How to cook bacon

Bacon is favorite in Cruft Manor. Typically, bacon is cooked in the microwave here. It is quite a production with separating the strips on a plate and careful placement.
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Infected, and Martin, Joey, and the Gator were discussing how to cook bacon. Gator suggested that you cook bacon “like a man” and toss the slab in without separating anything.
Now Gator ain’t a man to steer me wrong, so I gave it a try.


I tossed about a quater of the slab in the pan. The pan was nice and hot.

Sure enough, the bottom slice started to cook and it peeled off the slab quite easily. I simply moved the slab off with no trouble and the bacon continued to cook.

Quite rapidly, the bottom slices each began to cook and shrink down, peeling themselves off the slab. It was trivial to seperate them now.

The bacon cooked up just great. I cooked a second slab to test again with the same results.

Of course the final test was if the girls liked it. As you can see, they both rated Gator’s bacon cooking method and superb.

So the next time to cook bacon, cook it “like a man” and just toss that slab in.

Only in LA: a free over-the-air Anime TV Channel 24/7

Thanks to a tip from Art at the office, Cruft Manor is now a viewer of Funimation Channel, a free 24 hour a day anime channel.


Here you see a typical anime scene with a father, ready for work in tie and sunglasses, talking to his daughter in bed while the kimono-wearing mother drives by in a mini-car.
Anime has become quite popular with young Zoe and this is viewed as a huge step forward in increasing the amount of TV watched.
With the transition to digital television, many new channels are enabled. The Funimation Channel is channel 18.3 with a digital tuner if you live in Los Angeles.
Don’t know about digital TV? The government’s explanation ain’t exactly clear.
Here’s the basics:
Our beloved FCC decided to move us all to digital over the air television. What that means is that local TV stations are given a new, digital channel to use to prepare for the turn off on analog TV in 2009.

Right now, a TV broadcast uses up 6MHz of bandwidth, what you think of as a channel, to distribute the signal. We don’t use adjacent channels to help avoid interference. That’s why there is usually (but not always) a gap between channel numbers on the dial.

With digital TV, a station gets the same 6MHz of bandwidth, but due to digital magic, 19.3 Mb/s of data can be transmitted. To put that in perspective, it’s roughly the same as 10 broadband DSL lines at the same time.
The TV station can break up that bandwidth any way they want with different channels. Here in LA, KSCI puts their main Asian TV broadcast on 18.1 and the Funimation Channel on 18.3. Other stations do similar things. In Los Angeles, KABC puts their High Defintion (HD) broadcast on 7.1, a news feed called ABC News Now on 7.2, and a 24/7 weather radar map on 7.3.

What most people don’t realize is that you don’t need a HDTV to get digital television.
All you need is an ATSC digital tuner to receive the new digital TV signals. They are much cheaper now, going for under $100 for a set-top type or for the computer saavy, an ATSC tuner for your computer.
Makes sense?

On a lighter note

A few other things I have been remiss in not posting:
Mister P. writes about a Doonesberry comic that involves my alma mater, RPI
My cousin Richard is now blogging at Otigoji.com
If you want a visual display of what’s on your hard drive, try SequoiaView Windows software (via dl.tv)
Strenghting my geek cred, I had a story I submitted to Slashdot approved.
I am now a writer for the Metroblogging Azeroth site, focused on World of Warcraft news and issues.
A good article on HDTV standards, focusing on 1080p in next gen DVD and gaming displays. (via digg)
Sean “Internet Mogul” Bonner doesn’t get Second Life either.
And finally, 30+ years into my readership, Legion of Superheroes is coming to television in 2007 on the WB.
Sidenote: I really do need to get around to making a linkblog thingie for this site…

Podcast Ethics

I’ve been a reader of PC Gamer magazine for years, ever since the death of my beloved PC Accelerator magazine. Recently, they started a podcast about PC game news and discussion and I’ve been listening.

Several shows ago, the initial host of the show Dan Morris left and was abruptly replaced by Greg ‘theVede’ Vederman to lead the discussion. I wondered what had happened, but didn’t think much more about it. After three or four shows, the issue was finally addressed.

What happened was the Dan became Associate Publisher of PC Gamer, formally moving to the business side of the magazine. In the world of journalism, the wall between the business side and the editorial side is significant. There is a real concern about the influence of ad sales money and business relationships with the journalists to not taint the news with concern over the business impact.

