longish pair of longnose pliers and use them to catch hold of the fins, which was not trivial when I couldn’t really see what I was doing. Grump. This was uncomfortable, as well as difficult and time-consuming, even though they came loose after a turn or so apiece. Grump. Despite the fact that the hold-downs on the new faucet were very slightly larger in diameter than the older ones, they did not have any protrusions sticking out of them, and they rotated all the way up into place just the way they’re supposed to, so that the new faucet went in extremely easily and quickly. It looks about like this: Having done this thing, I turned the sources back on and performed the obvious test. The hot side was just fine, but when I tried the cold side, nothing came out. Uh-oh, project time... argh. I turned off the cold water at the wall again and attempted, unsuccessfully, to remove the handle on the cold side. I’m still not sure what I failed to do or did wrong, but various removings and gentle tappings did not provide the desired result. I put the screw and the cute little domed plugs back in, figuring that at least I had some water. Sigh. Whatever it was, though, I guess I must have knocked it loose, because when I turned the cold source back on again and manipulated the handle a time or two, idly, a tiny bit of dark grayish wet stuff came out, followed almost instantly by a gray gush (ick, ptoo), which equally swiftly cleared up. Both sides work just fine now. In fact, the action is surprisingly smooth and crisp. ...Which brings up the fact that this faucet not only went in exactly the way it should have, and works remarkably well, it also seems significantly fancier than most of the other faucets I’ve encountered. I was sufficiently curious about this that I went and did some pattern-matching against images of faucets on the Web, and fairly quickly ran into something that looked like it might be from the same manufacturer. After that, it didn’t take me very long to catch up with The Thing Itself, though I had to slog through about 5 pages of their stuff because it was about the last item in the set. I will save you the trouble, if you actually care: This is a Mico Designs, Ltd. “Wilson Collection” #505 bathroom faucet. It seems to retail for $206 from several sources I examined on the Web. I do not, of course, have the correct knob on the top of the shaft that operates the plunger in the sink, as there was no such structure included in what I found at the thrift store, but I really don’t think I have any cause for complaint. Not too damn shabby, for three bucks. ....-----++++++^^^^^!^^^^^++++++-----.... Chicken. Tomato. Tarragon. Sourcream. ...Divergence. “One afternoon, lo these many years agone,” said the multicolored though somewhat faded Python [or is it Perl, perhaps, or maybe Rexx?] rock-geek, “when I was little more than a leathery sort of egg-shaped object and we took our summers in the Northerly reaches,” (multicolored Python [or is it Tcl, perhaps, or maybe JavaScript?] rock-geeks are inclined to speak in such terms even when not somewhat faded) “my mother bravely set forth, and produced something for lunch.” She actually did that rather frequently, as my father had not yet learned to cook and my brother and I had gotten only about as far as sandwiches. [[I will point out, at this juncture, that some years later, at a time when he was holed up in the aforementioned Northerly reaches doing some writing, my father did teach himself to cook, armed with his typical outlook and a marvelous set of cooking principles that my mother wrote out for him (which I still have). A mere few weeks later I visited him up there, and he steamed a duck for dinner. It turned out really well, but that’s neither here nor there. I will also point out that I myself didn’t learn to cook until I trundled off to graduate school and realized within minutes that the one Chinese restaurant in town didn’t actually have chopsticks for patrons. That, however, is an entirely different story, and I must return to this one.]] What my mother made on the occasion in question was a casserolian item, a covered dish. There is some chance that she performed it entirely on the stovetop rather than actually bothering to aim it at the oven. I don’t really remember, but it doesn’t matter. The content was chicken, in a tomato-sourcream sauce that was firmly redolent of tarragon and almost certainly contained white wine, of what sort I could not, at this distant remove, say, not that it probably matters. I feel morally certain that it involved garlic, and in addition it quite probably contained onions or shallots, which she would have sautéed in butter at the outset, until they were translucent... When the dish appeared at the table we examined it. We