Beer 1 – The greatest beer I’ve ever made

May 28, 2012 in Beer Topics, Beers by Brian Thompson | No comments

For my birthday Lisa got me a home brewing kit from South Bay Brewing Supply in Torrance and had picked out a wheat beer.

 

With some help from Alex, Tom, and You tube we set out to create the first batch

It didn’t seem like the stove could get things hot enough to keep this at a full boil so I was somewhat worried that the flavors wouldn’t turn out right.  On top of that when we  pour the wort into the fermenting container I think we got too much of the bottom gunch and was worried that the flavor would end up weird.  But we packaged it up and let it ferment for 2 weeks

After 2 weeks I took the top off and saw this

I wasn’t too sure if this was a good thing or not, but continued on.  I siphoned the beer into another container and added the priming yeast and sugar.  Here is my bottling operation

I tasted it here and it was not good, but continued on with the bottling and let it sit for 2 more weeks.  I was pretty certain that I messed up somewhere.  After 2 weeks Alex and I tried a couple bottles.  It fizzed when I opened it so I knew I didn’t kill the yeast.  The color is pretty nice and best part it tasted pretty good.   The next week we had an opening happy hour on the  roof.

One 5 gallon batch makes ~50 bottles of beer so now I have a full fridge of beer in the garage!

So the beer tastes pretty good, but I’m not too sure how much alcohol it has in it.  According to my measurements the starting gravity is less than the ending gravity, but it is supposed to be the other way around.  If I play with the numbers a bit it might be a 3.2%, but who knows and it still tastes good.

This Memorial day we had some great weather and got to beach it and some burgers on the roof.  We put a good dent in Batch #1 and due to my outstanding success I hope to make another batch of beer in time for July 4th!

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Installing a Cyanogen 7 on my Evo Shift

May 20, 2012 in Tech Talk & Other Thoughts by Brian Thompson | No comments

Below are the steps that I took to updating my Evo Shift from 2.3.3 to cyanogen 7.2 RC2.  So far RC2 seems really stable.  I haven’t tested the bluetooth yet, but so far everything else seems to be working just fine (no crashes and no reboots).  It is running much better than the stock phone with root.

5/27/2012 Update:  Well I’ve learned a few things since the first post.  First, bluetooth works just fine.  Second, I didn’t format my SD card right to allow a partition to be used as internal memory.  I’ve updated the steps below to capture this.  Finally, here are a few performance test after a reboot results Linpack Single Thread: 50.87, Multi Thread: 37.398, Quadrant Standard: 2182

Backing up the Phone

Evo Shift

  1. Install ROM Manager, Titanium Backup Root, SMS Backup & Restore, Astro, and Disk Usage to the phone (not sd card),
  2. Optional: ROM Manager Touch Mod if a power user
  3. Backup SMS text with SMS Backup
    1. Make sure you backup to SD card
  4. Using Disk Usage, see if there are any large caches worth deleting.
    1. I noticed google maps and Pulse had a lot of space.
  5. Do a backup using ROM Manager Backup
  6. Do a backup using Titanium Backup
  7. Optional:  To be safe just copy the whole SD card to a folder on your computer.  If you do this then you can skip steps 8-11.
  8. Copy to a computer the non-app files.  This includes all your pictures (DCIM folder), any ringtones and notifications, downloaded files from browsers
    1. If you do not need to re-partition your SD Card this step can likely be skipped, but I think it is a good idea just in case
  9. Copy to your computer the ROM Manager Backup file.
    1. Mine was in the clockworkmod folder
  10. Copy to your computer the Titanium Backup backup files.
    1. Mine was in the TitaniumBackup folder
    2. optionally:  You can copy your backups to Dropbox or google Drive from the App
  11. Copy to your computer the SMS Backups
    1. Mine was the SMSBackupRestore folder (the .xml file)

Flashing the Phone

I followed several wiki forums and suggestions to create my sequence of steps, but this link (http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/HTC_Evo_Shift_4G:_Full_Update_Guide)  by far was the most helpful.

  1. Skipped downgrade from 2.3.4 to 2.3.3 since I never did the update (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1558532)
  2. Reboot into recovery
  3. Select One: (A) Partition SD Card to use it as internal memory (I think this is the best option) or (B) SD Card not as internal
    1. Partition SD Card to use it as internal memory
      1. Partition SD Card with SD Ext = 4096MB and  SWAP = 256MB
      2. Shutdown Phone and take out SD Card
      3. Using Minitool Partition Wizard, delete the EXT partition and apply the change.  Then to the same partition section create an ext3 partition. Note:  I’ve read several other forums that have had mixed results.  I tried a FAT32, ext2, and an ext 4 before I found the ext3 to be recognized correctly.
    2. Partition SD Card with SD Ext = 0 MB and  SWAP = 256MB
  4. Restart phone
  5. Download ROM, kernel, and Google apps and place files in root (/mnt/sdcard/) of the SD card
    1. ROM: CM7 nightly 255 (http://download.cyanogenmod.com/?type=nightly&device=speedy or here since the link was broken http://ftp.sh.cvut.cz/MIRRORS/cyanogenmod/nightly/speedy/ select cm_speedy_full-255.zip)  or CM 7.2 RC2 (http://download.cyanogenmod.com/?device=speedy&type=RC select update-cm-7.2.0-RC2-plusfixes-speedy-signed.zip)
    2. Kernel: Scary Kernel 3 (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1010934)
    3. Google Apps: Gapps (http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Latest_Version#Google_Apps)
  6. Restart the phone in recovery mode
    1. Power off the phone.  Then while holding down on the volume button press power.
  7. Select the option to Wipe data/factory reset.
  8. Then select the option to Wipe cache partition.
  9. Select Install zip from sdcard, Choose zip from sdcard, Select nightly ROM
  10. Select Install zip from sdcard, Choose zip from sdcard, Select Kernel
  11. Select Install zip from sdcard, Choose zip from sdcard, Select Gapps

