A crazy house, and some Google-stalking

A friend of mine was looking around on Redfin for "crazy" Seattle houses, and found this one:

http://www.redfin.com/WA/Mercer-Island/0-Mercer-Island-98040/unit-NorthEnd/home/17884945 *

At just under $35 millions dollars, it's quite the estate. Over 22000 square feet, and 2 acres of shorefront proprty on Mercer Island. (Why on earth does the house have 9 bathrooms for 5 bedrooms though? And only 4 garages? What insanely rich person has only 4 cars?)

Anyway, since the address is not disclosed, my curiosity was piqued. From the listing agent's description the property is on the NW shore of Mercer Island. And the exterior pictures show a fairly unique quarter-circle roof near an outside pool. A little time on Google maps and you can find house in aerial shots. Some more digging and you can find the street address. In fact you come across a property listing with the full address.

Who owns this house?

A quick search on the address finds some political campaign donation records in the name of Charles and Karen Lytle. (Thanks to Huffington Post's Fundrace 2008!) The 2007 and 2008 records show that Charles Lytle is CEO of Lytle Enterprises (as does a search on his name).
Their company develops retirement and assisted living communities.

Kind of interesting how easy it is to find stuff on the 'net sometimes. (And how bored I am :P)

I somehow don't think they'll be selling this house any time soon though. (It's been on the market for over a year already... And things haven't gotten any better in the past few months!)

* Updated on 1/14/09 to include current Redfin link. The cumulative time this house has been on the market is now 1628 days (almost 4.5 years).

Kabocha squash time!

Fall means it's time for winter squash - great in soups, baked as a side dish, or of course in the form of pumpkin pie. One of my favourites is the Japanese kabocha squash, and our local farmer's market has had some recently.

I experimented last weekend with a new soup recipe - a Thai-style coconut milk soup made with baked squash. The recipe I used as a starting point is here, but this one from Annie Sommerville's website is very similar and has the added benefit of giving you a nice recipe for making your own veggie stock.

I had to make a few changes to the recipes, but I think it turned out really well, so I'll jot them down here as a reminder to myself and in case other people want to try:

• I didn't have any lemongrass or kaffir lime, so I used the zest of a lime near the end of the recipe (when I added the coconut milk).
• I used light coconut milk :)
• I used about a teaspoon of Thai green curry paste - this gave the soup a nice kick which complemented the natural sweetness...
• I didn't add any sugar (which the one recipe calls for)
• I blended the soup in the pot using a "magic wand" (immersion blender). If you don't have one of these and like making soups or sauces, I really recommend getting one! Bamix are the Rolls-Royce models, but a cheaper Cuisinart or Braun model will work fine unless you use it a LOT.

Amazon links: Bamix Mono Hand Blender, Cuisinart SmartStick Hand Blender

From Scrabble to Electronic Voting Machines

From Slashdot today :
"A New Jersey Superior Court Judge has prohibited the release of an analysis conducted on the Sequoia AVC Advantage voting system. This report arose out of a lawsuit challenging on constitutional grounds the use of these systems. The study was conducted by Andrew Appel on behalf of the plaintiffs, after the judge in the case ordered the company to permit it. That same judge has now withheld it indefinitely from the public record on a verbal order."

The name Andrew Appel looked familiar to me, and sure enough looking at his past publications I see that he is one of the authors of the paper on computer Scrabble that guided my own Scrabble game's development many years ago. (See my previous posts here). This more recent paper looks like it would be interesting to read..

I wonder how one moves from computer Scrabble to looking into the security of voting machines? Probably the Scrabble paper was the result of supervising a student's research...

AntiVirus XP vendor sued

Yay! From ZDNet's ZeroDay blog today:

"The software purveyor behind AntiVirus XP, a fake anti-virus package, has been sued and will hopefully be put out of business."

This is great news - even better would be if they are forced to remove their badware from all the machines they've infected. It was sad to see the public Internet machine in our hotel in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, infected with this crap. (See the screenshot I took.) I was tempted to try removing it, but doing tech support on vacation is not my idea of fun.

