In light of the color wheel failure in my HD70 I was forced to find a replacement.

I have to commend Optoma. Despite their somewhat snippy customer service rep, I am really impressed. I called them four days ago (Monday) after they had closed for the day (why answer the phone if you’re closed?) and ordered a replacement color wheel for my HD70, a projector they haven’t made for about four years. Not only did they have it in stock, and for a reasonable price, but they told me it would be 8 days to arrive and it arrived in less than four. Color me impressed.

After I opened the projector up, pulled all the glass shards out, blew the dust out of it, and installed the new wheel I buttoned it back up, sure enough it fired right up. The only note I can really give to others who attempt this is not to forget to unscrew your color wheel sensor (an optical sensor) from your original color wheel and attached it to the new one before installing it. If you have ever noticed “a dirty color wheel,” manifested by your screen flashing odd colors (usually green), you are actually dealing with dust interrupting the view of this sensor.

I have never been happier that I purchased an Optoma projector, and I won’t hesitate to buy another (when funds permit I’d like to get the HD80 or HD33). When this projector was new the retail price was around $1299, and it was widely thought of as a bargain for a best-in-class unit. I got mine all beat up and not working on eBay for $200. I added a lamp ($245 at the time) and did some cleaning and sealing of ducting and had a working projector. Thanks to Optoma for building us a durable workhorse  that we can repair ourselves!

From Ezra Moore

Read chapter 12 for Weds.

X-Linked Hemophilia

• Gene is located on the X-chromosome, thus males and females are affected differently.
• Females = XX
• Males = XY
• Hemophiliac Male (XhY) – only 1 X-Chromesome with recessive gene causes disorder.
• Hemophiliac Female (XhXh) – both X’s must carry the recessive gene.
• A male hemophiliac cannot pass the gene to his son, only his daughter as he only passes on the Y to his sons.

Polygenetic Inheritance

• Two or more genes contribute to the phenotypic expression of a single characteristic
• These traits show gradations, there is a series of measurable intermediate forms between two extremes.
• Hair, eye and skin color are polygenetic traits.
• Traits can be influenced by your environment.
• Regulatory genes: can mask expression of some traits.
• Skin color is governed by at least 12 alleles.

Discontinuous Distribution of Mendelian Traits

• Shows discontinuous distribution of ABO blob type in a hypothetical population
• Described in terms of frequency.
• Continuous Expression of a Polygenetic Trait
• Represents the continuous expression of height in a large group of people.

Population Genetics

• Evolutionary forces bring about change in the gene pool of a population.
• Four evolutionary forces are recognized by scientists (mutation, natural selection, gene flow, genetic drift).

Evolutionary Forces

1. Mutation: a change in the DNA.
1. The source of genetic variation.
2. In humans, occurs at a rate of ~30 mutations per million sex cells formed.
2. Natural Selection: factors in the environment exert pressure favoring some individuals over others.
1. Acts on variation
3. Gene Flow: The exchange of genes between populations.
4. Genetic Drift: random changes in gene frequency from one generation to the next.
1. Related to smaller population size.
2. founder effect.

* Additional factors: female choice, unequal fertility, consanguineous mating, isolating mechanisms.

To read these notes in their original format (from the Evernote for Mac application) on the Evernote website click here.

From Ezra Moore

I was watching an old episode of Dexter the other day (I know, I’m late to the party) and my projector (an Optoma HD70) image became an off color for just a second, but most alarmingly started to make a terrible buzzing/whirring/grinding noise, almost like a bad computer fan.

There are a couple of high volume brushless DC (computer) fans inside there, so I knew it was possible that one had thrown a vane. Since the HD-70 is a DLP projector it uses a complex set of mirrors to reflect the image through a color wheel in order to get the correct colors displayed in the image. The color wheel in the HD70 is seven segments. I believe that it is ordered red, green blue, white, red, grean, blue. When I heard the noise I shut the projector down as quickly as I could, and the color shift that appeared along with the noise only lasted a split second. For this reason I think that my color wheel simply lost its white (or clear, if you prefer) segment. When I pick the projector up and move it around I can hear a piece of what sounds like glass moving around.

