If you think about it, feed your starter and set it out overnight. This is not critical though. …

But that required overnight – kind of. Most recipes do including [...]]]> Today – nothing to do – time to cook a good breakfast. I had the starter out, let’s make Sourdough waffles! Start with Sourdough Waffle or Pancake Batter

If you think about it, feed your starter and set it out overnight. This is not critical though.
…

But that required overnight – kind of. Most recipes do including the classic King Arthur Flour recipe. I googled “quick sourdough waffles” and found Fantastic Sourdough Waffles! at WENDY USUALLY WANDERS.

I added only 2 T of oil and it was REALLY runny, so I added some flour from my other aborted attempt. Then I had severe problems with the waffle iron – was not hot enough (sourdough cooks hotter) and I took the waffles out too soon and lost 2 of the 4 cooking spaces and spent 10 mins scraping crud out of the waffle iron.

All in all, good, but way too much hassle, mostly because I don’t make them enough. And then the coffee grinder jammed, but that’s another post…

It was in the parish hall of the First Congregational Church in Huntley, with an old beat-up dining room table. The players came in and out of the kitchen [...]]]> We saw this play before at the Woodstock Stage Left Cafe, and it was really good. Bette saw that it was here again and she jumped.

It was in the parish hall of the First Congregational Church in Huntley, with an old beat-up dining room table. The players came in and out of the kitchen from doors on either side. Actually, a nice set-up for the play.

We sat in several rows of folding chairs, the single problem of the night – it is hard to sit in folding chairs for 2.5 hours. They served coffee and slices of the birthday cake from the play at intermission. Nice touch.

And they did a great job. I would see something like this again. They announced, thanks for supporting local theater, which is in danger of disappearing. Here is the front line. Support them.

Our Other Sara(h) blogs about life, love and adventure on the Continent.

Joe:

Here is a link to the video that the Post had briefly Friday morning. It is one of the few that has me talking….. in case you care. John asked for the video where I could be [...]]]> Or as Cousin Mike puts it – “Joe versus the volcano. My brother Joe’s 10 seconds of fame….”

Joe:

Here is a link to the video that the Post had briefly Friday morning. It is one of the few that has me talking….. in case you care. John asked for the video where I could be heard, but it seems silly not to self promote given all the bloody self promotion that I just went through.

This was a piece put together by AP international and then sold to whomever, I was interviewed at the conference

and then the UW site doing some self promotion (ed note: some maps of locations and more video)

and finally there is the Seattle public radio station interview over the phone from my hotel room. (ed. note: videos and other info here too)

I did a recorded interview with BBC, and a live interview with CNN-International during what must have been a newscast in London, I missed a real interview with the Seattle times, and didn’t connect up with BBC’s “UP ALL night” program.

A whirlwind tour…..almost done. Hypothetically I will be on Fox and Friends on Monday morning 3:50 am my time…. They are sending a car to get me. Maybe they will change their mind and I can sleep instead.

What a nutty idea. I told my boss no, but he twisted my arm. Certainly this must be the end of this stuff? We’ll see. Maybe I will still get NPR??

Joe

Most scientists labor in obscurity. May Joe be a little less obscure now. Uncle Hank is very proud of his boy.

Some short quiet videos with ominous rumblings from magma exploding 100 feet away.

I use MusikCube a lot. That said, I sometimes share files from various machines that have duplicate files, and rather than hand-edit the playlists after each synchronization to eliminate the duplicate albums, I want an automated way. Since MusikCube runs on SQLite, why not do it [...]]]> Or, Use SQL Squirrel and JDBC to dedupe MusikCube playlists

I use MusikCube a lot. That said, I sometimes share files from various machines that have duplicate files, and rather than hand-edit the playlists after each synchronization to eliminate the duplicate albums, I want an automated way. Since MusikCube runs on SQLite, why not do it in SQL?

First download the SQLiteJDBC JDBC driver and install to the SQL Squirrel lib folder. Restart the client and add a new Driver to the list using name=SQLite, example URL = jdbc:sqlite:test.db, classname= org.sqlite.JDBC and Website URL = http://www.zentus.com/sqlitejdbc/

First problem – how to access the database. Doc is sketchy, but based on some investigation of the org.sqlite.JDBC.java code I found that it uses everything following the “jdbc:sqlite:” prefix as a new File() argument (unless nothing is found, than an in-memory DB is assumed). So I can access the db using the JDBC URL: jdbc:sqlite:C:/Documents and Settings/username/.musikproject/musik_u.db. I love source code.

Note: I do not put any work into playlists. I am a big fan of letting the metadata do the work. I am comfortable with nuking the DB a starting over, if necessary. If you have lots of valuable annotations, you are editing in the wrong place. So if my tests blow up the DB, so what.