Update: 10/02/2008

I didn't realize that Microsoft and the Washington State Attorney-General are the ones suing over this. Kudos to both! Brian Krebs (Washington Post) and Bruce Schneier also wrote about this. (The comments are pretty sad - I had no idea how prevalent this stuff is...)

New Gito Baloi album!

"Death is not the end" :)

I got a message on Facebook today announcing a new Gito Baloi album, called Beyond, produced posthumously using recording made before he died in 2004. (See my previous post about Gito Baloi here).

Folks in the USA can buy the album from CDBaby here (you can also listen to the tracks online), or you can order from Kalahari in South Africa (see below).

Here's the full message*, from the album's producer Dave Reynolds:

There's a brand new Gito Baloi album out called Beyond.

Using bass and vocal recordings which Gito did before he died in 2004, the music was developed in studio by some of the musicians that had worked closely with him on various different projects in his life: Steve Newman, Paul Hanmer, Ian Herman, Dave Reynolds, McCoy Mrubata, Moses Khumalo, Pedro Pinto Da Silver (of 340ml), Tlale Makhene, Tony Cox, Frank Paco, Nibs Van Der Spuy, Deepak Ram, Rui Soeiro (of 340ml), Bernice Boikanyo, Paulo Chibanga (of 340ml), Thuli Mdlalose, Eliot Short, Vusi Maseko and Graeme Sacks.

Here is a write-up by Daniel Brown from Radio France International - there's also a 20 min audio interview which I did - also features some words by Gito.

The album is available from Kalahari . 100% of the proceeds of sales go to the Gito Baloi Memorial Trust (since all costs have been covered by donations).

The Radio France International interview also touches on a collaboration project called Grassroots which features Gito as well as Louis Mhlanga, Concord Nkabinde, Jeff Maluleke, Chris Tokalon, Siya Makuzeni and others. It was nominated for three South African Music Awards and had hit songs on Kaya FM and Munghana Lonene FM [South African radio stations].

The Grassroots album African Moods is also available from Kalahari, and check out the Facebook group called "friends of gito baloi" which will also be the name of the collective of musicians who will be performing tracks from Beyond.

Look out for this - Oppikoppi etc.and funky video coming soon on YouTube too. So get down and pass this on (for Gito and his family, and because it's a great album to have in your collection) ....

* With some slight tweaks and added links by me.

Verizon Bundled Services?

(Last updated 9/30/08 - see below)

Warning - rant ahead! Verizon certainly know how to irritate their customers. (Well, this one for sure).

I presume I am not the only person to use Verizon for landline phone service. I got a letter in the mail from them this past week, labeled Important Information, which lists a few of their current residential service plans and then says:

"These packages will be moved from Verizon Northwest's regulated tariff to a Catalog for Bundled Services under minimal regulation. [My emphasis] A tariff is a document containing the rates, terms and conditions of services that the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) regulates. This will not cause any interruption to your existing service"

So, this seems to be a way to increase the monthly fees I pay, side-stepping the regulation of the UTC? A logical question is: How much more will my monthly bill be? The letter conveniently doesn't mention the fees at all... And:

"Your use of Verizon Bundled Services will constitute your agreement to be bound by the charges, terms and conditions set forth in the Catalog".

The letter also says:

"You agree that it is impractical to print in this document the complete Catalog of all the service descriptions, charges, and other terms and conditions [...] and making it available on request are reasonable means of notice and incorporation of those terms".

Let's get one thing straight. I do not agree with any of the above. I'd like to know how much I will be charged under this new scheme *before I am actually locked in*.

The letter mentioned that the full copy of the Catalog for Bundled Services can be found on http://www.verizon.com/tariffs.
I tried... I challenge anyone to find anything useful relating to the new fees on that website! Which if these "effective tariff" documents do you suppose I should read? Or is it one of these "non-tariff" documents?

All of this frustration made me see if the WUTC website had info on these "Bundled Services under minimal regulation". It looks like Verizon petititioned the WUTC in July 2007 and it was approved shortly thereafter. (See the documents here.)

