Dead Blog

It saddens me to announce the death of Sam the Giant's Evil Adventure and Experiment Log.  It was a good blog, but in my opinion the ever present nature of modern social media sites has rendered the personal blog irrelevant for anyone unwilling to make a major commitment to constant updates.  It's just easier to keep up with people on the various social sites.  The samthegiant.com domain will be redirected to a personal landing page at about.me/smcclanahan that will display a brief bio and links to the social media sites I participate in.

CodeStock 2011 - Adventures in Speaking

Adventure 20110603

CodeStock 2011 was fantastic.  Once again Mike Neel out did himself and set the bar higher than any other local code convention has any hope of reaching.  Unfortunately for the poor attendees he did make one mistake.  He let me be a speaker.  ^_^  So Friday at 12:30 PM I presented a short session in the general track titled "A Knoxville Hackerspace - What do you want to build today?".  Despite some issues with swapping rooms at the last minute I did manage to draw eight people in for what turned into a pretty good discussion on what exactly is a hackerspace and am even hopeful that one or two might come to check out the local Knox Makers group.  I will note that even though I got flustered by the room change and ended up speaking and going through my slides far too quickly I think I may be hooked.  Presenting a session was exciting and I felt much more involved in the convention itself.  I think I'm going to have to see if I can come up with another topic for next year.

Aside from speaking I also got to attend several great sessions:

• The Geek's Guide to SEO by Jay Harris.  Walked out with a half-dozen links to hit up for more info.
• Kinect Hacks 101 by James Ashley.  Unfortunately, now I have to go buy a Kinect to play with.
• Introduction To Ruby On Rails by Rod Paddock.  Goes under my "nifty toy I must find time to play with" category.
• The Open Spaces discussion on how we learn and the future of publishing with Charles Petzold was fascinating.  It may simply be time for tech authors to reach directly out to their readers and skip the publisher entirely.
• Open Spaces discussion about the Netduino with Brady Gaster. Of course I had to go and back-order a Netduino Plus as soon as I got home that night.... 
• I shared an Open Spaces session with Thomas Langston discussing gameful ways to build developer communities.  I really think that a coding based version of the Chore Wars website has a lot of promise.  This discussion also helped me make the mental shift to start thinking about team leadership and the Agile Scrum Master role the same way I think about the Dungeon Master role when setting up a pen-and-paper RPG for my friends.  Saving throw versus deadline!
• Eulering up your coding skills by Matthew D. Groves.  Project Euler is now in my "must play with" bookmarks folder.
• Arlene Gray led a great Open Spaces discussion about what it would take to hold a SQLSaturday here in Knoxville. Can't wait!
• Why aren't women speaking at CodeStock? (and other WiT issues) by Mike Neel and Jennifer Marsman.  Very thought provoking.
• Your OS is going the way of the dodo by David Smith was a good intro to Google’s Chrome operating system.

My top pick for "Best of CodeStock" this year has to be the Open Spaces discussion on how we learn and the future of publishing with Charles Petzold.  Although the Open Spaces session with Thomas Langston discussing gameful ways to build developer communities and the over-the-top buffet at the Keynote tied for second place.  ^_^

Greg's Peanut Butter Tardis Birthday Cake

Experiment 20110521

For Greg's birthday this year I wanted to try something a little different, so I came up with a new Peanut Butter flavored cake recipe.  It turned out well if not as strongly Peanut Butter flavored as I would have liked.  For a decorating theme I used Greg's interest in Doctor Who and one heck of a lot of blue dye to create the dreaded Peanut Butter Tardis.  Powered only by Peanut Butter it travels through Time And Relative Dimensions In Space!  Next step, Daleks out of Nutter Butter cookies.  ^_^

Photo Album on Picasa

Douglas Adams themed 42nd Birthday Party

Adventure 20110430

For my 42nd birthday party this year I decided to go with a Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy theme.  I even went so far as to hold a "Worst Dressed Sentient Being" contest so I suppose I can only blame myself for the pictures below....

