Cameron Stokes’s Blog

I’ve started several development/technology projects over the past few years, none of which have made it to a launch or release.  Many of them were to learn new a new framework, a couple were things I thought I could turn into a full-blown product but for whatever reason didn’t.

In any case, I have a new project I’ve been working on for the the past 2 weeks that I plan to see all the way through.  I think there’s a real need for a product like this and can see it having a pretty decent adoption.  Without giving away too many details here’s a tease:

I’ve tried some delicious new beers recently and my list of favorite breweries has grown, specifically Stone Brewing Co., Duck Rabbit Craft Brewery, and New Belgium.  A recent post on Blogfish, the Dogfish Head blog, answered the question of where Dogfish Head conceived their name and since I’ve always been curious about some of the other breweries and their names, I decided to do some research.  Here’s what I came up with:

• Atlanta Brewing Company – Obvious…
• Dogfish Head Craft Brewery – Named after the a cove behind founder Sam Calagione’s parents’ home in Maine; suggested to Sam by his father. [1]
• Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery – Named after an illustration in Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein, a throwback to head brewer Paul Philippon’s previous life as a philosophy teacher. [2]
• Flying Dog Brewery – Named after a painting the founder, George Stranahan, saw in Pakistan while attempting to climb K2 in the Himalayas. [3]
• Left Hand Brewing Company – Named after Chief Niwot, a tribal leader of the Southern Arapaho people in Colorado; Niwot is the Arapaho word for left hand.
• New Belgium Brewing Company – Presumably after head brewer Jeff Lebesch’s bike rides through Europe. [4]
• Stone Brewing Co. – A quick email to the brewery told me Stone was chosen to elicit thoughts of “old school European architecture, strength, simplicity and craftsmanship…the opposite of the plastic and aluminum culture which (regrettably) dominates the beer drinking world of today.”
• Sweetwater Brewing Company – Presumably named after Sweetwater Creek in west Atlanta near their original brewery.
• Terrapin Beer Company – Named after the Grateful Dead album Terrapin Station, a favorite of founders Brian “Spike” Buckowski and John Cochran. [5]

This gets me thinking…if I were to start a brewery what would I name it?

Since planting the hops back in March we’ve made numerous trips to Bogart to water, trim, and just overall tend to the hops.  A few of the rhizomes didn’t make it but of the 23 vines, we ended up with about 18 that took off and have been growing like crazy ever since.

Hop Cones

Based on my research I wasn’t expecting the plants to actually produce any hops given they’re in their first year but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what they’ve produced.  Since early July we’ve had 4 pickings and have over 6 ounces of Cascade and Chinook hops vacuum-packed in the freeze.

Getting ready to dry.

The best part of growing hops is the smell…they smell incredible.  Being a hop head I can’t get enough of the smell and dunked my head into our picking bag several times.  Breaking a hop cone open you can see the lovely lupulin glands and imagine the wonderful beer they will produce.

I’m already thinking to next year about what new varieties to plant and how to expand the hop farm.  All those goes to show you really can grow hops in Georgia.

More photos of the harvest are here.

I’ve posted a MySQL backup script to the lab for anyone that is interested.  The script will backup all MySQL databases and allows you to configure the filename and path for backups and how long to keep older backups in number of days.  I have mine set to run via cron every night at midnight and to retain 31 days of files so that I can revert to any day within the past month should anything happen.

It’s a simple script but it gets the job done.  Hope you find it helpful.  You can find the script here.

Every once in a while I’ll put together a one-off script or application to help solve a problem or save myself time by automating something.  These rarely leave my computer but I figure some of them could be helpful to someone else, hence I’ve setup my Lab.  The lab is where I will showcase anything I’ve hacked together that I think is worth sharing.

The first item in the lab is a Timer I’ve written using using JavaScript, ExtJS, and SoundManager 2.  After setting the hours, minutes, and seconds that you want to time, click Start, and the application will countdown and then play an alarm sound once the countdown is complete.

I wrote this for 2 main reasons: (1) to build something using ExtJS and (2) to have a timer that wasn’t surrounded by ads, blinked at me, or otherwise annoyed me.  The source is available from the application page.  The next iteration of the timer should be out soon allowing you to set multiple timers to be executed in sequence, i.e. reminding you when to start or stop steps in an exercise or recipe.