Update: 9/30/08
I called Verizon last week to ask them if my bill would change in any way, and they said it wouldn't. Even if they're correct, this is an epic fail in terms of dealing with their customers and answering the obvious questions that would arise. (The customer service agent I spoke to sounded quite peeved and frustrated that I was asking about this - I guess they are getting a lot of calls? Hint: Provide better info up-front in the mails you send out and you won't get a flood of calls from confused and frustrated folks...)

The Nigerian scam anthem?

By way of Deputy Dan:
I go chop your dollar.

The evolution of computer demos

One of the guys I work with spent some time in his youth coding Amiga demos in Poland. A friend of his recently found one of his group's old demos on Youtube here. Remember this is with a 14Mhz proc, no 3D acceleration and very little memory and storage.

Nowadays people have machines that are almost 1,000 times faster, not counting their graphics card's GPU. Memory is abundant and portable media can hold loads of information. As an example of how far things have come in the past 15 years, take a look at last year's winner at The Assembly. (Remember, all this is rendered in real-time).

Fun iPhone puzzle game and an interesting blog

I've been enjoying the puzzle game Subway Shuffle on my iPhone. It's has a clean, simple design, is easy to play and challenging, plus I love this sort of abstract puzzle. (There's also a Mac trial version but no PC version).

The author, Bob Hearn, was a student at MIT, and it looks like this game was part of his Ph.D. research. (No, I haven't read his dissertation :P)

An unexpected discovery by way of the Subway Shuffle website is Robert Brinkerhoff - a talented artist who has an interesting blog covering art and life as an American in Rome.

testing this Ping.fm thing...

Interesting times in South Africa

So, president Thabo Mbeki has been recalled by the ANC and will step down as president.
I'm guessing that Jacob Zuma is very happy, and will be elected president in the next elections. (In the interim, and acting president will be chosen from parliament). The oppopsition parties are not happy, even though Mbeki was not popular with them.

What's next for the country?

Thanking our wedding vendors

I've been meaning to write a quick blurb about the various vendors we used for our wedding in July. They were all fantastic and I'd recommend them if you're planning a wedding in Seattle. (And no, they didn't pay me to say any of this :P)



Photography:KMB Photography. Karen and her partner took some amazing photos and has a fun, relaxed style that made us feel comfortable.
Music:Bamboo Beats. DJ Tecumseh and his wife Joanne were very professional and organized, helped us get our playlist together, and did a lot of work on the day-of to keep things running smoothly. He did a great job of sticking to our list of songs and also mixing in a few of his own to keep the energy up and everyone on the dancefloor.

Food: Ravishing Radish. Their food is great - tasty, fresh and beautifully presented. Their passed hors d'oeuvres are some of the best I've ever had, and the everything on the buffet looked like it had just come out of the kitchen. (Quite a feat considering we were in a place with a tiny prep kitchen).
Flowers: Fena Flowers did a great job (and Junko at Ravishing Radish did a great job on the buffet table and centerpieces)
Drinks: Pete's Wines. If you know what you want to drink at your wedding, this is the place to go. They sourced the beer & wine I wanted at a great price and delivered to the venue.

Popcorn Superhet Receiver

Ever since seeing There Will Be Blood and loving the soundtrack, I've been looking around for more music by Johnny Greenwood (guitar player for Radiohead).

In 2004 he was hired by the BBC as their composer-in-residence, and wrote a piece called Popcorn Superhet Receiver, which won the Radio3 Listeners' Award at the 2006 BBC British Composer Awards. I tried to find a version online that I could listen to, without much luck until today I found this page from WNYC , part of the Wordless Music series. You can listen to any of the three pieces on their own, and I've also embedded the code for Popcorn Superhet Receiver below.

