Halloween is over

It's November 2, but before I can make my devilled eggs, the monsters had to come down.

I set the time lapse to go a little faster, so this one will only take you 12 seconds to watch.

National Deviled Egg Day is tomorrow (Nov. 2)

November 2 is National Deviled Egg Day and I will be ready for it this year. I pressure-cooked 12 eggs in the Instant Pot on 4 minutes. Alas, one of them cracked during cooking so I had to eat it with cayenne pepper after lunch. So, tomorrow, I'll only be able to make 22 devilled eggs. (Pro-tip: Always boil at least two more eggs than you will need.)

Here are recipes from Canadian Living if you need them.

Notes:

• Although Canadian Living uses "devilled", I'm going with "deviled" because that's what Grammarist says is used in Canada.
• I can't seem to find any official body that has actually declared Novemeber 2 to be "National Deviled Egg Day", so it might just be something the special-day websites have glommed onto, but I'm just happy to have a day honouring this delicious treat.
   

Previously:

• Appetizer Tip: Use the right platter (2015-02-17)
• Happy National Deviled Egg Day (2018-11-02)

Winter is coming for the Stick Library

I'm sad to say that it's that time of year.

The Stick Librarian has posted her end-of-year statistics and notice that today was the last day of 2024 for the Stick Library.

Time lapsing the monster mounting

It's late October, so time to put the monsters up on the windows.

To encourage myself, I used my new lifehack of setting up the time lapse camera.

Here I go. You might notice that after I put up a set in a narrow window, I took the monsters down and put them in the other window. This is because I used a picture taken from outside as my reference and got my left and right mixed up. This won't happen again because I've given myself a graphic guide for next year.

And here's the well-drawn, professional reminder I've attached so that in future years I'll know which monsters go on which side of the big window.

 

Video from 1995

Until very recently, I had a box with twelve 3/4" U-matic videotapes that dated from the 1980s and 1990s from my university days in the early 80s and volunteering at the Rogers 22 community TV station in the mid-90s.

The tapes were in a box collecting dust. Every few years, I'd look into getting them downloaded but it was always difficult to find someone with the right equipment, at an affordable price, and where it wasn't too complicated.

Until now. Someone on Reddit asked about downloading VHS tapes in Ottawa, and someone else replied with several options. I sent emails to a couple of the choices and it turns out that Ottawa Video Transfer has a U-matic machine, and they were willing to do it at a reasonable price. They sent a courier for the pickup and return and put the resulting mp4s on a thumb drive.

The box of tapes is now gone and I have started the process of trimming the clips, adding in things like titles, name captions and close captions and uploading them to Youtube.

The first is from September 1995 with Corinne Baumgarten reporting on the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair. Camera work by David Taylor. Interviews with John Barton, Chris Edwards, Roberta Huebner, rob mclennan, Lorraine Montgomery and Theresa Morrow.

My new time-lapse life-hack

I have issues with procrastination.

Five years into the pandemic and two years into retirement, I still have many items on my multiple to-do lists. But I am slowly ticking things off. (For example, Getting rid of old cables and GIFs from my Pixel 5)

This week, I finally developed the capacity to take time lapse images. I've been wanting to do this for decades. It would have been fantastic when they demolished the house across the street, or when they built the new house there. 

The only construction-type thing visible from the Scrimchateau right now is the housing construction happening over on Booth Street. I missed a lot of it, but there are two giant cranes. Here's 11 minutes of their movement collapsed into 22 seconds.

I've tried a couple of other things. First, I did some of Manon's plants on a windowsill. I'll have to play with lighting and timing before I get anything worth looking at. Second, I did the Stick Library. It was kind of cool seeing how many people went by and getting quick glimpses of people stopping with their dogs. But I don't imagine any of these people would be happy about having their images appear on the internet when they didn't know they were being filmed even if they were on a public sidewalk.

My lifehack brain wave

Then I had my lifehack brain wave. I was sitting here at my desk thinking about how I've let it get really messy and I should tidy it when I realized that it would make for something to time lapse. Maybe not the most compelling time lapse video ever, but if it motivated me to do something I ought to do anyway, it would be a bonus.

So here it is, Dave Tidies up his Desk (a little bit):

How I did it

I took my old smart phone, a Galaxy S5 Neo, that no longer has a SIM card, but still has WiFi and:

1. 
   improved the phone's memory capacity by stripping out all the apps that I don't need any more, and deleting all the music files, ebooks, and videos; and
2. used the App Store to install FrameLapse 2.

I mounted the phone with a clip-on flexible holder thingy that I cannot remember acquiring that has been around for years. To be honest, it's probably not the best thing for doing this, but it works.

To take my time lapse videos, I turn on FrameLapse 2, aim the phone where I want it, and tap the big round button to start shooting and tap it again to stop. 

So far, I've only used the default settings for timing and everything else, but I did zoom in on a couple to get more of the frame that I wanted.

I edited the video with Microsoft Clipchamp to add a title, trim the video to only the part I wanted and remove sections of the video I didn't want.

What's next

I've got some more tidying to do (I promise though that I will not create any messes just so that I can manufacture content) and I hope to do something with plant growth and our first snowfall this winter. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Acknowledgement

Rest assured that I am aware that the effort involved in creating the time lapse videos, editing them, and creating this blog post took far more time than it would have taken me to just clear up the junk on my desk.

 

Black Plastic - the nightmare continues

As I mentioned previously, the news that black plastic is likely contaminated with toxic flame retardants caused me to throw out all of our black food containers.

But then a couple of days later, I realized that the coffee cup I use every single day has a lid that my lips touch every time I take a sip and every drop of coffee passes through the opening in the lid and that lid is black.

I am comforting myself that a single lid might not contain that many of the toxic molecules and in the 20 or so years I've owned the cup, many of the molecules will have leached away, at least some in the dishwater.

I have sidelined the mug in the hope that I might find a non-black lid in some thrift store or at a garage sale. And in the meantime, Manon has generously allowed me to use a mug she was given with a clear plastic lid. (The clear lid does not fit my mug. I checked.)

I pretty much need a lid on my coffee cup because I am sloppy and clumsy. Without the lid, coffee spills on the stairs when I come upstairs, and I knock over the cup about once a month at my desk.

I'm happy to report that I like the clear plastic lid because it lets me see how much coffee is left in the cup.

Of course, I realize it's only a matter of time before we learn that clear plastic leaches something other than flame retardant that is bad for us. Is it too much to ask that one of these days it could be a molecule that gives us a super power? Even a minor super power like improving our ability to parallel park?