When I bought my projector it needed a new lamp and a thorough cleaning inside. I got a great deal on it, so that was no problem, and I ventured inside the box to get it all taken care of. I am completely comfortable opening the case and working on the internals. What concerned me was that no matter how hard I Googled I couldn’t find anyone selling a replacement color wheel. I even found the Optoma part number for it (70.85S22GR01, by the way), but even searching for that yielded few results. I have one hit from Alibaba, which has been an unreliable source for me in the past (and often requires that you order 10-100 of something you only need one of) and one for a website that I had never heard of that wanted $300 for the color wheel. If I was going to have to pay $300 I was planning to upgrade to a new 1080p projector (HD80/22/33, something along those lines). Sure, it would have cost a lot more, but this projector is outdated now, even though the image quality and reliability are both excellent.

My next resort was this thread (second page) on AVSForum, where someone had kindly posted a phone number and quote from Optoma. Sadly, that number didn’t work for me, disconnected. So as my last resort (before pinching pennies for a new/used machine) was to call Optoma. I’ve never had good luck getting companies to sell my internal non-user serviceable parts directly, nor have I had luck with ordering parts for out of warranty/support machines, but the projector gods were on my side today. Optoma sold me a new color wheel for $50 plus about $12 to ship it (FedEx Ground) to me. I tried just about every number on their contact us page, and finally got to a message that said ‘for out of warranty machines please call (888) 942-2929, and that is what I did. No lies, no weirdness (the lady wasn’t very nice, at all), and I got my part. Once it arrives I may post some instructions/pictures of the replacement process.

From Ezra Moore

Oh boy! I’ve been waiting (who knows why) to make this for a long time. Without further ado; carne asada.

I ended up doing a ton of research before making this dish. I wanted a reasonably authentic taste (Safeway-brand taco seasoning? No thanks), and it is surprisingly hard to find authentic Mexican recipes. I synthesized about 5 recipes to get the ingredient list I have here.

Carne Asada (literally translated “roasted meat”) is a very popular dish in Northern Mexico (and in the Southwestern USA). Carne Asada is synonymous with a social BBQ here in the USA. Check out the Wikipedia entry for it here.

Ingredients:

1/2 bunch fresh cilantro (chopped, remove large stems)
1 Tbsp. freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 Tbsp. sea salt
1 Tbsp. Cumin
1 Tbsp. chili powder
1 Tbsp. Mexican oregano
1/4 tsp. ground clove
4-8 cloves of garlic (chopped)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1/3 cup fresh orange juice
1/3 cup fresh lime juice
1/2 bottle of dark beer
1 orange sliced latitudinally
1 lime quartered into wedges

3 lbs. skirt steak

Preparation

This one is pretty easy. Combine everything but the steak, orange, and lime slices above, in a bowl. Slice the steak thin (or if it is already less then about 1/2 thick, skip this step) and then put it into your marinade in your ziplock. As you can see in the photo, I sliced my larger steak (1.84 lbs) into strips about 1″ x 0.5″ strips. The thinner steak (0.37 lbs) was thin enough that it did not need to be sliced at all.

The steak the the marinade.

Grab your oranges squeeze them into the bag, then drop them in. Do the same with the limes. I am adding this section in from a wise comment posted by Buster. If you leave the top of your bag open and submerge it in water you will force the air out. This helps the marinade break down the enzymes in the meat, which improves flavor penetration and makes the meat more tender! Put the bag into your fridge and let it sit for between four and eight hours.

Everything in the bag marinating!

After marinating for several hours its time to fire up the grill. I got mine as hot as I possibly could and grilled the sliced pieces for about 5 minutes each. Your temps and times will vary, so keep a close eye on it as you cook. I left the larger steak on for about 5 minutes per side. Carne asada is typically served well done, even a little charred.

Carne asada fresh off the grill!

After I took the meat off the grill, I shredded some mozzarella sprinkled it over a couple of flour tortillas and threw them on the grill for a few minutes to melt the cheese. After that it is as simple as applying meat and any other toppings you like (we had avocado and salsa verde) and consuming it.

All done! Excuse the messy range.

My Thoughts

This was amazing. Next time I would consider marinating it for the full eight hours, but regardless it turned out great. I will definitely be making this again. The only real change I would make is to prepare some sides (pica de gallo, and grilled onions, anyone?) to enhance the meal.

Have a good night!

From Ezra Moore

Just a quick preview of tonight’s dinner: Carne Asada!

The steak the the marinade.

Everything in the bag marinating!

I had better take a few more pictures tonight, or this preview may be the only view you get.

See you later!

From Ezra Moore

Phanaeng Curry. Another food photo that is pretty terrible, but the dish is delicious!