Chrome First Impressions

To follow on from my previous post, I've downloaded and installed Google's Chrome on my Vista 64-bit machine. First impressions:

• The installer is quick and slick. I never saw a UAC prompt (and I'm not an admin user) - so where the hell did it install the darn thing? (Turns out it is under the user's profile in AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\)
• It's FAST! Rendering typical "busy" pages (Slashdot, MSN), it blows IE8 Beta 2 out of the water on my machine...
• The UI is very slick. Chrome features many things that IE8 has (like seperate processes per tab) but they have made some really nice improvements to the UI. For example, the "omnibox" (address bar) is very intuitive.  Dragging tabs works just like you'd think it should (they can be re-ordered,  undocked and re-docked).
• The smart search feature is cool - I went to Amazon.com once and searched for something, now typing 'a' + [Tab] switched the "omnibox" to a "Search amazon.com for:" box. No more installing a million search providers...
• Memory use is better than IE8 Beta 2. With MSN and Slashdot open in both browsers, Chrome used a total of 40MB, while IE8 used over 100MB.

So far I like it... The only area that IE8 may have the upper hand is in terms of security. (Chrome doesn't seem to have an Anti-XSS filter). Now to look into their sandboxing technique in more detail :-P

Google Chrome

So, today Google announced their own web browser, Chrome. This small comic book is cute and gives a quick look at the features - most of it sounds like stuff IE8 already does, so their "we're smarter than you" tone is a bit funny.

I think the timing of their anouncement is interesting too, following hot on the heels of the IE8 Beta 2 release last week. I think Microsoft stole a large amount of their thunder...

CNN have an article looking into why Google felt the need for their own browser (instead of working with the existing open-source browsers like Firefox). One reason they give is that IE8's privacy features prevent Google from collecting user-information they need to target advertisements. (I think the latest Firefox has a similar feature).

No doubt Chrome will be less aggressive when it comes to enabling user privacy?

Say it isn't so: The Asteroid is closing...

Sad news today: The Asteroid restaurant in Wallingford is closing.
There's a closing party this Sunday night (August 31st) at 8pm, and all are welcome. I'll be out of town, so sadly I won't be able to make it...

{A} and I love this place, and had our wedding rehearsal dinner there just a few weeks ago. It feels odd to know we won't be able to go back, enjoy the great food and service, and re-live the memories. I hope Marlin finds a new restaurant site, but whatever he chooses to do, I wish him all the best!

As one commenter on the Seattle Times website said: It's sad that good, independent places like the Asteroid can't make a go of it, but chains like The Cheesecake Factory make gobs of money.

Feel-good music from Africa

I've been having a bit of an African-themed few weeks, musically speaking. {A} and I received two CDs as a wedding gift from our friends Patrick and Tracy in Cape Town: Putumayo's Mali and African Odyssey CDs.




Both are great, but the Mali CD reminded me how much I like Malian music. Perfect up-beat stuff that leaves you feeling energized and cheerful. The songs by Habib Koite & Bamada are my favourites, so I looked him up on Napster and downloaded his most recent album, Afriki.



That led me to related artists on Napster, and I discovered more good stuff - most notably, Dimanche a Bamako by Amadou & Mariam. (This was released back in 2005, but I've never heard of them before.) This has an interesting, more modern pop edge (not surprising since it is produced by Manu Chao).




Finally, I've been enjoying the recent album by South African guitar legend Tony Cox, called Blue Anthem. This is a collaboration with the guys from the SA band Benguela, and it's quite different to Tony's usual fingerstyle guitar CDs. (He won a 2008 SAMA award for this album - congratulations!)

Wedding pics

We met with our wedding photographer yesterday and got the pictures - they are amazing! :)

Here is a link to the collection on Flickr - if you're not already on my friends/family list, drop me an email and I'll invite you so that you can see them.

I'm working on the honeymoon pics (tagging them and cleaning out the bad ones) - I'll post an entry here once the sets is ready for viewing. (They're already on Flickr if you want to look at them in the meantime).

Married!

Well, that was certainly an eventful few weeks! {A} and I are now married - Hooray! The wedding went smoothly, she looked beautiful and everyone had a great time.

We had a lovely mini-honeymoon in Seattle at our favourite hotel, and then left for the real honeymoon in Costa Rica a few days later. (We just got back this morning at 1:00 AM) The 13-days in Costa Rica were fantastic - more details to come, along with pictures. In brief, we saw lots of amazing wildlife, plants and beautiful scenery, spent lazy hours on the beach or in warm pools swimming, did a horse-ride at sunset, went on many rain-forest walks, and ate lots of yummy food.

