general update

it has been a long time since the last post of relevance, and, even though nobody reads this, i thought i should make an update. you know, for posterity.

i seem to have given up on nanowrimo. i said i would finish it but i have no motivation. this is because i am currently motivated by something else (see below). i may lose it all in a couple more days as my trial for Scrivener expires and I can no longer open the data file. oh wells.

i'm currently devoting much spare time to implementing python on snails. it is an ambitious problem to tackle, of course, and it's getting more ambitions. i'm currently stuck in a depth-first implementation of blog posting support -- which first involved implementing forms so i could do a login page, now i need to do sessions, which involved several refactorings (after all, shouldn't snails have snails-default sessions instead of app-specific? and if so, shouldn't you be able to plug your app-specific User class into the sessions? yes on both), and the daunting prospect of implementing foreign keys in my Pickle based DB abstraction. i keep fearing that my MVC separation is too harsh and brittle, but the upcoming work seems to fall neatly into the abstraction i've already got. at the end of it all, i'll be able to make stupid posts like this to my snails-powered brewing site, and i'll have a much more fleshed-out framework.

speaking of brewing, i kegged the tripel last weekend and it's sitting, inertly, in the warm closet to continue some fermentation. i took no gravity readings because the initial readings were bogus. this is a poor line of reasoning since the terminal reading could be used to see if fermentation is done. however, i did taste them, and they weren't what i wanted, so i'll let them sit a bit more before lagering.

the date beer is still bubbling a little, or at least, it looks like it's continuing to ferment. i'd really like to drink it some time soon but since the dates cost a huge pile of cash, i'd rather let them ferment. so more time for that, and then, some day, rack it one last time, add the hops, crash it, and serve it. yum.

on the topic of yum, i harvested wild maybe-yeast from the air in my beer closet. i plated it and it grew into something that really looked like yeast, so i dumped it into a 50ml 1040 starter. it's currently on its second day of incubation and though the starter appears to be more cloudy than when it started, it's not clear that it's reproducing. i took the cover off this morning to sniff it and could smell mostly just the wort. i suppose that's a neutral sign: it did not smell like beer, but it also did not smell like dirty socks or rotting meat.

i came up with a name for the beer i will brew with this yeast if it turns out to indeed be beer yeast. with a nod to whatsit up north from here, i'll call it San Mateo Queer Beer: Out of the Closet.

work proceeds as usual. there's a noise outside the apartment that resembles the stupid sound of nextel phones, occurs at random intervals, and is inaudible to hops. i do not think i am imagining it, but it's been happening for 2-3 weeks now and i've not been able to pin down its location, much less its origin. it may drive me batty. i hope not.

travel is coming up, hooray. and then, proabbly more travel. in the meantime, my new workout schedule is improving my climbing, somewhat, at least on mondays. at the same time, they've gotten some new route setters in the gym who seem bent on creating horrific routes.