Prosthetic Conscience

“New” razors from Father-in-law

This past weekend we happened to be in Oak Ridge for a while, because we were in the region for an unfortunate reason that I’m not going to talk about here. Carol was very kind to give me a couple of razors that Bill no longer uses. One was a 1960 Gillette adjustable (“Fatboy”), and one was a 1959 Gillette flair-tip SuperSpeed. Carol was surprised to learn how old they were. Neither one was in all that great condition; both of them were corroded, especially on the twist-to-open knob, and the adjustment ring on the Fatboy is stuck.

(Side note. After seeing this Fatboy, I realized that my grandfather’s razor is, in fact, a Slim adjustable. All I can say is that by comparison to everything I was used to, it looked awfully fat!)

I got around to cleaning them last night. I got them both reasonably shiny, though the Fatboy is quite worn, and showing brass through the chrome. I couldn’t get the adjustment ring on it loose, either, and it’s set to 7 currently, which means I won’t be using it any time soon. The SuperSpeed is great, though. I loaded it with a Dorco and had a shave with it this morning.

It was an almost-great shave, too. I got my face baby’s butt smooth, with no redness. I did get several weepers, though, on the last cleanup pass I made going truly against the grain. The “aggressiveness” is about comparable to my Slim set on about 3 or 4, which is plenty for me, but the feel isn’t quite the same. More “snippy” at the same level of blade exposure.

My Slim has the problem that the blade exposure is not completely even on both sides, probably because it was dropped. It’s not a big enough difference to cause a problem, but it is one of the things that makes me want to get the Fatboy working to see how the adjustable is supposed to work.

[ Posted: 08:00] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Mushroom-spinach pasta

This is a recipe I made up to use ingredients that we happened to have. We actually didn’t have the pine nuts, but agreed that they would have made it better.

Ingredients

Instructions

Cook pasta al dente, and roast the pine nuts.

Saute onion in olive oil until it starts to soften; add garlic and oregano. Saute until onion is translucent.

Add mushrooms, saute until they give up their water.

Stir in the flour so that it coats the mushrooms and onions. Stir in the water bit by bit, making sure it is always completely blended before adding more. Stir in the yogurt and mix well, making sure to eliminate any lumps. Add the paprika, salt, and pepper.

Stir in the spinach, and cook until barely wilted. Stir in pine nuts and toss with pasta.

Serve hot. Makes about 4 servings.

[ Posted: 19:00] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Fiore Lightsabre?

This video shows a “lightsabre” duel done using a clip of WMA practitioners using what looks like Italian longsword technique. I get the impression that the persons depicted in the video were not involved with the lightsabre effects editing, and that the budding special effects guy just got the video from a search (there are lots of WMA videos out there). But still, cool to see a lightsabre video that uses real martial arts rather than Lucas-fu.

[ Posted: 11:05] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Harvesting Butternut Squash

It has come to my attention that a significant number of users that end up on this site get here because they are searching for instructions on harvesting butternut squash. But I don’t have instructions on harvesting butternut squash! In order to better serve these users, I will share what I know.

My understanding is that you are supposed to harvest butternut squash when the vines going into that squash are dry, and the fruit is deep tan in colour. Don’t wait too long, or the end of the squash near the vine will get eaten by some sort of caterpillar or grub, and you will have to cut it off, which means you won’t be able to save that squash for as long. You should be able to save intact squash for two to six months if they are kept cool.

Usually you harvest butternut squash in September or late August depending on how ripe they are, which depends on the weather. This is being posted on August 25, and I would say about half of my butternut squash are ripe now, but some of the vines are still producing new blossoms and new fruits.

[ Posted: 08:25] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 1 ]

Ratatouille

Ratatouille is the best thing about summer. Everything in it is from either our garden, a friend’s garden, or Round River Farms. A bowl of this basil-y vegetable stew and a glass of red table wine is enough to make you even be thankful for the 95° heat.

This is my version of the recipe, slightly modified from Anna Thomas’ in The New Vegetarian Epicure. It makes a lot; I made about half this much tonight and we had leftovers.

