Still Making Things

 

It has been a good summer thus far, that we are halfway through. I have gotten a better handle on my WMBR show I've been running on my own. I got used to having guests and a cohost. Now I have to come up with the vamping material myself. Speaking of cohost, I went out on Saturday night with Noah (old WMBR cohost for Exit Tangent) and we saw Shakespeare's The Tempest with his partner Ming and mutual friend Conrad. We had a swell, odd time meandering through Cambridge and Boston. We talked about food and coincidentally both made a recipe from the same book this week. We both have read Nosrat's "Salt Fat Acid Heat". I made the Midnight Chocolate Cake while Noah made an Arugala and Radish salad for himself and Ming. I feel pretty good when I am able to pull off a new recipe. It is a sure sign that I've learned something and it's always easier the second time around.

A few weeks ago Ally and I visited the Harvard Arboretum. It was fun to see a wide variety of trees I have never seen in my life. At one point we walked under a tree where an eagle was feasting on a rabbit. I would not have known if not for another patron of the park telling me to watch out above.

Here's to another few weeks of summer and hopefully less covid cases. One can hope.

Making Things Again

 

One of my favorite dishes from Salt Fat Acid Heat, the ragu

A pot of ragu, a voltage regulator, and a cleaner garbage disposal (still very rusty). I'm trying to hook into the concept of 'active accountability' as I have read another blogger write. There are all these things I want to do but without the same time pressure as before. Back when I was living with family or as a student, nearly every task had a deadline. As a result, I believe I began to associate tasks worth completing as tasks with deadlines. I have found out this past year that is not how the world really works. There is no strict deadline to clean the bathroom floor, vacuum up some dust, or call an old friend. Nobody is going to tell someone out on their own when they have to go exercise or else... So I/you have to take things into our own hands when others do not provide that pressure. Some reports from Pew Research note that between 10 and 20% of EU and USA citizens are NEET (not in employment, education, or training). This is something I find worth reflection. I cannot say anything about the individuals who find themselves in this position, however I worry that not all of them are thrilled about it. Some aspect of this active accountability or holding oneself to deadlines could help? Some scholars at Berkeley note that happiness and meaning (whether derived from work or leisure) are connected. There are a lot of generalizations in that piece but I found it interesting.

Starting a build on a summing op amp

Messy filter with impinged fluorescent particles, used to be a couple micron, now about 1 mm

Ridiculous, my apartment had so many issues when we moved in... working on it

A Night Out at Felipe's

 

Friday was my 23rd birthday. I got up and pulled clothes from a suitcase on the floor, ate a banana, made coffee, and went off to Haverhill. The day went by alright, although I wish there was more time in a day. With each passing year, the old saying of 'not enough hours in a day' gets all the more real. After work, I went home and made some calls. Ally and I went to Mike's in Davis square and then we took the T into Boston. The bars by the north end were packed. We kept our distance. It was a ridiculous sight. The sea of drunk strangers walking in silly strides across town was an indication to me that the pandemic is approaching some sort of end. We walked to Winthrop lane to see some brass bricks, but we found that the artistically crafted bricks had been removed due to nearby construction. Next, we walked to the skinniest house in Boston, it's about 12 feet wide and three stories tall packed between brownstone walkups. It was a funny sight. Usually we only go to this part of town for Bova's bakery. We see a little bit more of this town each time we go out.

The next day, we unpacked and cleaned more. The apartment is sort of a mess. I guess the landlord vacuumed and repainted? It's hard to tell. There are paint marks on all sorts of stuff there should not be paint marks. It seems everyone in this town is going at life as fast as they can, one has to worry about the attention to detail... Ally and I replaced some wall plates and made a grocery trip. Afterwards, we met up with some friends in Harvard square to get food and drinks at Felipe's Taqueria. It was Conrad's birthday and we had a swell time. We walked back to a friend of Conrad's place in Central square to play games and then head home. A weird thing happened to us as we walked back to the T. A drunk couple started talking to us about a steakhouse. They seemed quite far gone and very adamant about the quality of this particular steakhouse. I had a hard time keeping a straight face as they went on and on in slurred speech. I hope they got home alright.

This encounter reminded me of an article in the Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/america-drinking-alone-problem/619017/

One of many half-fixes in the new apartment... an incorrectly used bolt in place of where a wood screw should be.