Photo Album on Picasa

KMG Meetup with Hacker Consortium and Midsouth Makers in Nashville

Adventure 20110416
The Knoxville Makers Guild had an impressive turnout for our trip to Nashville with all nine of what are quickly becoming our "core" members able to attend.  It was an awesome opportunity to get to see what the Hacker Consortium has been able to do with their space, and Mudflap, Seeblind, Skydog and the rest of the HC folks were fantastic hosts.  It was even better that three members of Midsouth Makers were able to come over from Memphis as well and Joe, Dan and Mary had lots of great information for us to use to get our group up and running.  You hear that Knoxville?  Nashville and Memphis already have their cool maker/hackerspaces up and running.  ^_^  What are you waiting for?

KMG Old School Blacksmithing Workshop

Adventure 20110402
In an effort to expose the members of the Knoxville Makers Guild to some old style making I asked my friend and neighbor John Enloe of Art In The Burrow and the Clinch River Blacksmith Guild  to hold an old school blacksmithing workshop for the group.  The session was well attend with a crowd of ten very pale geeks exposing themselves to the dangers of the dreaded day-star to have a chance to pound hot metal and create hand-forged wall hooks and railroad-spike knives.  I personally discovered that it is quite possible to make steel burn, which is frankly pretty darn awesome.

Photo album on Picasa.

OLCF/NICS Spring Training

Adventure 20110307
One of my buddies from the Knoxville Makers Guild clued me in on an opportunity to attend a week-long training workshop for the world-class Cray XT5 systems, Jaguar and Kraken, hosted by the National Institute for Computational Sciences and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computational Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  I've gotten a lot of strange looks for spending some of my vacation time to attend what was basically a "beginning programming for Science Doctorates" workshop, but I had a great geeky time.  Always having been on the commercial software side of the house, getting to visit ORNL was kind of akin to a trip to Hogwart's minus the brooms and owls.  Instead of the normal treatment of being pushed into the background, fighting for the bare minimum hardware and getting squeezed for every last penny it was a great change to get to see a place on the forefront of technology focused on what computing can do to improve the world.  After some quick refresher sessions on UNIX, the vi editor and basic C programming we moved into some fascinating discussions on parallelization, MPI, OpenMP and debugging with DDT.  Great stuff and really gave me a lot of notes for future topics to research.  I have to say that the high-point of the workshop for me was during the tour on the first day when our guide actually was able to let us go in and actually physically lay hands on and get pictures of the Jaguar, Kraken and Gaea super-computers.  Yeah, I'm a geek, but that was frakking awesome!  (Shame I only had my crappy cell-phone camera with me.)

Carrie's Chocolate Hazelnut Birthday Cake

Experiment 20110226

My friend Carrie requested a chocolate hazelnut cake for her birthday this year, so this experiment was all about exactly how much hazelnut I could cram, shoehorn or inject into a single cake.  The cake itself was a basic chocolate Dream Whip recipe that I added four shots of Frangelico Hazelnut Liqueur, then filled with Nutella hazelnut spread, and finally topped with Lindt Hazelnut Chocolate Lindor Truffles.

 

Con Nooga and Biltmore weekend

Adventure 20110219

A hint of Spring is in the East Tennessee air so this weekend I tried to pry myself out of hibernation and engage my sense of adventure.

First up was a Saturday trip down to Chattanooga with my Step-Dad to day-trip Con Nooga.  This was the first time we have had a chance to attend Con Nooga and I was very impressed.  Lots of costumes, a good sized crowd without it being difficult to get around, a wide selection of programming tracks, and a very friendly atmosphere.  I particularly enjoyed the Ms. ConNooga contest, and you could tell the ladies were having a great time and enjoying being silly and putting on a show.  We will definitely be back next year.

Next up, Kathy and I drove over to Asheville on Sunday to visit Biltmore.  I can't say that I was very impressed personally, I kept noticing signs of maintenance issues like cracks in the ceiling and cobwebs in the windows.  Also, the sense of scale was off for me, huge cold and drafty rooms were offset by small cramped corridors.  I felt more like I was visiting an old bank than anything else.  Although impressive architecturally, I certainly wouldn't want to live in it.

2010 Thanksgiving Spread

Experiment: 20101125

Here we have a few snapshots of the massive feast that Kathy, my Mom, Step-Dad, and I had for Thanksgiving this year. 0_0 Yeah.... We barely touched all this food. My Mom and I have these images stuck in our heads of what a Thanksgiving meal should look like and we just can't quite get that to line up with the fact that we are only feeding four people.  Leftovers anyone?

Dubious Chef Episode Seven: Scallops!