2 lbs. young, firm eggplants	2 Tbs olive oil
salt to taste	handful of chopped flat leaf parsley
2 lbs zucchini or yellow crookneck squash, or a mixture of the two.	2 handfuls of chopped fresh basil
6 cloves garlic, chopped	1 Tbs. balsamic vinegar
3 large onions, chopped	fresh ground black pepper to taste; I prefer rather a lot.
1 lb green bell pepper, seeded and chopped	3 large, red tomatoes, cut in 1 inch pieces
2 cups chopped roma tomatoes (in our garden these are more abundant than the large ones)

Cut the eggplants in ½-inch dice; I prefer them unpeeled. Toss them in a collander with salt (to drain their water). Trim the squash and cut it similarly, and also toss it in the collander with salt.

Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan or small dutch oven. Put in the garlic and onion and sauté over medium heat until the onion is translucent. Add the eggplant and squash to the onions and sauté for 7 or 8 minutes. Add the peppers and the chopped roma tomatoes, cover, turn down the heat, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Uncover the pan, and if the ratatouille is too soupy, let it simmer uncovered a bit to thicken. Add the chopped herbs and balsamic vinegar and pepper. Stir in the cut large tomatoe pieces, and simmer just for a few minutes.

Serve hot with some Parmesan cheese and a dry red table wine.

[ Posted: 20:12] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

That’s not a white tornado!

Apparently some kind of dust devil or mini-tornado swept through our garden, yesterday, knocking down the tomato plants, cages and all. This did quite a bit of damage to the plants, and we had a bit of a struggle getting the cages back up. It looks like they will be okay, now, though we’re still not sure what the final toll will be. At least we got a tasty dinner of green tomato chili out of it.

Also, all our pumpkins are dead, killed by squash vine borer. Thankfully, our butternut squash are unaffected; apparently they are less vulnerable. This might be because they put down so many secondary roots that even when they get infested, the insect doesn’t harm them much.

We also discovered that our tomatoes have a few tomato hornworms. On the one hand, they are rather pretty, and grow up into the good-looking five-spotted hawk moth. On the other hand, they eat tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. On the gripping hand, they are infected with larvae of a braconid wasp, which just goes to show that the entire class Insecta is not out to destroy our garden. On the other hand, it shows that the “destructive” insects can be a lot more appealing than the “beneficial” ones, who in this case are, in Lori’s words, “creepy.”

[ Posted: 15:01] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Swords in New Orleans

So while Lori was doing bridesmaid stuff, I wandered down to the Vieux Carré for a couple of hours. And what trip to the Vieux Carré would be complete without visiting the antique weapons shop on Royal St.? Okay, probably most would. But since I have learned a lot more about swords and sword history since I lived in New Orleans, I wanted to go there and have a look around.

They have a very broad selection of 19th century military swords and a few late 18th century swords, mostly American, British, and French, as well as a few non-European weapons. There was pretty much a whole wall of sabres, including the expected Civil War era American sabres and a few Napoleonic era British and French ones. I asked the shopkeeper for more information about a smallsword that wasn’t labeled with any details, and he told me about it, that it was a late 18th century French military sword. It must have been a dress sword of some sort, as it certainly wasn’t a battlefield weapon.

The prices were somewhat reasonable, in the sense that while I would never spend that much money on that kind of thing, even if I had it, I can imagine someone else doing so. For example, a French model 1822 light cavalry sabre, probably the most elegant example of its class of weapons, was “only” around $1000. I don’t know whether that’s actually a good deal or not, but given that medium-end reproduction swords (admittedly, reproductions of older types of swords) can be $800, I can see a collector paying that without breaking my brain.

[ Posted: 16:41] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Israeli Army frowns on Dungeons and Dragons

So do I, but not for the same reasons. I wonder what they think of Call of Cthulhu or All Flesh Must Be Eaten players :-P

[ Posted: 12:55] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Pointless Acts of Sharpening

So, yesterday I spent a lot of time waiting on a Fedora box to get up2date over the slow network at the CPRC, and I decided to amuse myself while waiting by pointless acts of knife sharpening. On my keyring (about which I probably ought to write at some point), I have a very cheap, stainless steel, made-in-China McGuyver knife. The knife blade on it is practically worthless, but I had sharpened it up reasonably well on my free stones. It’s basically disposable, so I figured I could practise any kind of sharpening on it I wanted without worrying about ruining it.

So I put a convex grind on it.

