covaithe

Here's some of what I've been up to these days:



That's Recercar #4 by Francesco da Milano, played by yours truly. There's a mistake or two, but I thought that of the takes this evening, this one was the most musically coherent. I hope it's audible; I fiddled with the gain a bit, but the lute is a quiet instrument. You may have to turn it up.

On Sunday afternoon we took V into the hospital.  The midwife had come out to weigh her on Saturday, and she had lost quite a lot of weight.  They expect a newborn to lose up to 10% of their body weight in the first week or so, and then start making it up quickly as the mother's milk comes in and the baby figure out what to do with it, which hole it goes in, etc.  V had lost close to 25% of her birth weight.  They told us to really try hard to feed her more, and scheduled another weighing for Sunday.  On Sunday, V had lost a tiny bit more rather than gaining anything, so the midwife sent us to A&E (that's the ER for those of you who don't speak British) to get evaluated and then admitted into the pediatric ward. 

In A&E, they have a special area for children, so we didn't have to wait in the big queue.  They asked mostly the same questions that the midwives had, which was somewhat annoying since they had the midwives' written notes actually in their hands at the time.  The pediatrician on duty fairly quickly concluded that she was not getting enough fluid.  He seemed quite tired; I think he had been on duty for a long time and was due for relief soon.  I had to correct his math several times when figuring out exactly how much weight V had lost, but when he went to put in an IV to get some blood, his hands were sure.  They took a somewhat disturbing amount of blood, especially since they had just decided that she was dehydrated, but they replaced it with a similar volume of something clear, which I assume was some kind of neutral saline or something.  The blood tests showed that her sodium and urea (?) levels were high, verifying that she needed more fluids. 

I bullied the ER nurse into giving her some formula by bottle right away instead of waiting until we could get a bed in the pediatric ward, since they didn't know how long that would be.  V sucked down the formula very quickly, and seemed happier for it, much to the relief of mom and dad.  Naturally, as soon as they had done that, a bed came open in the ward, and we moved up.

They talked us into using a nasogastric (NG) tube for giving her more formula, on the grounds that if we wanted to continue breastfeeding, that was less likely to confuse her between the breast and the bottle.  I was slightly reluctant, just because we'd already subjected the poor kid to a lot of unpleasantness, but she took it fairly well, all things considered. 

So now they've been in the ward for a day and a half, with V getting formula by NG tube every two or three hours.  This morning, she had gained back about 2/5 of the weight she'd lost, and her sodium levels had fallen, though the urea (?) was still high.  We're assured that it will come down too, as the kidneys have time to do their thing.  So that seems to be going well, though she'll probably remain in the hospital for a few more days until they're confident that she's fattening up properly.

Mom is doing less well.  They're putting her through the wringer trying to get more milk to come in, and on top of two weeks of poor sleep, it's wearing her down.  We did discover, though, that her blood samples at the time of birth -- mom's blood samples, that is -- showed a bit of anemia, which can cause reduced milk production.  So she's taking huge iron pills now, along with lots of orange juice and extra vegetables, so we're hopeful that things will take a turn for the better there as well, in the next few days. 

( big pictures )

I am a father.  At 3 a.m. this morning, englandbound gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.  A big one; 3.96 kilos == 8 lb 12 oz.  I don't think anyone measured her length, or if they did, they didn't tell me about it. 

Everyone is healthy and happy and exhausted and somewhat bewildered, especially Dad.  Mom and baby are being kept for observation tonight.  More to follow, including media when I remember to bring the camera home. 

The due date has come and gone, and no child yet. On the one hand, I'm getting impatient. I've been waiting a long time for this, and I'm really excited. (Excitement being a near cousin of terror, of course.) On the other hand, I'm also having some success at enjoying the anticipation. If this is the calm before the storm, it would be careless of me to fail to cherish this time.

edit: If you're going to write HTML by hand, use the preview button. Sheesh.

Yesterday we took a bunch of stuff to the dump.

