Great British Bake Off

Robyn got me hooked on this show called the Great British Bake Off. It has inspired me to try baking a couple of the tastier looking things on the show.

Here is Mary Berry's Lemon Tart:

Not bad for a first crack!

Here is a fruit tart that uses the same sweet crust recipe as the lemon tart, with a crème pâtissière (from this recipe) filling. The crust turned out nicer looking this time:

The recipes are brilliant because they're in grams; you can't possibly muck up the measurements.

I made one slip up on the fruit tart. I used Masa Harina for "corn flour", but I should have used corn starch (only the US and Canada refer to "corn starch", the rest of the world calls it corn flour"). It still tastes fine, but the texture is a little bit off. The other UK-ism is that caster sugar is sold as berry sugar in Canada.

Homemade Soylent (Schmilk)

In 2013 I read about Soylent, a "nutritionally complete" meal replacement beverage invented by a software engineer, who started a 30-day experiment to see if he could survive on the stuff. His experiment morphed into a crowdfunding campaign with a feed-the-world-cheaply theme and he raised millions of dollars to start mass-producing it for sale.

Do people need "real food" to survive and thrive, or can we break food into its macro- and micronutrient components and reassemble those pieces to create something equivalent? Possibly better?

A lot of people were intrigued by the same question and the "powdered food scene" seemed to grow a lot in 2013 & 2014.

The shipping date of Soylent to Canada was never confirmed. When I started getting serious about losing weight in 2015 I started doing some research on homemade, powdered food meal replacements. The appeal was:

• Easily portionable and measureable (to meet caloric needs)
• Inexpensive 
• Easily hackable (for instance, easy to bump up the protein content or lower the carbohydrate content by adjusting the formula) 
• The buzz-phrase "nutritionally complete" kept popping up. 

As it turns out, Soylent (the company) hosts a recipe section on their website where users can submit and review recipes.

A 450-calorie serving of homemade Soylent

I found one called Schmilk Chocolate that I thought I'd try. It uses whole milk as a source of fat and protein. I made a batch and had it for breakfast every day for a week. It was pretty good! Bland, but not offensively so.

Since early summer 2015, I have been eating/drinking this homemade Soylent every workday for both breakfast and lunch. For supper and meals on weekends I have "real food". I have observed no ill-effects whatsoever (including excess flatulence, which some Soylent users had trouble with).

The positives are:

• Easy to make. I mix the powdered ingredients with whole milk a meal ahead; the consistency is better if it sits in the fridge for a while.  
• Easy to measure (12.6 grams of powder + 100 ml of whole milk = 108 calories. Scale however is appropriate. I started drinking 670 calorie portions, then 550, currently 450). 
• Easy to consume - you just drink it! 
• Tastes okay. Hard to describe; it's so bland that there are not any defining offensive flavours. The balance of fat, salt, and everything else seems to tell the body "this is good". I usually add an espresso shot for flavour. 
• Makes me feel satiated and satisfied until the next meal. 
• Keeps me regular.

Now that I'm basically at my goal weight, I don't think I am going to stop with Soylent any time soon. It's a part of my routine, and something I miss if my routine is interrupted. 

Recipe - Schmilk Chocolate - "5 day" Batch

1 kg Oat Flour (Only Oats brand comes in 1 kg bags) 

60 g Cocoa powder

53 g Acacia Fibre

30 g Psyllium Husk powder

16 g Iodized Salt 

5.5 g Potassium Citrate 

5.5 g Choline Bitartrate 

2 g Stevia Powder 

1.5 g Xanthan Gum 

5 g (or 5 daily servings) Multivitamin (powder)

9500 ml Whole Milk

Recipe notes:

• Most ingredients can be found in health food stores, all can be found online. 
• Mix all dry ingredients ahead of time.
• Food scale required. 
• 12.6 g powdered mixture + 100 ml whole milk = 108 calories.
• Recommend mixing at least 1 hour before consuming for better consistency. 

Weight Loss

I think I've got this weight loss thing figured out.

In Montreal in 2011, I started writing a blog post called "Losing weight with common sense", because I was going to make all of these "sensible" changes to melt off the pounds, and hold myself accountable by blogging. Thankfully, I never hit the submit button, and those sensible changes - like eating an enormous plate of salmon and broccoli with a side of four beers and a half bag of chips for an evening snack - never paid off.

I've been overweight since my early teens. By World Health Organization standards, that means having a BMI of >25. In at least part of my high school years I was obese (>30 BMI - at 6'5" that's >114.7 kg or >253 lbs). I wasn't interested in sports, and I sure wasn't interested in moderation. I didn't particularly care, and I didn't have the understanding/knowledge to do anything differently.

In October 2014 I got a Fitbit One to use as a silent wake-up alarm, because Robyn couldn't stand my old alarm clock. Putting a step tracker in my pocket piqued some interest in weight management and I started occasionally tracking my weight for the heck of it. I clocked in at 113.4 kg; just a hair under "obese" on the BMI scale.

