On The Road to Carrot Ginger Muffins

Adapted from the New York Times recipe here.

The original Recipe didn’t have anywhere near enough sugar.  It also lacked ginger.

I’m still tweaking, but this batch was more promising.

2 1/2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

2 teaspoons dried ginger root

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 cup raw brown (turbinado) sugar

6 Tbsp Honey

1/3 cup canola oil

1 1/3 cups buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2/3 cup dried currants

2 cups grated carrots

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees with the rack in the upper third of the space. Oil or butter muffin tins.

2. Sift together the whole-wheat pastry flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt.

3. In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar, oil, buttermilk and vanilla. Using a whisk or a spatula, stir in the dry ingredients and mix until well combined. Do not beat; a few lumps are fine, but make sure there is no flour at the bottom of the bowl. Fold in the raisins or pecans and the carrots.

4. Spoon into muffin cups, filling them to just below the top (about 4/5 full). Place in the oven, and bake 25 minutes until lightly browned and well risen.

Yield: Twelve muffins, depending on the size of the muffin tins.

BMW EfficientDynamics

I find it ironic that an auto manufacturer known for terrible, gremlin infested electrical systems is building hybrid cars.  How about getting the digital clock to work reliably on our 535xi before moving on to more advanced projects, hmm?!

Fantastic Buttermilk Pancakes

My Fabulous wife found this recipe for Buttermilk Pancakes, and it’s wonderful.  Hers were fancier than mine, since they were made on Valentine’s Day and thus were heart shaped.   But even the regular round version is tasty.

Jack liked them  so much he’s been saying “CAKES!!” all morning.

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
• 2 Tbs. sugar
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 4 Tbs. (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 to 2 Tbs. vegetable oil or nonstick cooking spray

Directions:

Beat the eggs with an electric mixer until frothy. Add the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, buttermilk, melted butter and vanilla. Mix the ingredients until the batter is smooth and no lumps of flour remain.  Be careful not to over

Heat a griddle over medium-high heat until a drops of water bounce across the griddle.  Spray the griddle with cooking spray.

Pour about 1/3c of batter on to the griddle, and let cook for about 2 minutes until the top surface starts to bubble.  Flip and cook for another 2 minutes, or until the top of the pancake springs back when pressed when pressed with the spatula.

Repeat with the remaining batter, adding more cooking spray to the griddle as needed. Serve with maple syrup.

Makes about 12 pancakes; serves 4.

The Myth of Expensive Cables

Headline: Use 12 Gauge Magnet Wire instead of expensive Speaker Cables.

I’ve spent too much time in retail to completely believe the saying “You get what you pay for”, especially if it relates to electronics and accessories.  ”We’ll make the margin on this product with accessories” is heard over and over in merchandising meetings, so my skepticism runs pretty deep.

There are limits – I can absolutely tell the difference between a reasonably built analog cable and thin and shoddy “thrown in the box” interconnect.  If a digital cable like HDMI or TOSLINK works at all, it will generally deliver whatever digital content it’s carrying flawlessly.  Fancy shielding and cabling as thick as your thumb just don’t do anything for digital signal quality.

A while ago I bought a bunch of entry level Transparent Audio cables with some new components.  They seemed like a decent value with gold plated connectors (no oxidation, which does make a difference) and reasonable shielding.   They sound fine, and I suppose they made me feel better about connecting a fairly expensive DVD player to a nice amplifier and speakers.  Once they were hooked up I forgot about them.

A recent equipment upgrade got me thinking about whether better cabling would make a difference.  I stopped by my favorite audiophile shop and talked with them about interconnects, and at their suggestion took home a “Moderately” (read: hideously) priced pair of RCA cables for between my DVD player and Preamp.  I have to say that these cables were beautifully made with lots of great craftsman touches – lacquered metal insulators and stress relief bushings, locking RCA plugs, etc.  Hooked everything up, and sat down to listen to a few recordings I know extremely well.  They sounded fantastic!  Then, just for the sake of comparison I swapped out the new deluxe cables with the old and relatively inexpensive ones.  THEY sounded fantastic.  As a matter of fact, they sounded identical.

This led to an afternoon of listening to 30 second clips of music over and over again:  Listen to the segment 5 times with one set of cables, then listen to the same segment 5 times with another set of cables.  Repeat until your wife thinks you’ve lost your marbles. Couldn’t tell any difference.  A good friend came by for dinner and I hauled him up to do a seriously abbreviated version of the test.  He couldn’t tell any difference.

I was now in full skeptic mode.  I started scouring the internet for articles on cable dynamics.  I’ll save you the effort – here’s the best thing I found:

Roger Russel’s tome on Speaker Wire

It’s worth a read if you’re interested in the gory details, but the high level summary is “Expensive Cables are Bull: use 12 Gauge lamp cord or Romex”.  You need a certain amount of copper to handle the current and minimize impedance and capacitance.

It probably does make sense is to have a Twisted Pair of conductors, especially since the cables exist in a reasonably noisy RF environment with lots of high output electronics and digital sources nearby.  This may be overkill, but the physics makes sense to reduce interference and crosstalk.  This is very hard to do with Romex or Lamp Cord.