Moving onto the next place

Ally and I have a list of things to purchase. We are moving on to our own place and need to get our own pots, pans, and plates. The apartment is nice and close to Davis square. Our one year lease will see us here another year at the very least as two young professionals together in the area. I am ready for a year where COVID dies out in this corner of America, god willing. Bars and restaurants, hikes and art museums. There is pent up demand for entertainment everywhere and in every one I talk to at work.

I've had the moments to cook new meals and try out different recipes. Two weekends ago, I made shakshuka and yesterday I made Dal Palak. 

Ally and I made this plant shelf. The black trestle is from IKEA, the other parts we purchased from Home Depot and constructed ourselves.

I need to sell some of this furniture I no longer need.

 

Michigander: A Euchre Engine

 

I have started a Github repo for a set of functions to carry out the game of Euchre. Please check it out if this is something you are interested in.

I'm mainly doing this to stay sharp on my Python skills and flush out any holes in my programming.

My strategy is to get a working game going in the terminal and then work on a OOP implimentation.

https://github.com/JacobMiske/michigander

Euchre or eucre (/ˈjuːkər/) is a trick-taking card game commonly played in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, and the United States. It is played with a deck of 24, 28, or 32 standard playing cards. Normally there are four players, two on each team, although there are variations that range from two to nine players.

Euchre was responsible for introducing the joker into the modern deck of cards. The Joker Deck was introduced to Americanized Euchre around 1860 with the joker acting as a top trump or best Bower (from the German word Bauer, "farmer", denoting also the Jack – see Bester Bube).^[1] Euchre is believed to be closely related to the French game Écarté,^[2] the seventeenth-century game Loo, and the 19th-century game Juckerspiel. It may be sometimes referred to as Knock Euchre to distinguish it from Bid Euchre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euchre

Poker Solver

 

Made dinner for Ally and I last week, linguine with vodka sauce, broccoli, chicken, and cake for desert

In the spare evenings and weekend hours, I continue to do problems posted on projecteuler.com. It's a wonderful website I think I've mentioned before on this blog. The fifty fourth problem involves determining the winner of a hand of poker given two player's hands of five cards each. In person, this would involve both players laying down their cards, announcing their best arrangement (two pair, flush, high card, etc.), and then accepting or not accepting victory based on the other player.

When handling this computationally, every possible outcome must be accounted for in the program. The most difficult part is determining the winner of a tie, It is comparatively simple to say whether five cards can achieve a straight, a flush, or simply a high card; but to determine every tiebreaker is difficult.

The worst way to handle ties is to create a case in the program for every sort of tie. This would be exhaustive and inefficient. Instead, I opted to evaluate ties based on the type of tie reached. If the two players were tied for three of a kind for example, the tie breaker code would determine which value of card each player had three of a kind (queen, 3, jack, etc.), and then immediately determine the winner of the hand of cards. This was a much faster implementation.

The cake I made before being cut

Baptist church near Davis square has this sign up. 

Playing euchre with housemates, my hand had a four of a kind, unfortunately not that great

Apartment Hunting and Questionable Designs

 

Ally and I are looking for an apartment. Getting an 2 bedroom apartment within walking distance of the Red Line is expensive, nearly 4 times as expensive as a mortgage on a 5 bedroom, 3 bath home in rural Michigan. So we are taking our time and scoping out various options. We have been on a handful of tours now. Nothing in particular has been striking thus far. Most of the places we have seen are floors of multi-family homes nestled tightly together on 1/16 acre plots. Somerville is a dense neighborhood. In one case we visited an actual 'apartment building', it was a bit old and showed its age in places. The broker from Coldwell hurried us through an apartment in the building in which a resident was present (illegal if the tenant object according to COVID regulations, I did not know prior someone would be there and/or if they wanted the broker to stop by). As I asked the broker if a particular component in the apartment worked, the resident looked me in the eye and nodded 'no'... the broker did not see this... the search continues.

As a general principle, I think it's good to ask questions even when things seem normal and satisfactory. Things can always be a bit better right? Or a bit safer? Perhaps the way we used to do that was inefficient? Dangerous?

I was looking at this building while on a run through Somerville. It's been around for decades. I was struck by the diameter of the supporting pillars underneath the building. Something in my head told me that the supports seemed inadequately built. I sat down at the dinner table later and calculated the critical load for buckling using some ol' statics knowledge from college. I made some assumptions and my 'back of the envelope' calculation showed me the building's supports have at least a safety factor of 5, which is not great but perhaps acceptable for static buildings that do not change in mass often. 

Another building I saw on my run had these signs outside. I feel like they probably got tired of updating the sign after a while...