Dubious Inclinations is the name of the pen-and-paper role playing game group I belong to, and a couple of months back we decided to try something a little different and have been playing our own home version of a cooking challenge show that we blog about under the name of The Dubious Chef:

In an odd turn of random chance I (Sam) won the die roll for this week's Dubious Chef with Greg providing the secret ingredient. Apparently Greg and I have decided that we need to monopolize all the attention since we didn't get a turn until after everyone else....

My featured ingredients were:

• Cheese, Cottage cheese, or Cream cheese
• Eggs
• Mollusks (Clam, Oyster, or Scallop)

I started the week with a very strong idea of what I would like to focus on because the night before I won the die roll I had noticed that my local Walmart had scallops available for just under $5/bag. The Epicurious app on my iPad quickly pointed me towards an excellent Seared Scallops with Creamy Noodles and Peas recipe that I felt could be easily adapted to use cream cheese, would look attractive garnished with boiled eggs, and that I felt had a good chance of allowing for the incorporation of whatever random ingredient was presented. As luck would have it Greg happened to choose lemon juice as the secret ingredient this week and it quite handily complemented the dish.

Seared Scallops with Lemon Cream Sauce Noodles and Peas

• 8 ounces medium egg noodles
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1 pound bag small bay scallops
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 package cream cheese
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh chives
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Bring a large pot of salted water to boiling and cook noodles until almost ready then stir in peas and cook about 3 minutes more. Drain in a colander, then coat bottom of pan with olive oil and toss noodles and peas to coat until ready to plate.

In a second small pot hard boil two eggs, then set aside in sink under cold water.

While water is boiling, rinse and pat scallops dry and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat butter in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat, then add scallops. Increase heat to high and sear scallops until golden brown and just cooked through. Add wine to skillet and deglaze by boiling, stirring and scraping. Stir in cream cheese, chopped chives and lemon juice and boil until slightly reduced and then pour sauce over plated noodles. Garnish with slices of hard boiled eggs and chives.

Final Score:

• Creativity–9
• Presentation–10
• Taste–9

Items Purchased:

• Bag of Bay Scallops - $4.97
• Cream cheese - $1.98
• Half dozen eggs - $0.59
• Egg noodles - $1.75

Total: $9.30

Did not use:

• Half the cream cheese
• Two thirds of the eggs
• Half the egg noodles

Brought from Home:

• White wine
• Olive oil
• Fresh chives
• Frozen peas
• Half stick of butter
• Salt & pepper

Dubious Chef Episode Five: Cherry Ham Holidays

Dubious Inclinations is the name of the pen-and-paper role playing game group I belong to, and a couple of months back we decided to try something a little different and have been playing our own home version of a cooking challenge show that we blog about under the name of The Dubious Chef:

For our fifth episode we decided to skip our random die roll to determine who would be next, and instead I (Sam) won a coin flip with Greg to be the next Dubious Chef.

My featured ingredients were:

• Oatmeal, Cornmeal or other Cereals
• Cheese, Cottage cheese, or Cream cheese
• Apricot, Cherry, Peach, Plum/Prunes or other Stone fruits

We did go ahead and randomly roll to determine that Ken would be the Mystery Ingredient provider for this episode, and much to my consternation he brought, drum-roll please.... Flour tortillas.... .... .... Yeah, I was so totally expecting THAT to be an option....

I actually had several false starts while planning because of the "Oatmeal, Cornmeal or other Cereals" selection. Immediately after the roll I thought I'd go with something breakfasty, but despite the fact that I almost always have oatmeal for breakfast myself I couldn't really come up with an idea "fancy" enough that I could see getting decent points for the creativity category. Once I had discarded breakfast as a theme I moved on to the concept of using Cornmeal and Polenta as my foundation. Unfortunately I've never made Polenta before and the couple of quick trial batches I made did not turn out well at all. About mid-week I was discussing possible options with my friend Miki and after he suggested a Roasted Peaches with Honey Mascarpone Cream recipe he was fond of my entire concept suddenly formed up as a holiday meal. Once the flour tortillas were exposed as the secret ingredient I was pretty sure how to incorporate them into the main dish, but failed rather poorly in an attempt to also include them in the desert. A quick experiment with the heat gun and some Cinnamon Sugar showed that I wasn’t going to be able to create anything similar to a cinnamon churro so I tossed the experiment and proceeded with what I had.