smelt of it. We made noises of approbation. Some moments later we took pieces of bread and wiped the inside of the empty pot to get the last of the sauce. Then we turned the pot upside down, held it up, and murmured incantations, in hopes that somehow, more would miraculously arise within, and fall from it. Then we rent our garments, tore our hair, and lamented most piteously. The sky darkened. Strange creatures swarmed at the corners of our vision, disappearing when we turned to look at them. Bears crapped in the woods. ...You get the picture. She was never able to re-create the thing, much to the dismay of all involved; there was some arcanum, some magic, informing it that one time, which refused to reappear on subsequent occasions, though they wa’n’t none of ’em exactly bad. Mind you, it isn’t as if she tried every week for a year; she had many other things on her mind, and many other dishes to make. (This was, I think, some years prior to The Incident of The Cold Poached Salmon, which was a result of her feelings toward the Qualifying Examination in Logic, a hurdle she was obliged to clear en route to her PhD. That, again, however, is a different story.) I cook substantially the way my mother did (she is less active in that regard nowadays, being somewhat more creaky than she was a few decades back), though she was and is almost certainly capable of following a recipe better than I ever could or ever will; but she didn’t and doesn’t use them very often, and it is clear that no specific recipe was involved in the incident I have described. Such is life; a recipe probably wouldn’t have helped in any case. Let us pause here for a moment, to contemplate the vicissitudes of histamine reactions, apparent “leaky gut”, &c. It is wretchedly misfortunate that I am now allergic to yeast, casein, and a few other things, because it would be totally pointless for me to attempt to reproduce the item in question if I were cooking for myself. (I could try it for other people, but I don’t often get to cook for other people.) What I can do for myself is attempt to create some sort of analog, and I have in fact done that, which is why I’m writing this. I used a mixture of Wildwood unsweetened soy yogurt, “MimicCreme”, and tomato paste as a marinade for a seriously variant kurma that I flavored with marjoram and tarragon instead of spices, thinking back to that summer afternoon in Vermont. Despite the fact that it never had a prayer of equalling my mom’s original, as it did not involve butter or wine or shallots or sourcream, it was quite edible, and I expect that I’ll be making it again fairly soon. I have acquired a tub of the Tofutti fake sour cream to use next time, in place of the yogurt and the cream substitute, and we’ll see how that works out. Cheers... jon (29 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 11th, 2010
9:55 pm	Three Recent Images Food: (The bowl was made by Guillermo Cuellar, who is very good at what he does. The food was made by yours truly. Those are substantially its actual colors, exaggerated a bit by the camera in my phone, which is enthusiastic about such things.) Not Food: (Found the octagonal plate at a thrift store. Embellished it myself with what you see on it here.) Also Not Food: (I also made this myself, though not the disk and glass plate that it’s on. I shall largely refrain from further comment until I’m ready to talk about it, except to say that it’s a nice start and I am relatively pleased with it, and that there is an alternative photo here.) Cheers — jon (24 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
3:22 am	Brief Botanical (and other) Items -- I would have thought that the fruit of Citrus bergamia would be a bitty little thing, like a chinotto (C. myrtifolia). I would have been wrong. A Bergamot-orange looks about like ...an orange. vgqn gave me one from her tree when I was visiting, and I ate it last night in a forlorn attempt to find a single viable seed. The flavor was not really “orangy” at all. It was, expectably, fairly sour; and it was strongly floral, reminiscent of the scent of the peel oil (if you weren’t already aware, the peel oil of this fruit is the key flavoring in Earl Grey tea), but far more delicate. I could easily grow to like it, though I don’t think I’d want to eat the things every day. Even if I had a plant it probably wouldn’t ever get big enough to flower. I’ve got two Yuzu here that I sprouted from seed, some years back. They are taller than I am, but I have yet to see a flower on either of them. (Grump.) If you are interested, this page has quite a bit of information about a lot of the sour oranges, including both Chinotto and Bergamot. Some time ago I posted about a mystery plant that we found at the parking lot of the Public Library in