All posts by Sheryl Canter

FIX: Android Battery Draining & Overheating

Media Server
Media Server seems to get confused with too many files

In case anyone else with an Android phone is having problems with overheating and battery drain, I found the solution. It’s a bug in Media Server that afflicts some ROMs. When too many files build up on your phone, it goes bonkers. Here’s the fix:

1. Remove all unneeded files from your phone (photos, music, videos, and any other files you have in volume – e.g. I had several hundred crossword files). I moved what I wanted to save but didn’t need on my phone to my computer, and deleted the rest.

2. Go to Settings->Apps->All, scroll down to find “Media Storage”, click Force Stop, and then Clear Data. In the screenshot, Media Server has only 7.31MB of data. Before I cleared it and rebooted, it was over 52MB. How big is yours?

3. Restart your phone.

This will force Media Server to start again clean and reindex everything, restoring your phone to its original cool-running, long-battery-life state.

You’re Probably Iodine Deficient

You’re probably iodine deficient because most people reading this will be American, and most Americans are iodine deficient. Whether it will cause out-and-out disease in your body depends on whether you have any physical “weak links”, so to speak.

I have a history of “hot” thyroid nodules – nodules that spew thyroid hormone without regard for what my body  needs, making me hyperthyroid. I had a partial thyroidectomy when I was 19, and most of my thyroid was removed. My doctor told me to take synthroid for the rest of my life to suppress my thyroid activity, but I didn’t and I was fine for many years. But recently the nodules recurred.

The problem was caught in a blood test. Again my TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) was very low, indicating that my body somehow already had enough hormone – i.e., nodules again. It occurred to me that I had recently switched from regular, iodized salt to sea salt, which is not fortified with iodine. So I did a google search to see if iodine deficiency could cause hot thyroid nodules. The answer was yes, so I then researched supplements. After taking a high dose supplement (details below) for about a month, two miraculous things happened:

  1. My thyroid nodules went away and my thyroid levels returned to normal.
  2. My ulcerative colitis went into complete remission for the first time in 10 years. (HUH?!?!)

Continue reading You’re Probably Iodine Deficient

Surface Pro with Windows 8: My Take

I’m a technophile, and I particularly love tablets. I bought the iPad within weeks of its initial release. I have a really nice Android tablet – Google’s Nexus 10. And now I have a Microsoft Surface Pro with Windows 8. I’ve used all three extensively. What do I think of the Surface Pro? It’s not perfect, but it’s very good.

Continue reading Surface Pro with Windows 8: My Take

How to Turn off the Junk E-mail Filter in Outlook 2010

I recently switched over to Outlook 2010 from Outlook 2007 (I’m slow). I always disable the Junk E-mail filter in Outlook because I use something better: Popfile. But I was having trouble doing that in Outlook 2010. I selected the radio box for no filtering, but messages were still being directed to the Junk E-mail folder.

I took to the internet to search for an answer, and discovered that I was having this problem because I have multiple accounts, and Outlook 2010 handles junk mail filtering on a per-account basis. But there was mass confusion on how to access the settings for each account. There is no global setting area in the interface.

Even Microsoft MVPs on Microsoft sites were giving misinformation. Many were suggesting that people disable Junk E-mail in the registry. That didn’t sound right to me, and I didn’t want to do it. I do use some pieces of the Junk E-mail feature – the disabling of links and the safe/blocked sender lists. Plus, judging from peoples’ complaints, it seemed like the suggested registry tweak just disabled the interface and not the functionality!

Continue reading How to Turn off the Junk E-mail Filter in Outlook 2010

Why Mayor Bloomberg Is Right About Sugary Drinks

The arguments to Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed ban on super-sized sugary drinks show the ignorance that proves why the ban is necessary. There is no comparison between the health hazards of a large pastrami sandwich and a giant sugary drink (as Jon Stewart complained). Saturated fat isn’t dangerous, as the blog post linked below explains. Nor does the argument that “donuts are dangerous, too” make sense. A large sugary drink is more dangerous than a solid sugary dessert because of the speed with which the sugar hits the liver. Plus the danger isn’t only obesity – it’s heart disease, obesity, cancer, and more.

Most people are unaware of the dangers of sugary beverages – or the debate from the early 1970s over which dietary factor caused heart disease: sugar or fat (it is sugar, not fat – Ancel Keys is now widely thought to have been wrong).

Read this blog post: Sugar Is Toxic: Heart Disease, Cancer & More. It clearly explains the biochemistry of sugar metabolism, and why large-sized sugary beverages are the greatest threat to health of any food.

Kindle 3 Tips and Tricks

Kindle 3

I resisted the Kindle for a long time. I read a lot and I’m headache-prone, and those low-contrast early Kindles were not going to work for me. Also, I saw in reviews that Kindle books often lacked the footnotes and indexes of the paper versions. When I had occasion to create a Kindle book I realized why: the format is very limited and inconvenient for publishers.

