Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

Kick returned to SxSW this year. I brought my timelapse setup and made a short movie.

You can read a little more at Cnet & Valleywag.

Just over five years ago, we bought a new laptop.
Today, Mira was sitting in the living room and booted it up. She said, “Dad, the screens messed up.”

Yup, the screen is messed up. The LCD screen is cracked and there’s no reasonable fix for this.
Five years is a long time for a laptop. I covered it with stickers and took it many places. The touchpad buttons broke 20 days after the warranty expired and the battery only lasts 30 minutes these days. But, even after five years, it still was good for surfing the net or watching a DVD in the house.
What to do next? MacBook Air with Vista on it? 😉

SxSW starts March 7th in Austin. This is my SIXTH year and these are my helpful tips for the novice. I had a great time last year.
Introduce Yourself – People are at SXSW because they want to meet people and see new things. Strangely, many of the blogger types that go are introverted types that are a bit shy. Do yourself a favor and say “Hello, I’m So-and-so” to that person you are sitting next to. (Don’t say So-and-so, use your name…) I guarantee that they will be happy to talk to you.
ABC – Always Be Charging – If you bring a laptop, you need to be charging it every single chance you get. No battery lasts long enough. Try to sit near an outlet in the session rooms. Share power outlets with others.
Kick – Kick is back! Saturday morning is a large kickball game. Good fun and you will have a chance to meet all kinds of new people.
Personal cards – Make up business cards with your name, email, and website info on them to hand out. Bring your regular business cards if you want, but what people really want is a card that ties you to your online persona so they can find you after SxSW.
Session Info – When you arrive on Friday go to the Convention Center and pick up your badge. They will give you a large canvas bag of swag. You don’t want to haul this around, so you need to figure a way to drop this off at your hotel before a long night of partying. In the bag are two crucial items. First is the program which has detailed session descriptions. Second is a small pocket card with the session schedule on it. You want these to be in your daily walk around bag, not in your hotel room.
Shiner Bock – Shiner Bock is a local Texas beer that you find everywhere. Often referred to as simply ‘Shiner’.
Fray Cafe – Go to the Fray Cafe on Sunday night. Fray is people telling truthful stories about their life. It’s one of the best things about SxSW. Baratunde is the new host and is generally hilarious. Get there early for a good seat, otherwise you will be standing for the whole thing.
Stay Warm – It can get cold and rain in Austin this time of year. Bring a good jacket or coat just in case.
Sharpeners – There are no pencil sharpeners at SXSW. People think writing on a pad of paper with a wooden pencil is a bit strange.
The Backchannel – Be aware that there is a backchannel of real-time IRC discussion going on. Probably on irc.freenode.net, probably on #sxsw. The trick is to not make the backchannel into the front channel for you. It can distract you from listening to the speaker/session that you paid to see…
Twitter – Be in the Twitter loop with your new friends. You’ll always know where the party is that way…
Secure connections – Wifi traffic is in the clear and people are sniffing packets all the time. Arrange for secure email, FTP, and if possible, secure browsing while at SXSW. It’s unlikely that a malicious hacker is gunna do bad things, but it’s best to be prepared.
Street Signs – For some reason, downtown Austin has few street signs. Get a map and study it before venturing out.
Food – Eat food. Austin has a great bar scene. You will be drinking. Don’t drink on an empty stomach. It also would be a good idea to keep a couple energy bars in your bag during sessions.
Texas BBQ – IMHO, Texas BBQ pales in comparison to BBQ in other areas like Kansas City and Carolina. That chopped beef sandwich stuff just doesn’t cut it, but people will want to eat it for lunch. That said, Stubbs makes a great brisket.
Say Hello to Me – I would love to meet Loyal Cruft Readers. There doesn’t appear to be Break Bread with Brad this year, but I will be bringing a few cigars to share with people. Email me or IM at pusateri AT gmail.com and I promise to respond.
Any questions?

I read about The Million Zimbabwean Dollar Homepage on Boing Boing today. It’s a slightly different take on the original Million Dollar Homepage.
At those prices, I decided to do a little advertising. I think I spent $3.24 for 8100 pixels.
So if you go to The Million Zimbabwean Dollar Homepage you’ll see my ad on the left side. It will be interesting to track the stats of how many people arrive this way.
Get your now, the pixels are going fast!

