Sunday, October 25, 2009

Tomato and Linksys WRT54G - 303 days and counting!

I've stayed with Tomato v1.19 on my older Linksys WRT54G v1.0 router, but so far, no problems. The router is on a 400VA UPS, so as long as the power doesn't drop for longer than the UPS can feed the little router, I have no doubt it can go another 300+ days or longer!

The colors of fall...

The maple trees in my neighborhood are absolutely vibrant this time of year:


Beauty is where you find it, IMHO.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Concord moved to secondary fermentation...

About a week ago, I took those 20 pounds of Concord grapes from my dad's farm and reduced them to approximately 2 gallons of juice and pulp. That then got put into a 6-gallon primary fermenter with pectic enzyme, tannin, yeast nutrients, sugar, water, and yeast.


Today, that young Concord wine got racked into the 6-gallon secondary carboy and topped up with a little water to prevent oxidation. It's sitting next to a 3-gallon batch of Wild Grape wine that's also a week old. Note the blush color of the Concord!


Now if I can just quit "sampling" the stuff this winter before bottling it...

Friday, October 16, 2009

I want a Chapman Stick!

But I also want to be able to play using both hemispheres of my brain at the same time, which one needs to do when both the melody guitar and bass guitar are situated on the same instrument. I've got about 30 year of regular guitar playing under my belt, but I am truly blown away by what folks do with this invention. The video below is Greg Howard and his band, playing "Still Water", with Greg on the 12-string Chapman Stick. More Chapman Stick videos later...


Thursday, October 01, 2009

Staying busy!

Tonight, I started a couple more batches of autumn wine. On the left, those are two 1-gallon batches of plum wine, and on the right, that's one 2-gallon batch of elderberry wine. The little airlock thingies started burping CO2 within just a few minutes of me getting the batches into the primary fermenting jugs!


Almost done, but I still have 5 gallons of fresh Concord grape wine to make next...