Of Examinations and Fermentations

Quite a lot to report now...

1. My rosehip wine is now happily bubbling away in a demijohn. It was a pig to strain the fruit pulp from the must, and still a little got through, but it's settling OK and is showing the first signs of thinking about clearing.
2. On an unrelated matter, I had my OU exam this morning. It was a tough exam, with some of the questions on concurrency and OO design finding fuzzy points in my knowledge. I think I did OK, but I'm not confident I hit my target grade. It's possible though. As celebration after the exam I got back to a bit more winemaking...
3. The mead has been clearing and had developed a thick sediment, so I racked it off into a new jar, taking the opportunity to have a taste (not bad!) and try out my new hydrometer. The gravity I measured was pretty much bang on 1000, meaning the majority of the sugar is now alcohol. There's still some more fermentation to go – this is going to be a nice, dry mead, and should be worth drinking by Christmas.
4. I now have a gallon of Ribena wine on the go too (yes, Ribena – why not?). This looks like it should turn out to be a sweet (possibly too sweet -- next time use less sugar!) pink wine. Nice and different to the others I'm making up.
5. PS. Knock me down with a bubble, I got 93% in that last assignment. Just born lucky, I guess.

Assignment: Improbable

So yesterday evening I submitted my final assignment for this year's OU course, M301 Software Systems and Their Development. This course has a rep for being wrought from pure evil, which is not entirely unmerited, and this last assignment fit this profile perfectly. This was probably the most wide-ranging of the year's six assignments, covering cryptography, security, project management, ethics, and various aspects of the use of Java and UML, which made it tough enough, but there were quite a few flaws in the way the questions were worded, which made for some real ambiguities.

Anyway, it's finished and submitted on time, and to keep my grade average up all I need to score is 60% -- fingers crossed. Now it's time to start preparing for the exam, which is in a little over two weeks' time.

Rosehips

So I'd been eyeing up all those rose bushes near our house and watching these big, fat rosehips ripening nicely, and planning the next batch of wine, when some sod went and trimmed all the bushes, leaving naff-all fruit behind.

Luckily, after an hour's wander a little further afield, I'd got myself a bag of hips, only to realise that we were nearly out of sugar. D'oh!

Anyway, last night, after aquiring some more sugar, <3 and I chopped up our kilo of rosehips, stuck them in a bucket with sugar and boiling water, and stirred. The mix is currently being munched on by a dose of pectinol (hopefully breaking down the fruit and destroying pectin that could leave the end product cloudy), so this evening the yeast can go in for a couple of weeks of fermenting in the bucket.

The mead it still fermenting along nicely, after 2 weeks.

First Winemaking Steps

A couple of months ago, a friend convinced me of the worthiness of winemaking as a hobby, recommended a book (First Steps in Winemaking by CJJ Berry) and presented me with a couple of demijohns. The book cost less than a fiver, so I bought a copy and had a read -- it does a good job of explaining the basic theory, describing the essential equipment as well as the less essential but useful kit, and has many dozens of recipes for country wines, from nettle to elderberry. More recently, I decided to give it a go and ordered some equipment, yeast, sterilising powder, and so on from the excellent Art of Brewing, and last week I started my first brew. The first effort is a mead based on a recipe in Berry's book, with 3.5 lb of honey, and my little modification: I boiled some rosemary in with the honey and water, hopefully giving it a more interesting taste. Nearly a week later, we have a steady fermentation, and it's looking good. According to the recipe this should be drinkable by Christmas, which is extremely fast for a homebrew wine. We'll see... The plan is to raid some local rose bushes for rosehips with which to make my next batch -- slightly more advanced than the mead.

No Borderline

A little while ago we received the very kind gift of a Borders gift card. Unfortunately, this was made out in US dollars and marked as valid for all US Borders stores. We live in the UK so this is not much help.

Luckily, according to the card, the credit was also valid for purchases on Borders.com, so off I surfed to choose some books from "Borders teamed with Amazon.com". All well and good -- international delivery would be a bit slower and more expensive, but no problems.

When I got to the checkout and entered my gift voucher number and credit card details, I was told (by Amazon) that my voucher code only worked with Borders purchases. OK, so I went back and reselected my purchases, making sure that they came from Borders pages rather than Amazon (difficult to tell what was what), only to get the same error at the checkout. After another try I gave up.

Visiting our nearest Borders, in Oxford, we had a chat with a customer service guy, who said that at the moment US and UK Borders shops are effectively separate companies, and that Borders.com and Amazon.com are in the process of merging, with much website confusion in the meantime.

Luckily, the in-laws are off to the US soon, so they can make use of the voucher on our behalf. Ho hum...

When Animals Fight

It's amazing what lunchtime discussions at work lead to. Bob's Animal Fights will answer that perennial question of whether a giant panda could beat a mako shark in a fight, or how killer bees would fare against a hippopotamus.

Correction

Okay, I don't know what I'm talking about. SpaceShipOne's flight on Monday was not an X Prize attempt -- it didn't have the extra two-bods-worth of ballast. Apparently there was also a systems problem that needs fixing before the X Prize runs can happen. Still, even with a systems failure, the 100km target was reached, followed by a safe landing.

The Penultimate Frontier

Today was the day that SpaceShipOne, piloted by Mike Melvill completed its first flight outside the earth's atmosphere to become the first privately funded manned spacecraft. If the feat can be repeated within a fortnight, the X Prize can be claimed. This is one of the coolest (in a geeky sort of way) things I can remember happening -- and the spacecraft and launch vehicle look amazingly cool too.

It's interesting that this project was funded largely by Paul Allen, who seems to have devoted his life to using his money in a way that so many geeks would want to -- I understand he also footed the bill for a reproduction Babbage difference engine. Kudos, Paul.

Part of Europe

Today is "Super Thursday", when we have the European elections and a number of UK regional elections (though not near us). Four areas of the UK are trialling compulsory postal voting and putting the our democratic process in the hands of a company who failed to meet any of its targets over the last year. Ho hum.

I'm torn over my vote. I sympathise primarily with the LibDems (am generally pro-Europe, electoral reform, funding of public services, etc) but am strongly considering the Green party, largely due to their position against software patents, a massive blow against innovation getting ready to be struck.

Cookie Translation

<3 returned from a trip to a conference in Madrid yesterday, avoiding the delays due to the failure of a NATS computer, and bearing some delicious Spanish biscuits withe the brand Gamito. In the box came a slip of paper written in both Spanish and English, and here I am proud to reproduce, as accurately as I am able, the delightful English text...

INFORMATION TO CONSUMER You have adquired the traditional chritsmast's sweets, from Estepa (Seville), one of the typical spanish sweet. Their taste is exceptional. They are made of select natural ingredients: wheat's flour, sugar, Clyan's cinnamon, nuts, ...,. TASTING: Opress it with your hand.
Take off paper and eat it. Thank you for your election and bon appétit.