Kitchen Math: Area

Q: Your pizza dough recipe is for a 12″ diameter pizza. Your pizza pan is 14″ diameter. You proceed by:

a) make a thin crust pizza
b) scale the recipe by __%

I chose to scale the recipe. A twelve inch pizza pan has an area of 6 * 6 * 3.14 (π) = 113. A fourteen inch pan has an area of 7 * 7 * 3.14 = 154. The difference in area is 154 – 113 = 41. Since the existing recipe is for 12 inches, I need to scale it up by 41 / 113 * 100 = 36%.

MacBook Pro sleep causes network failure

A short time ago, my MacBook Pro developed a new and annoying habit. After putting it to sleep by closing the clamshell, and then waking it, the WiFi network wasn’t working.

Safari would report “You are not connected to the Internet” and DNS queries via dig in Terminal would fail with an “Unknown host” error message.  Interestingly enough, ifconfig reported that I did in fact have an IP address:

en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

ether 60:33:4b:XX:YY:ZZ

inet6 fe80::6233:4bff:fe0a:d552%en1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5

inet 10.0.1.43 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.1.255

media: autoselect

status: active

And netstat reported that I had a default route which pointed at my default network gateway:

$ netstat -rn

Routing tables

Internet:

Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire

default            10.0.1.1           UGSc            7        0     en1

10.0.1/24          link#5             UCS             4        0     en1

Upon further examination, I was also able to ping the default gateway. And I was able to send DNS queries (dig example.com. @10.0.1.1 syntax) to the gateway and get them resolved. But attempts to resolve hosts using Snow Leopard’s DNS recursion failed.

The workaround was turning WiFi off and then back on. Voila, problem solved until the next time I put my laptop so sleep. Today I decided to find and fix the problem. The solution was disabling IPv6 support on the WiFi network interface (in Network control panel). Voila, problem solved.

 

The Joy of Cooking – redux

After a multi-year hiatus, I have resumed my quest to to cook my way through every recipe in Joy of Cooking. Notable things I’ve learned in the past few weeks:

  • I like tomato sauce. This greatly surprised me, as I’ve had no special affinity towards foods with tomato sauce. What I learned is that I don’t dislike tomato sauce, I dislike Prego, Ragu, and other ‘canned’ tomato sauces. When made fresh from raw ingredients, I like tomato sauce. I really like it.
  • I learned how to make a good puffed pastry. The secret is persistence. Just like with making bread, accept that the first few times will end in disappointment. So start with something like an apple turnover, so even a disappointing result is good.
  • (My) kids don’t like soups. It don’t recall liking them much as a kid either, so I shouldn’t be surprised. But I’ve found a greater affinity towards them in my middle years.
  • Kids love, love, love familiarity. I’ve made a dozen types of pancakes and several were excellent. But they still prefer “my” whole wheat banana buttermilk pancakes.

 

My solution for robocall bill collector

This morning at 5:05 AM I got my third call from 877-384-0290, “If you are not Evelyn ____, please call 877-384-0290 and have your number removed from our list. If you are…”

At 9:34AM, when the call came in again, I hung up and called the 877 number to inform them I have no idea whom that person is/was. Not surprisingly, I was placed on hold immediately. While I was holding, my level of annoyance rose as I was repeatedly informed their call volume was “unusually high.”  And I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell them.

So I logged into my BroadVoice control panel, and configured “Call Forwarding Selective.”  Now, when they call me, their calls go directly into their own switchboard. I doubt it will make any difference to them, but at least they won’t wake me up at 5AM.

Building a Christian America

When taught well, history is a positively fascinating and enjoyable subject. Here is a positively superb example of how history should be taught:

It is impossible to understand the role of the Christian Right in American culture unless we first understand its two predecessors: the Second Great Awakening and the Fundamentalist Movement.

In this second article in this four-part series, then, we will ask how the Second Great Awakening and the Fundamentalist Movement sought to transform the United States into a distinctly Christian nation and, in that way, paved the way for the Christian Right of our own time.

By Richard Hughes: The Christian Right In Context: Building a Christian American

Introducing a subject with a statement like “It is impossible to understand ___ without first understanding ___ is almost always a positive harbinger.

I truly do admire men like Mr. Hughes who have the depth of knowledge and eloquence to simplify such a complex issue.

HDR arrives for the masses

Dynamic range has been a limitation of photography since its inception. Film and digital photographers have used a number of techniques over the years (merging film negatives, dodging and burning of film, bracketing on digital cameras) to enhance the range of their photos. The historical problem of achieving High Dynamic Range (HDR) has always been the amount of time spent post-processing the images. With film, the process could take days. With digital photos, it was reduced to hours. With the introduction of HDR on the iPhone, the process takes two seconds.

Apple added HDR functionality to the iPhone with the recently released iOS 4.1 update. With a single tap of the shutter, the camera takes three photos and merges them. When shooting a stationary subject with a steady hand, the results are excellent. Otherwise, the results are mixed. I’m certainly glad the camera I have with me has it as an option.