In November of that year, Robyn's dad passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. He was in his 50's, healthy and active. This was shocking. I started thinking - a lot - about the limited time we have on Planet Earth. I was 28; about half Paul's age.

By Spring of 2015 I had been fiddling with the Fitbit app, and mustering up inspiration to get serious about changing my habits, health and appearance. I had been reading posts in reddit's r/Fitness, r/loseit and r/fatlogic. r/fatlogic was actually the best inspiration - the subreddit showcases examples of anything that "deviates from the scientific facts of body weight management". It was a wake-up call to recognize some of those behaviours in myself (those small internal justifications I made before smashing a whole bag of Ruffles All-Dressed potato chips).

I learned that diet is the key to weight management, not exercise (although I do not dispute the value of exercise!). I learned about calories, got a food scale, and started counting.

I couldn't believe how effective it was. I plugged in a weight loss target into the MyFitnessPal app (0.5 kg/week) and it gave me a calorie allowance. By maintaining the discipline to weigh and count everything that went into my body (and estimating generously when nutritional info was unavailable), the weight disappeared at a perfectly consistent rate:

Weight loss target was 0.5 kg/week from April to December. Slowed down to 0.25 kg/week in December. Almost at my "maintenance weight" target of 85kg. 

RESULTS
Starting weight: 113.4 kg (250 lbs) - October 2014
Starting BMI: 29.6
Starting waist: 38-40"

Current weight: 85.7 kg (189 lbs) - Today
Current BMI: 22.4
Current waist: 34"

A couple tricks I used to stay motivated:

• Daily weigh-ins, but ignore daily fluctuations. This built a rich data set and let me see that the day-to-day doesn't matter so much as the week-to-week and month-to-month. It's about lifestyle changes, not daily changes. 
• Didn't give up up my love for snacks, just found different snacks. Tomato basil rice cakes smothered in hot sauce and beef jerky, mmm. 
• Log absolutely everything. Estimate high if unsure. 
• Try my best to avoid going over daily calorie limits. If I go over, it's not the end of the world. Just hit my limit the next day. 
• Ditched the calorie counting features in Fitbit for MyFitnessPal - a much better app and food database. 
• The key has really been education and understanding. I failed in 2011 because I thought motivation was enough to succeed. Success, at least for me, is dependent on knowledge, goal-setting, and data. 
• Because I have the knowledge, I feel I can maintain these habits indefinitely. It's not a quick fix, it's a lifestyle change. 

Next steps - turn 30 in April with a healthy BMI for the first time in over half of my life, maintain current weight around the 85kg mark, turn remaining fat stores into muscle starting this spring when I can get out and start running again. That's a blog post for another day! 

Feels good, man. 

Summer of Baseball 2015

2015 was the summer of baseball! 

Robyn and I saw the Jays play 3 games against the Twins in May, in Minnesota.

I went on a trip with my parents to Seattle in July to see the Jays play the Mariners.

Robyn had a business trip in Chicago, so I flew down to meet her for a weekend and we saw the Cubs play two games at the White Sox. Somehow, I missed taking pictures of this!

Coolest of all, we impulse-travelled to Toronto to see Game 1 & 2 of the ALDS - Texas Rangers @ Toronto. So intense, even though we lose those 2 games!

Best summer ever!

By default, E3+ overload relays have a "reset" button that doubles as a "test trip" button

Long time, no blog!

At work the other day we came across an interesting situation. We had a motor that we just couldn't get started. Wiring was good, communication was good, no faults being recorded...but every time we hit the start button the motor instantly tripped.

Here's how we figured out the issue.

At Vanscoy, all of our big expansion project MCCs (motor control centres) use E3+ relays and DeviceNet for motor protection and control. These relays are like the circuit breakers in your house; they trip if there is too much current passing through them, but unlike your home's circuit breakers you can program them with more advanced and specific settings for different types of trips.

While in your house you switch a tripped breaker back to the ON position to reset it, these E3+ relays have a "TEST/RESET" button on the front. If your motor pulls too much current, the E3+ trips to protect the equipment, and an operator has to go hit the reset button to clear the fault.

(the faults are also re-settable over DeviceNet, so programmers can enable different behaviours like reset functionality with an HMI or a field stop button)

There is a programmable "Test Enable" parameter (#103) in the E3+ relays. When enabled, this parameter changes the changes the behaviour of the reset button on the front of the E3+ as follows:

• An instantaneous TEST/RESET button press clears the faults/trips from the relay and allows you to resume operations. 
• A button press >= 2 seconds generates a test trip, causing your motor (if running) to stop. 

A potash mill generates a lot of dust and humidity, and mechanical devices - including buttons - are failure-prone. What we had here was a sticky reset button that was maintaining a test trip. As soon as the motor was given a start command, it would trip. 

