Author: Eugene

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Ted’s Butcherblock hits the road

A couple days ago, Ted’s Butcherblock announced on Twitter that they had acquired the Magic Cheese Truck

Yes, we’re the proud new owners of – Stay tuned for details… you’ll be seeing us out on the streets very soon! 

which led me to a tweet from the day before from Magic Cheese Truck

we have sold our little magical truck to Ted’s Butcher Block . Follow them for fabulous food. Stay tuned 4 our next adventure!

Today I was surprised to find out that Ted’s Butcherblock’s new food truck was making its debut at MUSC for Food Truck Wednesdays! When @butcherblock said soon, I wasn’t expecting to see it this soon. I headed out to check them out and scope out the menu as soon as I found out.

Ted's Butcherblock food truck menuThe truck is staffed by familiar faces, which is really nice. The menu is similar to what is available in the shop, so now if the truck makes a stop near you, you can enjoy their great sandwiches without having to make the trip downtown. I went for the always yummy Bacon of the Month BLT with a very garlick-y garlic aioli.

Ted's Butcherblock Bacon of the Month BLTDelicious. I hope Ted’s food truck enjoys the same success the shop has.

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Twitter archive

I just discovered that under your Twitter account settings, Twitter now lets you download a complete archive of your tweets. Scroll down to where it says “Your Twitter archive” and click the button. They’ll send  you an email with a link where you can download all your tweets packaged up nicely in a .zip file containing everything you need to view your tweets in a browser and in a CSV file to import into a spreadsheet or database of your choice.

You can check out my Twitter archive over here (up to 20-Feb-2013).

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Scanning manuals

Now that I’ve finally got my scanner to work under Fedora, I thought I’d use the opportunity to scan the manuals I got with the Heathkit IG-102 signal generator I picked up a while ago. I was also lucky enough to find an assembly manual on eBay for the HD-10 keyer I picked up at Hamcation so I scanned that as well and converted them both to PDF files.

There’s another manual for the IG-102 that’s quite a bit larger (168 pages) that will take me a while to scan and convert, but I’ll get that done eventually.

Heathkit IG-102 manual cover
Heathkit HD-10 manual cover


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Rutabagas?

One of the things I like about being a CSA (community supported agriculture) member (with Ambrose Farm) is that it makes me try veggies that I’d otherwise pass over at the grocery store. It’s in the bag, and unless there’s something to swap it with, I have to figure out how to use it.

This week, it’s the rutabaga. In the grocery store, they’re large purplish-white things covered in wax that I’ve never been all that interested in trying. They were in this week’s CSA share though, so I looked up some recipes. Lots of them were for mashed or roasted rutabagas. Seems they can be treated a lot like potatoes.

Roasting root veggies is usually a safe way to try things out, so I diced up two of the larger ones I got, tossed in olive oil, sprinkled some salt over them and threw them in the oven.

Roasted rutabagasAfter about 30 minutes, they came out looking golden brown-ish and tasting pretty decent. The flavour is mildly turnip-y and the texture is kind of potato-y. Good enough to eat a bowl of straight up. I’ll serve these with some sautee’d swiss chard that also came in the CSA today.

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7 segment LED adventures

One of the items I picked up in the tailgating/bone yard area of Hamcation was this bag of 7 segment LEDs. Out of the 10 in the bag, 8 of them are marked CSS-3115RJ, one is marked MTN1130-ASR and the other is marked MTN1130-CSR. 

7 segment LED modules
7 segment LED modules
Side view of some 7 segment LED modules

A bit of Google-ing turned up data sheets for the MTN1130 modules, but very little on the CSS-3115RJ modules. Of the three types, it appears that only the MTN113-ASR is the odd ball.

Adafruit has a great tutorial when it comes to learning about LEDs and how to use them in circuits. I’ve got power supplies that will give me 3.3, 5 and 12V. Will work out the resistor values to use for these modules at those voltages, then have a bit of fun testing them out and making the segments light up (I hope). Then I’ll have to find something that I can use to control them and make them display something useful.