Whacked the President with a Single Stick

February 19, 2018

...e ex-Colonel nor the ex-Lieutenant Colonel of the Rough Riders has aimed a making this point, but both havve confined themselves to developing their skill with the weapon and getting as much exercise and fun out of the game as possible. Notwithstanding this, it is impossible to play with single-sticks without occasionally getting hurt, and both the President and his ex-superior officer have daily given and received some pretty severe raps. Lumps h...

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SolSource Review Part I: Assembly

Mr. Homegrown

June 17, 2016

Appropriate Technology, Solar, Solar Oven Summer, Water and Power

4 Comments

...We’re going to break our initial review of the SolSource into a couple of parts, starting with assembly. But first, a few basic things so you know what you’re looking at. The SolSource is a parabolic mirror with a clever central cutout to allow easy access to the cooking surface. The sun’s rays are directed beneath a pot/frying pan support, so that all the cooking heat is focused on a single spot at the bottom of the cooking pot or pan. A small mi...

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How to Mix and Shape Dough Explained Without Words in Two Minutes

Mr. Homegrown

April 14, 2016

Bread, Food

6 Comments

...bout this video: Bakers use scales and so should you. Mixing dough entails making an incredible mess. Learning to shape dough requires practice. As regards point #3, my plan is to mix up some practice dough (I use the dead dough recipe in the Bouchon Bakery Cookbook but any bread dough will do) and practice over and over. As a professional once told me when I complimented her on her pizza shaping prowess, “It’s because I’ve done it 10,000 times.”...

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Restoring the Original Black Box: Our Western Electric 534A Subset

Mr. Homegrown

June 14, 2016

Appropriate Technology, Thoughtstylings

7 Comments

...s were mounted in a separate box in a central location in the house. This particular ringer box was manufactured between the years 1918 and 1930 and replaced earlier wooden models. Phone expert Ralph O. Meyer speculates that the Western Electric 534 ringer box may be where we get the term “black box” from (flight recorders are bright orange, not black). Ringer boxes and the phones that went with them were also one of the first consumer electronic...

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It’s safe to comment again

Mrs. Homegrown

October 12, 2015

Miscellaneous

5 Comments

...service. Our intrepid webmaster put out the fire a couple of days back by making it hard to comment We’ve had no spam at all as a result. That is good. But no one is happy with the draconian commenting protocols. So we’re trying something new. Now, commenting is back to our usual system, but we’re closing down comments on older posts. We have a library of 2,522 posts on Root Simple as of today–crazy, huh?– and that’s a whole lot of territory for...

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