Robert Narracci's blog

This is my second version of a phone cradle so that my elederly parents can do Facetime with relatives hands free.

So during the Work-At-Home period, my architectural design team got into a rhythm of MSTeams meeting and communicated pretty well. However, we encountered a technical challenge after re-entry to our office. (like other workspaces, we 're slowly filtering in with masks, strict hygeine rules, distancing, and a cap of 50% occupancy). We're still relying upon MSTeams because of travel restrictions and because some teammates are still at home.

If you're working at home (I feel lucky to be doing so...some people aren't lucky enough to be working at home or to be working at all) this 30-60-90 degree cradle can make it easier to manage a phone next to a laptop during video conferencing. The double notch allows portrait or landscape orientation and it should be sized to hold your wetsuited phone snug. Flip it over if you'd like a more dramatic view of your nostrils. Made with 5/4 pine but anything thick enough to not tip over will do fine.

So today I departed from my neoprimitivism to see just how quickly I could bang out a bowl. I produced the a similarly goofy looking bowl as I did last time (this one has a sort of scandinavian boat motif) but this time I did it in 5 hours. Word of caution....the circular chainsaw grinder attachment I use for the fast rough-out behaves similarly to a chainsaw in that its very agressive and can pull one into a cut. This is not to be used in a careless way and should only be used with safety gear (face protection, hand protection and thick clothing.)

Sous Vide is a cooking method with which you immerse vacuum sealed food in a hot water bath and cook it slow and low. The hot water bath is controlled by a water heater/recirculator with a very tight range of temperature control (to one degree F). Since proteins in particular are more temperature sensitive than time sensitive, sous vide allows one to cook and hold food for long periods of time without degradation or loss of moisture. These temperature ranges for various states of doneness are often from about 120F - 160F.

Not too long ago I ate at a small family run Italian restaurant in Dallas. Their claim to fame is handmade pasta and they have one of those $15K bronze die pasta extruders that leaves proper tooth on the surface of the pasta in order to better hold sauce. We tried many of their wares and the the standout dish was not an extruded noodle but a fresh egg noodle made for ravioli. The dish is called Pasta in Brodo (pasta in broth). More specifically it was a porchetta ravioli served in a chicken broth with a full sprig of rosemary dunked into the broth.

Like Aziz Ansari, I dedicate a substantial portion of my life to  making and consuming pasta. This little device allows you to make ridged dumplings like gnocchi, capunti and cavatelli. It’s also very easy to make and is a great holiday gift. 

On weekend mornings, I like to treat myself to home brewed coffee; high quality, whole bean, ground on the spot and french pressed. Takes about 20 minutes but well worth it. I’m lucky enough to own an antique coffee grinder that has an interesting story. In the early 20th century, my Irish grandparents were servants at the Brewster Estate (now Edgerton Park) in New Haven. Frederick Brewster was the equivalent of New Haven's John Rockefeller. When he wasn't off on safari, he was making phat stacks of Benjamin’s with a life size train set that covered most of New England. Mr.

So I had spent a long cold winter fabricating around forty-or-so old tymee tilt out storm windows for our 1895 house. That was tough but I was left with an even more vexing problem of how to protect an elliptical leaded glass window high up on the facade. First was getting on a  high ladder and taking measurements and then reproducing it in drawing. Suffice to say, the ancient Greeks figured out how to easily draw an ellipse with two sticks and a piece of string, but I cheated with digital drawing software and made a print out as a template.

So I ride my bike to and from work almost every day and given NHV's slow but methodical march towards normalization of bicycles on roadways, I decided it would be safe and proper to get a bike light. The bicycle accessory industry has a dazzling array of options with equally dazzling expense. Because my priorities are focused less upon lighting the roadway and more upon making my presence evident to motorists, I opted out of spending hundreds of dollars on a high tech “bike light”.