My uncle and aunt in California gave Melissa and I an engagement gift of a credit to a nice furniture store in DC. Used it to get an awesome home office setup. I wish I got to use it more, but today is the perfect day to stay home and do some research.

The monument is sticking out in the background. The view is splendid.

For NYE, we went to Fripp Island, SC with some good friends. I’ll post some pictures shortly. The highlights were a great golf game with Mitch and an Oyster roast on New Years Eve. Regarding golf, let me just say that if Caroline is my scorekeeper, I might make par someday, otherwise there is no chance.

1. Update the Gemfile and Gemfile.lock to use the new version of httparty

2. Started seeing errors like this:

NameError: constant JSON::Parser not defined
/Users/rbanerjee/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p180/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
/Users/rbanerjee/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p180/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
/Users/rbanerjee/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p180/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
/Users/rbanerjee/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p180/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/custom_require.rb:36:in `require'
/Users/rbanerjee/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/multi_json-1.0.3/lib/multi_json.rb:30:in `block in default_engine'

and

NotImplementedError: HTTParty::Parser has not implemented a parsing method for the :json format.
/Users/rbanerjee/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/httparty-0.8.0/lib/httparty/parser.rb:138:in `rescue in parse_supported_format'
/Users/rbanerjee/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p180/gems/httparty-0.8.0/lib/httparty/parser.rb:136:in `parse_supported_format'

Huh? That doesn’t make any sense: HTTParty doesn’t have a built in JSON parser? What about the dependencies it just listed? Turns out that the second error is a result of the first failure.

3. Did some digging into multi_json docs, which are listed as a dependency. The first example in the basic doc is incorrect and I had to do a little tweaking.

SOLUTION

1. Fix your require statements at the top of your class:
require 'httparty'
require 'multi_json'

2. Inside your class or module,
include HTTParty
include MultiJson

3. Place this near your code, in a place where it’ll effect every function:
MultiJson.engine = :json_gem

Good luck. Drop a note and let me know if this worked / didn’t work for you.

from Slashdot. Turn to high-def mode and full screen for this gorgeous video!

I’m starting with this recipe from the food network:

Ingredients

* 3 pounds very ripe tomatoes, coarsely chopped
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vegetable oil
* 1 small onion, finely chopped
* 1 large clove garlic, minced
* 1/4 cup light brown sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon ground mustard
* 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
* 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
* 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
* 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
* Pinch ground cinnamon
* 1/4 cup cider vinegar
* Salt

Start by buying the ripest, most delicious tomatoes you can find.

From Hurricane Irene

We got these from a farmer’s market on 14th and U street in Northwest DC. The tomatoes are delicious: we ate one of the heirloom tomatoes destined for the pot in about 30 seconds flat.

Next, chop them coarsely and blend them to a puree.

Pass the puree through a wire mesh strainer and into a bowl or pot.

Use a wooden spoon to mash the paste through the strainer until all that remains is the solids.

Finely dice a small onion.

And fry it up.

Now the cooking begins. It will cook down for over an hour.

And the final product!

So delicious. It is mildly spicy: I will use 3x the crushed red pepper next time. I had no cider vinegar and used ordinary vinegar instead and it added became a little too tart. But man it was good. My cousins came over last night and we put the ketchup on everything from edamame to dumplings.

it was awesome.

1. Ceiling Fan in the guest bedroom. No more steaming while reading, and more comfortable for friends sleeping over

2. Solar Shades to keep the sun out and the place cooler (and let me sleep longer)

3. Home beer brewing. It takes soooo much energy to transport the beer from the brewery to me.

4. More motion detector light switches. Some of the lights turn off when you leave the room. Upgrade the rest of them.

Have to pick one, any suggestions?

• Turn off the AC / Heat while you’re at work
• Cool off the apartment before you return
• Save a LOT of money

A lot of people leave their temperature at the same setting all day and night. This is a terrible waste of energy. It is much more cost effective to cool it when you are returning home, and to turn off system when you leave in the morning. It is hard to remember to do it manually, so a programmable thermostat is significantly better.

I decided to one-up the programmable thermostat and completely geek it out with a wifi thermostat that one can control from their computer, Android or iphone.

The thermostat of choice was this one:

The CT30 from Radio Thermostat Company of America. Despite the cheesy 80′s sounding name which you may liken to other well known institutions like the Peanut Corporation of America or Yokogawa Corporation of America, this is a fine thermostat. The interface is well designed and the software is surprisingly good.

Installation

This thermostat was quite easy to install. You need to have a C-Wire in your condo, which is a 24V AC electric supply. It frequently comes from your HVAC unit directly. Most modern buildings have this wire. Our condominium, The Floridian, has a C-Wire ready to use.

Removal of the Old Thermostat

You should remove the old thermostat carefully. In case you find that your wiring isn’t up to snuff and you don’t have a C-Wire, you’ll want to put this back. I had a cheap, builders-grade digital thermometer with only two buttons. I kept it just to have a backup. It had some strange snaps in the back, but can be pried off with a flat screw driver:

Pry it off. It has two weird snaps holding it on:

Turn Off your CIRCUIT BREAKER!

Turn off the HVAC unit and any A/C Compressors you have. Hopefully they are on individual circuits and individually labeled. The C-Wire carries 24V of electricity and could give you a nasty jolt. It could kill your goldfish but is unlikely to kill you.