But then I bought an iPad. The Kindle app is free, so I tried a couple ebooks. For most books I read, footnotes and indexes are not an issue, and I’m chronically low on bookshelf space. I like the built-in dictionary and being able to carry several books in a small package. So now I was sold on ebooks, but the iPad was not the ideal hardware. It’s just heavy enough that I don’t want to carry it around, the screen washes out in bright sunlight, and the battery life is only so-so. I can read books on my Droid X phone, which also has a Kindle app, but that drains the battery fast.

Amazon had dropped the price of the Kindle when the iPad was released, and the new Kindle 3 with its light weight, improved screen contrast, long battery life, and readability in direct sunlight was starting to look pretty good. So I bought one, and I like it a lot. I used it for a few days without reading the manual – the basics are not hard. But once I read the manual and did a little googling, I discovered some interesting things I didn’t know. What follows is a collection of tips and tricks for the Kindle 3 that I found especially useful:

  • Viewing PDFs and Other Document Types
  • Zapping that Ghost Dictionary in the Archive
  • Hotkeys and an Easter Egg
  • The Hidden Image Viewer

Continue reading Kindle 3 Tips and Tricks

Book Review: Cooking for Geeks

Cooking for Geeks

I was attracted to the basic concept of this book: an analytic approach to cooking that includes the whys and wherefores, not just the whats. But, for the record, I would like to clarify that as a software engineer I would call myself a “nerd” rather than a “geek”. The word “nerd” derives from the word “drink” spelled backwards. The nerds were the ones who stayed back at the dorm and studied while everyone else went out and got hammered. Geeks, on the other hand, have no special technical or intellectual gifts. They’re just inept – socially and physically uncoordinated, messing up even the simplest tasks.

The first two chapters of this book are targeted towards geeks – people who have never stepped foot inside a kitchen and don’t have any concept of nutrition. The author uses programming code as metaphors for basic cooking concepts. Now who could possibly be this in-the-dark about cooking, and find computer code enlightening as metaphor? They would have to be male. No girl grows up without any exposure to the kitchen. So the target audience is apparently the stereotypical male programmer sitting behind a keyboard 18 hours a day living on pizza and soda pop. I thought these were creatures of the 1980s and now extinct – either dead from the all-pizza diet or evolved into healthier eating, while younger programmers were not spoiled by homemaker mothers into total kitchen ignorance. Perhaps I’m wrong. Are you still out there??

The book gets much better after the first two chapters, which – in the author’s defense – he does say you can skip if you are experienced in the kitchen.

Continue reading Book Review: Cooking for Geeks

Movie Review: “The Kids Are All Right”

"The Kids Are All Right"

I didn’t like this movie half as much as I thought I would, for two reasons:

(1) The trailer gives away too much.

(2) The part the trailer doesn’t give away is the worst part of the movie.

I actually liked the trailer more than the movie.

What follows is a spoiler, so if you don’t want to know, do not continue reading!


Continue reading Movie Review: “The Kids Are All Right”

Recipe for Authentic English Muffins with Natural Nooks and Crannies

I was surfing around the Web last week and came across a picture of English muffins cooking in a cast iron skillet. I’m always interested in recipes that make special use of cast iron, and I didn’t realize until I saw this picture that English muffins were made in a skillet. I like English muffins and I’m getting a little tired of popovers for breakfast, so I thought I’d look up the recipe.

Well, it turns out there are a million different recipes for English muffins, and they vary widely. Some are rolled out and cut like biscuits into circles. Some use a wet batter that is poured into crumpet rings. Some are baked in an oven rather than cooked on a skillet – either partially or completely. Some are cooked in a covered skillet (news flash: that is baking, not skillet cooking).

Judging from reviewer comments, most of the recipes lacked the large holes and sourdough flavor characteristic of English muffins. A few tried to correct this problem by the addition of vinegar for the sour flavor, and baking soda just before cooking to create holes. That sounded like artifice to me so I continued my research, and eventually discovered the authentic source of that characteristic taste and texture. I tested my theory with a recipe of my own creation, and the result was fantastic. Here is my recipe – with pictures!

Homemade English muffin with natural nooks and crannies.

Homemade English muffin with natural nooks and crannies.
Homemade English muffin, nooks and crannies filled with butter.

Homemade English muffin, nooks and crannies filled with butter.


 

Continue reading Recipe for Authentic English Muffins with Natural Nooks and Crannies

“Black Rust” and Cast Iron Seasoning

My previous post on the chemistry of cast iron seasoning focused on fat polymerization – the transformation of an oil into a hard, slick glaze. After I posted that, someone sent me some links that talked about two other elements in cast iron seasoning: carbon and magnetite.

Carbon is the black stuff that’s left after something is burned. A certain amount of carbon gets bound up in the polymerized fat when food is cooked in the pan. This may darken the pan, but does it make it more nonstick? Some say it does, though I don’t see the mechanism.

More interesting to me is the third element: magnetite.

Continue reading “Black Rust” and Cast Iron Seasoning