With that in mind I started looking around for solid copper wire, preferably oxygen free, with some kind of light insulator on it.  There are a number of sources out there, but after doing a ton of digging I finally found a company called AntiCables that produces pre-made runs of 12 gauge copper wire with nice spades for termination and color coded polarity indicators.  You can add a DIY twist to a pair of these and get a more manageable run as well as limiting interference.

To get a sense for the baseline of the system I did another 30 second repeat session with my old cables, and then swapped them out for the new 5′ runs of AntiCables.   To be fair, this wasn’t a completely apples to apples test since I was able to bi-amp my speaker with the AntiCables but not with my original Transparent Audio speaker cables.  Fair or not,  I was completely blown away by the new cabling…by far the biggest “Bang for Buck” upgrade in audio ever.

It’s very straightforward to build equivalent cables yourself with “Magnet Wire” copper wire and spades.  I suspect you could get the price down to under a dollar a foot, while the AntiCables come in at $10/ft.   By the time I sourced all the parts and tools and built a few prototypes I’d have spent the better part of a day and ended up with expensive tools I’d hardly ever use, and most of the wire I located was sold in 100′ rolls, leaving me with about 80′ of extra wire.  In that light the pre-made version was a bargain.

I’ve read some very positive reviews of AntiCables Interconnects, but I have not yet tried them.  Maybe later.

AntiCables Website

With an iPhone, Home Automation Finally Works

Headline: It’s easy to add Remote Control to your home’s lighting with Insteon based products.

Background

I’ve always thought it would be cool to be able to have your home fully remote controlled.  At various times I’ve looked into the current solutions but have inevitably found them to be too flakey, clunky or expensive.  A trip to CES would usually spark my interest in some new approach, only to be disappointed  again at something that’s all hype and of little practical value.

As we were remodeling our place in Half Moon Bay, there were a few lighting problems that begged for some kind of remote control capability.  Specifically, the reading lights over our bed would work much better on some kind of wireless switch as opposed to tearing up the wall and installing hard switches.

Traditional lighting vendors had wireless solutions but they seemed pretty clunky and “Last Generation”, and they were also hideously expensive for the limited functionality they provided.  Of the few options out there, some used IR (Yikes!) or proprietary RF Protocols and required some remote control pad that looked like an accessory for a ’70′s TV.

In the past I’d looked at X10 hardware, but after talking with a few friends who had dabbled with that technology and had mixed results and reading a bunch about it I’d never been able to get excited.  Most people cited reliability problems in complex installations and very slow response times as show-stopper issues.   Also, all reports were that setup and programming could be a challenging – I have plenty of technical challenges at work, and don’t really need a debugging headache in my spare time.

One promising option did emerge though:  Insteon.  This tech promises better reliability and usability than X10, and had a broader range of devices available for it than any of the competing products.   It’s also backwards compatible with X10, which for me is interesting but not that important.  The big selling point though was the ease of setup and software support for devices that was available.

The thing that made Insteon go from interesting to no-brainer was the existence of good Mac based control software and full iOS support for iPhone, iPad etc.  The software seemed straightforward and easy to program, and the remote control software for iOS looked easy to use and effective.  This was all great in theory, but I’ve had plenty of promising gadgets turn out to be a huge pain to implement or use.

is the primary source for Insteon products, and they have modules for just about everything.

Basic Setup

Before getting too deeply invested in Insteon, I wanted to do a minimal setup to control the reading lights over the bed.  The total cost of hardware was about $255.  Here’s what I ordered to start wtih:

PowerLinc Controller – Dual Band

KeypadLinc Dimmer

In-LineLinc Dimmer (x2)

Our contractor was in doing lighting at this time, so I asked him to install the hardware.  I took a look at the instructions and wiring myself, and I could have easily done the work on my own.  He said it took no more time than replacing a switch or installing a new socket.

The initial programming took less than 10 minutes.  The instructions for pairing controllers and devices were straightforward and worked flawlessly.At the end of this phase I had reading lamps controlled by the keypad and 2 different “scenes” set up where you could turn on both lights or operate them independently, just as with a hard wired switch set.

The big advantage of this approach is that you have more flexibility where you put switches and controllers because you do not have to do hard wire runs. You can do some fairly fancy programming of different lighting scenes using the controllers and devices by using the keypad based setup.

It would be several months before I got around to adding the iOS controls, and in the mean time we did use the keypad based controls extensively.  It worked flawlessly as you would expect a hard switch setup to.

Adding the iOS Devices

Getting the iPhone to control lighting involved setting up a Mac Mini and connecting it to the PowerLinc USB controller.  I already had the Mini that’s used as a media server on our Plasma TV, and getting the PowerLinc connected to the Mac and setting up the software was very straightforward.