Now it's back to the grindstone for a while :)

Dr. Horrible

If you've not yet heard of this, check out the latest project from Joss Whedon et al - Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog.
If you liked the musical episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", you should enjoy this...

Episodes I and II are out already, and the final episode is due out on the 19th.

How to east sushi

I was recently reminded of this fun video that spoofs Japanese sushi-ya etiquette, so here it is:

Wedding website live...

At last, the wedding website is ready for public consumption. (Sorry about the Flash content :P)

Now we just need to complete a few last minute things and enjoy the actual day! Hold your thumbs for sunny weather!

Oh noes! No more Monte Pollino olive oil at TJs?

My favourite olive oil for the past few years has been the Monte Pollino oil that Trader Joe's sold. Sadly, the last few months that we've been to TJ's to get more olive oil, they have not had any. It seems like, in classic TJ's fashion, they've discontinued it... I will keep my fingers crossed (and maybe talk to a store manager) in the hope that the stock it again.

Antonello Imports have it for $15 a bottle (compared to $5 when TJ's had it...)

This blog post on Chowhound mentions that it seems Monte Pollino at TJ's was the same as a more expensive brand, Frantoia (which I've not seen generally in Washington - maybe DeLaurenti in Pike Place has it?)

No-one said we are "poor, wimpy, stupid jerks"

In the July 2008 edition of Wines magazine (which I got from the Issaquah Winestyles store) , executive editor Cathryn Castle Whitman wrote the closing article, titled "We Are Not Poor, Wimpy, Stupid Jerks". The article is in response to one by Joel Stein in Time magazine, which you can read in full here.

Joel's article starts:

Touring wineries can make you feel like a jerk. Not just from saying that yes, you do totally taste the gooseberry in that merlot but also because the chemistry of oenology makes you feel stupid, the picking and crushing of grapes makes you feel wimpy, and the giant estates make you feel poor.

Cathryn quotes this and then responds:

Wow. In the span of two short sentences, Stein makes us wine enthusiasts out to be poor, stupid, wimpy jerks. I say not so fast, beer man.

I think Cathryn misses the point of Joel's article - he is not saying that all wine drinkers are stupid, wimpy, or poor - just that there are still a lot of wineries that are intimidating for "wine neophytes". Wines magazine has a similar philosophy to Gary Vayerchuck: wine should not be initimidating, taste lots of wine and find what you enjoy, and don't let "wine snobs" put you off. All of that is amiable - but you still need to recognize that some wineries are targeting the more "expert" wine drinker, and will tend to make us lesser mortals feel intimidated.

Cathryn writes:

The key is to enjoy ourselves and have fun while we're sniffing and
swirling and sipping. If we don't totally taste the gooseberry, we won't let it totally spoil our fun - or make us feel like a jerk.

Carolyn then mones on to tackle the "wimpy" part of Stein's 2-sentence opener:

As for Stein saying that "the picking and crushing of grapes make you feel wimpy," I know a few burly wine-makers who'd probably like to crush his laptop, like, well, a graoe. If you ever tour a vineyard during harvet, you'll soon find out it isn't a job for wimps.

Now, for me this is where Carolyn really loses the point. I don't read Joel's statement as in any way a maligning of wine-makers toughness. In fact, Carolyn re-inforces Joel's argument. Wine-making is tough, physical work - especially harvesting and crushing the grapes. Some of it is mechanised, but it is still a tedious manual job in most respects. Pruning the vines, picking the grapes - all manual. Most wineries feature huge fermentation tanks, with lots of hard work imvolved in moving the wine, cleanign tanks, filling barrels, ... And then there's the dirty job of making barrels. All along the line, this is a physically-demanding job.

All that just means that if you're an average person, all this phsyical work would seem quite daunting and might make you feel "wimpy".

And then the final statement that Carolyn takes issue with: "giant estates make you feel poor". I'm totally with Joel here. Has anyone been to a large winery or wine estate and not thought "Wow, this place is amazing! They must have spent a fortune building it!". Take the Mondavi Winery in Napa, or Opus One as a more extreme example. Or consider some of the older estates in Europe or South Africa that are located in old family estates/chateaux. At some point a family lived here and they had a lot more money that you do now...

