A few friends and I first experienced this traditional Vietnamese Tết (Lunar New Year) food while visiting years ago. We loved it, and recently I looked up how to make it myself. It’s not a well known food in the US, so I thought it would still be fun to share.

I followed the recipe from “Enjoy a simple life“, but made a homemade cardboard mold as suggested by “Takes Two Eggs“.

Like a bread, this recipe takes a fair bit of time. I would start in the morning.

1. Soak rice and mung beans overnight. Marinate seitan or meat.
2. About 30 minutes of cooking. Boil beans and rice.
3. About 30 minutes wrapping and packaging.
4. Finally, an 8-12 hour boil in a big pot of water.

Ingredients needed:

• Seitan or pork belly (optional), 4-8 oz
• 5 c glutinous rice, lightly rinsed twice and soaked overnight
• 2½ c dried slit mung beans, washed and soaked overnight
• 2 shallots, thinly sliced
• 2 leeks, use white part, thinly sliced
• 2 t salt
• 3 t black pepper
• 1 t sugar
• 2 t good soy sauce
• 2 T fish sauce or 1 T mushroom powder
• ½ c vegetable or peanut oil

Additional supplies:

• Banana leaves (defrosted)
• Twine, string, etc
• Scissors
• Plastic wrap
• Aluminium foil
• Cardboard and packing tape to make a mold. I used a soda box

Ingredient Prep:

1. Cook rice with salt.
2. Steam mung beans. Food-process them.
3. Fry shallots and leeks in oil. Add seasonings.
4. Remove from heat. Add the rest of the oil and mung beans. Mix thoroughly.

Making the cakes:

1. Place the square cardboard mold on a sheet of plastic wrap.
2. Put two cut banana leaves inside to form a little square pocket.
3. In the pocket, layer ½ c rice, ¼ c mung beans mix, strips of meat or seitan, ¼ c mung beans, and ½ c rice.
4. Fold the banana leaves over, and remove the mold. Close the plastic wrap to hold everything together.
5. Wrap the plastic wrap in a layer of alumnium foil.
6. Tie the foil shut with string.

Once you have all your cakes made, boil them at a low simmer for 8-12 hours. Your cakes are done.

They last weeks and stay pretty tasty. You can freeze them if you want them to last even longer.

Sources:

1. https://enjoyasimplelife.blogspot.com/2012/01/vegetarian-sticky-rice-banh-chung-chay.html
2. https://takestwoeggs.com/banh-chung/

So I’ve decided on my next project! I’m going to spend a month learning new things. Unlike hack-a-day, where the focus was mostly on doing something every day, here I’m trying to cultivate a different attitude. So the following are all encouraged:

• Being curious about stuff
• Getting distracted
• Having fun
• New experiences
• Being goofy, even if I don’t “learn” anything from goof experiences
• Naps
• Hanging with other people

And these are discouraged:

• Completionism
• “Grinding” through a nonfiction book I’m not that into
• Rigorously writing up everything
• TV and other mindless activities
• (tentatively) reading?

I made a minimal, printable TODO list. Enjoy!

Take everything in this article with a cup of salt, I’m not even close to an expert.

Recently I’ve been itchy, so I’m treating a couple areas of my house for mold and mildew–the walls of my basement, and a new couch I got. I’ve been researching mold treatments. Some of them are clearly absolute nonsense.

never trust any cleaning procedure that involves mixing baking soda and vinegar

– za3k’s 42nd law

The sensical mold-killing strategies I’ve found boil down to “Remove moisture, so the mold doesn’t come back”, plus one of the following. I do not know which of these are effective. I also can’t guarantee the specific procedures I tried work.

Sunlight / UV lamp (UV light): I didn’t get good data about whether this works, but it makes some sense. The recommendation I got was 1-3 hours.
My attempt: None. I’d need a UV lamp, since I can’t easily get sunlight where I’m cleaning.

Bleach (oxidizer): Generally held to be pretty effective. Not good for fabrics.
My attempt: I tried it on my basement (dilute to about 0.15%, then pour or spray, scrub afterwards).
My attempt: I also added a little to laundry while I washed the couch cushions and my sheets.

Vinegar (acid): I would suspect vinegar is not very effective (several people claim mold can tolerate low pH better than high pH, and Drew Frye who does a lot of actual testing on boats claims that vinegar acts as food for the mold, helping it come back). OTOH I have anecdotal evidence that it works.
My attempt: None.

Concrobium (a base): This is a mix of trisodium phosphate (pH 12), sodium carbonate or “washing soda” (pH 11) and sodium bicarbonate or “baking soda” (pH 9). I suspect it works really well, because there’s a good explanation as to why it should. Store-bought concrobium is also quite expensive, so I’d make your own. I suspect you don’t need all three ingredients, because I think they’re doing the same thing.
My attempt: I sprayed spray-can concrobium on my couch, which covered maybe 1/6 of the couch with a $13 can. Plan to make some homemade to finish the job.
Edit: Muurkha advises that you can make sodium carbonate by boiling sodium bicarbonate for about an hour.

