Fermenting: “Out Like a Lion” Ginger Maibock

20-some inches of snow fell on Saturday. I don’t know exactly how much – because the temperature promptly dropped below 10°F and – I decided to stay indoors.

And brew up some beer for spring.

    “Out Like a Lion” Ginger Maibock Recipe

  • 10 lbs Pilsen Light Liquid Malt Extra
  • 2 lbs CaraMunich II
  • 2 oz Yakima Magnum @ 60 min
  • 2 oz Yakima Magnum @ 15 min
  • 2 oz Ginger @ 5 min
  • Wyeast’s 1007 German Ale yeast

Original Gravity: 1074
Potential alcohol content ~10%.

The blow-off tube is a lesson I learned from my previous encounter with Wyeast’s 1007 German Ale – it seems to be much more excitable than the Belgians yeasts I more frequently use.

I’m planning to lager it in the basement until spring – or the snow melts, which ever comes first.

Update 23 Dec 2010:
I moved the beer to the secondary this morning. It smelled fantastic with a comfortable ginger nose. It’s quite cloudy, so if it doesn’t clear out by next week – I’ll rack it again before hiding in a cool corner of the basement until March.

Oh – and estimated ABV is currently at 7.3%.

Update 27 Dec 2010:
Lagering has begun.

Update 20 Mar 2011:
I bottled it today and poured the dregs of the bottling bucket into a Duval glass. There’s a big ginger nose, a light (perhaps too light) malty body, and a gingery aftertaste lingering on the tongue. And like a good Maibock should- the alcohol completely crept up on me.

The New York Times’ New URL Structure

The Hyperlink Grows Up: The Times Releases New Linking Features

Here’s how it works. In the story above, the base URL is: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/americas/01colombia.html

If you wanted to link to a specific paragraph, you’d simply add a “#” and the number of the paragraph, e.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/americas/01colombia.html#p2

You can even go a step deeper and skip to a particular sentence, e.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/americas/01colombia.html#p2s2

And here’s where it really gets cool, though. If you want to highlight that section, you simply switch the p to an h. I generated the highlighted text below with the following link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/americas/01colombia.html#h2s2

To simplify things, if you hit your shift key twice on a Times story, small icons appear next to every paragraph. Click on one of them and it’ll place the paragraph linked URL up in the address bar of your browser.

Full of Sound and Fury

“Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.” – Wallace Stanley Sayre

“This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change.”

“That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.” — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 25-28

“In an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.” – Douglas Adams

Introducing: The Daily Reality Planner

“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” – President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Nov 14, 1957

If you’re like me, you’ve continually struggled with answering 1 question:

“Where did today go?”

To Do lists are helpful in identifying what should be done. Assigning those To Do items a date and time on the calendar declares when they should be done.

But then – reality interferes.

Some things take more time, some things take less. Some hit a brick wall. Not to mention unexpected phone calls. Unexpected interruptions. Unexpected opportunities.

Too many productivity solutions make it frustratingly difficult to both plan for the day and respond to the day.

The Daily Reality Planner is comprised of 3 columns:

  1. Proposed
  2. Reality
  3. Proposed Tomorrow

Each column goes from 900-2300 hours, graduated in 15 minute increments.

How to use the Daily Reality Planner?

  1. Each morning I block off the first Proposed column with my fixed appointments, and the big things I want to accomplish during the day – each with their own time block – just like the fixed appointments.
  2. After that – I look at the clock, draw a line across the corresponding time and write down what I’m starting on.
  3. When I move on to something else, or I’m interrupted, I draw a line across the current time and write out what I’m doing.
  4. Things that don’t fit today’s Reality are assigned a time in Proposed Tomorrow – the 3rd column.
  5. Tomorrow, I’ll review that 3rd column and migrate anything still relevant to the first Proposed column of a new Daily Reality.

Simple, flexible. Handy. Real.

Try it out –
Download the Daily Reality Planner

And let me know how it works for you.

The Daily Reality Planner is released under a CC-By-SA license.