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Category Archives: Life of Marcos
The best Tequila
I saved the bottle for over five years waiting for a special occasion. Forgot to drink it at my wedding. Forgot to take it out at my son‘s bris.
No way I’m going wait for his Bar-Mitzvah. So we used the excuse of Meir visiting and popped it open last night.
Yes, it is indeed the best Tequila I’ve ever had.
Preserving childhood memories: revisited
My parents came to visit and on my request brought along three fat photo albums from when I was born. I needed to show my wife that our son does indeed have an eery resemblance to my extremely young self, if not my adult self.
As you’d expect from photos that are over *ahem* twenty years old, they’ve suffered from some terrible degradation (older post on the subject). Not surprisingly, the photos degraded differently based on the photo development process and paper used. Some even got extremely blurry – and I think those are a lost cause.
So obviously I need to scan them all. To make the digitizing work worse, and unlike my wife’s old photos, these are glued to the album pages with transparent cellophane on top. To try and pry the photos off the album will most likely destroy them, so they need to be digitized off the page. I think this means that using a digitizing service like we did before will not be possible.
Here’s what the album looks like:
Like crap (please don’t get me started on idiotic Instagram filters people are using nowadays).
I already finished scanning one of the three albums. It wasn’t a fun process. I used an Epson Artisan 837 and the built-in Image Capture application that comes with OS X. I scanned everything at 600 dots-per-inch, which I believe easily exceeds the sharpness of the old photos.
One nice thing about Image Capture, is that it can auto-detect the photos on the page, and scan each one of them as an individual file.
It will even fix rotation! Unfortunately I didn’t have great luck with this because, as you can see, the glue is extremely yellow at this point so the program had trouble recognizing where the photos are. I would end up selecting the photos by hand.
This made the process quite tedious:
- Take out page from album
- Remove cellophane
- Place on scanner
- Go to computer, press “Overview”
- Wait
- Adjust what photos will get scanned
- Press “Scan”
- Wait
- Flip page to scan the other side
- Repeat process from #4 to #8
- Put cellophane back on page
- Reinsert to album
Hardly a model of speed, automation, and efficiency.
I will refine the process for the other two albums, no doubt. For one, I will skip overviews and just scan full pages. It will make scanning a lot faster. I will also try and connect the scanner over USB rather than WiFi. I have a hunch that this was the main bottleneck to the scanner’s speed and not so much the digitizing itself.
But this means that I would need to cut individual photos out from a single page scan to individual files as a post-processing step. My goal is to automate this – research needed and advise appreciated.
The last step: fixing the colors of the photos. I played around with adjusting all the color curves of a specific photo manually on the excellent Pixelmator. This is what the original photo looks like:
It took a bunch of tweaking, but the results seem pretty good:
Not bad, huh? (you can click to zoom in)
Of course, fixing each photo manually like this would take a tremendous amount of time. I think the way to go, barring a completely automated solution, is to group photos by era, album, and photo paper; since those would all degrade the same way. I can then apply the same combination of color-correcting filters. I haven’t yet figured all of the details out, so this is material for a future post. Far into the future most likely.
For now the important thing is to scan the rest of the photos so we can freeze the color degradation.
Northwest Austin Style
Hello World!
First and foremost, allow me to introduce myself. My name is <yet to be named> Kirsch and this is my first post on The MKX®. I’ve had a crazy week so I thought I’d share some of it.
So there I am, chilling and floating in warm amniotic fluid, minding my own business. I’ve been doing the same thing for what feels like forever, but I’m not sure… my memories of anything over 9 months ago are kind of hazy. In any case, I’m chilling in the dark enjoying some half-digested frozen yogurt through my umbilical cord when suddenly I start getting pushed out. Weird stuff… at first it was only now and then but later it got more frequent, like every five minutes apart or so. Then it hit me.
I’m being evicted.
What.
The.
Fuck.
My guess is that the guy in charge of my personal finances forgot to pay the rent or something. Oh, I’ll make him pay big time, don’t worry. Perhaps a college fund. Maybe I’ll wreck his car too someday just to spite him.
In any case, they are pushing me out for what seemed like two days, and it’s working. Eventually I see the light at the end of the tunnel and being the brave adventurer that I am, I decide to slide out.
It wasn’t easy. I don’t know who designs this stuff but believe me, my head was bigger than the exit hole and not barely. I bet I left some damage behind me.
