That picture is of a batch of IPA going into a freshly cleaned keg, which is now sitting in a newly constructed kegerator in the basement. There’s a tank of Co2 hooked up to a brass splitter and two shutoff valves, which will eventually feed two kegs. The brew I put in this afternoon is getting force-carbonated and should be ready by Monday afternoon. I’m currently without a temperature controller, but switching the keg on and off manually works just as well until I can get one.

For about eight months I’ve been unable to use Flickr’s built-in posting tool to add photos to my website. The content showing up on my site would be code minus the HTML symbol markup, so every post looked like Finn had started bashing on the keyboard in an open text field. The fix was to install this small plugin, which resolves an issue with the libXML2 version my hosting provider is running (and thus mangling my posts).

Sadly, it looks like the fuckheads running Yahoo are looking to sell it to somebody; apparently AOL is interested in buying/merging the company, which means nothing but trouble. So, added to my housekeeping list for the site: shopping around for a new method of serving photos (or adding them all to the site itself).

I’ve been holding back on tying my Facebook account to my Flickr feed, and I rarely link to weblog posts on Facebook, but I’m thinking that having things more tightly organized would be nice.

Brian and I cracked the first two homebrews of the new batch in Corolla, and while they weren’t perfect, they weren’t bad, either. I think the sugars got cooked too hot and caramelized a bit, which gives the batch a slight molasses flavor, not unlike (but not nearly as strong as) the Hefeweizen batch. I poured out 12 more bottles of the Hef on Sunday, and I think there might be one 6-pack left down there.

Strangely, suddenly, my Flickr feed is acting very wonky. That’s why there are no thumbnails showing below the masthead (I had to remove the code pulling them in). Stranger still, when I use Flickr’s auto-posting feature to post a picture from my photostream, it’s stripping out a bunch of characters between here and there so the HTML I get from them is useless. Now I have to go figure out what’s going on.

Update: Looks like my xmlrpc.php file was corrupted. I downloaded a clean copy of WordPress, renamed the old file, uploaded a clean copy, and then went to settings -> writing to make sure the service was enabled. It looks like everything is working again.

I’ve been streaming The Civil War at work over the last couple of days, and finished up with the first episode yesterday. I didn’t see the series when it first aired (I was living in Baltimore with a black and white TV and couldn’t pull the PBS signal in with rabbit ears) but wow, what an impact that had on me. I’m now quite fascinated with the subject. I’ve been thinking about reading material for the beach, and was settled on the middle three of the Harry Potter books; I think I’m going to add The Killer Angels to the list. Some of the trivia from the war is fascinating: For example, consider Wilmer McLean, on whose property was fought the first battle, and in whose parlor at Appomattox, four years later, the surrender documents were signed.

I’m no closer to brewing my next batch of beer, but I may activate the yeast tomorrow morning to see if it rises by the time I get home. I’d like to get this batch fermenting as soon as possible, because the recipe says it’ll be 4-5 weeks. It also calls for double fermentation but I think I’m going to skip that part. Last weekend, Brian helped me remember that the Hefeweizen extract I’d used came from a friend of his, and must have been at least five years old by the time I cooked it. So I don’t feel so bad about that batch being so lousy. I’m just going to buy a six-pack of something good and pour out 3/4 of the hefeweizen so that I can reuse bottles for the new batch.

Going through my Moleskine last night, I made two discoveries: first, I’ve officially been using it for a year as of yesterday. Second, I’ve put a total of 937 miles on the Scout since November 17 of last year (the first record of date and mileage I can find).

Also, I’ve entered all of August and September of 2002 into WordPress, and the post count (including this one) is currently at 2,996.

Daddy Likes: A ’52 Metro Delivery van. This is exactly the kind of industrial design I dream about.

I’ve also upgraded to WordPress 3.2, which is very nice, very smooth, and very shiny. I’m impressed. However, my webhost control panel keeps rolling PHP back from version 5 to version 4, which is why the site randomly goes down. Annoying.

I’m planning on a dump run tomorrow morning to get rid of construction debris and free up two of our three garbage cans, which is also the perfect opportunity to get the Scout on the road in time for 70° weather. Finn and Mama are going with the co-op to the Science Center, so I will hustle to meet them downtown for a snack at the Harborplace, which will be awesome.

I took some time last night to add August of 2003 from the old log into WordPress. At this rate, I won’t have it all integrated for the 10th anniversary, but over time I’ll get it all in once and for all.

There’s some talk of colder temperatures, rain and snow next week, but I’m going to avoid thinking about that and soak up as much sun as I can. I think a trip to the playground across the street will definitely be in order this weekend.