Wheaton. I thought it might be a Micromeria, but I couldn’t find a precise match. Then I thought perhaps it was a Satureja, but I had the same problem. A few weeks ago I read Simon Winchester’s book about the earthquake and fire in San Francisco in 1906, and came across a mention of Yerba Buena... What such a thing would be doing in Maryland I do not know, but I am fairly well convinced of the identification. As a pleasant aside, yerba buena has, at one time or another, been placed in both of the genera I named above. (It is currently Clinopodium douglasii.) Strawberries are monoecious. That is, most of them are. I have this plant (well, actually, clone — like many other strawbs it spreads by runners) of ‘Profumata di Tortona’ that I’ve had for about 16 years, and even though it flowers every spring, I have yet to see a fruit on it. This is because the musk strawberry is apparently dioecious. (From what I’ve read it is also hexaploid, which means that cultivars probably won’t cross with anything except other musk strawberries.) I got 3 new plants a while back, but they haven’t flowered yet, so I don’t yet know whether any of them is male. (The place where I got them does not understand this, so there’s no guarantee. Their catalog says that you need more than one plant for improved yield, or that you need to plant more than one cultivar of musk strawberry for good yield; but as far as I’ve been able to determine, you need more than one for any yield.) Last night I went to repair my poor old Mophie Juice Pack, for about the 6th time. (This is the same Juice Pack that I put a new battery into some months ago, as I reported in a posting here.) It had developed some cracks, one of which was particularly annoying, and I had already used cyanoacrylate adhesive (“CA”) on it several times, as there didn’t seem to be anything that was much better suited to the job. Last night I used CA on it again: (Sorry about the slight motion blur.) I thought I waited long enough before I put the phone back into the Juice Pack, but I was clearly wrong, as I discovered this morning when I attempted to take it back out and it refused to comply with my wishes. When I finally did get the poor thing to come out, it left the plastic fin from its power/data connector inside the matching connector of the Juice Pack (I will never figure out how any of the CA managed to get in there!); and when I [very carefully] put it back in, it did not accept charge from the Juice Pack’s battery. Aaaghghhh... It is conceivable that the phone could be repaired, but it is likely that the repair would take some time and be expensive, so this afternoon I acquired a new iPhone 4, something I was hoping to avoid doing for about another year. I have to say that it is a lovely device with many pleasing characteristics, but I very seriously did not want to afford such a thing now. Sigh... jon (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 19th, 2010
2:31 pm	We Are Not Entirely Amused. A few days ago I decided to upgrade my kindly old iPhone 3G to iOS 4.1. I was cautioned that this could take more than an hour; but after all, a major OS upgrade can be expected to take a lot longer than a mere synch. I began, at about 10 pm, by putting the phone into airplane mode (to avoid interruptions) and by turning off Time Machine on the laptop & telling it not to dim its screen or go into sleep mode (likewise). I had already synchronized the phone twice, just to be sure, and had separately downloaded the new items in the photo album to iPhoto. ...So I gritted my teeth and clicked the Go button. . . . . Perhaps we should pause a moment here to contemplate the whichness of the what; various vicissitudes and variations in mileage; questions such as why the sea is boiling hot [[presumably because it is pissed off at something or other]] and whether pigs have wings [[mostly not, the last time I looked at any]]; and the inconveniences of modern conveniences. Some omphaloskepsis might even be in order, as you may be assured that there is no rush, no, none at all . . . . After the passage of a not inconsiderable amount of time, I noticed that my music and videos were being restored to the phone. I watched [[in horrified fascination, as it were]] for perhaps the final ¼ of the progress of the status bar, which took several minutes. There is no music on my phone, and there are no videos. I have never used the iPod functionality. They probably count voice memos and other recordings I’ve made as “music”, but I have relatively little of that kind of data, and several minutes for ¼ of not much seems to me to be rather unreasonable. I can’t even begin to imagine how long this section of the restore would have taken if it had included a nice long video or two. There were several longish gaps in the process, during which the laptop did not display any sort of cautionary alert to let me know that it was still doing things, and I nearly screwed it up at least once. Grump. To make a long story short, the entire business went to completion shortly before 04:15 the next morning, more than 6 hours after I started it. I guess I should be thankful for the fact that it appears to have been a clean install. (The phone initially told me I had no service, but that resolved pretty easily.) The applications appear to be intact, and things even seem to be nearly as fast as they were under iOS 3.1.3. Still, I wasn’t planning on being up until after 4 in the morning. Grrrr. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 12th, 2010
3:55 pm	...And Home Again... It is hard for me to believe I was in New Orleans yesterday morning. It was my first visit there, and I got only about 40 hours, not long enough to acquire more than the most superficial sense of the place, though I can certainly say that the wee part of the city that I encountered was very pleasant. I saw bunches of friends, met bunches of new people, and even got to go to a really fine hat store. (Didn’t actually buy a hat, but have strong thoughts about the future. I put on a topper, and was told that it transformed me instantly into steampunk, no effort involved.) It was stellar all around, and I return blissfully amazed. <creeb>I had the misfortune to catch something of a cold while I was in Santa Cruz for a conference last weekend, which is annoying on several counts. For one thing, I really wanted to be able to smell New Orleans itself, and my impression of it from that standpoint was rather blunted; cities have individual smells in addition to their other characters. Besides, I especially hate having trouble smelling at events involving outstanding food, which this one was.</creeb> To get back to Santa Cruz, though, the conference was wonderful, and Jeri Ellsworth gave me a violet laser pointer, which is just great, the more so because the one I had hacked together here is not really transportable. (The battery holder doesn’t fit inside the little project box, so I can’t close the lid, and the thing is rather haywire anyway — I have a TEC on a heatsink on the front, but I haven’t provided power for it yet, so the wires are just hanging out in the air...) There are specific kinds of weather I don’t mind being under, and I got to see one of them on my way to the airport. Here’s an overview: [[Note, added later (13 November, 2010) — Here, for comparison, is one of the photos I took with my phone before I dragged out the Canon G11: No iridescence visible here, but I’m not at all sure there was much. Some noise, though, and somewhat more contrast than I might like. Still, all in all it isn’t a bad shot, considering the fact that it came out of an iPhone 3G that has been through many trials and travails during the past 2+ years.]] The formation directly below the sun was even stranger when I first saw it; as Sarah Coleman, who was sitting next to me, pointed out, it was almost like a skeletal hand in the sky (but with snow drifted over it). As I watched it, I began to see bits of color here and there — the clouds were becoming iridescent, a phenomenon that occurs fairly often in Boulder, Colorado, but is rare in most other places. The camera, for whatever reason, picked these up better than the eye. Here are more images:                                     Aside from the one [obvious] crop, I have not done anything to these except to scale them. It’s good to be home, and I will be getting back onto the laser and other projects as soon as I feel a bit better, but I do wish I’d had more time at both corners of this trip. It was great to stay with vgqn and magscanner before and after the conference, but a single day on each side of a very full and exhausting weekend just isn’t enough time to do much of anything or see people. vgqn did cook an astonishing dinner and a wonderful lunch, though, and vgqn & fishbliss & I got to have lunch with the estimable David Casseres, which is always a treat. I just wish I could have had time to see and talk with a great many other Bay Area folks I know. Sigh. As to New Orleans, I got less than 2 days there, which is ridiculous. Wish I knew how to multilocate (mere bilocation doth not suffice).... Cheers — jon (48 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 25th, 2010
