Ingredients (we didn’t go shopping specially for this, we just happened to have most of what we needed on hand):
3 tomatoes (ours were from  Frog Holler Organic Farm)
1 onion
3-5 cloves of garlic (I don’t remember exactly, I just like garlic, OK)
a handful of mushrooms
1 can of baked beans (vegetarian)
1 red pepper (I didn’t have one, but I would have used it if I did)
3 veggie sausage links (feel free to use the meaty kind if that’s your thing)
4 eggs
Spices: garlic powder, zhatar, cayenne pepper, cumin, paprika, schug (if you have it)

Sidebar: If you can figure out how to have friends who work on organic farms I highly recommend it.  Every time they come to visit we get more delicious organic goodness than we know what to do with.

Tools: a pan with a lid and a wooden spoon

Wash and destem the mushrooms.  Dice the onions, most of the garlic and the mushroom stems.  Slice the peppers into thin strips.

Heat up some oil in your pan and toss in the diced/sliced veggies, the whole mushrooms and the sausages.  I left the sausage whole, but it’d probably be pretty damn good if you broke it up (especially if you’re using actual sausage).

Dice the tomatoes and toss ‘em in when the veggies are starting to get soft.

Add your spices.  It’s supposed to be spicy and piquant.  You probably won’t need the cayenne if you’re using schug.

Drain your beans while that cooks down a little bit.  I saved the sauce in case I needed more liquid, but I didn’t end up using it.

Once the tomatoes are starting to soften up, dump in that can of beans and stir it up.  Lower the heat a bit and simmer for a while until the consistency is a thick but not dry.  Remember that you’re cooking the eggs in the sauce, so it needs to be liquid enough for that, but not too wet or the eggs will sink through (more of an issue when you’re cooking for a party in a big ass wok).

Once the consistency looks right, make a little indentation with the back of your spoon and crack an egg into it.  I tried to position a mushrooom in the indentation so the yolk would land where the stem used to be, but my mushrooms were too small for that to work.  I like to sprinkle zhatar, garlic powder, cayenne and paprika at this point to make the eggs look all pretty.

Right after I put the eggs in.

Cover partially, lower the temperature to medium and simmer until the eggs are done (I like mine pretty soft).  If you’re cooking for people who like differently done eggs, only cover two of the eggs so you can get two hard and two soft.

Serve with toast, hummus coffee.

Maybe I just don’t know the Irish spice palette very well, but it turned out tasting mostly like shakshuka and not too Irishy.  I’m open to suggestions as to how make this a more even combination.  Deana suggested just doing the Irish breakfast alongside a normal shakshuka, which sounds pretty damn good.

I had a friend take some pictures of it today and I’ll post them as soon as she gets them to me (Anne).

The basis for today’s project was a Chanukah present I got from my parents: a compass from an airplane.

The tag says "Airplane Compass | Made in Chicago | Does not point North"

It has a bulb built into it already.

All it took was some solder and a power supply and I had myself a nice little night light.

I used this recipe, but used less sugar because I got confused with another recipe I had been considering where all the comments indicated it was too sweet.  I also added dried cranberries, chocolate chips and walnuts.  The muffins turned out pretty tasty, although they could probably have used more  cranberries, chocolate chips, walnuts and sugar.  Still, for my first muffins ever, they turned out pretty well.  We’ve been putting apple butter on them to sweeten them up, and it’s been working great.

I can’t say I’m happy with the way it turned out — it’s definitely not something I want to show off to people.  With that said, it was fun to do, and turned out pretty well given the lack of tools. materials or planning.

I ended up starting a hollow book.  I found some directions over here and started looking for a book to chop up.  I went with an old Harvard Collection Philosophy book that I, uh, borrowed from the library ~10 years ago.  I didn’t get too far.  I glued the sides together and got about 1/4 inch down into the book.  I couldn’t find an appropriate dremel bit, and the one I ended up using gave off some unpleasant smoke.

This wasn’t the way I wanted to kick off this month, but it has been a good lesson in how crucial planning is.  Hopefully I’ll finish this off tomorrow and give myself some time to plan things out for Thursday more carefully.

We originally planned to use the ferrofluid recipe that my friend Sacha over at ChemHacker is making, but he hasn’t worked out all the kinks.  He offered to let us use his lab and reagents, but scheduling difficulties got in the way (he did hook me up with some oleic acid, and exchanging chemistry supplies in a bar is one of the shadiest legit things I’ve ever done).  He pointed us to a recipe over at SciSpot, which we ended up using a modified version of (at Sacha’s suggestion we did the last ammonia gas releasing step in a safer way).

Having good lab technique is hard to do in your kitchen.  I’d love to be able to devote a room to being a full time lab, but that’s just not happening where I live right now.  Here’s our setup:

Don't worry, the chemistry didn't seem to bother my aloe plant.

Here’s Nick stirring the mixture:

Step 1: Stir that shit! Err, mix the reagents thoroughly. Yeah.

Is it supposed to look radioactive?

Step 2: You remembered to wear your lead apron, right?

Skipping ahead some steps, here’s the modified setup we used for step 5 from the SciSpot recipe.  The erlenmeyer flask has a mixture of chemicals including ammonia, which we’re trying to evaporate off.  Ammonia gas is not exactly good for you (read: it will burn your lungs off), so we’re running the gas into a beaker full of ice water.  Ammonia gas dissolves readily in water, turning back into something that won’t necessarily harm you for life.

I hope.

Finally, we got some ok looking ferrofluid!

Ferrofluid!

Some of the imperfections come from the recipe (using PCB etchant instead of straight chemicals means there are extra things in there that we don’t need), and some probably come from this being our first try.  We should be trying this again soon, so we should know then.  Once again, a big thanks to Sacha at ChemHacker for helping us get this done!

I controlled a robot with my brain.

This final project for my Neural Engineering lab.  A lego robot, controlled by neural signals (we’re using EMG), that has to be able to navigate a maze.  The EMG circuitry is connected to the computer and our software (labview, expect a separate post on that at some point) checks for spikes indicating neural signals being sent to the muscle.  The amperage of the computer’s output is too weak to actually drive the robot’s motors, so we use the signal to flip a transistor that’s hooked up to 9 volt batteries that actually drive the motors.  This happens every time the system sees a spike.

On Wednesday we had our first live test (using real EMG signals instead of a recording).  We set it up to drive both motors at the same time (we haven’t worked out driving the wheels separately yet).  Every time I flexed my muscle, the robot would scoot forward.  Well, not quite.  Our system is nowhere responsive enough to feel that transparent.  You had to really work to get the spike high enough that the motors would run, and sometimes they’d keep running for a while after you stopped flexing.  But, man.  It.  Was.  Awesome.