I love the way a recipe can get passed a long, it leads to foods sweeping an entire region (sometimes an entire country) in the blink of an eye.

This recipe came to my by way of my little sister, Hannah.

Phanaeng curry originates from the Phanaeng Islands which are part of Malaysia.

I won’t be posting the recipe here, you’ll have to click the link above and visit Hannah’s blog to find it.

When Hannah passed the recipe on to me, she recommend Aroy D curry paste and canned coconut milk of the same brand.

My Thoughts:

This was a great dish, and my first attempt at making my own Thai food (which I love to eat). I think that I could clean up my methods, now that I know how to make it, and end up with something a little more refined. Overall I loved it, but I would warn that if you have a sensitivity to spicy food the Aroy D paste is a little bit on the spicy side. Make sure you prescribe a tall glass of milk! Thanks HANNAH!

From Ezra Moore

Initially, I loved Boxee. It was the cat’s meow in terms of media management, and media playback. As someone who has ripped (and re-encoded) 200+ DVDs more than once, it was a welcome relief to have software to pull together album art, names, synopses, etc. I always found the interface less than desirable, and never understood the ‘social’ aspect of it (still don’t), but it made my life a lot easier.

Then came the whispers (and eventual announcement and release) of dedicated Boxee hardware; the Boxee box. That was when things started going wrong. Because of the semi-secretive development of the Boxee Box and its feature set, the PC version’s continued development suffered. Prior to the announcement/leak that there would be a Boxee Box, the developer had always had an excellent presence on the Boxee forums. After the announcement it became more and more difficult to get updates regarding the PC version. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that Boxee was (and will continue to be for a very short time) free software, and as such the end user cannot expect direct support from the developer, but it is fair to say that the community had become accustom to an open flow of information. The abrupt loss of this soured the experience terribly and spurred my move to PLEX.

PLEX is a wonderful bit of software, based on the same original source as Boxee, XBMC. XBMC is a fairly mature project, one that started out providing an alternative (and media centric) dashboard for the original Xbox. The history section of their Wikipedia entry is an interesting read. PLEX started out as an custom OS X port of XBMC and has blossomed into a cross-platform media center/server combo with exclusive features.

Best of all, when I run into trouble with PLEX I can jump on Campfire and chat directly to the project leader and developers.

Bye Boxee, I won’t miss you one bit.

From Ezra Moore

Margherita Pizza. I know, I know, it is a truly terrible picture. My excuses: it was late, the fluorescent lighting in my kitchen does nothing for photos, and I am committed to showing you guys exactly what I made.

Once in a while I have a good idea. This pizza was definitely a golden moment for me. When I was younger my family travelled abroad and I ordered this pizza in a lot of different countries. Rarely have I seen it in the United States. I know California Pizza Kitchen makes a Margherita pizza, but its not on the menu a lot of places I would expect to find it.

Pizza Margherita has a pretty illustrious history, as far as pizzas go. In 1889, Queen Margherita was taking a tour of the Italian Kingdom with her husband Umberto I, and she noticed the people eating a large flat bread with toppings. The curious queen ordered her guards to bring her a pizza. She loved it, and caused quite a stir in the court by going out to eat it amongst the peasants. To resolve the issue of her social faux pax, Queen Margherita summoned Chef Raffaele Esposito to the royal kitchen, and had him bake for her, a variety of pizzas. The chef chose to make Queen Margherita a special pizza, with all the same colors as the Italian flag. Green basil, white mozzarella, and red tomatoes. He called is Pizza Margherita.

It makes for a decent story, I guess.

Here is what I did for dough:

Trader Joe’s sells pizza dough. I bought their herb/garlic offering. It turned out pretty good.

Ingredients:

1/4 pound smoked mozzarella, shredded
1/2 pound low moisture mozzerella, sliced to medium thickness
10 – 15 whole basil leaves (the more the better, in my opinion)
1 Roma tomato
4 – 6 cloves of garlic (diced medium/small)
olive oil
salt

Directions (prep):

1. Thinly slice your tomatos (seriously, thin!)
2. Chop your garlic.
3. Add your garlic, salt and olive oil in a large bowl, stir and add your tomatoes to coat them. Remove the tomatoes.