5:30 pm	Surprise (not), Serendipity Strikes -- I have, yet again (it almost seems as if I should say “as usual”), had a test glaze produce results that are not at all what I was trying to achieve, but are nonetheless very pleasing. This time, however, it is not an unadulterated triumph: I changed the recipe to check something, and although my second version is somewhat prettier (at least, I think so) it is also runnier, and is not a viable glaze. I have written a third recipe that is an attempt to stiffen it without losing its appearance, and we’ll see how that goes when I get a chance to mix it up and fire a test of it. First version on the left, second version (with drip, grrrr) on the right. I doubt that this is going to be a good glaze for large objects, but if I can clean up its behavior it should be nice on small cups and bowls. I am, meanwhile, continuing to work on a laser project that I will post about if/when I get it to work. I think it’s pretty spiffy, or will be if I can get a beam out of it. Cheers — jon (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010
9:07 am	Mystery Resolved Kudos to cavemanog and a couple others: this is Omphalotus illudens, formerly known as Omphalotus olearius (and with another synonym or two, IIRC, back there somewhere in its history). Here is a photo: The glow was not very bright. Even at ISO 3200 and with an ominously long exposure the Canon G11 just barely managed to pick it up, and I had to turn up the brightness and contrast of the image in post-processing to make it possible to see. (I did not detect the color by eye, btw.) There we are, though: I don’t think there is any question about what kind of mushroom this is, at least as far as genus is concerned, and it’s fairly safe to conclude that the ID is correct to species as well. Cheers — jon (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010
4:11 am	A Mildly Mysterious Mushroom I saw these mushrooms today. They are not of any species I’m familiar with, and I have not yet been able to identify them. The tree they are more or less under appears to be a flowering cherry; the mushrooms are in two groups near the dripline, which suggests to me that they are actually growing on detritus or wood in the soil, rather than on the roots of the tree, though I could easily be wrong about that. They have a slightly tangy/citrusy fragrance mixed into a very light (and rather neutral) mushroomy fragrance; the taste is blandly mushroomy. (I rinsed, chewed, and spat out a very small piece of cap. It wasn’t particularly interesting, but it certainly wasn’t at all objectionable.) These are largish critters with surprisingly long stalks. I picked one so I could take a sporeprint (if that proves interesting, I will try to add a photo of it tomorrow); the stalk, which tapers considerably toward its lower end, was about 9" long; and where I sliced it, up near the cap, it was at least as large in diameter as a quarter. The interior of the stalk is considerably paler than the surface. As you can see from at least one of the close-ups, the outer edge of the cap tends to be curled under a bit (though I think the outer members of the group are much flatter). There is a depression in the middle of the top surface of the cap. The gills, which are decidedly not tightly packed, continue into the upper part of the stalk. The surface of the cap tends to scale, but mostly where it has been stressed. (Compare the two close-ups that show parts of the cap.) Upon exposure to strong ammonia the cap quickly (within a few seconds) stains green or brownish green, but the color is not particularly pronounced.                         [[Please note: if you want a larger image, change “c14” or “14c” in the filename to “c36” or “36c”.]] My initial guess would be some sort of Gymnopilus, but this is different from all of the ones I have found on the Web so far. Any notions? Cheers — jon (25 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 10th, 2010
8:17 pm	Just briefly -- After a few glaze tests and a large amount of thought, I made up a new recipe for what I am loosely calling “Joss Seattle Kaki”. I fired it last night, along with a comparison tile of the unsuccessful 3,000 gram batch, diluted appropriately (there was not enough water in it when I first mixed it). Here is the first test tile in this series (from when I accidentally mismixed the original recipe), flanked by the new test tile of the unsuccessful batch [left] and the test tile of yesterday’s new recipe [right]: Considering how large the change in the fired glaze is, the change in the recipe is surprisingly modest, and if it hadn’t been clear from the beginning that my accidental deviation could not have been very large, I would be rather surprised. The new version has very nice orangy-red color and very pleasant texture, and what it does with the wash is entirely acceptable, so the next step is to mix 3,000 grams and try dipping a test object into it. I am guessing, btw, that if I added another bit of iron oxide, perhaps half a percent or so, the result would look much more like the original accident, and I