Jim asterbrook

Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • Hungarian sour cherry soup revisited

    Five years ago I wrote about my first attempt to make Hungarian sour cherry soup. My recipe has evolved a little since then, so I thought it might be useful to record the current version. 400g Morello cherries 2 cloves ~1cm cinnamon stick 100ml red wine 200-300ml water 25g (or 30 ml) sugar 5 ml…

  • Why have I got a web site?

    You might already know that I have my own web site http://www.jim-easterbrookxxme.uk/. It’s a modest affair and I don’t update it very often – the last change to the main page was in November 2015. Recently my web hosting provider withdrew the “lite” package I was using and migrated me to another package, at more…

  • A simple model railway DCC accessory controller

    A few months ago I converted my N gauge train set to DCC operation. As well as fitting DCC decoders to my locomotives I also converted the points by fitting a tiny decoder in each one. This makes setting up a temporary layout (I don’t yet have any sort of permanent layout) nice and easy…

  • Chromatic aberration in digital photographs

    In my last post I wrote about my attempts to measure vignetting in the lenses I use with my DSLR camera. Another lens problem that the camera can correct (but only for Canon lenses) is lateral chromatic aberration. To determine the amount of correction my lenses need I printed out a simple test chart and…

  • Digital photograph vignetting revisited

    A few years ago I wrote about some experiments I’d done with measuring and correcting vignetting in digital photographs. (Some cameras have such correction built in, called “peripheral illumination correction” or similar.) I recently purchased a second-hand 10-18 mm wide angle lens for my DSLR. Measuring its vignetting using my previous method is difficult as…

  • Shaun the Sheep

    I’m a huge fan of the Aardman Animation children’s TV series “Shaun the Sheep”. Although it’s nominally a children’s programme there is a lot in it for adults as well. I particularly like the references to things that not many children would be aware of. Here are a few that I’ve spotted. I’ll add more…

  • Setting up a Raspberry Pi Zero W to run pywws

    I recently bought my first Raspberry Pi Zero W, a tiny little computer just 3 inches long and 1½ inches wide (in its case). I intend eventually to get it working with pywws (some weather station software I wrote a while ago) and I’ll be adding to this blog post as I go along, to…

  • Oxbridge entrance – a modest proposal

    There has been some talk recently about apparent bias in the way Oxford and Cambridge universities select undergraduate students, disproportionately favouring (white) students from fee-paying schools. The universities respond, with some justification, that they accept anyone who gets top grades at A level and performs well at interview, and it’s not their fault if state…

  • Samyang 500mm ƒ/6.3 DX mirror lens

    Long focal length lenses for SLR cameras are mostly one of two types – refractors (true lenses) or “mirror” lenses (actually Cassegrain telescopes). Large aperture long lenses are big, heavy, and expensive, but they can perform really well. Mirror lenses are much smaller, lighter, and usually a lot cheaper. However they are fixed aperture, usually…

  • Sussex pond pudding

    Last weekend I made a Sussex pond pudding and, as I occasionally do, I posted a picture of it on Facebook. The ensuing discussion included both a request for my recipe and a link to a recent Guardian article “the perfect… Sussex pond pudding”. Here’s my recipe, fleshed out with a few pictures. I’ve taken…

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