In Cambridge, the dump is located on Butt Lane.

I just made hamburger stroganoff, improvised off of a half-remembered version of my mother's recipe. It worked pretty well, so let's see if I can remember what I did.

• 1 small onion (medium or large would be fine, I think), diced
• 800g of hamburger
• 2 packages of Knorr's french onion soup mix, which isn't very good, but it's the only dry onion soup mix I've found in England
• splash of milk, maybe 50ml? Can probably skip this, or make it water.
• some water... didn't really measure but it was probably about 200ml
• 10 fl oz sour cream
• 1 can sliced mushrooms
• 1 can Campbell's condensed cream of chicken with white wine soup (yes, I know... but it worked!)
• Worcestershire sauce to taste. Be generous.

Brown the onion in a little olive oil with some garlic. Add the hamburger and brown it, maybe a little salt here. Drain. Add the rest of the ingredients except for the sour cream. Mix and simmer for maybe 10 minutes. Cook some noodles here if you want; I'm doing the low carb thing and skip the noodles. Before serving, stir in the sour cream and let it heat up, but not quite boil.

Not only can you have a laser shootout in your fish tank, but soon you may have to dodge laser beams from... well, there's really nothing I can add to the original, so I'll just quote:

Michael Jackson is in discussions about creating a 50-foot robotic replica of himself to roam the Las Vegas desert, according to reports.

The pop legend is currently understood to be living in the city, as he considers making a comeback after 2004's turbulent child sex case.

It has now been claimed that his plans include an elaborate show in Vegas, which would feature the giant Jacko striding around the desert, firing laser beams.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that I can't wait for someone to hack the remote control for that.

Remote control fish... with lasers!

From ABC news, parked here for future reference because I expect that link to disappear.

Marshmallow "Peepz" by Culinary Institute of America Chef Francisco Migoya

Yields about 36 pieces

Ingredients:

¾ cup confectioners' sugar, sifted
½ cup corn starch, sifted
2 packets (¼ ounce each) powdered gelatin, about 2 tablespoons
½ cup cold water
2 cups granulated sugar
½ cup light corn syrup
2/3 cup water
9 large egg whites, at room temperature
Your favorite food coloring, as needed
Flavor extract to taste, optional

Sugar topping:
1 cup granulated sugar combined with food coloring, as needed

Garnish:
¼ cup semi-sweet chocolate, melted

Equipment:
Stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment
Candy thermometer
Pastry bag or large plastic zip-close bag, fitted with a large plain tip

Directions:

1. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment or waxed paper.

2. In a small mixing bowl, combine the confectioners' sugar and corn starch. Using a fine-mesh sieve, sift a moderate coating of the powdered mixture over the prepared sheet pans; reserve for later use.

3. Prepare the gelatin: In a small bowl, sprinkle the gelatin over the ½ cup cold water; stir to break up any clumps. Let the gelatin soften; reserve for later use.

4. In a small, heavy-bottomed saucepot with deep sides, combine the 2 cups of granulated sugar, the light corn syrup, and the 2/3 cup water. Stir the mixture until well blended. Attach the candy thermometer to the side of the pan, and begin to cook the sugar mixture over high heat.

5. Meanwhile, place the egg whites into the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. When the sugar mixture reaches 250°F, begin to whip the egg whites on medium speed to attain medium peaks.

6. Once the sugar mixture reaches 311° F, remove the pan from the heat and increase the speed of the mixer to high.

7. While the egg whites whip to form stiff peaks, add a generous spoonful of the prepared gelatin to the saucepot and stir vigorously, but cautiously, with a wire whisk. Be careful, the mixture will bubble up and increase in volume when the gelatin is added. Once the sugar/gelatin mixture is well incorporated and the bubbling has subsided, add the remaining gelatin and whisk until well blended.

8. Lower the speed of the mixer to medium, and begin to pour the sugar/gelatin syrup in a slow, steady stream down the side of the mixer into the egg whites. When all of the sugar/gelatin syrup has been added, increase the speed of the mixer to high and continue whipping until the mixture cools to room temperature.