intend to test that. If it works I will seriously consider making up a second bucket, as I like both versions. Meanwhile, speaking of buckets and test objects, I found what looked like it should be a bucket of the magic red temmoku glaze from 2003 or so. I dipped and fired a test tile, and was surprised & pleased to see some dark red on it, so I dipped a small (slightly over 3¼" across) “TFR” piece in the glaze and fired it last night, trying to replicate the conditions of the previous firing fairly closely. These have been the two hottest (both to 1319° C) and fastest (1:12:30 and 1:12:00) firings I have ever done with this burner, and I am extremely pleased about that. I'm also pleased with the object:             It is hard to see the red color except in very bright light, and only small hints of it show up in these photos, but that’s okay with me. My concern is that it be present, which it is. Cheers — jon (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 3rd, 2010
2:18 pm	Electric Kiln Results, Mostly Some years back, David Pier wrote an article for Ceramics Monthly about the use of “Rare Earths” (currently referred to as Lanthanides or Lanthanoids) in glazes. He covered three: Pr [praseodymium], which makes a delicate pea-green color; Er [erbium], which makes a delicate pink and is also found in some art glass; and Nd [neodymium], also sometimes used in art glass, which is metameric: in some lights it is blue; in others purple; and in still others, red or pink. Because the absorptions of [the ions of] these elements are sharply defined, the colors are not strong; and you need to use quite a bit of the oxide to get anything interesting from it. They are also not cheap, so they have not seen wide use. For whatever reason, Pier did not examine Ho [holmium], though it exhibits a metamerism that is probably even more pronounced than that of Nd. I had already tried quite a few of the Ln [chemists’ shorthand for the entire group] in my search for fluorescence, and I had seen the color change from Ho; but it didn’t fluoresce visibly, so I set it aside. (I didn’t bother to try Nd because it is not known to emit in the visible, and I tried Pr mostly because I knew about the delicate green color and wanted to see it for myself. It didn’t fluoresce, but I didn’t really expect it to.) This past March, at the NCECA conference, Fred Paget (Twin Dragon Pottery, Mill Valley  CA) gave me a sweet little bowl covered with his clear glaze, to which he had added 12% holmium oxide. It exhibits a fine color change, and I decided to see what holmium would do in my own clear glaze. I fired a test in the electric kiln last night, with about 10% Ho2O3. It works pretty well:             I white-balanced the camera under fluorescent light, and took the first photo. Then I turned the light off, changed the white-balance of the camera, and used the small amount of daylight coming in the window for the second photo. I’ve bumped the brightness and contrast of the second one a bit because it was underexposed, but I did not otherwise tweak it; these are quite close to the way the tile appears to the eye. In some lights I have seen orange or brown from Ho, but bubblegum pink and butter yellow (as you can see above) are the most common colors. .-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-. Remember “DH Kaki v1.0”, the orangy glaze with the grayish-green blotches from two postings back? Shortly after I tested that, I decided to try moving it toward brown as part of my effort to recapture the dark glaze from 2002. Here is v1.1, fired in the gas kiln: When I made up the 100-gram test batch of this I also mixed what I thought was 3,000 grams of v1.0. Imagine my surprise when I took the test bowl out of the kiln and found that I had accidentally used the v1.1 numbers instead (don’t ask; it was too dumb for words)... Ruddy fortunate that this glaze is a keeper! Last night I fired a test tile of it in the electric kiln. In oxidation, it clearly doesn’t do well where it is thick (I dipped the upper left corner of the tile a second time), but it is still a keeper: .-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-.-=|=-. On a less-happy front, when I tried to mix up a bucket of the lovely Kaki with the sweet texture (bottom of the previous posting), it failed. Miserably. The color is wrong, the effect with the wash is wrong, and the glaze slid a bit. I mixed a second test batch, and unfortunately that failed identically. I am now trying to figure out what I did wrong when I mixed the original test. Gargh... At least I have a few clues to follow. We’ll see whether I get anywhere. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 16th, 2010