What happened afterwards was a blur. Dude with gloves catches me, skinny white dude cuts my umbilical cord with scissors (more on him later), some woman grabs me, they’re cleaning me and measuring me and checking me out like I’m some kind of weird specimen. Finally they put me down on top of a tired looking brown woman.
Immediately it hit me: this is the person I need to enslave. I stared long and hard directly at her eyes, in order to subject her to my will. It worked, she will forever remain under my control.
In a crazy stroke of luck, given that my tummy got disconnected from my other food source, this woman has the ability to produce milk from her chest. This handy little trick has turned out to be very useful ever since.
The next couple of days were kind of odd. Different people started to show up. Some worked at the place we were at, referred to as “The Hospital”. They were nice and didn’t seem to be as scared of touching me as the others. Then there was the food source person I refer to as “Ima” and the tall skinny guy with the curly hair cord cutter SOB I refer to as “Papi”.
The rest of them are easy to catalog. If they are brown, then they are related to Ima. If they are white then they are related to Papi. Except for the loud bald guy, he’s Papi-colored but is actually related to Ima. Something must’ve gotten horribly mixed up there, I suppose. They are all really nice in spite of talking to me in funny voices, but my favorite one is the one I call “Bobe Raquel”. She’s so warm and cushiony and smells good!
Just as I was getting used to the harsh military environment of The Hospital, they decide to take me somewhere else: Bungee jumping! Or at least I thought so, since I was strapped to a ridiculous harness. Disappointingly, I was then taken to a freaking four cylinder Elantra! Talk about a tease! The only thing I can conclude is that Papi is a huge idiot at the wheel. He better stay off that iPhone of his.
Eventually we arrived to what I refer to as “My Palace”. I was taken to my main chambers. They are all light blue filled with white furniture. Who decorated this dump? Do they expect me to live inside a Martha Stewart catalog?! First thing I do when I get a chance is a layer of paint, hang some posters of girls in bikinis, and maybe install a hot tub.
Living in My Palace is not bad. I arranged for one of my servants to hold me most of the time. The one known as “Savta” takes the night shift, Ima feeds me whenever I feel like it, and Papi carries me too but he’s a scam: no matter how hard I suck his puny flat chest, NOTHING comes out. Dry as a bone. I’ll have to look into how to repair that, maybe on Yelp?
For the most part, this is what I’ve been up to all week: Being carried, being fed, taking dumps.
So let’s talk about poop.
I eat a lot, I mean how could one reject the banquets I’m being offered? And whatever comes in, must come out. Simple physics. The funny thing is, whenever I relieve myself, the person that looks the most relieved is Ima. Haha seriously, she’s obsessed with my feces or something. I swear she seems to be keeping track of color, consistency, date and time ON A FREAKING APP. What a weird fetish.
Something interesting happened last Saturday. Papi and uncle Moi were staring at a big bright rectangle for two hours. He seemed really into it. On the rectangle there were moving pictures of little guys running after a sphere in some sort of arcane ritual. In the background, annoying yells in Spanish.
I think I can get into this arcane ritual, seems like fun. Also, I think the big bright rectangle and I are going to be good friends.
Finally, you may have noticed I don’t have a proper first name. People have been calling me all sorts of things but nothing consistent. The ones who speak Hebrew often call me “matok sheli” which I find a little disrespectful. The Spanish speaking ones say “mi Rey”, much better – they should know their place.
But I heard a rumor: apparently I’m getting an official name tomorrow at this event called a “Bris”. I’m not sure what that is exactly, but I bet it’s fun for me! I mean… it’s gotta be, right? Right?
Soylent day 3
I’m sorry for the delay posting this. Some life circumstances sort of got in the way. You can now stop desperately reloading. Fear not: I have not died of non-stop bloody Soylent diarrhea and I am in good health. I just didn’t post. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…
Thursday night I went to sleep after eating nothing but Soylent in the last 24 hours. I had a very vivid dream of me eating a warm thick bowl of oatmeal. I remember its smell, texture… This experiment is messing with my mind.
Breakfast
I woke up on Friday and prepared my pitcher of Soylent for the day. It took 3 minutes. Since I didn’t leave the pitcher in the fridge overnight and now I know better, I added a bunch of ice to the mix.
At my desk in the office, I had my glass of Soylent. Not bad. Like revenge, Soylent is a dish better served cold. Once again I finished feeling satisfied but not full.