9. Once cooled, reduce the speed of the mixer to low and add enough food coloring to obtain desired color. Add optional flavor extract to taste.

10. Place a portion of the marshmallow mixture in a piping bag fitted with a large, plain tip and pipe chick shapes onto the prepared sheet pans. Immediately after piping, sprinkle the chicks with a moderate coating of the colored sugar; reserve remaining sugar for later use.

11. Allow the marshmallow chicks to set at least 2 hours.

12. Once set, use the tip of a toothpick to paint on the chick eyes with the melted chocolate; allow the chocolate to set.

13. Remove the chicks from the sheet pans. Dip the bottoms of the chicks into the reserved sugar topping.

14. Store the chicks in a dry, airtight container and they will remain fresh for approximately 2 weeks.

On a friend's recommendation over Christmas, I gave Google Reader another try this year. I had tried it previously in my initial period of searching for usable RSS-reading software, but it was crap at that time, so I ended up with Bloglines. Which isn't bad, but has at least one feature that I really disliked: there's no way (or at least I couldn't find a way) of only reading some of the unread items in a feed. So when I inevitably found myself having to interrupt my reading partway through a dense feed, it wasn't just one item I needed to mark unfinished, but all of them. Not good. I tried Google reader again just because my friend told me a) they'd un-screwed-it-up, and b) it didn't mark items in a feed as read until you actually read that item. Long story short(er), I've been happy with Google Reader now for over a month. Which is why this is amusing instead of annoying:

So, we arrive safely in Ann Arbor, and what's the first thing I do? Make tea.

In my defense, I actually needed the caffiene; jet lag and all. Still, sheesh.

Those of you who aren't affected by my comings and goings from Ann Arbor can feel free to ignore this; you won't miss anything.

Due to late-breaking news on the travel plans of my siblings, Christmas in my ancestral home has been moved from the 25th to the 22nd. Now that the dust has settled from the resulting explosion of my head, our New and Improved travel plans are as follows.

14th Dec: We arrive and immediately collapse of jet lag.
15th: Wassail (Wassail!)
22nd: Christmas
23rd: We depart for parts northward (Cheboygan)
25th?: I return to Ann Arbor
26th or 27th?: englandbound returns to A2.
3rd Jan: We leave for England.

This morning in my mostly-daily blog reading I ran across the most concise explanation I've yet seen on what's wrong with the legislation on torture in the US:

    if (person = terrorist) {
        punish_severely(); 
    } else {
        exit(-1);
    }

(Hint: If you don't read C, try reading the comments in the link above.)

Tragically funny.

I didn't win. But I did have a great time. There were nine fighters in the tournament, including three knights, two of whom were counts. The tournament was held in a round robin format, each bout being best two out of three, with a destructive bye fighter to round out the numbers. (A destructive bye means you have to win that bout to get a point for the round. A non-destructive bye would mean you get a point automatically, whether you win or not. Everyone but me probably knew this already, but I only learned that terminology about three days before the tournament.) I won four bouts and lost five. I lost to all three knights, to another unbelted fighter who has been in the finals of Drachenwald's crown tournaments on a number of occasions but hasn't yet won, and to the destructive bye. I thought all of my losses were close fights, except against the bye fighter, where I was just sloppy and let my guard down. I killed each of the knights once, and made them work hard for their victories. At the end of the day, though, they had an edge on me in speed and skill and mental toughness. My four wins was enough to put me solidly in fifth place, though if the bye fighter had been a contestant, it would have been sixth.