The solution was a two-parter:

1. Fix the sticky reset button (we don't want faults to be instantaneously cleared without properly understanding them) 
2. Disable the "Test Enable" parameter on the E3+ so that the "TEST/RESET" button could only clear faults, not generate them. 

Taking a step back, our problem was that we never bothered to understand what the "TEST" part of "TEST/RESET" meant - we had no idea this "Test Enable" feature existed, and didn't know the single button (that we thought was simply a reset button) had different functions. 

I think the "Test Enable" feature is a probably a good one. During construction and commissioning, being able to generate a test trip allows for testing the trip protection on the relay, as well as the functionality of any PLC monitoring the trips. 

But for anyone searching the 'net for E3+ relay info - I'd recommend that as part of a commissioning procedure, the "Test Enable" parameter be disabled as one of the final steps. This insulates plants from tricky-to-troubleshoot failures caused by sticky reset buttons. 

DeviceNet Troubleshooting

DeviceNet... she is a fickle mistress.

I am wrapping up a big expansion project at a Saskatchewan potash mine that included a pair of GE Fanuc RX3i PLCs, lots of IC694DNM200 DeviceNet modules on each PLC, many, many E3+ starters, and several Rockwell VFDs (700, 700H models). On this project we have encountered some frustrating and mysterious DeviceNet problems.

If you're banging your head against the wall with your DeviceNet network, or can't figure out how to get your PLC to recognize a node, here are my tips:

1. Search Google for "turck devicenet troubleshooting guide 2.2". Download the PDF. Read it from front to back. It is your new bible. Carry it with you everywhere and sing its praises. Most problems that you encounter while commissioning a new DeviceNet network (or making modifications to an existing network) can be solved with this manual's guidance.

2. After an unscheduled plant-wide power outage, we'd sometimes lose nodes - a VFD or E3+ that was happy a day earlier would disappear from the network entirely when everything was powered back on. Not visible on the PLC, not visible with RSNetWorx. On the Rockwell VFDs (on the 20-COMM-D module), the PORT light would be solid green, MOD flashing green, and NETA solid red. Check the following, in order of ease:

a. Power cycle the VFD/E3+/starter in question. Maybe it just needs a power cycle to register on the scanner (ie, your PLC).

b. Check the node address of every. single. node. on your DeviceNet network and make sure there are no duplicates. If someone has inadvertantly created a duplicate address by changing DIP switches, this will cause network problems the next time everything starts up. Make sure each node address matches what is configured in your PLC. You never know who has been sneaking around in your MCC, so don't rule this out.

c. If you are using auto baud rate on your scanner (PLC), power down your non-working node. Change the baud rate on the node from "auto" to match whatever the network is actually running at (125, 250, or 500 kbps). Power up the motor again. Does it work? Wow, magic. Power it down, set it back to auto baud, and power it up again. It should still work. This just happened to me a few days ago on a Rockwell VFD with a 20-COMM-D DeviceNet module. This was after replacing most of the hardware and trying most of the other solutions I've listed here.

d. Power cycle the DeviceNet network: make sure all DeviceNet power supplies are turned off (there can be multiple 24V power supplies per network, so keep your eyes open!). Caution: this impacts communication between all the nodes on your DeviceNet network and your PLC. I've seen nodes return to life after a network power cycle.

e. Power cycle your scanner / PLC. Caution: this impacts your whole process, in my experience it's only possible on a shut-down day or during commissioning. I've seen nodes come back from the dead after power cycling the PLC.


Got any other tips for fixing bad DeviceNet codes? I'd love to hear about them. Send me an email (neufeld@brahm.ca) or leave a comment on this post. Thanks and good luck with your networks!

Update Nov 2015 - In the past few years I've developed a much better understanding of DeviceNet... it's actually a reliable protocol, so long as it's installed and commissioned correctly. I am leaving this post online as a reminder of how frustrating it can be to work on a system that you don't have the proper experience or training on!

Hawaii's Best Treat

Oh, hello there blog! Long time, no see.

I have largely ignored blog posting since we moved into our new house in January. It's really awesome, especially compared to our old place. I'll post about it some other time though.

Robyn and I just got back from a relaxing 10 days in Hawaii. We spent 8 nights on the Big Island - the one with the volcano:

Lava flow covering the road in Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii. 

There is an awesome, awesome treat that can be found in Hawaii's gas stations and grocery stores: the SPAM musubi.

Here's one from a grocery store. 

It's a fried piece of spam, surrounded in non-vinegared sushi rice, wrapped in nori (seaweed paper stuff). You may be raising an eyebrow right now, but it's extremely tasty! Think about it: salty ham flavour, rice for bulk, and nori for that "umami" savoury flavour.

Here's one I got at a farmer's market in Hilo, Hawaii with a piece of pineapple across the top:

If you are ever in Hawaii, I urge you to seek out this local treat and try it! If for no other reason to tell your friends you tried it. But I am pretty sure you'll like it!

One of these days I'm going to make some... so beware if you get an invitation over!