Then there's the "makes you feel poor" apect of most wine tasting roooms I've been to i nthe USA. For example, in Napa you will be paying to taste, and for the higher-end wineries, you will be paying a lot. ($30 for a taste of Opus One). If that doesn't make you feel poor, then you probably earn a few times more per year than I do... :) I don't object to paying, to be clear, but sometimes I've felt like a poor country cousin being given a disapproving once-over, usually followed by the tasting-room staff steering me away from the expensive Reserve tasting list, as if to say "This isn't for you, boy. Have some nice, fruity wine instead..."

And in a snarky closing statement, Carolyn writes:

Maybe someday Joel and I will meet up at a writers' conference [me: they have those?] or something, maybe at the bar in the hotel lobby. And maybe I'll buy him a drink. I'll order a lager for myself, and for him, a nice merlot. One with a hint of gooseberry...

Snarky me thinks: Isn't gooseberry a flavour you usually associate with white wines (like Sauvignon Blanc)? :P

Word Association Football

I was reminded of this for no particular reason today: One of my favourite Monty Python pieces is the "Word Association Football" sketch from the Matching Tie and Handkerchief album.
(Can I get a shout-out for for Michael Palin?)

It's definitely worth listening to, but the script is pretty funny on its own:

Tonight's the night I shall be talking about of flu the subject of word association football. This is a technique out a living much used in the practice makes perfect of psychoanalysister and brother and one that has occupied piper the majority rule of my attention squad by the right number one two three four the last five years to the memory.

It is quite remarkable baker charlie how much the miller's son this so-called while you were out word association immigrants' problems influences the manner from heaven in which we sleekit cowering timrous beasties all-American speak, the famous explorer. And the really well that is surprising partner in crime is that a lot and his wife of the lions' feeding time we may be c d e effectively quite unaware of the fact or fiction section of the Watford Public Library that we are even doing it is a far, far better thing that I do now then, now then, what's going onward christian Barnard the famous hearty part of the lettuce now praise famous mental homes for loonies like me.

So on the button, my contention causing all the headaches, is that unless we take into account of Monte Cristo in ourthinking George the Fifth this phenomenon the other hand we shall not be able satisfact or fiction section of the Watford Public Library againily to understand to attention when I'm talking to you and stop laughing, about human nature, man's psychological make-up some story the wife'll believe and hence the very meaning of life itselfish bastard, I'll kick him in the balls Pond Road.

My high school French teacher would sometimes allow us to kick back and relax in class by playing this (in English!). Great fun - something to try on your long summer road trips maybe?

Swinging on the flippity-flop

(Updated on 6/29/08 with links to listen to this episode)

We saw Wait Wait Don't Tell Me! on Thursday night at the Paramount. It was really funny and interesting to see the mechanics of producing a "live" radio show. With Bill Gates' retirement from Microsoft happening this week, there were a large number of MS jokes, including about 15 minutes of riffing on the theme of Clippy!

"It looks like you're digging a shallow grave! Is this a business or personal grave?"

Their "not my job" guest was Jonathan Poneman, one of the founders of Sub Pop Records. That led to a discussion of the 1992 New York Times article on "grunge slang". See the article here, which includes a "lexicon of grunge speak" from Sub Pop employee (now VP) Megan Jasper - most of them were made up on the spot and are pretty obviously fake, but the NYT journalist took the bait and published them without checking... :)

Sub Pop have a recent interview with Megan here.

You can now download a podcast of the episode here (or listen to it online here)

How not to remove a palm tree

Some smart South Africans decide to get rid of their palm tree... Here's the video on Youtube:





All I can say is, ja-nee....

Updated on 6/29/08: Changed the video link to Youtube instead of Facebook.

Pap snoek

For some reason, people have been hitting my blog after searching for "snoek worms" or "parasites in snoek" (finding this old entry).


I found this nice article on snoek by Hilary Prendini Toffoli, in which she looks at the history and culture around snoek, and gets some tips from the "top" Cape Town chefs. She also expains what a "pap snoek" is...