Clove oil (anti-microbial): Most people who recommend it have a bit of an anti-science attitude, which means they tend to give… silly specific advice. But there’s published research that it works, I just don’t know the best way to apply it, how long it works, or how it works. It seems possible that clove oil is a bit more species-specific than the other methods.
My attempt: None.

Mechanisms, as I understand them:

• Sunlight and bleach should destroy mold and mold spores, by denaturing things.
• Vinegar and concrobium should prevent mold growth by making an environment mold can’t grow in (wrong pH)
• I have no idea how clove oil might work, but both applying the oil and vapor work.

I do not think high or low temperatures will work to kill molds generally, from my research.

The hardest part of this research is that I don’t have a large, visible mold patch. I’m just itchy. So don’t expect a report back about whether this stuff worked, honestly.

The game can be played here. Source code is on github.

Info about the original 1989 Hillsfar game is linked from the demo! Enjoy.

See also the previous blog post about the spritesheet.

Hack-A-Day 2023 is complete. I did 20 projects in 30 days. Pretty good considering I got a new job and moved!

The overview of the month is here and highly recommended.

I plan to do a little more followup this year than last. Today’s last-minute fixes:

• Perquackey (01) works on phones, tablets, and with the mouse. There’s an easter egg that displays any words you missed at the end.
• Typewriter (10) saves progress, and lets you type more than 1 page of content.
• Screensaver (12) works on more screen sizes, including phones.
• Synth (14) looks better on a phone-sized display.
• Stuff.md (23) has an example from the database
• Timelapse (24) has a partial video
• Speed Reading (29) works better on a phone. It also saves your progress.
• Music of the Spheres (30) works on a phone. It’s also louder.

Hack-a-Day is a challenge to complete ~30 fun new projects in 30 days. In my case, I aimed for 20, because I knew I was getting a job and moving. I just barely made it with this last entry, a collaboration with nsh.

Music of the Spheres lets you hear songs on different tonal scales. Listen to the warped melodies. Watch the pretty planets orbit. Surely their sizes and orbits are significant and connected to the tonal scales? Go mad with afterimages of… okay, well it’s kinda fun, anyway. Demo is here, code is on github.

Yesterday’s project was Speed Reading. Experience what it’s like to read Don Quixote faster than you’re comfortable with. Source is on github as usual.

Two friends and I wrote the intro to “Pint-Sized”, a 90s sitcom that never existed.

We used DALL-E and stable diffusion for images, Photopea to add captions, and Google’s AI Test Kitchen for the backing music. Cheers were added with audacity. The video was edited together with ffmpeg.

Credits: za3k, stetson blake, jeremy mcintyre

I’m moving, so I have to pack. I thought I’d make it fun with two projects.

First, I entered everything I was packing into a text file, stuff.md. That way, I can find stuff later. I have two friends who have done something like this, so I’m curious how it will go for me. Here is a sample:

Box 01 - banker
======
- USB Receipt Printer - in trapezoid box
- Thinkpad 460 Charger (x2) - cardboard box (x2)
- Cardboard box "eink"
    - eink communications converter for 7.5" eink display
    - Piece of fiberglass sized for 7.5" eink display
    - 1.54" eink display 152z152px never used, with notes on yellow paper
- Airtec electric duster (AC) - cardboard box
- Tiny UPS for Raspberry Pi - cardboard box
- Wireless receipt printer - cardboard box
- Playstation Eye (x2) - cardboard box
- Mini-router (2 eth, 1 usb), unconfigured - in cardboard box
- Pipe-sealing tape for vacuum - loose
- Multimeter, Kaiweets brand - in cloth case
- $1 in pennies, and penny sleeves - plastic bag
- Engraving pen - loose metal case
- LED Light bulbs (one white, one red) - cardboard box

Box 02 - banker
======
- HDD Copier - cardboard box
- HDD Dock (x2) - cardboard box (x2)
- Butane soldering iron - metal box
- Doxie Go adapters - loose plastic bag
- "Faces" M5Stack development. Stacking keyboard and screen, etc. - plastic case
+ Magnetic metal parts tray
+ Neodynium magnets, two disc sizes - Loose box
+ Receipt paper roll - loose

Box 03 - banker
======
- empty

Second, I took a time lapse video of packing. I wish I had time-lapsed moving in at my current place, but I just wasn’t set up for it. Sadly, my camera battery died after 90 minutes, so I only have a very short video. Next time I’ll plug in a power cable. Here is a short example video.

Both are much too personal for me to post on the web in full.