Lunch
A co-worker passed me with a plate from the cafeteria: their Greek Plate (chicken, tzatziki, little slices of pita)… After 13+ years, I’ve developed an indifference at best, dislike at worse for cafeteria food. I’ve had this specific dish many times and while it’s not not bad, I don’t particularly like it. But it looked especially appetizing this time.
At 1:15 I decided to “eat” “lunch” which is a lot later than my usual time. Either Soylent is very good at keeping me satiated or my body is suppressing my hunger since it knows what’s coming to it. Whatever the case, I started drinking it at 1:20.
In the afternoon I got a slight headache but I wouldn’t pin it on Soylent. People get headaches. I’ve also been terribly thirsty.
Dinner
It’s Friday night, and I mother in law cooked a big Shabbat dinner. Being the good son-in-law that I am, I decided to take a break, enjoy food and the company of my very round pregnant wife, and spend some time meditating on the merits of giving up old fashioned food.
Flatulence
Indeed, as many people pointed out on the Internet, it mostly went away on the third day. I’m sorry I wrote about the topic so much but it turned out to be relevant to the discussion.
Comments
Let’s address some comments received:
- Reader Esther says to watch out – Soylent has no Vitamin D. But it does, in the for of the tasty sounding ingredient ergocalciferol. 33% of the daily value per serving, to be precise.
- Reader Carolina is worried that the first ingredient listed is sugar. But it’s not! It’s maltodextrin, which is… huh, kind of like a sugar. Shit.
- Reader Gabriel posted a very misguided article on Soylent. Sorry dude, the article gets it wrong at the most basic level. Soylent is not for hipsters: it’s not organic, vegan, overpriced, nor sold out of food trucks. Soylent is for overworked nerds.
- At work, several co-workers who had never heard of Soylent were incredibly puzzled. Are you on a diet? No. Is it for weight loss? No. Is it some kind of cleanse? No. Then what the hell are you doing? Science!
- Other co-workers who had heard about Soylent were very curious. Several tried it. None were disgusted, with one exception: Frank who had done Schmoylent, the sketchy Soylent knockoff, found it disgusting. I suppose Schmoylent is better.
- My mom vigorously opposed me doing Soylent. She watched the movie and I suppose the mental association was just too strong, in spite of my assurances that this thing is beige and most likely not made of <<SPOILER ALERT>> humans.
I did more reading about Soylent. Here’s a pretty rough thread on some of the issues with Soylent.
Closing remarks
I’m done with this stuff. All in all, this was an interesting experiment. Sure, I failed to eat nothing but Soylent for a week. Sure, I am a fraud. Sure, many readers secretly wanted me to write this from the toilet while dealing with horrible, debilitating diarrhea. None of this came to pass.
Interestingly, it seems quite viable to survive, at least for short periods of time, on nothing but Soylent. I wouldn’t go much longer than that though. The people behind it are not nutritionists nor medical doctors, and the fact that you can survive for some time does not mean you can or should go for extended periods of time on it. Let’s wait and see how some more adventurous/stupid souls do a couple of years from now.
A guy from work is buying my remaining supply. And I will close with this short video:
Thank you for joining me in my journey.
Soylent day 2
Strong feelings and opinions revolve around this experiment. A reader objects to my eating of solid foods at all, even though the instructions clearly state to slowly ramp up my ingestion of the product. Other readers believe that I am pumping my body full of harmful chemicals in spite of what the publicly available list of ingredients says. Ok, I admit the list of ingredients sounds scary, but it’s the same stuff listed on whatever you buy in the supermarket.
Breakfast
I sat down to “enjoy” my breakfast. I was a little hungry in spite of the gigantic Lebanese buffet of the previous night. I am not dreading this, which is both an improvement and a surprise. Interestingly, the glass of cold Soylent goes down easily, and I even enjoyed the “sandy” texture. Weird.
Lunch
The single serving kept me satisfied until lunch time. Timing couldn’t be better – there was an Apple Event to watch so it’s not like I would have gone to a cafeteria. Simple: pour and drink. Satisfied yet not full.
Gym
After work but before dinner I stopped at the gym. In spite of having had nothing but Soylent all day, I didn’t feel hungry and I was able to workout at the same level as usual – which is admittedly pathetic but still. I think this is worth noting.
Dinner
This time I will avoid the wrath of my readers: another full serving of Soylent for dinner. Unlike the previous day, I no longer detect the faint smell of fish oil in it.