Directions (assembly): Preheat your oven to 500+ degrees F

1. Follow the directions to make your dough (or if you bought the Trader Joe’s dough, follow their directions).
2. Spread your dough into whatever shape you desire, this is a thin crust pizza, so spread it out thin.
3. Pour (and then brush evenly) your garlic/olive oil/salt mixture over the dough, making sure to cover the entire surface.
4. Spread your grated (unsmoked) mozzarella over the crust.
5. Lay your tomatoes over the mozzarella.
6. Alternate tomatoes with medallions of your smoked mozzarella.
7. Spread your basil out over your pizza.
8. Put your pizza into the oven, allow it to cook until the cheese is fully melted and the crust is beginning to brown. Let it cool and then consume it voraciously!

My Thoughts

I love this pizza. Its light and it is delicious! I need to get a pizza stone, in lieu of building a pizza oven in my apartment complex. I will definitely be making this pizza again soon. As you can tell by my picture, I overcooked it just a tad this time. I would also use thicker slices of the smoked mozzarella, mostly for decorative effect.

Tonight I am making chicken caprese sandwiches. Yum!

From Ezra Moore

I’m sick of online news. Especially local news. Local newspapers do one of two things, they batter you with ads (Google Adsense or similar) or they are shockingly short on content. Some are both. “Read more in the Nov 15th print edition.” No thanks, I’m reading the online edition right now because I don’t like picking up a paper newspaper.

Medium

I realize that there are people who have to feel the newsprint in their hand in order to enjoy the experience, but I have always found a newspaper to be unwieldy and difficult. My dislike stems from reading the newspaper as a child and have trouble using my small body to manipulate the big paper. The newspaper was purchased for my dad, and I always had a tendency to  fold, rip, wrinkle, or get it out of order.

Between school and work, I spend a lot of time online in a day. Going to the grocery store (or gas station?) to get a newspaper, then bring it home unfold, refold, and read it seems a lot less convenient to me than calling up a web page (or app) and reading the news I want. Some local papers, The Bellingham Herald for instance, have a lot of their content online. In the case of TBH I can’t say for sure if they have all of their content online, but they do have a lot. Other local papers, The Leader for example, have a pretty limited amount of content online, and are always plugging their paper edition. It is time that the local paper figures out that their online content is not a supplement to their print content. It is time for parity.

I am a firm believer that young people need a stronger voice in the media, and that has to be backed by a stronger understanding of current events. Young people use computers. We like to be able to search within the text of an article. We like relevant past articles underneath a story, just one click away. Traditional media cannot provide that and as a result fails to engage many young people.

Ads

I am not against ads. I actually like them. Being able to access content for free is important to me, especially with trial versions and demos becoming less and less popular. Freemium is the new demo, and I like that. When it comes to online video, Hulu for instance, I could download the videos and remove the ads so that I don’t have to watch them, but I don’t . I want those videos to be there to watch tomorrow, for myself and others. I watch the ads, or at least let them play in the background.

Local papers have no problem plastering their site with ads. The Bellingham Herald is a prime example of this. I was honestly shocked when I discovered they still create a popunder ad upon the user’s first click on site site. The user’s first click (for me, it is on the first article I want to read) isn’t registered on the link, it creates the popunder ad. That means that I have to click twice to get the first article. They use big animated banners that scroll the screen on their own. Both of these tactics destroy the user’s experience with the site. They break the site. The Bellingham Herald is guilty of running so many Flash advertisements that even a powerful computer labors under the load of rendering the site.

Local papers should be running local ads. When I log on to CNN or HuffPo, I expect to see nationwide ad campaigns. When I get on The Bellingham Herald’s page I want to see ads for The Bean Stop, not Hewlett Packard. Excellent coffee at The Bean Stop, by the way.

A better option

I think we need more small blogs/hyper-local news sources. Many will argue that your average Joe is not a trained journalist, but these days what does that even mean? Anyone can buy a copy of the AP Style Guide, what else do reporters know now that isn’t obvious to an astute blogger? I don’t disagree that the overall quality would likely not be as high in this scenario, but I think people would be better informed, especially on local issues that are most important to them.

Anyone want to start a local news blog?

From Ezra Moore

About a month into this little experiment, the basil is growing very well. The roots now reach into the bottom of the reservoir, I may have to find another bucket to set the basket into while I am cleaning/refilling the main reservoir. I don’t want to damage the roots while I’m working.

The mildew begins to grow after about three and a half days, and it has been a persistent issue. I have been soaking things down in hydrogen peroxide when I am rinsing/cleaning/changing the water and adding nutrients. I will try to get some more pictures up soon.

About a month in, and growing like a weed.

From Ezra Moore