Roasted Peaches Flambe with Honey Nut Cream Cheese

• 2 peaches, halved and pitted
• 2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
• 4 tablespoons Philadelphia Honey Nut Cream Cheese
• 2 shots of Grand Marnier

Preheat oven to 350F.
Mix the butter and brown sugar together to form a paste.
Place the peach halves, cut side up, in baking dishes. (I used small cast iron cauldrons for extra presentation points.) Place a large spoonful of the brown sugar mixture into the center of each peach half.
Put the dish in the oven and bake for 35 minutes.
Allow to cool at least 5 minutes.
Top with a large spoonful of the Honey Nut Cream Cheese, insert a cinnamon stick for garnish, and add a half a shot of Grand Marnier to each dish and ignite.

Cherry Ham Steaks with Sharp Cheddar on a Flour Tortilla

• 1 pound fully Cooked Boneless Ham Steaks
• 1 can Del-Monte Dark Sweet Cherries
• 2 cups Kraft Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese
• 1 package Flour Tortillas
• Dash of Liquid Smoke
• Dash of extract of Cinnamon
• Salt and Pepper to taste

In a small saucepan bring the cherries to a slow boil, add dashes of Liquid Smoke and extract of Cinnamon. While liquid in cherries is reducing by half, brown the ham in a large skillet then add the reduced cherries, lower heat, cover and simmer at least 10 minutes. In a another skillet brown the tortillas and melt the cheese.

Cornbread Stuffing with Pine Nuts

• Stove Top Cornbread Stuffing Mix
• 1/2 stick of Butter
• 2 tablespoons Pine Nuts

Prepare stuffing per box directions substituting real butter for margarine and adding Pine Nuts while fluffing.

Final Score:

• Creativity–9
• Presentation–9
• Taste–9

Items Purchased:

1. 2 peaches $0.79
2. 1 box Stove Top Cornbread Stuffing Mix $1.42
3. 1 pound fully Cooked Boneless Ham Steaks $2.98
4. 1 can Del-Monte Dark Sweet Cherries $1.00
5. 2 cups Kraft Shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese $2.00
6. Philedelphia Honey Nut Cream Cheese $1.86

Total: $10.05

Did not use:

• Half the Cream Cheese
• Half the Cheddar Cheese

Brought from Home:

• Half an airplane bottle of Grand Marnier
• stick of butter
• brown sugar
• Pine Nuts
• Cinamon Sticks
• Cinnamon Extract
• Liquid Smoke
• Salt & Pepper

CompuLounger 1000

Experiment: 20100903

It’s been a point of geek pride for me to be able to say that except for my very first (A Power Macintosh 6100 bought in ‘94.) I’ve always built my own home workstations.  That being said, in recent years I’ve noticed a trend in my improvements where I have been moving away from attempting to build high-end computers, and focusing more on comfort and usability.  I believe I may have reached the culmination of this trend with the build I have dubbed the “CompuLounger 1000”.  Over the last several months I have been experimenting with the “living room computer” concept, and thanks to a very understanding wife and the purchase of a few final extended length cables I think I have found the right mix with a Lane Bandit Snuggler recliner and a Easy Chair Mount bolted to the floor for stability.

SQLSaturday #51

Adventure 20100821

This last weekend I drove over to Nashville State Community College to attend SQLSaturday #51.  This was my first time at a SQLSaturday conference and I had a great time.  The staff was very friendly and the site was quite comfortable.  The drive from Knoxville to Nashville was pretty good, just plugged in my audiobook (The Hero of Ages: Mistborn, Book 3 by Brandon Sanderson, narrated by Michael Kramer) and drove, but I had to get up really early to make the three hour trip in time for the 8:30 AM first session.  My timing for the trip also ended up being a little closer than I would have liked as I barely had time to go through registration before the first session started.

Here are the sessions I attended:
XQuery Basics - Allen White
Design and Implement like Edison - Bill Pearson
Fundamentals of SQL Server Internals - Jeremiah Peschka
From Access to SQL Server - Jack Cannon
Fortress SQL Server - Brian Kelley
Introduction to SQL Server Statistics - Andy Warren

My pick for most informative session would have to be Allen White's XQuery Basics.  His example of extracting XML mapping data from his Garmin Forerunner was particularly awesome.