Because the steel was so soft, I didn’t have to use a bench grinder, or anything; just the time-tested mousepad and sandpaper method. I only used three grades of sandpaper, since Hiller Hardware had a pretty scant selection of the finer stuff. I ended up starting with 220 grit to change the shape of the secondary bevel, then 500 grit to do most of the sharpening, and 1500 grit to finish. Visually, the results look very nice. It now has a flat primary grind with convex edge bevel, and a “brushed metal” kind of finish. It’s also solidly shaving sharp (but not scary sharp; with the stones I had only been able to get it barely to shaving sharp…

Anyway, a waste of time, but it amused me, and was educational. When I can pick up a mousepad (free is good) to bring home (I’m a trackball person), I’ll have a go at the cheaper of my chef knives and see if I can get a convex secondary bevel on that. Then, perhaps I will order my Valiant golok. Mwah hah hah.

[ Posted: 07:04] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Swordfighting

So, how does swordfighting go along with all this peace and lurve stuff I do? There’s a good book on the subject called Herding The Ox, but here’s a quick movie quote that gets to the heart of it:

King of Qin: It just dawned on me! This scroll of Broken Sword’s isn’t about sword technique but about swordsmanship’s ultimate ideal. Swordsmanship’s first achievement is the unity of man and sword. Once this unity is attained, even a blade of grass can be a weapon. The second achievement is when the sword exists in one’s heart when absent from one’s hand. One can strike an enemy at 100 paces, even with bare hands. Swordsmanship’s ultimate achievement is the absence of the sword in both hand and heart. The swordsman is at peace with the rest of the world. He vows not to kill and to bring peace to mankind.
— Hero

[ Posted: 16:55] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

You say tomato, I say tomahto

The picture here is apparently of a Tai Chi Jian posture called “Shooting at the Wild Goose.” But it could just as easily be an illustration of Posta di Fenestra. Pity that the picture I found of the latter was on the opposite side, and so doesn’t exactly convey the similarity I felt when I saw the first one.

[ Posted: 11:48] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

More on the wasters

I finished the bokken yesterday, with a coating of boiled linseed oil. It’s got that smooth, glassy finish that you really look for in a waster. Too bad I messed up the design of it (in profile) pretty badly. Oh well.

I got to put in about an hour on the longsword waster today. Finished rough-cutting both edges. I ended up cutting off (with the coping saw, go me) the false-cross that I was going to use as a sunk tenon for the real cross. It was getting in the way of shaping, and I wasn’t 100% committed to that method of attaching the cross anyway. I think I’m going to go more or less with my dad’s suggestion, because all my ideas involving a one-piece, slid-on cross would have required that the blade be thinned quite a bit more than it actually was. I’m happy with the profile as it is — it has a lot of distal taper while still being decently thick in the point; about as thick as the kissaki of my bokken — and I wouldn’t want to thin it excessively just to attach the cross. So what I’m going to do is thin the bit of handle under the cross a bit, make a cut-out the width of the handle in the cross (gnaaah, have to do this with the coping saw), and put it in place with the (also thinned) piece that was removed going on the other side. Everything will be glued, then I’ll either put a glued dowel through or short, countersunk nails. The dowel would be both prettier and safer in the event of breakage, but the nails would be a lot easier; also I’m afraid of splitting something. Still, it seems to me like this will be more durable than (if not quite as pretty as, maybe) the two-pieces-all-the-way across crosses that most people seem to use.

On the down side, I managed to get a couple of blisters working today. I thought my hands would have toughened up from working on the last one, and they did, to the extent that I got blisters in a different place from last time. Oh well. Only one of them is actually painful.

[ Posted: 06:23] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Progress on wasters

A waster is a wooden sword used for training in sword fighting. Most people are probably more familiar with the bokken, a Japanese wooden training sword, than with its European equivalent, probably because the Japanese martial arts survived into the modern era uninterrupted, unlike the Western Martial Arts.

In spare moments (not many of those lately), I’ve been working on a bokken and a longsword waster. The bokken is just about finished – I just need to go back over some imperfections to try to clean them up, sand again with the coarse, medium, fine, and extra-fine sandpaper, and oil it. But the shaping is finished, anyway. I’ve started the rough shaping on one edge of the longsword waster. The longsword waster is the more difficult project, because it has a more complex shape, and I’m also going to have to do the cross separately and attach it. I need more tools.

[ Posted: 07:15] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]