On Ars does Soylent, writer Lee Hutchinson described one of the notorious side effects of the original Soylent 1.0 as follows:
It was bad. These weren’t mere ha-ha toot kinds of emissions; this was hair-raising. It was room-clearing, horse-killing, World War I mustard gas-type gas.
I am eating version 1.1. Its main improvement is the addition of “digestive enzymes” that ameliorate the aforementioned issue. I will say the following: when it comes to gases, it has not been the quantity but the quality. These are very high quality farts. Unless you are a person who’s not attached to my own nose, then they are horrendous.
Thankfully, the quantity is small and I’ve avoided displeasing my coworkers more than usual and have had no elevator incidents. I am still happily married and for the next few days I plan on only hanging out with my two friends who have no sense of smell.
But I will add this and I am not joking: given that 1.1 is having this effect on me, I would love to get my hands on some 1.0 just to see what that would be like.
The experiment continues tomorrow. I am now open to deviating from the plain Soylent and welcome suggestions for culinary improvements. Chocolate? Peanut butter? Sriracha?
Soylent day 1
Breakfast
Making Soylent for the first time was easy. Put powder in pitcher – it smells good, like pancake mix. Add water and shake vigorously. No problem.
Add the oil which comes in a small hotel shampoo bottle. This is the part in which the product started losing its appeal. A little more shaking and I was ready to pour the thing for poor me.
This is how it compares to my almost daily breakfast:
| Oatmeal | Soylent | |
| cost: | cheap | cheap |
| color: | beige | beige |
| texture: | thick sludge | watery sludge |
| benefits: | helps me poop | brings readers to The MKX® |
| temperature: | hot and soothing | cold and harsh |
| requires: | a microwave | a healthy dose of masochism |
I must say that it was faster to prepare it than it was to eat it. It’s grainy, smells bad but tastes ok, and leaves behind a feeling not unlike having a spoonful of olive oil with sand… something I hadn’t done in years. I had to drink it in little sips.
I’ve read that eventually you get to crave this thing. We’ll see. It made me burp little soylent-tasting burps, but that may be because I am a little disgusted.
Good thing I can wash it down with coffee.
Lunch
12:20 PM: It’s later than my usual lunch. I’m hungry but not terribly so. I am dreading this. I left 2/3 of a pitcher of Soylent in the fridge. Ok let’s do it.
12:59 PM: Done eating. I feel satisfied if not full. It took forever to eat because I am doing other things in parallel. And because it’s not super yummy.
Dinner
I forgot about a prior engagement of dinner with friends. So… I had Middle Eastern food. It was glorious. What happened later was interesting: right after dinner, all hell broke lose on the gassiness front. Or back, I should say. This didn’t happen at all before. So the question arises: What caused it? The Soylent? The hummus? I have tainted the experiment.
At this stage, I feel good, strong, healthy, and my hair has a new sheen.
Soylent
You may or may not have heard about Soylent. Not the science fiction green type, but the wildly successful Kickstarter project.
I first ordered the food substitute on 5/14/2014. On 7/24 I received an email update in which the original 10-12 week lead time was further pushed back another 8-10 weeks. On 9/19 I was asked to confirm my address, on 10/9 I got my shipping notification, and today I finally received my package. It only took exactly 5 months. You’d think this stuff was made of people or something.
The idea is this: substitute food with this inexpensive, nutritious, delightful goo and save money and time. Great for important and busy people who aren’t important enough to have someone cook for them.
In the name of science and for the benefit of The MKX® readers, we will have one human being consume nothing but Soylent and coffee and maybe some snacks for a full week. The subject will be monitored and progress will be tracked on this website. There is an important caveat: if the subject is to suddenly become a father, the subject will get a deluge of foreign family members who like to do nothing but eat out. The subject will take a break from the experiment should that occur, although Soylent can be handy in some of the circumstances that may arise.
One notable thing: I received version 1.1 of the formula. The biggest change according to my research is that it drastically reduces flatulence. Given the amount of beans I eat, I assumed any change in my diet would have the same effect. Who knows.
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to post them below. Or just post whatever, as it will encourage me to carry on with the experiment.
Bonus:
A colleague ordered an unofficial Soylent knock-off (the formula is available for anyone to use) and traded a single meal with me. It came in a shady-looking ziploc bag. At some point during the experiment I will try it and compare.
Fastest way to do IKEA
Now everywhere I go with Shlomit, I wish I had a shopping cart.