Monthly Archives: February 2015

Fermented Figs Timelapse

Fermentation, Linux, Time Lapse Photography, , , , , , ,

Nothing beats combining two things that are interesting together. I’ve been into fermenting foods and beverages since the late 1990’s and have been experimenting with timelapse photography since late in 2013 ( One of the first projects I set up and Ubuntu Server for ). Combining them together has been an interesting experience lately.

Recently I bought a 50.5 Ounce glass container with a gasketed lid. I got the idea from reading The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz, a must have if you are considering getting serious about fermentation, it covers a lot of territory on the fermentation landscape. This jar is ideal for some fermentation experiments as any pressure built up in the container would vent via the gasketed lid.  A lot of times, I don’t worry about pressure build up, because I am close to home and can vent it manually. But this time I was going to be away so this jar would be good to use. I decided to try to ferment some figs in it and create a time lapse video by taking photos every 4 minutes. I ran it for a week, almost 2400 frames.

The Ferment Mixture

The figs were a bit on the hard side so they were not getting used up to much and I decided that they would be good candidates for a fermentation experiment. The fermentation was started by cutting up the figs into small bits and added some sugar water and a pinch of bread yeast. Normally I would have let them ferment naturally based on what wild yeasts are present on the fruit, but I wanted a vigorous fermentation that got going quickly in order to capture the action for the timelapse video.

Timelapse Video Setup

The setup for the timelapse video was a laptop running Ubuntu with Apache and a webcam. The program used to take the frames for the timelapse video is fswebcam ( which I cover in the post on Bread Dough Rising Timelapse GIF ). The frames were taken every four minutes and saved into a folder underneath my home directory. Additionally a frame was copied to the /var/www directory to allow it to be seen on the web. Plus, I have a symbolic link from /var/www to a directory called fswebcam under my home directory. This directory holds the scripts to run fswebcam, under this is a directory called timelapse which collects all of the frames. This allows me to flip through these from the web as well, so I can keep track of the fermentation progress.

I went away for a few days while I was running the timelapse frame capture and it was nice to be able to view it to check on the progress. To get it online, I basically added a virtual server on the router for port 80, pointing to the internal IP address of the laptop, which was hooked to the router via WiFi. This worked flawless and I was able to periodically check in on the fermentation while on the road.

Fig Fermentation Timelapse Photography Setup
Fig Fermentation Timelapse Photography Setup

 

Timelapse Video AVI

Fermenting Figs 1 frame every 4 minutes for 31s of video

 

 

 

Wake on LAN via Windows

Info Links, Linux, , , , ,
Windows

To wake a machine from a Windows computer there are a few choices.

wolcmd

wolcmd for the command line from Depicus.com is good to use in scripts or by itself. It works 100% of the time for me.

 wolcmd yourmacaddr localserveripaddr 0.0.0.0 9

wolcmd can start the Linux server using wolcmd <-download page, from Depicus.com

Wake on LAN GUI

A GUI version of the wolcmd tool from Depicus.com WakeOnLanGui

WOL Magic Packet Sender Tool

WOL Magic Packet Sender, uses a WOL Setup MSI file.  I have used this quite a bit and it does work nicely. It is the first one that I used and have it on my Windows machines.

Online

At Depicus.com you can wake your machine directly from the Internet as well without loading any application via this page –> http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/woli.aspx

There is even a way with the Depicus site to make up a URL that will have the MAC address, IP address and Port as parameters to send a magic packet. I’ve tried it and it works.

 

 

 

 

Tuscan Style Chicken Thighs

Recipes, , , , , , ,

This is a recipe that I saw on TV, don’t remember the show. But I have since modified the recipe. I chose chicken thighs, they are generally moister as they contain more dark meat. This recipe can also be done with an entire chicken splayed or a half chicken.

Tuscan Chicken Thighs Plated
Tuscan Chicken Thighs Plated

Ingredients

2 Large onions

2 Large carrots

2 Celery stalks

4-6 Potatoes depending on size

4 Chicken thighs

1 Lemon, preferably preserved

Paprika

Old Bay

3 tbsp Dried rosemary, 1 for the thighs, 2 for the potatoes

4-8 Cloves garlic

Salt

Olive Oil

Tuscan Chicken Thighs, Chicken Ready For Oven
Tuscan Chicken Thighs, Chicken Ready For Oven

 Process

  • Set oven to 425 F
  • Cut up onions into 3/4 inch slabs and lay in bottom of casserole or cast iron pan
  • Peel carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces, add on top of onions
  • Celery cut into 1 inch pieces, add on top of onions
  • Clean skin of potatoes, quarter them, toss in bowl with salt ( to taste preference) 2 tbsp Rosemary and 2 tbsp Olive Oil. Put on top of other vegetables
  • Put in oven for 30 minutes, covered if possible
  • Rinse chicken thighs and do not remove skin, but loosen it gently to provide a pocket for the lemon and garlic
  • Take 1/4 Lemon, 1 or 2 cloves of garlic and a pinch of rosemary and stuff under the skin
  • Apply paprika, old bay and salt to taste preferences to the outside of the skin
  • After vegetables have cooked for 30 minutes, remove casserole/iron pan and place chicken on top of vegetables and then it goes back in the oven, 15 more minutes at 425F
  • Reduce heat to 375F, continue backing for approximately 1 to 1-1/4 hours until vegetables become soft
  • Remove chicken and allow to rest for 10 minutes
  • While chicken is resting, it is possible to mix vegetables around and broil them a bit until browned a bit

Tuscan Chicken Thighs, Vegetables