Taking over the podcast reins was Greg Vederman, new Editor-in-Chief of PC Gamer, who felt that ethically it would be wrong to have Dan on the podcast, on the journalism side, now that he worked on the business side. So in the most recent podcast, they openly discuss the issue. Talking about both sides and weighing the impact. Even if you aren’t a gamer, give it a listen, it’s the first thing they talk about, so you don’t have to sit through the gaming chat. Although if you are a PC gamer, listen to the whole thing.

I called my father-in-law Tony, an editor at a major midwestern newspaper, to get his take. He felt that the ‘firewall’ between the business side and the journalism side had eroded over the last several decades. He said that as the internet and new technologies enable things like weblogs and podcasts, the guidelines are unclear on how to deal with them. He mentioned that as newspapers embrace weblogs and citzen journalism, it’s not easy. He said it’s demonstrated in the recent controversy over a “Grandma In Iraq” weblog that the paper was running.

Back at PC Gamer, they have take an interesting approach on how to resolve the issue of whether Dan Morris will contribute to the podcast or not. They are leaving it up to the readers and listeners. On the front page of the PC Gamer Podcast site is a poll to let Dan’s fate be decided.

I’ve read a number of discussions about these kind of ethics regarding weblogs, but not much in the realm of podcasts. With many podcasts vying for the almighty dollar of advertising these days there are bound to be issues raised since podcast advertising is not as firewalled as placing Google or Yahoo ads on a web page. With podcast advertising, there is a direct relationship between the performer/journalist and the buyer of advertising. Who knows what the future holds in this area, controversy is for sure…

Halloween 2005

We had a little Halloween get-together at Cruft Manor tonight. Besides the normal events, I tried a few new things.


Mira, Kate and Zoe carved up pumpkins while waiting for the sun to go down.

This year I decided to buy full size Hershey bars to give out rather than deal with the handfuls of cheap candy. My brother Matt was first to try this a few years ago and I wanted to give it a try.

The kids were impressed with the full size candy bars and I think it can be counted as a success. I also wanted to keep track of the various costumes that came to the house. Our friend Monique did a great job of keeping track while I was out trick or treating with the kids. When I got home I took over. We went through over 180 Hershey Bars (5 boxes of 36 each) and had to resort to the back up candy.
# Kids Costume
8 Darth Vader
7 Pirate
5 Jason Voorhees
5 Monster Mask
5 Spiderman
5 Vampire
4 Batman
4 Butterfly
4 Cinderella
4 Scream
3 Black Ninja
3 Detective
3 Leopard
3 Princess
3 Red Power Ranger
3 Snow White
3 Tinkerbell
2 50’s Girl
2 Angel
2 Belle
2 Doctor
2 Grim Reaper
2 Red Ninja
2 Solider
2 Stormtrooper
2 Teenager
2 Tiger
2 Wicked Girl
2 Witch
2 Zombie
1 70’s Girl
1 80’s Girl
1 Alien
1 Anne of Green Gables
1 baby is home sick’
1 Baby Pig
1 Bank Robber
1 Barbie Swan Lake
1 Beautiful Angel
1 Being eaten by shark
1 Big Kahuna
1 Boogieman
1 Bunny
1 Camo Girl
1 Cat
1 Cheerleader
1 Daphne
1 Death
1 Dentist
1 Dinosaur
1 Dorothy Gale
1 Duck
1 Dumb Blonde
1 Evil Jester
1 Fairy
1 Farmer
1 Flower
1 Freddie Kruger
1 Ghost
1 Gothic Fairy
1 Grave Robber
1 Guy w/mask
1 Happy Gilmore
1 Hello Kitty
1 House Burglar
1 Jack Skeleton
1 Japanese Girl
1 Ladybug
1 Little Boy
1 Minnie Mouse
1 Monk
1 Monkey
1 Mouse
1 Mr. Darkness
1 Mulan
1 Neo (Matrix)
1 Padme Amidala
1 Pagan
1 Phantom
1 Pimp
1 Pink Princess
1 Pocahontas
1 Pregnant Boy
1 Robin
1 Spider Witch
1 Sugar Plum Fairy
1 Superman
1 SWAT Girl
1 Sylvester
1 The Only Princess
1 Unicorn
1 Vampire Girl
1 Victim
1 Woody
1 Zorro
That list totals up to 163. We had more than that, but the list is reasonable accurate as to what we saw. Darth Vader is obviously the most popular costume this year. When the kids woudl come to the door, if the costume wasn’t clear to me, I’d ask them what they were. I think it was much more interesting to hear the kids explain who they are than simply guess at it.

