Category: Other Interests
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How do you charge an electric vehicle and how much does it cost?
We recently rented a Tesla Model Y from Hertz and took it on a 900-mile round trip through the Adirondacks, Quebec, Vermont, and the Hudson Valley. This was a bit of a test-drive to see if an electric vehicle could put up with being driven on a road trip that we had planned without much…
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Cheems, the most famous Shiba Inu in Mexico
This is a post about a Shiba Inu from Hong Kong named Balltze who is a superstar in Mexico, where he is known as Cheems. KnowYourMeme traces the birth of “Cheems” to r/dogelore, an American Reddit group focusing on dog memes, in June 2019. In his original incarnation, Cheems was a floating dog head that…
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Making hot cocoa from scratch
This past week we were out of hot cocoa mix and Chocolate Abuelita so I looked up how to make hot cocoa out of baker’s chocolate powder. Believe it or not I’d never done this before. Turns out it’s quicker than melting Chocolate Abuelita and tastes better. It’s one of those rare “from scratch” recipes…
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Scoring internet points: Open source espionage in Russia and Ukraine
The internet has been scoring points against the Russian military lately. “Hacktivists” disrupted the Belorussian Railways (Wired). Viral TikTok has been tracking Russian vehicle movements (ABC News). The drama of political negotiations over the standoff between Russia and Ukraine is happening in the public eye, but what is happening in the background is really interesting,…
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Ikea as turntable furniture
Last month we did some rearranging and I ended up with Paola’s Ikea Eket bookcase in the living room as my new record storage and turntable solution. It’s been great for background music while we work from home, even if I have to get up and flip the record every 20 minutes. The Eket bookcase…
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The many versions of Scott Pilgrim: The Game from Limited Run
Paola got me into the classic movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) a few years back. It’s a superhero epic centered around an average 20-something from Toronto in a rock band. It has themes pulled from video games and Japanese manga and anime. Around the same the movie was released they came out with…
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Shortwave spy stations, still transmitting years after the Cold War
I’ve been reading a number of John Le Carré books lately, which are mostly fictional thrillers about Cold War spies. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a particularly good one. So in that vein, I’ve been reading about ’60s spycraft, including how they used to communicate. In the pre-internet days, these spies…
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The Cold War lives on, on shortwave radio
After reading a few too many John Le Carre spy novels, I decided to see whether the shortwave radio spies in the Cold War used is still a “thing” and whether there’s any point to buying one. I tapped into a lively nest of hobbyists and websites documenting these international airwaves online, with no need…
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Giorgio Moroder’s “From Here to Eternity” (1977)
Giorgio Moroder is most famous these days for being “that guy from the Daft Punk song”, referring to his cameo on Random Access Memories. Prior to 2012 or so, he was known as the producer of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”. He had mostly faded into obscurity unless you were into ‘80s movie soundtracks (Scarface,…
Hops Trains and Backpacks 