The finals were held in the inner courtyard of Schloss Limberg, of which englandbound took many pictures which will be posted in due course, between Sir Maximilian von Brandenburg and a knight who insisted on being announced, all day, as "The champion of Countess Eufemia" rather than by his own name. He wore her colors, not his own, and had a cloth cover over his shield in her colors as well. I watched the finals from a balcony overlooking the courtyard, some ten feet from where the queen stood with Countess Eufemia and Lady Margerite, consort of Sir Maximilian, and their daughter, who I'm guessing was around three or four years old. The fighters made their salutes, and the field was silent, except for a little girl's voice floating out from the balcony when Sir Maximilian saluted towards his lady: "Hi, daddy!" With a huge grin on his face, Sir Maximilian went on to defeat the champion of Countess Eufemia in two consecutive bouts. On receiving the second blow, "the champion" immediately fell to his knee and greeted Sir Maximilian as "my prince".

This was, hands down, the best tournament I have ever participated in: the highest level of fighting, the cleanest, and the most fun. Afterwards, I stayed at the list field for another two hours of pickup fighting, and got some nice compliments and some even better suggestions for improvement from several knights I hadn't met before. I'm very much looking forward now to the next crown tournament, which will be held in Sweden in April.

In the last month, I've

• Finished sewing my first real gambeson and fitting my armor to it.
• Decided on heraldry and started to get it submitted
• bought fabric for and sewed a new surcoat with an approximation of my heraldry
• inspired englandbound to paint my heraldry on everything that would hold still
• fixed countless corroded-to-dust rivets, broken straps, bent plates, etc on my armor
• put together a new sword from spare parts
• fresh tape job on old sword
• chased down and recovered my half-gauntlet that went missing after Rhaglan
• been in the gym as much as was consistent with keeping my job
• kept my job
• gone to practice every weekend

Tomorrow morning I leave for Austria to fight in Crown Tournament (on Saturday). I'm as ready as I'm going to get. And I even have time, barely, to get a decent night's sleep.

...tomorrow I'll be fighting here:

Today, during a bout of routine swearing at his computer, I heard one of my co-workers use the term "shite". Moved more by a desire to poke fun at him than by curiosity, I asked him "When do you use 'shite' instead of 'shit'? Explain this to me, please."

He looked amused and slightly embarrassed, while a couple of other guys within hearing range laughed at him a bit. This particular co-worker is renowned for his frequent and enthusiastic swearing. He proceeded to think about it for a long, long time. Finally he said, "I think I tend to use 'shit' as an expletive;" ex-PLEE-tive, he pronounced it, "as in, 'Shit!', right?"

"Yes," I said, looking very earnest. "Go on."

"Whereas 'shite' I normally use to describe something. As in, 'this is absolute shite.'" A phrase I hear from him quite often.

"Interesting," I said. Well, it was. "Do you think that is how most people would use it?"

"I have no idea," i-DEAR, he said. "I've never really thought about it before."

"Shite is originally an Irish term," chimed in another co-worker, an Irishman.

"Is it really?" said the first. "I didn't know that."

Wikipedia and other online reference sites are not particularly helpful regarding this distinction. Wikipedia seems to think it's a regional thing rather than contextual, with 'shite' being common in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Lincolnshire. I've certainly heard quite a bit of both here, but haven't paid attention to the context. Maybe I'll start to do so.

In part 1, I used TDD to develop a class that, given an array of doubles and a smoothing factor percentage, calculated the exponentially smoothed weighted average of the values in the array. The ESWA was a geometric progression given by the formula

A_d = A_d-1 + P(M_d - A_d-1)

( read part 2... )

Since setting out to learn to use TDD in my daily work, I have read rather a lot of books, articles, blogs, mailing lists, and code trying to figure out how to do this thing. Among the most useful slopes in that mountain of text have been the articles by Ron Jeffries at http://www.xprogramming.com/. I enjoy those particularly because, though they aren't the only detailed examples available of from-scratch TDD development, they are well written in a pleasant conversational prose style, and in a style of TDD that appeals to me. Besides, he mentions in a few places that he's writing on his laptop from the Amer's Deli in Brighton, which makes me a little bit homesick -- and more than a little bit hungry. I have a project I've been meaning to work on for a while, and I thought I might give a shot at writing it up Ron Jeffries-style.

( read on... )