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Cake day: June 14th, 2023

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  • It will be similar but not the same. Tvarog & quark are more acidic. So it will have a tartness you may or may not like. With cottage cheese there is more rennet for curdling, the curd is cut like with cheese production, and the curd is heated and washed, producing a more firm and less sour curd. Then cream is added.

    So try it and see what you think. If it is too sour you could try and find a very soft fresh cheese it might be closer to the curd you are familiar with and add cream to that.

    In the end though, cottage cheese is an industrial product, with all kinds of bioengineering involved (like special bacteria strains that produce diacetyl for a buttery flavor). So any hacks will be unlikely to duplicate the flavor and texture exactly. It’s probably worth learning to love the local stuff.




  • If you have trouble with the soaking, black beans do very well with a “quick soak”.

    1. Cover them with water about twice the depth of the beans. Add about 1 teaspoon (~5 ml or 5-7 g) salt.

    2. Bring to a boil and keep it boiling for 2 minutes. Then cover and turn off the burner/hob. Let soak for 1-2 hours.

    3. Add any extra seasonings now (but nothing acidic). Then bring back to a boil and then simmer until soft. Adjust seasoning and you’re done.

    They should take much less time than cooking from dry. How long will depend on the beans. Older beans can take much longer, but most should be soft in 1 hour or so.




  • Does this media server need to be accessible when you are away from home? Will you store personal data on it?

    Out of band management: this is a server feature that lets you access and manage the server even if the OS is down. That’s important if you may be away from home and need to fix a boot problem.

    You can simulate some of this with PiKVM (remote console access) and PDU solutions (remote power control).

    Redundant power: servers often have redundant power supplies, so that if one fails it can still function.

    You can simulate this, with short downtime, by having a replacement ready. Mini PCs make this easy by using relatively inexpensive laptop style external power bricks. But also think about the power circuit - is the server on the same breaker/fuse with something that could potentially take the circuit down while you are away?

    ECC RAM: this is about data integrity. If there is a failure in non-ECC then a bit flip could cause data corruption.

    You can’t really get this without ECC. Using a file system that has anti-corruption features can help reduce some of the risk. You probably trust your data to consumer PC hardware, so this would be no different really. It’s about risk mitigation.

    And that’s the main thing here, deciding on the use cases and prioritizing/budgeting how you mitigate risks to each.






  • Yeah, I get what you’re saying. Definitely. It’s not complicated for one pair of speakers in one room. For one music source. For one person controlling it.

    There just haven’t been any better cost-effective solutions with multi-room, control from your any phone convenience. And that’s a big plus for how we listen to music. Today there are a few contenders, but many of them are also cloud dependent. Really the small number of good options in this space is proof of how good Sonos was for a long time. Well and also of Spotify causing people ditch the idea of a offline digital music library.

    Edit: And to be clear, aside from the “any computer networks” part, this is what the original Sonos device did. It could work without a home network, but worked best with a shared music library on a PC. Didn’t need cloud anything, internet connection, account, etc. You just hooked your normal speakers to it and it played music.