Setting the phone backup

This section is widely variable.  Here are a list of things that I have done

  1. At the first startup enter in your google id and go through the other startup questions
  2. If you selected Partition SD Card to use it as internal memory above then go to Google store (now called Google Play) and download Link2SD.  In Link2SD press Menu->Storage.  If the SD Card 2nd Part shows that there is space then partition worked fine.  If not then use Minitool Partition Wizard to format the ext3 partition to a different type (repeat unit Link2SD recognizes the SD Card 2nd Part)
    1. I think the partition type is dependent on the phone.
  3. Titanium Backup
  4. Copy the Titanium Backup files to your SD Card.
    1. If you did a backup to Dropbox or Google Drive then re-connect those accounts
  5. In Titanium Backup
    1. Select Menu->Batch->Restore missing apps + all system data
      1. This will get all your programs back
    2. Then, Menu->Market Tools->Market Doctor->User & system Apps
      1. This will make sure all your programs are connected with the Market
  6. In Google Play, download all the updates to your phone
  7. Go to SMSBackupRestore and restore the backup created
  8. Optional: Go to Menu->Settings->CyanogenMod settings->Performance->CPU Settings.  As recommended on another forum set Governor to Smartass ( used Scary), Min CU Frequency to 122 (I used 245), Max CPU Frequence to 806 (I used 1209), Select Set on boot
  9. Copy back your non-app files
  10. From here you are somewhat backup and going.   My experience is that many of the apps still forget the login and some other things.  But with having a new ROM there are several tweaks and settings to play with

 

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Password Required ???

January 1, 2012 in Tech Talk & Other Thoughts by Brian Thompson | No comments

Here is something weird that keeps happening with my router.  Occasionally I have to go into the router and delete the password files.  There shouldn’t be any passwords as the permissions are set to public, but Win7 keeps asking for a user/password.  All of my attempts at guess a generic password have failed.  Instead I have to telnet into my router and delete the secrets.tdb and passwd.tdb files in the /opt/etc/samba directory.

If someone knows how to fix this I’m all ears.

PS3 Media Server

December 22, 2011 in Tech Talk & Other Thoughts by Brian Thompson | No comments

So back when I wrote that the website was back up I mentioned the PS3 Media Server.  This is a great free program that will allow you you stream pictures, music, and videos from your pc to your PS3.

Well I have been having a bit of a problem, but I just figured it out and thought I’d type about it.

The problem:  Network drive folders are not showing up on the PS3.

The Observables:  Prior to making the PS3 operate as a service everything worked fine.  When I clicked on the “Install as Windows Service” button on the “General Configurations” tab.

The Solution:  After reading through the PS3 Media Server forum I came across this thread which suggested that the solution was how the service was being run.   I added to the thread for my solution, but here it is again.  It turns out that I did have to go into the PS3 Media Server Service settings and from the “Log On” tab change the log to use “This account” and not a “Local System account”. Make sure you use the Browse button, enter your user name and then click “Check Names” button to ensure that the user account name is correct.  For me it came out as ‘.\UserName’ sans-apostrophe. Next type in your password, even though there are dots, and click apply. It should tell you to then stop the service and press start again for the settings to take place. Once I did this my network drives all work. I suppose the other option is to change the permissions on how my drives are mapped, but since this is working I’m done.

October Sun and Pirates

November 5, 2011 in BLT Updates by Brian Thompson | 1 comment

October sure seemed to go by fast.  After having a really gloomy September, October really came out in full force on the weekends getting into the mid-80s.  We enjoyed 2 super sunny beach weekends; it was just locals and no tourists…peaceful. We also had fun going up to the Palisades to celebrate Lisa’s grandfather’s birthday with the whole family.

Trouble came the third weekend with our friend Chris LaPlaca visiting from Chicago and Alex.  The first morning we filled up on a gourmet waffle breakfast using the waffle mix my mom gave us from San Antonio.  After breakfast we headed out for a little pub peddle starting up in Playa del Ray at The Shack and working our way back with stops at OB’s and Simmzy’s.

Pub peddle stop at OB's

Our Mammoth ski passes came in the mail which is making me excited for another ski season.  I bought some more ski tuning gear and will be in the garage shortly getting our skis ready for the first turns of the year.  Neil has been sending me videos of some big time skiing at Silverton and I’m getting pumped.  We almost couldn’t tell if it was us on the video or not, but we are thinking the big cliff drops and aerobatics might not be us

We also went to Denver for Halloween weekend were there was snow on the ground (just  fueling the ski season anticipation) and had a great time staying with Gina, James, and Riley.  Riley let me into his pirate gang. I got play swords and wear his pirate hat all weekend (starting every morning with a “do you want to play swords” while we were still in bed).

We got to see Mark at the Vine Street pub and had a good time over a few beers.  Discussions ensued about looking into a Colorado ski trip  this season…we will see.  Saturday’s plans were to go to the Zoo, but there were way too many people so instead Lisa did some boot shopping at the Cherry Creek Mall and we watched a bit of football at the Cherry Cricket. On Sunday the Gilmore’s hosted a Halloween party for the kids which was pretty fun.  We were happy to see Haley and hear that she is getting better everyday.  It was fun for Lisa to see all of Gina’s high school friends that live in Denver.

Well we are into November now, but I’ll save all the current happenings until the November update.

We hope everyone is doing well

Love,

Brian and Lisa

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