Indigo4 Pro has a 30 day full functionality evaluation period.  This was a key factor in deciding to give the Insteon setup a try.  I was pretty sure that the hardware would work as advertised, but I was wary of the quality of the integration.  Our entertainment center setup just barely clears the usability bar, and having a lighting solution that requires any amount of thought was not going to work.  The evaluation period meant I could assess how well the software and device integration would work without much of an investment.

Indigo4 from Perceptive Automation provides a server that allows an iPhone or iPad to connect to your Insteon network, and provides a usable (if basic) UI on the phone that allows you to control devices and scenes.  Getting the software up and running and connected to devices was very easy.   Once a device is connected, it can be assigned to a room via drag and drop.  Once the client software is installed on the iPhone anything you do on the server just magically appears.

Getting the first reading lamp online was very easy, but for some reason the second lamp couldn’t be seen by the server.  A quick check of the Insteon FAQ indicated that signals can have trouble crossing the breaker box due to electrical noise from appliances, etc.   There’s an easy solution to this – adding a Dual Mode (Powerline and Wireless) device to each circuit in the house.  This nearly guarantees that signaling will propagate to all devices no matter what circuit they are on.

Despite this glitch, I was able to get one of the reading lamps under iPhone control in about 15 minutes.  There are very few hardware/software solutions that were this easy to set up, and I was pleased with the instructions and stability of the product.

I was expecting that controlling lights from the iPhone was going to be cool, but I wasn’t prepared for how excellent it really was.  The controls are very easy to use and extremely responsive.  It has a real WOW factor.

After ordering a dual mode plug in adapter for some floor lamps, the server could see all of the devices and everything worked flawlessly.

A Few Minor Complaints

In the previous section I mentioned the one functional issue; Insteon signals can have problems crossing circuits and phases in your home.  This is easily fixed by putting a dual band device on each circuit.  I do not see any need to have more than one dual mode device per circuit – they are a little more expensive (about a $10 premium) and I don’t think several would increase the reliability of the signaling.

There does not appear to be a “Discovery Mode” for Insteon, where I can ask the network what devices are currently attached to it.  This means that it is important to write down the addresses of each device as you are installing it.  I did not do this with the LineLinc dimmers so I had to go back and open up the access panel to read them.  It would be nice to be able to query the network for all devices and have some automatic way of self identifying them – such as a lamp flash.

When you are setting up devices in Indigo4 it takes a suspiciously long time (90 seconds) to “Link” the device to the Indigo4 Database.  This just adds time to the setup, and it seems a little absurd given the USB interconnect and the fast machine its running on.

I have read that the network debugging software for Insteon is not good.  I haven’t had any issues, so it hasn’t been a problem for me, but I could see how a complex setup could be hard to manage without better tools.  The logging from Indigo4 seems pretty robust though.

Adding More Devices

After living with the initial simple setup, I decided to put all of the main lighting on the network.  I replaced switches and dimmers with Insteon compatible ones and added a few LampLinc boxes to control floor lamps.

The setup took less than 20 minutes to add an additional 9 devices, and I could immediately use them from the iPhone or control them from a computer.

The next project is going to be to create a bunch of pre-defined scenes for each room.  It looks easy, and I’ll add more info once I’ve done it.

Japanese Spicy Noodles

In Chicago, one of my favorite fast bites was at Noodles & Company on N. Michigan Ave.  I’d often stop on the way back from SHC’s State Street Office, or nab an illegal parking spot and run in and grab a takeout on the way back from Hoffman Estates.   Hearty comfort food that seemed relatively healthy and was inexpensive.    I went hunting for a recipe online and found a pretty good approximation, courtesy of Yahoo Answers.  I tweaked it a bit…the results are below.  This is about to become a staple.

Caramelized udon noodles in a sweet soy sauce with broccoli, carrots and shiitake mushrooms. Asian sprouts, black sesame and cilantro garnish.

Ingredients:

3 cups hot cooked udon noodles (Japanese wheat noodles) – The precooked packaged ones work well!
cornstarch
salt to taste
2-3 drops, toasted sesame oil
4 tablespoons teriyaki sauce
2 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoon vegetable oil
3/4 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
2 large cloves garlic cloves, pressed
1/2 tsp red chili flakes
1 cup shiitake mushrooms (stems removed), sliced
1 cup Asian sprouts
2 cups broccoli florets (baby broccoli is even better, blanched if you have time)
1/2 cup (2-inch) julienne-cut carrot
1 tbsp blk sesame seeds
1 cup freshly chopped cilantro leaves (optional)

METHOD:

In a Wok or Large nonstick skillet, Caramelize the carrots until mottled brown (about 5 min), then add the broccoli and saute until crisp and verdant (another 3-5 min) .  The carrots stop caramelizing once the Broccoli is added, so get them done the way you want prior to adding.  More caramelization is better!  Remove and set aside.

Add a little oil, the saute the ginger & garlic. After a minute or so, add the well drained noodles and let carmelize. Add the red chili flakes. Add the sesame oil, teriyaki sauce and rice wine vinegar. Add all of the other ingredients and toss to coat well. Serve.

Here’s the original post.  The author likes using beef as a protien, but I prefer Tofu for this.  I’ll try that next time…