1:18 pm	Pleasant interim results I have been doing rather a lot of glaze tests, pushing on two main fronts, one of which is the Red Temmoku. I did have a rather unexpected interim result, a variant test that produced a transparent dark olive celadon, but in general there is little enough progress that we will let it ride for now. I will report if and as anything worth reporting actually occurs. (If you have a terrible overmastering love of olive celadons, say so in a comment and I will take a photo of it.) The other front has to do with the Kaki and orange glazes. There was considerable foaming when I mixed the “bucket batch” of the orangy stuff, which I am still calling Joss DH Kaki v1.0 for the moment, though perhaps it would be better termed “Joss DH Blotchy Orange”. [Ahem.] The suds could have been caused either by the new brand of baby powder (if I haven’t already said so, I have, in the past, found pottery Talc to be rather gray, so I have avoided using it), or the new Bone Ash, which is not synthetic. Last night’s test glazes demonstrated rather conclusively that it’s the baby powder, so either I will have to calcine the stuff, or I can go look for my original brand, or both. Gargh. At least I know the source of the trouble. But. So. Anyway. I reworked the recipe for DH Kaki v1.0 to use Magnesium Carbonate instead of Talc (which is a magnesium silicate). This took a bit of tweakery, because I had to rebalance the silica content without screwing up anything else, but that’s one of the things glaze calculation programs are good for. The new glaze looks very much like the old one, with a couple exceptions: it is a bit more toward the red, the blotches are small, and the test tile shows one swath of crystals that are just about blood-red if you catch the light on them at the right angle. These two photos were taken with a white LED as most of the illumination, and they do not do justice to the color; but at least the crystals are evident, roughly in the middle of the tile: Get the light from a different angle and it’s all metallic, so you can’t even tell that the red crystals are present... I am particularly pleased to note that DH Kaki does not appear to be dependent upon the use of specific materials. (I can probably adjust the color slightly toward orange if I want to; that’s just more tweakery of what I hope will prove to be a straightforward sort — a little bit less iron oxide, perhaps, and/or throw in a bit of calcium carbonate.) .·-^-·.·-v-·.·-^-·.·-^-·.·-v-·.·-^-·.·-^-·.·-v-·.·-^-·.·-^-·.·-v-·.·-^-·.·-^-·.·-v-·.·-^-·.·-^-·.·-v-·.·-^-·. I also went back to the original recipe for what was on the dark lovely stoneware tile that started all of this, and took another look at it. It isn’t a Kaki recipe, so I am puzzled about the way it looks on the tile, but that’s not something I can resolve off the top of my head, so let’s leave it for now except to note that it provoked my next move: I took that recipe and used Insight to mix it [in effect] with an actual Kaki — not the David Hewitt glaze this time, but rather a variant of the far more common Ohata Kaki. Then I played with the result a bit. [[I wish I could explicate what I am doing when I play with these things, but I would have to dictate it or write it down while I was doing it, which would probably make it difficult to do, and I’m not even sure I could articulate it. A lot of it seems to come from someplace in the back of my head that is not typically within my consciousness.]] The tweaks I made this time were fairly minor, and I mixed up a test batch, dipped a test tile into it, and fired it last night along with the “Mag Carb” variant of DH Kaki 1 and various other things I was testing. The photos cannot even begin to tell you how this feels when you touch it, but at least they can give you some sense of the behavior (it didn’t run or drip or do anything untoward); the color (which is perhaps a bit closer to red than it appears in the photos, and is quite passable); the sparkle (which is good, though it isn’t especially visible here); and what it did with the wash (likewise good). This one would probably be a keeper even if it didn’t feel so nice, and I think it’s going to turn out to be a teacup glaze...             I have to put a test tile into the electric kiln for the next firing, to see what it does there. I will also be testing further versions, to see how closely I can approach the original and what it takes to do so. This kind of tweakage tends to be be difficult or bizarre because of the truly ridiculous complexity of what goes on inside glazes. In addition, I’m firing on porcelain. That makes a real difference, especially in the high fire, where there is a significant amount of interaction between the glaze and the body. As I say on a lot of my tech-journal pages, “More as it happens...” (20 Comments |Comment on this)