Ferns

fern fiddlehead fern fiddleheadI always admire these little guys when they roll out for the year. So much potential!

I had quite a bit of difficulty getting my phone to autofocus on these. I even used a second phone and found similar problems. If I focused on the roots, it would work, but if I tried to focus on the fiddlehead itself it would focus on the background. I wonder if it has something to do with the spiral shape. Went online to find out more. Came up empty on the concept of spirals as a problem for autofocus, but went down the rabbit hole on spirals in general :-)

Removing hot glue with rubbing alcohol

Today I learned that you can remove hot glue with rubbing alcohol. Just drop or dab some around the glue, and then start pulling or prying it off. The alcohol seems to get between the glue and the substrate, it doesn’t dissolve the glue and make a mess of it.

Of course this makes hot glue that much more interesting for temporary fixtures or jigs…

Fesenjoon

We discovered that a Persian Restaurant nearby a few weeks ago. When we tried it out we asked the proprietor what dishes he would recommend. He suggested  several dishes, including Fesenjoon, a stew with a walnut and pomegranade sauce. He recommended we eat that one last, because it has so much flavour and would cover up the others. He was right. I have since gone back and had it again.

Adding GoodReads and the local library to Firefox Context Search

The Firefox Add-on “ContextSearch” lets you highlight text in a web page and then use search tools of your choice to search on the term. I have it set up with Google, Wikipedia (choose English or German), Google Maps and some other tools that came with it.
Goodreads is a website that lets users review books. It and wikipedia are usually my first stops when looking up a book.

Today it occurred to me that it would be nice to also use it to look up books on Goodreads.

I set up a new search engine option using the URL
     https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=
I got that URL by searching for a book on the site, then taking the URL
     https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=small+angry+planet&search_type=books&search%5Bfield%5D=on
and stripping off everything after the “search?”.

The fact that this works makes me think it might work for other search tools as well.

URL for Winnipeg Public Library paper books:
https://winca.ent.sirsidynix.net/client/en_US/default/search/results?q=

URL for Winnipeg Public Library ebooks:
https://winnipeg.overdrive.com/search?query=

 

Tape Gun Masking Tape Dispenser

wall mounted tape gun with masking tape

I use masking tape a lot to label stuff, tack stuff in place mark a spot when measuring. And of course for masking.

Finding the start of the roll is a nuisance.
So, I put some in a tape gun and mounted it upside down so it’s a dispenser when stored.
I was not sure at first how well this would work since the tape is mounted sticky side up. I have had this up for more than 6 months now, and sometimes the tape isn’t used in weeks. I am pleasantry surprised how well it still works after that.

Shin pads are moldable

I have been searching for new shin pads for soccer for a while. Most that are on the shelves here are thick and and awkward. I finally got some anyway (Nike Mercurial Lite), but hated them because they were way too wide in the bottom.
Then someone mentioned that hers were intended to be heat molded. I figured the chances of mine being a thermoplastic were pretty good. So, I put them into a pot of boiling water for about a minute and pushed them into shape over a pair of socks. They molded quite easily. Wrapped a velcro strap around them while they cooled down, and they now seem to hold their shape nicely.
The finish that used to be shiny on the outside is now a bit wrinkly; this may actually be a good thing, maybe it will make them less slippery.
Will have to see if they last and keep their shape.

Using wikidata to link to an article about a disease on wikipedia by ICD-10 code coded as property on wikidata

Wikidata is a sister project to Wikipedia that encodes much of the information on Wikipedia into discrete data values that can be queried.

I needed to document some ICD10 diagnoses and wanted to add links to Wikipedia as part of that. I did not know the actual names of the articles on Wikipedia, though. Manually, I could have found them using a search, but that would be a lot of work for >1700 diagnoses.

Turns out that Resolver will do this.  The following link will resolve the ICD10 code (P4229) with value K37 (corresponding to appendicitis) to send me to the Wikipedia article for appendicitis:
https://tools.wmflabs.org/wikidata-todo/resolver.php?prop=P4229&value=K37&project=enwiki

You could use similar code to link to a city by postal code or an animal by its taxonomic name, or using any of the thousands of properties available on wikidata.

See here for an example on how to use this with semantic mediawiki.

Sichuan peppercorns

I read about Sichuan Pepper in Cooking for Geeks a long time ago. I have been wanting to try a dish with them for a long time. Recently there was a post on the Winnipeg SubReddit that mentioned that the Golden Loong restaurant uses them. Yesterday I finally got to try their Kung Pao Chicken with fresh sichuan peppercorns. The basic taste is lemony. More importantly, they are tingly and change the flavour of everything in the part of your mouth where they burst, including the water you drink after. Of the four of us there, one hated the sensation, one didn’t much like it, and the other two liked it at least for the intensity of the sensation. I’d have it again. Very neat experience, and one thing gone from the geeky bucket list :-)