A.C. Flory's Blog, page 92
April 11, 2018
Just for fun…a robot kangaroo!
No, not kidding. I’ve been doing some research on bats today and stumbled across a youtube site about robot bats. Then..I found another site that had all sorts of robot animals, including that kangaroo I mentioned. 
April 9, 2018
3D printed food
My thanks to sv3dprinter for this great post about a company that developed 3D printed food for NASA:
I recommend checking the post out as it contains links to other great videos on 3D printing:
https://sv3dprinter.com/?p=6769
If microwaves brought about a revolution in foodprocessing last century, 3D printing will do the same for this century. I love the tech but I think I’ll stick to home cooking. 
April 7, 2018
How Social Media misuses Behaviour Modification techniques
I’ve just read an article that is so important, I’m posting about it here and on Medium. The article is entitled:
How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind — from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist
Oddly enough, it wasn’t the bit about the writer being a magician that caught my attention, it was the label of ‘Google Design Ethicist’ that made me start reading. Having just learned how Google invades our privacy, I was primed to be interested.
Almost immediately, I recognized the term ‘intermittent rewards’ as one of the ‘behaviour mod[ification]’ techniques I’d studied at university. The course was Behavioural Sciences, and back then I’d wanted to become a psychologist.
In a nutshell, behaviour mod. started out as a therapy for:
Inducing positive change in an individual’s behavior through such techniques as positive and negative reinforcement, or punishment for poor behavior. This therapy method is based off of the experiments by B.F. Skinner and his theory of operant conditioning.
https://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/behavior-modification/
My interest in psychology was sidelined by my introduction to computers, so I never ‘used’ my studies for anything, but apparently industry had. Intermittent rewards are used to make people addicted to all sorts of things, including slot machines and…social media. When you see people obsessively checking their phones, or computers, for messages, emails, or ‘Likes’ on social media platforms like Facebook, it’s because they’ve been conditioned to do so by the technique of intermittent rewards.
You can see exactly how intermittent rewards work on social media by reading the article:
We’ve been turned into Pavlov’s Dogs by ‘social engineers’ who either never question the ethics of what they’re doing, or simply don’t care. The only way to turn social media into something that benefits us is to:
a) become aware of how we’re being manipulated and
b) kick up such a stink that companies benefiting from this manipulation are forced to change, or go under.
I’m so angry, I’d be happy to see them all crash and burn.
Meeks
April 5, 2018
Meeka’s posts for the week ending April 6, 2018
Only two posts this week. The first is an Australiana one about the artist’s colony of Montsalvat. It’s interesting but not earth shattering:
https://medium.com/tikh-tokh/montsalvat-in-eltham-c86d646f1584
It’s the second one that I really, really hope you read. It’s the first in god knows how many posts that will deal with privacy on the internet.
Even if you’re sick to death of everything to do with Facebook, please read this post:
https://medium.com/tikh-tokh/facebook-google-and-digital-stalking-9749ac26fd0d
cheers
Meeks
March 29, 2018
Happy Easter Everyone!
Good Friday in Warrandyte has been perfect. Gentle sun, mosty blue sky, and a blush of green on the ground as the hardy grasses/weeds come back to life after the days of soaking rain. It’s autumn, and for a change it feels like autumn too. I love it.
The Offspring and I are heading off for a meal soon and there’ll be cake when we get home. Easter is looking good this year.
March 26, 2018
Small crisis over! Phew…
I’ve had a couple of unpleasant days due to the fact that Tikh Tokh was ‘suspended’ by Medium. I could see it when I logged in as myself, but not when I tried to search for it or go direct via the address bar.
I sent an email off to Medium support straight away, but this was on North American Sunday so I didn’t get a response until this morning, Australian time. In the interim I spent a depressed day searching for web hosts so this would never happen again. As you can imagine, the results didn’t make me happy.
And then, lo! This morning I check my mail and there’s one from Medium. Apparently, Tikh Tokh was ‘….accidentally caught in our spam filter…’. It’s been restored and all’s well, but I can’t help wondering how a whole publications with over 500 posts can get caught up in spam. Whose spam?
Anyway, I’m relieved and my mood has lifted. Probably just as well as it’s the Offspring’s birthday on Friday, I have a full week of teaching and somewhen before now and then, I have to make a chocolate mousse cake. Busy, busy.:)
cheers
Meeks
March 23, 2018
Roundup for the week ending Friday, March 23 2018
Not a tech post in sight this week, although be warned, I’ll be starting a new series with some tech in it soon. For now there are just two posts:
The Gingerbread House of my Dreams, and
A Frog at the Window
You can find both posts on the homepage of Tikh Tokh:
Back home in Warrandyte, there’s rain forecast! Keep your fingers crossed please.