My nine year old daughter drew this short cartoon:

A few months ago, I made corned beef from scratch. Part of that process involved me using saltpeter (potassium nitrate) to preserve the beef. Of course, I knew that saltpeter is a key ingredient in gunpowder. As I learned from the Gorn episode of Star Trek, all you need to do is mix, carbon, sulfur, and saltpeter, and you have gunpowder.
I had some time this weekend, so it was time to make gunpowder.

Obviously, making gunpowder is inherently dangerous, so I was carefully in my preparation and protection.
Carbon is readily available as charcoal. Sulfur is easily found at the gardening store. Saltpeter is a little tougher to find. I’m not saying it’s hard, but it’s not something you can find at any local store. I had mine leftover from making corned beef.

The sulfur came as small pellets, meant for spreading in your garden.

After about 5 minutes of grinding, the sulfur was as powdery as I was going to get it by hand.

The charcoal briquettes were a bit tougher to crush. I had to apply some real force to get these into grinding size. This made a bit of a mess.

But in the end, I had the charcoal ground into a powder as well.

The saltpeter was already ground fine for food usage. The exact recipe for gunpowder varies from purpose to purpose. My recipe was:

• 1 part carbon
• 1 part sulfur
• 4 parts saltpeter

As I researched this, it was interesting to learn that saltpeter is the oxidizer for the reaction, meaning that gunpowder does not need air to burn. That means you can fire a gun in outer space! The molecules of saltpeter contain plenty of their own oxygen atoms.

To grind the components together, I wore gloves, long sleeve shirt, face and eye protection. I sure many people have been hurt making gunpowder. I can’t imagine what it took to make it hundreds of years ago.
After grinding for a bit, the gunpowder took on it’s characteristic grey appearance. Things were looking good so far.

For the initial test, I built a small test pan out of aluminum foil. I had also picked up green fuse to give me plenty of time to get to a safe distance.
Here is a video that shows what happened with my various tests.

Sure enough, my gunpowder worked.

In the Mini Rocket test, I used an old mini rocket that normally used an insertable motor. I filled it with gunpowder and attached a fuse. As you saw, it went nowhere, but did burn nicely.

I really wanted the gunpowder to work as a propellant, so I made rocket out of a old prescription (Rx) bottle. I placed that on the launcher and again, it went nowhere. You can hear the satisfying whoosh of the exhaust, but it just went nowhere.

The flames burned out the bottom of the bottle.

For the last attempt, I put all the remaining gunpowder into a second Rx Rocket and hoped for the best. As you saw, it made a satisfying whoosh and lots of smoke, but went nowhere. The lauching pad was completely destroyed.
I really need a nozzle to focus the exhaust. 😉
In one aspect, the experiment was a success. I did make gunpowder from scratch. This was not hard, but it would be hard to make it in large quantities. However, my attempts to use the gunpowder to launch a rocket, as is often seen in fireworks, was a failure. The combination of lacking a proper rocket body and a proper nozzle to direct the exhaust proved to be a serious flaw. I could simply get a bunch of model rocketry gear, but what’s the fun in that? It’s much more fun to try to launch plastic prescription bottles.
The biggest mistake I made ws using my wife’s mortar and pestle to make gunpowder. She was upset and now refuses to allow the mortar and pestle back into the kitchen. They are now sitting on my workbench in the garage. I have to buy a new mortar and pestle. In the future, I must avoid angering the wife.
Warning: I won’t tell you not to try this at home. If you are not an adult, do NOT even think about trying this. If you do duplicate this, please be careful. Gunpowder is dangerous stuff and you need to be very careful to avoid getting hurt. Wear protective clothing and eyewear at all times. And don’t use your wife’s kitchen gear in your experiment.

A few weeks ago I saw an ad for Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr Pepper on television. I had even seen the Cherry Chocolate Rain song by Tay Zonday on Youtube.

It took me a bit to find it, but I did. Quite an assortment of flavors we find here.

The soda itself really does have a red tinge to the normally caramel colored liquid. The smell was slightly sweet, with strong hints of cherry.
I could distinctly taste the cherry and chocolate flavors. Seemed to me that there was a bit of vanilla too. The Dr Pepper taste was in the background and subtle. The aftertaste is exactly that of a spoonful of Cherry Garcia from Ben & Jerry’s.
It’s quite a niche flavor. I can’t see drinking this day after day, but it would be good on occasion or as the base of some sort of mixed drink or shot.