• Electricity saving hack

    From Buzz McCool@1:229/2 to All on Wednesday, October 30, 2019 18:03:49
    From: buzz_mccool@yahoo.com

    Electricity prices is my area keep rising. The latest outrage here is
    that prices will be much higher during the late afternoon and evening
    (i.e. when I'm home from work and it is dark outside and I want to use electricity.) I've already replaced all the incandescent lights in my
    home with LED or compact fluorescent versions and was scratching my head
    trying to think of any other potential efficiencies.

    Obhack:
    Swap the light switch locations in the bathrooms such that the switch to
    the single lamp fixture in the ceiling is the first switch you feel (and
    flip on) as you walk in the door instead of the three lamp (powder
    room), four lamp (guest bathroom), or six lamp (master bathroom)
    fixtures above the sink mirrors.

    Buzz

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)
  • From Buzz McCool@1:229/2 to Buzz McCool on Thursday, October 31, 2019 13:30:01
    From: buzz_mccool@yahoo.com

    On 10/30/19 5:03 PM, Buzz McCool wrote:
    Electricity prices is [sic] my area keep rising....
    (Quick, think of a way to correct the typo.)

    Pickle prices *IN* my area also keep rising.

    ObHack:
    I save the pickle juice and jar after I'm done eating a jar of Claussen
    brand dill pickles. Then I buy some carrots, peel them, cut to half size
    and then slice into quarters to make thin, pickle jars sized carrot
    spears. I pack them back into the jar and top off with some white
    vinegar if they are not all covered by the existing juice. I give the
    jar a shake, refrigerate, and in a couple of weeks or less I have
    delicious pickled carrots. Note I tried this with those small "baby"
    carrots and it didn't taste as good as the spears.

    Buzz

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)
  • From Eli the Bearded@1:229/2 to buzz_mccool@yahoo.com on Friday, November 01, 2019 20:16:24
    From: *@eli.users.panix.com

    In alt.hackers, Buzz McCool <buzz_mccool@yahoo.com> wrote:
    Pickle prices *IN* my area also keep rising.

    ObHack:
    I save the pickle juice and jar after I'm done eating a jar of Claussen
    brand dill pickles. Then I buy some carrots, peel them, cut to half size
    and then slice into quarters to make thin, pickle jars sized carrot
    spears. I pack them back into the jar and top off with some white
    vinegar if they are not all covered by the existing juice. I give the
    jar a shake, refrigerate, and in a couple of weeks or less I have
    delicious pickled carrots. Note I tried this with those small "baby"
    carrots and it didn't taste as good as the spears.

    Real pickles can be made with just salt and water (and something to
    pickle). I do it that way: salt, water, spices, vegetables. I do
    typically save some water from the previous batch to add to the new
    batch, but that's not necessary.

    Here's a recipe I've used a few times:

    ~ 1.6lb cukes, quartered
    ~ 1 head garlic peeled, cloves halved
    ~ 600ml water w/
    5 teaspoon grey salt
    ~ 300ml water from previous pickles
    2 teaspoon whole coriander
    2 teaspoon whole black pepper
    1 teaspoon whole cumin

    Put in water-sealed crock, leave for 3 to 4 days, transfer to
    mason jar in fridge; eat within a month.

    "Grey" salt is basically the raw stuff you get from letting sea water evaporate. It has sodium chloride and other salts (in the chemical
    sense of "salt"). Unlike plain salt or refined sea salt, it looks grey
    and it looks damp. I don't think grey salt is strictly necessary, but I
    do think it helps.

    ObHack:

    I wanted to renumber a bunch of sequentially numbered files, but not
    all the way back to 0, so that I could add some more in there. So,
    reproduced here in psuedo code, I wrote a script to do:

    with eachfile in directory:
    if eachfile matches /^(\d)(-.*)/ ; then
    number = match.capture(1)
    rest = match.capture(2)

    if number >= startmove ; then
    number = number - startmove

    tomove[number] = rest
    endif
    endif

    # rename from end back down because some files with consecutive
    # numbers do not have uniquely "rest" parts
    while number >= 0:
    newnumber = number + shiftamount
    oldname = join( number , tomove[number] )
    newname = join( newnumber , tomove[number] )
    rename( oldname, newname )
    number = number - 1

    The hack is using the numbers, with startmove subtracted, as indexes in
    the array, so I could self-sort the array. Which I needed sorted so that
    I could avoid clobbering files which have the same name execpt for the
    number.

    Elijah
    ------
    the files are supposed to be in (subjective) complexity order

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)