The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Adam Ek:

Ailsa & I just drank a toast.

Another sign of the company I work for going downhill. In our last location we had fire drills 4 times/year.

In our new location we haven't had a fire drill in over 18 months. The newest building has never had a fire drill. Our fire plans are so out of date that the evacuation map for our building has us gather on lawn that doesn't exist anymore, it's under the new building.

My father recently had my great-great-grandfather's clock fixed
(built in Sweden in 1872). It's still on the wall and needs winding
once a week.

I think some people in this thread may be interested in the Maker
Bill of Rights http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtorrone/306528267/

I'm still envious of my coworker who got an old belt-drive
Bridgeport milling machine for the cost of hauling it out of a basement.

I'm really mad at my employer for closing down the only mass-transit
accessible buildings in the company. I now have a 42 mile commute each
way until I can manage to sell my house. On the other hand I got rid of
the 22mpg minivan in favor of a 42mpg diesel Beetle. The TDI diesel
should be good for 250,000 miles and can run on biodiesel (way better
energy balance than ethanol).

re post #166: I saw an engineering review in the 90's that stated
that most consumer point and shoots sold and even most low level SLR's
were used for less than 12 rolls of film, 360 shots.

re post #168: I've got an Old Town Tripper canoe. One of the old ads
involved the canoe being thrown off the tall factory roof and then
paddled away. My canoe is still in good condition after 32 years of
hard use. Another testimonial was from one falling off a float plane,
falling 1500 feet and still being usable when they hiked back and found
it

My Netgear WGR614v6 has been working pretty well for me. I need to reset it every month or two. The DSL "modem" and the router stop talking to each other. The router still works for the internal network, but the WAN stop working until both devices are rebooted.

Nixon's resignation. We were in the car and my Dad turned up the radio and told me to listen closely because this was probably the only time in my life I would hear a president resign.

I've known for quite awhile that I never want to fry a turkey. Then last week Good Eats convinced Ailsa too.

If you want to try an unconventional and fast way to cook a turkey, try Trashcan Turkey.

Requirements:

1 Turkey

1 metal trashcan. You can use it many times for turkey, but never use it for anything else. Especially don't use it for trash.

Heavy duty oven mitts or fireproof gloves.

20 lbs of charcoal. 10 pounds for seasoning the trashcan. 10 pounds for the turkey.

Turkey stick. see below.

Choose your location. It needs to be relatively flat and nothing combustible nearby. Almost anyplace where you could burn a campfire will do. However, there must be enough room for the trashcan to rest upside down and the ground must be soft enough to pound the turkey stick in.

Season the Trash Can

Take your new, never used, metal trashcan. Turn it upside down. Pour a ten pound bag of charcoal over it. Take all of the charcoal that spills off the top and arrange it evenly around the bottom, heaped as high as possible around the bottom.

Light the charcoal. Some people like hardwood charcoal chunks for grilling. That is great for grilling, but save it for grilling. For trashcan turkey use the cheapest briquets you can find. Either easy lighting or traditional briquets and use lighter fluid. Trashcan turkey never sees the charcoal fumes. You are heating up the trashcan. Radiant heat and convection from the hot trashcan is what will cook the turkey.

When the charcoal burns out you have seasoned your trashcan. Any fumes that the galvanized metal might produce are now outgassed. You won't need to season this trashcan ever again.

Cook the turkey.

Sorry, there is no stuffing with this approach. Take a plain thawed turkey. Don't put any sugary basting on the outside. It will most likely burn.

Pound your turkey stick in the ground. Traditionally a whittled and cleaned tree branch with a Y. The bottom gets pounded into the ground. The branch of the Y holds the turkey up off the ground, but lower than the height of the trashcan.

Place aluminum foil over the ground. Cover the full area where the trashcan will go. The point is to reflect heat back up to the bird.

Option 1: You can also create a aluminum shape kind of like a bundt pan around the turkey stick. This will catch drippings that can be used for gravy.

Option 2: You can wrap potatoes in foil and place them on the ground within the area of the trash can. Great baked potatoes.

Put the turkey on the turkey stick. Make sure that it does not touch the ground, and that it will not touch the trashcan. Adjust turkey stick if necessary.

Put the trashcan on top of the turkey.

Arrange and light charcoal as before.

Precisely two hours after the charcoal was started. Remove the trashcan. This is the most dangerous part of the procedure. You need some serious fireproof gloves or some kind of tool that you can use to lift and move the trashcan from a distance.

Remove the turkey from the turkey stick and put it on the platter.

Carve.

Eat.

re: popcorn

Kettle corn (sugar & salt) popcorn might work for some of the people who can't stomach the sugar & salt drink mix. Google for more info.

> If the question ever arises in your mind,
> “Should I turn back now?” the answer is “YES!”

I was driving in a bad snow storm once. I was following a snowplow, so the road didn't seem TOO bad, but I was still wondering if I should get off the highway at the next exit, about half a mile ahead.

Then the snowplow slid off the road.

I know how to read a SIGN when it's staring me in the face. I took the exit and checked into the closest motel.

Thanks for the information. I was just diagnosed with Type II in October. :(

I never used a Linotype, only saw one at the local paper when I was in high school. Personally, I started out in desktop publishing at IPBM with a Macintosh, a Laserwriter, and Pagemaker 2.0.

I've heard a lot about typesetting, but only a few comments about images.

We didn't have a scanner when I started, so I spent a lot time in the darkroom making halftone prints on the stat camera. Then I'd use the wax machine to paste the prints into place on the page.

We tried one of the first scanners Apple sold, but 16-bit scanning and laserwriter halftones weren't quite up to our print standards. I did use it a lot to create templates for Illustrator. (Trace the scanned image and then place the b/w line art into pagemaker.)

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