Experiments: Tempering

An idle thought on a Sunday morning: a tempering machine is little more than a computer-controlled heating element with a great big stirrer in it. The element heats the chocolate up to the point where all the crystals in the cocoa butter melt, while the stirrer agitates the mixture, making the stable crystals form (the ones that make chocolate shiny and have a good snap). As the chocolate is stirred, it cools, until the element kicks in again to bring the chocolate up to a working temperature (around 32ºC). Easy, but expensive - tempering machines start from around £500.

But I have a KitchenAid (well, technically, I have two, but the other is 4,000 miles away. And really really technically, I have half and half, so maybe I only have one KitchenAid after all, but I digress). It does a very good job of stirring. It does lack a heating element, but if I used a hairdryer, I could bring the temperature up to the working one when necessary.

And it works. I seem to be able to temper chocolate without having to stand around and stir vigorously for fifteen minutes. This could be very useful! I still need to experiment a little more - I only tempered 500g of milk chocolate this afternoon, so I need to try dark and white, whilst seeing if I can push the quantities up to 800g-1kg. And then, my pretties, and then, muahahahahaha! *dons the Willy Wonka hat*

DDDC: 2010 - Broadsword Calling Danny Boy

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And that's our show. Oh, except for one more thing.

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Dalek nano. Our new Dalek model for 2010!

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A whole new design! Totally pure, unlike some Daleks we could mention, plus, for the first time, more interior space! And, thanks to a new process, we can now colour the bonded polycarbide shell!

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I'll now hand over to our head of Dalek production, Davros!

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I have waited a long time for this. This time we shall triumph. My Daleks shall once more become the supreme beings! Back to you, Steve.

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Thank you, Davros! That's the Dalek nano, everybody, available now!

Well, then.

More to come, I think. Also shiny.



Location:Burch Ave,Durham,United States

Leaving on a jet-plane, part 2475: Pac-Man Boogaloo

Getting ready to go - hours of flight tomorrow, and then hitting the ground running. Eeep.

Coming soon: http://falloutdurham.com/live - will hopefully have video streaming and live Twitter updates throughout the week and especially on the day itself.

For those of you coming next week, we both look forward to seeing you! If not, we hope you can follow along vicariously on the website - thanks to everybody who has given us their best wishes in the past few weeks.

PLUS! SPITFIRES FIGHTING FLYING SAUCERS!

(I will be torrenting, obviously!)

I'm Making An Exception

"If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," — Sen. DeMint (R-SC)

Also, a helpful link for Rush Limbaugh: http://www.costaricaairfare.com/!

COUNTDOWN.

Currently over at falloutdurham.

Thanks for everybody who's voted so far at the Jukebox. Due to a few last-minute issues with venues, it remains to be seen just how much of them we'll get through, but keep voting!

Meanwhile, my sister is designing the greatest (and geekiest) wedding cake I've seen for ages (though she has been threatening violence after spending days working out Pac-Man grid patterns…), projector and Quartz videowall are almost sorted, bands are arranged, food is confirmed…yes, we're getting there.

15 days to go. Let's do this wedding thing!

Vote Now!

Okay, let’s try this again - the Fallout Jukebox has had a MySQL and DataMapper make-over, and seems to be a lot happier as a result. Vote early and vote often! (up to 15 times per day per IP address!)

(I reserve the right to jettison ABBA and Queen suggestions at any moment ;))

Dear Internet...(Dreamhost/DataMapper)

If you’re getting an error lack this on Dreamhost while attempting to use DataMapper and MySQL:

/usr/bin/ruby1.8: relocation error: /home/username/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/do_mysql-0.10.1/lib/do_mysql/do_mysql.so: undefined symbol: mysql_get_ssl_cipher

One way of fixing it is to remove -DHAVE_MYSQL_SSL_SET from the Makefile flags in ~/.gem/ruby/1.8/gems/do_mysql-0.10.1/ext, then do a make clean; make; make install.

(because the Internet had nothing for me and I spent three hours going down blind alleys to no avail)

Hating SQLite

Yeah, the jukebox is currently trapped in SQLite hell at the moment…don’t expect it to be working for the next few days…

In Medias Res...

Favourite song of the year. Yes, I know it’s January. Shut up. But…it’s not really a wedding song, is it? OR IS IT?

ONLY YOU CAN DECIDE!

I'm putting together an online web app which will help select the songs of the wedding. I'm at the point where I need to let a few people test it out before announcing it properly on the wedding website...so...

The Fallout Jukebox

Things to bear in mind:

  • Internet Explorer is not supported. Sorry. It might work. But I have no idea if it will.
  • This is a test run, without IP logging and vote-limiting. Go crazy! But remember I'll be wiping the database and starting again in about a week.
  • Come On Eileen is going to be played, no matter how many times you vote it down. It's not a wedding otherwise!

Let me know how you manage to break it…