Then from a SQL Server site article, How to remove duplicate rows…, I can compile this query:

SELECT title, album, count(*)
FROM songs
GROUP BY title, album
HAVING count(*) > 1

I easily get 100 rows with 2 hits each.

Alternate form of query (from here)

select s1.filename, s1.songid, s2.songid, s1.title, CASE WHEN substr(s1.filename,1)=’f’ OR substr(s2.filename,1)=’f’ THEN 1 ELSE 2 END as fred
from songs s1, songs s2
where s1.songid < s2.songid and s1.title = s2.title AND s1.artist = s2.artist AND s1.album = s2.album
AND s1.artist = 'Aerosmith'

and also

select s1.filename,
( CASE
– my box has top priority
WHEN (substr(s1.filename, 4, length(‘mp3′)) = ‘mp3′ ) THEN 1
– handle \\m51098 machine names
WHEN (substr(s1.filename, 3, length(‘m51098′)) = ‘m51098′ )THEN 2
WHEN (substr(s1.filename, 3, length(‘m51165′)) = ‘m51165′ )THEN 3
WHEN (substr(s1.filename, 3, length(‘m51134′)) = ‘m51134′ )THEN 4
ELSE 10 END ) AS priority
from songs s1
where 1 < (select count(*)
from songs s2
where s1.title = s2.title AND s1.artist = s2.artist AND s1.album = s2.album
AND s1.artist = 'Aerosmith')
-- limit to Aerosmith for speed
AND s1.artist = 'Aerosmith'

More to come…

Tools:
SQurrel SQL JDBC client
SQLite browser
SQLite core function reference
SQLite page
SQLiteJDBC driver

Dinner at Mixteca beforehand. I had the pork Cxxxx, Bette the Xxxx Verde soup, [...]]]> Not sure what to expect. We have heard her on the Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me radio program, and enjoy her there. But a stand up show?
It was local at the Woodstock Opera House, and only $28. Not going downtown. Worth it.

Dinner at Mixteca beforehand. I had the pork Cxxxx, Bette the Xxxx Verde soup, and Tim and Deb split the Cxxxxx. Margaritas all around. Muy bien.

We parked around the corner, and the ropes were still up on the stairs, so we milled in the lobby for awhile. Chatted, and looked at art. After sitting down, found a gentleman behind us who was involved with Bette’s Ag in the Classroom. Deb knew another person behind us. Small town, eh?

In a word, Paula was great. Engaging, funny, self-deprecating. She worked questions out of the audience and flogged them for great comedic effect. Kind of made fun of farmers, the another who owned a daylily nursery, another with an apple orchard, and another who is a psych nurse. And she worked all this material into stuff about her kids, her life. A little liberal moaning about the health care debate (nice.) Had a fun spar — the atheist woman vs. the pastor and part-time golf course greenskeeper. And she kept asking, “Who sees a show at 6:00″, and worried about the rowdy 9PM crowd.

I was sad to see it end; we could have sat through the next show easily. Just a pleasant, enjoyable evening.

Went with three people. Small tables, close — just like in the city! I had beef and pasta ($15), wife had the seafood stew ($19) [...]]]> This is a small place in the old karaoke bar a block off of the Woodstock square. Not as much vegetarian stuff as I would expect from the name, but good.

Went with three people. Small tables, close — just like in the city! I had beef and pasta ($15), wife had the seafood stew ($19) with some lobster and scallops, and Sara had the risotto. Everyone liked it. My only gripe is similar to other small places. It is very intimate, but you cannot talk if it is busy. Loud. Old places with tin ceilings are cool to look at but hard to hear in. I would recommend some wall hangings or anechoic foam on the wall.

Bonus: It was Wednesday, and the waiter informed us it was 1/2 price wine day, so we had a nice red Primo Rosso ($24) with dinner. I do like bottles better, and the price was right.

Herban Fare. 125 East Calhoun Street, Woodstock, Ill.
Also reviewed on Yelp

Got to Fermilab in good time, and [...]]]> Neil and I stopped at the Little Owl in Geneva for din din, had the Shore Lunch – nice piece of Walleye and fries. Good, but I should have gotten the burger. Neil had the fish combo and concurs. Little Owl was a lot less crowded than I remember.

Got to Fermilab in good time, and walked the path to the Lederman center, checked the time on the sundial, and walked around the building looking in like kids outside a closed candy store.

Back at the Wilson center we watched the MINOS project film. Fermilab closed the other exhibit center in the atrium, and replaced it with a control room for the swing shift at the CERN LHC.

Then the lecture, “Nanotechnology: The Crafting of Self-Assembling Materials for Medicine and Energy” by Dr Samuel Stupp of the Stupp Institute at Northwestern University.

Fascinating. Good questions. This guy must never sleep. I want a job there. And I want some cartilage when they start making it…