Podcast is a word

Exactly one year ago, I bet Phil Torrone, one of the Make guys, that the term ‘podcast’ woudl be gone in a year.
This morning I opened the local paper and this is what I saw.


When traditional newspaper headline writers are incorporating a term like this, I must admit that Phil has won our bet.
I’ll be sending out his ten bucks today.
I still think the term is stupid, but it is being surpassed by the stupidity of the recent term, ‘vodcast‘.

How to make a gyro cooker

I enjoy good gyro meat in sandwiches or in a greek salad. There’s a good place near the office (with a surly owner) that makes pretty good stuff. For those that don’t know, gyro meat is cooked on a vertical skewer and cooked with radiated heat. As the meat browns, the outer meat is sliced off and served.
One day, my co-worker Yoshi mentioned that Alton Brown of Good Eats had discussed making gyros. I love Alton Brown and if he said it could be done, then I could do it. Yoshi mentioned that his plan kinda sucked because it wasn’t cooked by the traditional method of a rotisserie. At that point I decided to build my own gyro cooker.


The first thing I had to solve was how to rotate the meat. On ebay I found a motor made for gas BBQs that looked like it would stand up the usage I intended.

The motor came with a long skewer and meat holder. That it much easier to figure out how to hold the meat. Using a pie plate, I fashioned a a grease catcher. The second item I picked up was a simple electric single burner, similiar to what I used when I built a smoker out of a trashcan.
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NFL Widower

Another football season begins and once again I find myself one of the few NFL Widowers around.


Michele loves her football something fierce. Over the years it’s gotten worse, growing from watching the occasional Sunday game with Cincinatti (her hometown team) to watching Thursday Night Football to this year with her enrollment into fantasy football in July.
Last year for her birthday I bought her a special quilting table and she had it placed in the living room so she could quilt while watching football.
For the Superbowl this year, we bought an HDTV so the game could be as good as possible. Now we have the NFL Network, the DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket, and even the DirecTV Superfan package for true football otaku that need to watch EIGHT football games SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Currently, she’s Tivoing every possible pre-season NFL game for later viewing.
Some of you think that it would be good to have a wife that is a football fan. I’m a football fan myself and enjoy watching games, but my with, she’s a fanatic.
My main role on Sundays is to keep the children entertained and make runs to 7-Eleven for more soda to fuel her orgy of football channel changing. On the positive side, it leaves me free to play games on Sunday and not hear any complaints.
So on Sundays and Monday nights, think of me and hope for rain delays.

How TV gets to your house

At the office I sometimes have to explain things to people about the way that television works. I’m a television engineer, so it all makes sense to me, but to many it’s a mystery. So today I present:
How TV gets to your house


First, you have to make the leap of faith that television networks make a channel in some way and add in all the programs, promos, and commericals that you love. The signal is feed to a large (usually 30 feel in diameter) dish that shoots the signal up into space. The dish and equipment that shoots the signal into space is called a Earth Station.
Up in outer space is a special communications satellite that orbits 22,300 miles up. To compare, the Shuttle visits the Space Station at about 250 miles. This orbit is called a geosynchronous orbit and is about a tenth of the way to Moon. It’s way the hell out there.
The satellite listens to the Earth Station and immediately rebroadcasts the signal back down toward Earth. This allows many places to all see the same signal.
The local cable company has a smaller receive antenna (usually from 10-20 feet in diameter) that is pointed at the satellite and listens for the TV signal.

The receive antenna pulls down the signal and feeds it into a special receiver called an IRD (Integrated Receiver/Decoder). The IRD is very much like a radio that converts wireless signals into something you can see and hear. The IRD sends the channel to a set of modulators that combines all the other channels that the cable company assembles into a single cable feed.
Television networks all over the country bouncing signals up into space and down to cable companies, allowing them to put the various channels all together in their line up. They take ESPN from Connecticut, and HBO & MTV from New York, and Disney Channel from California and a hundred other channels and modulate them all together into a single feed.

