Shallow Thoughts : : misc

Coffee Shirts

I'm not a major coffee drinker, but Dave is, and he's varied over the years in how he prefers to make his coffee. For a long time he used an espresso maker, then a French press, then cold press, but lately, he's been making a variety of cold press he calls "sun coffee". It's similar to "sun tea", where you mix tea leaves with water in a pitcher in a sunny window for a few days.

That means that eventually, it has to be filtered. We don't want want to use disposable paper filters. There are lots of options, but I like the solution Dave came up with: he uses an old white t-shirt. Two layers of t-shirt material does a pretty decent job of filtering (you might need to shift to another place on the shirt halfway through, depending on how much coffee you brewed and how finely it's ground).

After filtering, you wring out the filter and dump the grounds in a bucket where eventually it can be transferred somewhere like a path out in the yard. (We used to use it in the garden or in the compost bin on the theory that plants like more acidic soil, but the plants didn't do well so we've stopped that.) The coffee gets stored in the fridge.

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Best Books I Read in 2025

Happy New Year!

Time for an annual "Best Books of the Year" list. As always, these aren't all new books this year; they're just new to me. (Or even a beloved re-read, but this year I'm not listing any of those.)

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Construction Sites Covered with Plastic

Periodically in Los Alamos county we try to pass an ordinance to make retailers charge for #plastic bags, so people use fewer of them and we don't end up with plastic bag litter floating around all over the county.

But plastic bags are a nonissue compared to the new practice of covering whole buildings with plastic wrap during construction.

I've noticed it before, late last year when there was some sort of construction going on on the guard tower that stands near the east edge of town on NM 502. The entire tower was covered with plastic for months.

But between wind and the fierce UV at over 6000' elevation, plastic doesn't last long outdoors. So on the guard tower, the plastic shredded in just a few days, and they had to replace it several times a week. I'm sure the same will be true of the new plastic wrap on Piñon school.

Surely there must be a better way?

Best Books I Read in 2024

My annual "Best Books I Read Last Year" is a little sparse for 2024. When I look at my reading record, I see I only finished 17 books all year, the lowest count by far since I started keeping track in 2004.

There are a couple of reasons for that, some good, some bad.

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A Lovely Christmas Eve Present

I just had the greatest Christmas Eve present.

Yesterday we went exploring bike trails. We drove the length of Buckman Rd (a little over 10 miles of dirt washboard and sand, which I'm happy to say the newer Rav4 handles much better than the old one did) to explore the trail along the river. But we hit a washout about a mile and a half in, and Dave didn't want to try to find a way around it. So we went back to the car, packed up the bikes, and drove over to the La Tierra Trails, which turned out to be a wonderful mountain bike playground, about which I may write at some point.

When we got home, though, I realized I no longer had my Rav4 key.

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How to Move Around More (Being an "Outdoor Person")

I like to think of myself as an outdoor person. I like hiking, mountain biking, astronomy, and generally enjoying the beauty of the world.

Except — let's not kid ourselves here — I'm really more of a computer geek. Without some sort of push, I can easily stay planted on my butt in front of the computer all day — sure, looking out the window and admiring the view (I do a lot of that since we moved to New Mexico), but still sitting indoors in the computer chair.

Earlier this year, the science podcast "Short Wave" played an NPR series called Body Electric that had a lot of interviews with scientists who have studied some aspect of the health benefits of motion versus sitting, and specifically, the idea of getting up and moving around for five minutes every half hour. They challenged listeners to try it, and featured statements from listeners about their improved health and energy levels.

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Transposing a Song in Audacity

I've been learning guitar. I've tried several times in the past without much success, concluding that although I love music, making it is just not where my talents lie. But this time I'm following a course (Justin Guitar), doing things more or less in the recommended order rather than jumping around randomly. It's fun, and I'm practicing regularly and feel like I'm making progress.

So far I know about five chords, and surprisingly, there are a lot of good songs you can play with only three to five chords. But if you want to play along with a record, some songs need a capo (one of those little dinguses you can clamp around the guitar's neck) to map the chords to ones that are easy for beginners to play.

I don't have a capo. Justin Guitar has a phone app that supposedly can transpose songs, but I wouldn't know about that, because it doesn't work on my phone, just spins forever any time I try to load a song. But I do have a computer; can't I just take a recording and transpose it?

Yes! It's easy in Audacity.

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Best Books I Read in 2023

2023 was a good year for books, especially nonfiction.

I only finished twenty books this year. I think that's mostly because I read a lot more nonfiction than usual (tending toward long books and slower reading), and I had no re-reads. Still, quite a bit lower than past years. I guess I've been pretty busy with other things, and tired and zonking out early instead of reading well into the night.

Here are some of the books I enjoyed most this year.

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