I have to say that I was most pleased with my swag from this conferance.  Beyond just the normal promotional items I also came home with copies of Being Geek by Michael Lopp and Beginning T-SQL 2008 by Kathi Kellenberger, an Apress ebook gift voucher, and I won a copy of Blueberry FlashBack Pro screen recorder in the raffle.

In contrast to the drive to the conference the trip back to Knoxville in a rainstorm was an exercise in white-knuckle terror.  It was partially my own stupid fault though.  I actually got ahead of the storm for a while just before Cookeville and made the mistake of stopping at Jack in the Box to feed my addiction to their tacos.

Arduino Dubious Chef Countdown Timer v0.2

Experiment: 20100806

I have successfully constructed my first “hey, I wonder if I can just make that” Arduino project using a for loop to light LEDs in sequence, then turning them off in 5 minute intervals over a 60 minute period.  I’m inordinately proud of myself, despite the simplicity of the project and the fact that I had to toss out the buzzer feature I had first envisioned.  (I’m guessing I got the wrong kind of buzzer at Radio Shack as it sounded like a congested squirrel.)  My gaming group and I will be using it as the official countdown timer for our home-grown RPG themed cooking show tomorrow.

Shopping List:
12        220Ω Resistors
3        Red LED - 5mm
3        Green LED - 5mm
6        Yellow LED - 5mm
1        Arduino
1        Half-Breadboard

CodeStock

Adventure 20100625

Time for another CodeStock round-up!  I have no idea why I typed that sentence, but it sounds funny inside my head, so I'm going to go with it.  Yeehaw!  Or some such.  Anyway, had a great time at CodeStock again this year.  Once again Michael Neel did a fantastic job of leading the effort to keep everything organized.  The move to the University of Tennessee Conference Center was a huge success in my opinion, considerably more comfortable and well worth the small rise in registration cost.  The sponsor teams were also all very friendly and helpful.  Unfortunately due to some timing and personal health issues I only got to see about half of the sessions I wanted to, and didn't make it to any of the after session fun, but I still got to listen to some absolutely great speakers:

• How we made Windows 7 Fasterer? - Brian H. Prince
• A Little Lean with Kanban - Tim Wingfield
• A Field Guide to Moving to the Cloud - Michael Wood
• CodeStock Keynote - Rachel Appel
• Introduction to iPhone Development - Gun Makinabakan
• What's happening on the legal side of technology - John Petersen
• iPhone or Windows Phone 7: How Do You Choose - Robert Shoemate
• Getting Started with Arduino - Jim Christopher

My top pick for "Best of CodeStock" this year is a tie between Tim Wingfield's session for providing the most useful breakdown of Kanban I've ever encountered, and Jim Christopher's session as the most fun performing as his assistant during the live wiring of his Arduino Build Status Indicator.  (Yeah, I'm hooked and next paycheck already know which Arduino kit I'm ordering....)

Jon and Laura's Wedding

Adventure 20100612
My latest adventure involved driving up to Detroit for my friend Jon's wedding.  I moved out of Detroit back in the Fall of 2001 and I have to say I was rather shocked by how much it has changed in the last nine years.  Jon is the only friend I have kept in contact with from my time up in Detroit, but a few people remembered me (I tend not to be an easily forgettable person) and other than the driving time itself it was a pleasant little trip.

ScrumMaster Certification

Adventure 20100514
I was recently lucky enough to be able to attend a two day ScrumMaster certification training session led by Michele Sliger and gain my certification from the Scrum Alliance.  Michelle did a great job of making the information interesting and understandable.

Sam and Greg's Birthday

Experiment: 20100507
Greg and I decided to share a birthday celebration this year.  I asked Kathy to make me a huge peanut-butter chip cookie and I made Greg a very colorful Red Velvet Cake.  Considering this is actually the first real cake I've made this year I was a little disappointed, but I suppose I've just gotten out of practice.

Carrie's Candy Sushi Birthday

Experiment: 20100226
Continuing the pattern of my friends attempting to expand the whole concept of "Sam likes baking cakes for everyone's birthdays" my friend Carrie choose "Sushi" as her theme this year....  After extended consideration I discarded the idea of wrapping several pounds of tuna in fondant and instead went for a candy sushi platter theme.