Counting down

Ahh, only 2 days until Christmas. Thankfully, I sent Ellie off to her grandmother's for the day. She'll be back tomorrow. I used the time to wrap presents. I had my shopping essentially done since before Thanksgiving; I was so industrious. But I put off the wrapping until the last moment.

We're trying to enjoy the break. No evening grading, and no test writing, and no lecture preparation. I've taken all of the time I want to read about geeky things on the internet. I've even tackled a small geek project, building a solar stove, something I've wanted to do for several years. Essentially this is a big reflector that focuses a bunch of sunlight in one place. Then you paint a canning jar black and put it there where it proceeds to get hot, along with its contents.

Ellie and I cooked rice in it yesterday to see if it would work. It worked. Not bad for the winter solstice. There's less sun this time of year than any other time of year, so cooking is slower than it will be in the spring, summer, or fall. Now I'm inspired. I'm making plans to build a parabolic cooker next, because they are more efficient. I've got a pretty spartan set of directions, but they aren't anything a mathematician shouldn't be able to decipher.

Other geek projects that I haven't tackled yet include building a bumblebee habitat (Linda's not too keen on that one), and building a circuit that can generate "real" random numbers. I'd also like to make a circuit that can create new ROMs for devices like DVD players. That way I could rewrite the brains of the DVD player and add desirable features like "you may skip the FBI warning if you want, because it is your DVD player and your DVD."

Of course those other geek projects will have to wait for the future.