Prepare the new thermostat

Remove the old wall plate. Remove this carefully. In our condo, the builder had half-assed the job and hadn’t put any anchors into the wall. I also found out that there was a hidden aluminum junction box immediately behind the drywall which made it hard to add my own wall anchors. I highly recommend using molly bolts in drywall, otherwise any screws you install are apt to fall out with just a light tug.

Wiring and Mounting

Our building has a 5-wire system:

5-wire heat pump system with Auxiliary Heat

This means that a heat pump is used to raise and lower the temperature in the condo. When the temperature needs to be raised by more than 5 degrees, or the heat pump is malfunctioning for some reason, an electric Auxiliary heater kicks in as “emergency heat”. This heater consumes a lot of electricity and is expensive to run. Think about heating with a hair dryer. It is imperative to buy a thermostat that can have a meaningful relationship with the auxiliary heater.

Follow the instruction manual to wire it up and mount it to the wall using wall anchors. You may have to drill up to four small holes to install the wall anchors. They will help to keep the thermostat installed snugly against your wall. I was only able to install two wall anchors because of the pesky hidden aluminum junction box I spoke of before.

Final Product

Total Time: 45 Minutes

Total Cost: $130

Total Savings: $1m, at least. Per week.

In all seriousness, installing a programmable thermostat, even an ordinary one, will save you a lot of money on your energy bill. It will keep the apartment at your ideal temperature when you’re home, and at a more efficient temperature when you’re away. Don’t believe the myth that cooling your home all day while you are away is more efficient than turning on your AC 30 minutes before you come home. Nowadays, I can turn on the AC with my phone anytime I want.

Here is a little guide that may help you to install a ceiling fan in your bedroom. My situation was made easier by a concrete ceiling with a pre-drilled, sturdy electrical box. First of all, it is critical to have a tall and sturdy ladder. I tried at first with a 3-foot stepladder, but it would have been superhuman to lift the 40lb motor and tighten very small, very intricate screws standing on my tip-toes. Get a good ladder!

See what your mounting hardware looks like

Remove your existing light fixture to see what you will mount your ceiling fan to. Here in the Floridian, our ceilings are concrete and the builder installed some very solid electrical boxes. You shouldn’t feel scared to secure a spinning 40 pound contraption to the ceiling.

The boxes in our ceilings are made of sturdy plastic. It is hard to see in the picture, but it is well encased in concrete. The box has kind of a mushroom shape with the wider part at the top and encased in concrete, so it is unlikely to slip out. I used machine screws (not the provided wood screws) to secure the fan to the ceiling box.

You have to remove all of the existing light fixtures and hardware and stretch out the wires. In our building, you may see two “live ends”, where you can connect two separate fixtures, each controlled by a separate wall switch. See the picture below. This was a nice addition by the developer.

Two live ends.

Each with a separate wall switch.

Putting the heavy bits together

Do exactly as the manual says! The Hunter Fan that I bought had ~100 pieces and it wasn’t easy putting it together. But whenever I diverged from the instructions and did something of my own, it was bad… real bad. At one point I had to disassemble the whole body while it was hanging from the ceiling. I’d wired everything together and turned the switch and nothing happened. As it turns out, I didn’t push a “reset” button after changing the remote control frequency. 2 hour detour.

Building the heavy bits

Hanging and taking shape!

From Installing a Ceiling Fan

The final product!

The fan looks beautiful in our bedroom, matching the wood texture of the ceiling. I slept in comfort last night. It could have been the fan or the wine, but it was a lovely sleep nonetheless. The fan is a Hunter fan from LightingDirect.com and cost ~$320. Be sure to get a coupon from the internet. I used a 12″ downrod to lower it down from the ceiling. Lighting Direct recommends an 18″ downrod for 10-foot ceilings like mine, but I opted for a shorter one and like this look better. The fan ships with a ~4 inch downrod that is totally insufficient.

Give it a try, and leave a comment if you found this useful. It is very easy to install this in the Floridian condos in NW DC – no drilling, cutting, or excessive wiring needed.

My parents are here this weekend and we’re having a great time. They were sad when I left Boston, or at least my father was. I had a very interesting life change recently, some of you know what it was, and this is the first time my parents are coming to visit afterward. I’ll be writing a protected post about it shortly.

One of the cooler things I’ve done with the phone is to have it automagically download my favorite podcasts so I can listen to them on the subway. I sometimes listen to Pandora on my 30 minute morning and evening train ride, but sometimes the train gets stuck beneath the Potomac River and there is no Verizon data signal down there. Pandora will drop the song half-way through and I’ll be sitting listening to farts and coughing for the remainder of my ride.

I chose a free application called Acast to listen to podcasts. I always choose a free application first because I can get rid of it without a second thought if I don’t like it. Acast will:

- Show all of the podcast feeds so I can choose the most recent content (basic functionality)

- Download podcasts to my SD card so I can listen when my phone is off the network or in a tunnel

- Be configured to download podcasts only when my phone is plugged in and on wifi at night (save that battery!)

Anyway, it is cool. The new version of Acast works well. The previous version had some issues with the “podcast control pane”, so when I wanted to pause or ffwd I couldn’t find the pane and would be SOL.

My four favorite podcasts are:

- NPR Marketplace Money

- NPR: Technology

- HVW8 International Podcast – All kinds of funky music

- Gilles Peterson’s Podcast – All kinds of music from Jazz to House, all super tasteful and good for parties and chilling out.

That list is being refined and complemented by other podcasts, so check back.

I highly recommend you download ACast and subscribe to some podcasts of your own! You can customize your content endlessly!

This is what the snow cover will look like.

Totally nuts. The entire US will be covered in snow!