Plaidophile

Today, something nearly ate the sun, but fortunately it gave it back to us before the world ended.

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A lot of folks out there know about the Mandelbrot set. But that knowledge is often based on pretty abstract stuff, and is limited to the fractal as a two-dimensional thing that doesn't really make much sense. The other day I decided to screw around with some basic GPU programs, and I figured I'd finally write some stuff about this.

This is of course very basic to anyone who has studied fractals before, but the description of what's going on is largely secondary in this case.

(Warning: There are a lot of very large images in this post.)

For the first time in a while, I decided to buy an album off the iTunes Music Store (since it was the only place it was available). Actually purchasing it required:

1. Logging into iTunes
2. Accepting updated terms and conditions
3. Logging into iTunes again
4. Enabling a bunch of wish-it-were-two-factor authentication questions (with the usual problems the pre-set questions always have, and no way to set custom questions)
5. Logging into iTunes again
6. Being notified of the download on every iOS device in my house simultaneously (some of which I didn't realize were even turned on)
7. Being asked if I wanted to turn on automatic downloads of purchases (why yes I WOULD like to actually download this music I just paid for!)
8. Finally, logging into iTunes again

At that point it finally downloaded the album.

As always, the last 10% of the project ends up taking 90% of the time. Also, quite a lot more money involved too — I'm not even going to total it up because holy cow. (Let's just say that I'm certain that I've spent more on this kitchen update than I paid for my car.)

A while ago I got a SodaStream water carbonator to replace my slowly-failing iSi siphon. While I haven't used any of SodaStream's own flavor syrups (as I have heard they are generally nasty, and all of them use sucralose which tastes bad and whose health "benefits" are questionable at best), I have of course made several bottles of soda flavored using Torani syrups. However, I found those to be a bit sickeningly-sweet, not to mention overpriced, but after a bit of experimenting I discovered a very simple means of making soda which is quite delicious and also much healthier: herbal tea!

Basically, after carbonating a 1L bottle as best as you can, put two herbal teabags in (I usually remove the tags and use chopsticks to remove them) and let it brew overnight. If the tea you selected isn't sweet enough, you can add a couple tablespoons of simple syrup or honey or the like afterwards.

I find that Tazo's herbal teas work very well; their orange blossom and passionfruit teas are way too fruity and sweet for use as a hot tea, but as a soda flavoring they're perfect, and zero-calorie, too.

Stash's lemon-ginger tea is also pretty good as a ginger ale surrogate, although that needs quite a lot of sweetener. (I've also found that it doesn't hold its carbonation very well.) Of course, for ginger ale there are better ways to brew it (which involve actual fermentation)