Perhaps with some additional SkeinForge tweaking I can get my prints to be completely watertight.

Tools used:

• 1 MakerBot
• 1 cheap crock-pot (I found one for $9 at my local wal-mart)
• 1 Microwave oven
• 1 box Rit dye powder

My original plan was to purchase an electric burner and small saucepan, but wal-mart’s lack of burners and the crock-pot for 1/3 of the price I was going to spend changed my mind. Since we have a microwave at the hackerspace the crock pot doesn’t actually need to do the work of heating up the water, just keeping it hot.  A quick glance at the manual showed that the ceramic pot was indeed microwave safe.  I filled it about half full (4 cups) of water and put it in the microwave until it boiled, about 5 minutes.  Then using oven mits I transferred it to the crock-pot and set it on high.

Added one package of Rit powder and mixed with a plastic spoon.

I then added my first of 3 test pieces.  I dyed one for 20 minutes, another for 30, and the last for 45.  After the pieces were removed I rinsed them first in hot water and then cold.  I believe the cold rinse is somewhat essential to setting the dye.

There wasn’t much of a difference between 20 and 30 minutes.  The 45 minute block came out much darker.  My initial reaction is that the dye bath got a lot hotter and the piece actually sank towards the end.

There are still many variables I haven’t tested.  The pieces I tested floated in the dye so additional stirring/submerging may have darkened them more.  The orange color is light and longer times may effect darker colors more.  Some of my research indicated that certain plastics may need to reach a critical temperature before they take the dye.

If you’ve given this a try, please share your results.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y079xWjzBGE

Sorry the photos are still rotated weird.  They look fine on my computer, but as soon as I upload them something happens.

Here’s what happens next:

Here it is, untouched since last time.  Lift it up high, we’re gonna use gravity to help us transfer it off of the yeasties that have settled on the bottom.

Siphoning into a 2nd clean and sanitized bucket.  This take between 5 and 10 minutes.

Still going.

Add a clean and sanitized lid and put the airlock back on.  This sits in its “secondary” fermentation usually at least twice as long as the primary took.  If you drank it now, you might notice some off flavors.  When apples ferment they create sulfur so the cider might taste like rhinoceros farts.  The secondary fermentation is really just an aging process.  I’d recommend at least 2 weeks, but if you’ve got the patience 2-6 months is great as long as you keep the water level up in your airlock.

Here’s the yeast from the bottom of the bucket.  It’s going into the fridge until I start a new batch.

So now the bucket just sits for a while, you can check back every day if you’d like, but I have no idea when I’ll get to the bottling.  So hopefully you’ve seen that it’s really easy.  Honestly I think that bottling is the hardest part.  Getting it into the damn bottles without getting it all over the place takes more patience than I have.

See to the right over there? —>

The last 10 songs I listened to, that comes from last.fm a free music service that tracks the music you play and is able to do many things.  It has an online radio portion to it that many people swear by, even over Pandora.  However, my favorite part is that by tracking your songs it is able to give you recommendations based on what other people listening to the same music also like.

Since apps can’t be run in the background on a non jailbroken device, the only way you are able to ‘scrobble’ a track is by using the official Last.fm app which is limited to playing the online radio stations.  Scrobbl runs in the background all of the time, and scrobbles my tracks even when I’m on the road and playing music in my car.

Check back for part 3, or you can just check the main post because I’ll be adding them all to it.

1. Music Controls

Music Controls is probably my favorite app in the Cydia app store.  If you don’t know what Cydia is, don’t worry I’ll have a post on it later, but basically it’s the app store for jailbroken phones.

My first real disappointment with my phone was the inability to run anything but the core apps in the background.  So while I could listen to anything from my ipod while surfing the web or sending a text message, if I wanted to listen to Pandora, I had to stay in the Pandora app and was unable to do anything else.  If I got a text, or an email, I had to quit it.  So as soon as the 3GS was jailbroken I hopped on the train and my first stop was Backgrounder.  This app allows you to run any app in the background, while it worked for what it was meant to do, it also caused problems for me in other functions of my phone.  Mostly not being able to turn it on occasionally requiring me to reboot the device.  I’m pretty sure that this problem has been fixed by now, and Backgrounder is a great app, but the only thing I really needed to run in the background were music apps.  While searching for a fix to the freezing problems I came across Music Controls and have been so happy with it I never went back.

Music Controls is also great because you can use the free trial before you decided if you want to pay for it.  The trial is just a limited version of the app and once you pay you can register it to unlock the full set of features.  For most people the free version might be all you want or need.

After using it for a while my new favorite feature is the controls in the status bar of the display.  When I have my phone in the makeshift dock I constructed in my car to use it for gps navigation and playing music, I have control over my music while staying in my navigation app.

As you can see, it shows the artist and title of the current track, and has button for play/pause, and previous and next song.

2. Scrobble (Scrobbl for 3.0+)

See to the right over there? —>

The last 10 songs I listened to, that comes from last.fm a free music service that tracks the music you play and is able to do many things.  It has an online radio portion to it that many people swear by, even over Pandora.  However, my favorite part is that by tracking your songs it is able to give you recommendations based on what other people listening to the same music also like.

Since apps can’t be run in the background on a non jailbroken device, the only way you are able to ‘scrobble’ a track is by using the official Last.fm app which is limited to playing the online radio stations.  Scrobbl runs in the background all of the time, and scrobbles my tracks even when I’m on the road and playing music in my car.

Check back for part 3.

Having seen Gogol live, I like this album very much.  I love comparing the two versions of “Start wearing purple” that were released on different albums, and now I can compare the album versions of songs to these live ones.

If you’ve never heard of gogol, well… you should have. (Here’s a good place to start) Where else can you get your daily dose of gypsy punk?  Yeah. I thought so, NOWHERE!

What you need:

5 gallons of juice – I like to use Indian Summer apple cider, its only ingredient is apple juice, no preservatives.

Some extra sugar (optional, to raise alcohol content) – I used 4 cans of apple juice concentrate, plenty of sugar, not much extra water.

Yeast – I used a starter made with the sediment from the bottom of one of my bottles of cider and 1 of the cans of concentrate, left on my stir-plate for about 48 hours until it started bubbling, if you can’t make a starter, I recommend Wyeast labs #4766.  My starter is a 3rd generation of that strain.

First step, clean and sanitize your container and add your first gallon of juice:

Add another gallon:

And another:

Next I added my starter and the other 3 cans of concentrate, so that pouring the last 2 gallons of juice would mix it all in:

Now add the last 2 gallons:

Pretty full, that’s a 6.5 gal bucket

Next you’ll want to measure the initial gravity so you can calculate the abv. later:

1.056, measuring in the bucket is not exactly kosher, good thing I’m not an orthodox jew…

Now place the cleaned and sanitized cover on and then your airlock:

And the waiting begins…  Approximately 2-3 weeks depending on the room temperature.  Lucky for me I have a nice cold Minnesota basement which allows the yeasties to take their time and makes a tastier end product than if they were rushed.  It’ll be done when the airlock stops bubbling, check back in 2-3 weeks for the next step.  Hopefully by then I’ll figure out how to take and transfer the photos from the phone so they’re right side up without having to edit them somewhere in the middle of the process.  Until then hop in bed and do some sideways reading and right side up photo viewing.

Update: Here’s part 2