Once the cable company has combined all the channels, they send it down the wires that they hung from telephone poles or put underground in your street.
The cable signal gets split over and over as it branches into various neighborhoods and then into specific houses. Even at your house, the signal is split again to the various rooms you want cable. Each time you split the cable signal you cut the power level down significantly. Many people have crappy pictures from cable TV and it’s often due to low cable signal strength.

To understand what happens in your house, you need to learn a little physics. When you tune an FM radio, you are changing the frequency you are tuning to to change stations. It seems clear that when you go from 93.1 MHz to 103.1 MHz, you are changing stations.
Television works in a similar way. To change stations, you are changing the frequency you are tuning in. A long time ago, the television engineers thought that it might be simpler to give channels numbers instead of frequencies to refer to when tuning. At the time, they only imagined that there might be a dozen or so channels. Channel 1 was reserved for testing and so the first real channel was 2. That’s why Channel 2 is the lowest channel most people are used to.
In cable TV, the amount of bancwidth or space to shove channels is usually between 50 MHz and 800 MHz. Yes, that means that the FM stations are right in the middle of the TV band. But radio bandwidth is so small, it doesn’t take up much space.
Each TV channel takes up around 6 MHz of space, so you can place around 125 channels on a typical analog cable feed. Digital cable systems work differently and I won’t go into it here.
So you can now see that when you change channels, you are actually choosing a different frequency to tune in, just like a radio dial. Old people, like me, can actually remember TVs that tuned with dial like a radio. I doubt my daughters have ever seen a TV with a dial on it.

OK, now that you understand how frequencies map into channels, you can see that a set-top box from the cable company is tuning the channels for you. A cable ready TV is a TV that can tune in the higher channels that only exist in the cable world and not in the over-the-air antenna world.
The cable set-top makes audio and video (or sometimes a Channel 3 signal) that you plug into your your television.
To explain this, I’ve skipped over a lot of details and didn’t get into digital cable, direct to home satellite, HDTV, or many of the other modern methods of television distribution.
I can explain those things if you all are interested, but all of them are variations on the basic idea of television distibution I describe here. Ask away…

Remix Culture

I love mashups and I love mixes. The only thing I could possibly love more is a mix of mashups!
For those that don’t know, a mashup is the mixing to two songs to intertwine. Like the music from one song mixed with the lyrics from another song. A mix is the blending of two songs into each other.
On the local radio station Indie 103.1 is a weekly show called The Smash Mix, which is a half hour long mix of mashups. DJ Paul Vhas been doing a great job for the last several weeks with the Smash Mix and keeping it entertaining. His mix on April 15th for Tax Day was brilliant.
The mix airs on Fridays at 5:30-6:00pm and repeats at 9:30-10:00pm on Indie 103.1. They have a good streaming feed, so even non-Angelenos can listen in. Personally, I record it weekly with my Griffin Radioshark.
The best place to find the mix is at CultureDeluxe under DJ Paul V. You can also find the mixes at FleetwoodMash, scroll down to DJ Paul V.
There is even a Smash Mix podcast feed at Alohadude.net, for those podcastingly inclined.
I wrote to DJ Paul and asked how he made the mixes, I assumed it was all produced in a digital audio workstation software package. It’s not, it’s mixed LIVE. Here’s DJ Paul’s reply:

I guess I should let people know this more:
All Smash Mixes are made & mixed live – CD deck to CD deck (usually 4 decks tho). I’m not mixing them live on the air, but I pre-make them during the week.

But there’s no audio software involved at all. I might take a stab trying Cool Edit soon, but I haven’t even installed the program yet.

I kinda like that there’s a live and real DJ element to the mixes, even if they could be perfected using software.

Ciao for now….PV

To me, this is the remix culture I love. Sure translating speeches into different languages via Creative Commons licenses is a cool idea, but it a bit dull compared to rocking out to tunes by a great DJ…
There are those that don’t like Indie 103.1 because it’s owned by Entravision and has ties to Clear Channel, but I love it. This is some real creativity and great radio pumping out on Indie.
If loving the Smash Mix on Indie 103.1 is wrong, I don’t want to be right.