March 17, 2018
Tikh Tokh articles for the week ending March 18, 2018
I’m still experimenting with the best way to keep Meeka’s Mind more or less in sync with Tikh Tokh so this is attempt 2? 3? Something like that. Anyway, I thought I could use Meeka’s Mind as a kind of un-newsletter. Every Sunday [my time] or perhaps Friday, I’ll do a simple post listing the articles I’ve written during the week with links to them on Tikh Tokh. This may turn out to be a spectacular failure, but here goes:
Week ending March 18, 2018
Left-over chicken a la Peking Duck [March 18, 2016]
How to create a simple table in Word 16 [March 13, 2016]
How to ‘Add’, ‘Multiply’ & ‘Percent’ in Word 16 Tables [March 12, 2016]
All three posts can be found on the Tikh Tokh homepage:
cheers
Meeks
March 9, 2018
Tikh Tokh is up and running!
Tikh Tokh is my new blog on Medium and it’s now ready for visitors.
Apologies for the HUGE graphic. When I copy pasted the link, that graphic showed up instead and I have no idea how to get rid of it. -sigh-
Anyway, I believe you can look at Tikh Tokh without being registered with Medium, so I’d really appreciate it if you could try out the various navigation tabs as they now correspond to the ‘categories’ I used to have. The post about Elder Scrolls Online shown on the Featured Page is new.
Have a great weekend,
cheers
Meeks
March 3, 2018
Spinach sauce with savoury French Toast – a recipe
This is a very Hungarian meal and may not be to everyone’s liking but Mum made it for me all through my childhood and I still make it for The Offspring [and myself].
Spinach sauce
1 large bunch of English spinach
2 cloves of garlic
3 tablespoons of plain [all purpose?] flour
2 tablespoon of Peanut or olive oil
milk
Method
Begin by stripping the spinach leaves off the stalks and washing them AT LEAST 3 times. This is the part I dislike because it takes time and patience but if you don’t get all the minute bits of grit or sand or whatever it is off the spinach leaves your sauce will crunch between your teeth – most unpleasant!
Once the spinach is clean put a small amount of water to boil in the bottom of a pot large enough to hold all the spinach. When the water is boiling throw the spinach into the pot, cover and let the spinach wilt for no more than 1 minute. As soon as the spinach collapses into a green ball remove from heat, strain through a colander and refresh with a quick rinse under cold water. Let it drain.
While the spinach is draining peel the garlic and mash it with a heavy knife. I find the easiest way to do this is to use the back of the knife to scrape away at the cloves until they break down into a paste. Garlic presses are no good because you end up with small bits of garlic that can be rather overpowering when you bite on them.
Once the garlic is mashed make a white roux with the oil and flour in a pot large enough to hold the finished spinach sauce. To make the roux stir the flour and oil together over a gentle heat and keep stirring for about 2 minutes until the flour cooks. Do NOT let it go brown!
Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the mashed garlic. The roux can now sit for a little while.
Put the strained spinach onto a wooden chopping board and chop until very fine.
Add the chopped spinach to the roux and combine well until there are no lumps of white showing.
The next bit is a little hard to quantify but pour in at least 1 cup of cold milk and immediately stir into the spinach mixture. At this stage the sauce should be quite ‘wet’. If it looks too thick add a little more milk then return the pot to the heat and allow the sauce to come to a simmer. You must keep stirring [with a wooden spoon] until the sauce is completely cooked. Depending on quantities this could take ten minutes.
As the sauce simmers it will start to thicken and the spinach will ‘bleed’ that lovely green colour into the milk. The sauce is done when it has a nice overall green colour and has thickened to the point where you could almost eat it with a fork – so not runny but not like porridge either. Set aside while you make the french toast.
French Toast
The Hungarian version of french toast is called ‘Bundás kenyér’ and translates as ‘fur coated bread’ [bunda means fur coat. Don’t ask]. Each slice should be golden brown, slightly crunchy and sprinkled with salt, not sugar!
4 whole eggs
6 slices of bread – stale or fresh. [I allow roughly 1 egg to 1.5 slices of bread, depending on the size of the slices]
peanut oil for frying – should cover the bottom of the frying pan with a bit to spare but remember, you are not deep frying here.
Method
I use a heavy cast iron frying pan so it needs to be heated ahead of time while I prepare the rest of the ingredients. Adjust to suit your own pan.
While the oil and pan are heating, crack the eggs into a bowl and beat lightly with a fork – just enough to mix the white and the yolk.
Cut each slice of bread in half and arrange bread and egg mix near the frying pan. Place a serving plate within reach of the pan.
Once the oil is hot [it should be radiating heat but not quite smoking] dip a piece of bread into the egg, flip it with a fork and immediately lift out of the egg. Let the excess egg drip back into the bowl and then gently place the bread into the hot oil.
[Note : you have to be quick getting the bread into and out of the egg because you don’t want it to get soggy. If it gets soggy it will not fry to a crisp finish.]
Fry the bread in batches until the bottoms go a nice golden colour. Turn, fry the other side and then place onto the serving plate. You can drain the bread on kitchen towel if you want but I rarely bother.
Once the bread is all done, sprinkle with a little salt and it is ready to serve. Reheat the spinach just a little bit and stir the slight ‘crust’ on top until it reintegrates with the sauce.
To serve
Arrange slices of golden bread in a fan shape on a plate and pour half a ladle of spinach sauce next to the bread. It should look rather pretty. Then spoon some of the sauce onto the bread and eat the two together to get the combination of smooth, garlicky sauce and crisp, eggy bread. Enjoy!