It looks like some of the more high-end restaurants may have snoek on the menu (at least when it's in season) - for some reason it is not very common to see it in regular seafood restaurants (maybe because of the bones that make it a bugger to eat, ot the work needed to get it off the bone once it's cooked). You can usually find some frozen, smoked snoek at Snoekies in Hout Bay (and most grocery stores stick it too - at least they did back when I lived in SA).

I wonder how many people come in wearing the "I Love snoek" cap? (The correct answer is "not many"...)

As ironic as it gets...

I think I can hear Mr. Orwell spinning in his grave! Looks like this is in the Gothic neighbourhood of Barcelona. Might be a fun not-so-touristy spot to nab a picture when I visit (some day).

If you don't get the reference, then read this book.

"Murketing"

I caught part of an interview with Rob Walker on Weekday today, covering marketing and the psychology of why we buy things. His Bio:

Rob Walker writes the weekly column “Consumed”, a blend of business journalism and cultural anthropology for The New York Times Magazine. Previously he created and wrote the “Ad Report Card” column for Slate, and has contributed to a wide range of publications, from Fast Company to The New Republic and others. Under the pseudonym R. Walker he has written a number of satirical comic books set in the business world and collected in the book Titans of Finance: True Tales of Money and Business.

More info and the audio podcast are here on the KUOW website.
The discussion covered some interesting stuff, and his book Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are sounds like it will be good.

He also has a blog that looks like it will be worth reading.

100 New Classics (a random book list)

By way of wolverine_nun, Entertainment Weekly have a list of 100 "new classic" books. ("The 100 best reads from 1983 to 2008") . I've not read most of them - a few of them have been made into films which I've seen, though... :P

There are a few odd choices ("The DaVinci Code"? - I guess it was popular...) and omissions: Not a single J.M. Coetzee book? (He won the Booker Award in '83 and '99, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in '03). Where is "The Historian"? (No awards, I just love it)

It's interesting to see two "YA" books on the list. I fully agree that Harry Potter and the Dark Materials series should be there (looks like they only liked one Harry Potter book though?)

I'm also really pleased to see "A Prayer for Owen Meany" on the list - this book made a huge impression on me when I read it more than a decade ago.

{W_N} says that Posession by A.S. Byatt is the best book she's read, so I'll have to check that out... For no particular reason (except perhaps to show that I watch movies more than I read), here are the ones I've read (or seen in movie form):

• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)


• Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)


• Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)


• Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)


• Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)


• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)


• Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)


• Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)


• Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)


• Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)


• Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)


• His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)


• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)


• A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)


• The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)


• The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)


• Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)


• High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)


• America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

Morcheeba videos by Joel Trussel

Joel Trussel is the animator behind the War Photographer video I've mentioned a few times - his work is amazing. It looks like I just missed a recent animation show on June 20th in Seattle that he attended. Anyway for the latest info/news check out his blog.

Here is a recent (Jan 2008) video he directed for Morcheeba's song Enjoy The Ride. You can also check out an interview with him about this video here on Youtube. "I get questions about the pears..." :-)



From his blog, I see he was asked back to direct the video for the 2nd single too, Gained the World:

A shiny, sharp Quicktime version is here.

Madonna and the Viking Marching Band

Madonna's new album Hard Candy is pretty lame, but it does have a madly catchy hit single, 4 minutes. Rolling Stone describes it as having a "marching band aesthetic as blasting brass play a scale-like riff".

That must be why it reminds me so much of the Viking Marching Band* music every time I hear it. (Remember this cocktail based on the Viking Marching Band video?)

* Actually, it's called War Photographer.

So, for good measure, I give you the videos. Decide for yourself.

Updates: Better version of the War Photographer video.

Naartjie coming to Redmond

It's not every day that you see a store from South Africa opening up in the USA, let alone right in your own neihgbourhood. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Naartjie are opening a store in the Redmond Town Center mall.

As their about us page says, they opened their first store in Cape Town in the then-new V&A Waterfront development. (Well-worth checking out if you visit Cape Town - it's not just a big shopping mall :-P) They also memebrs of the British Royal Family have been customers. Hmm - I wonder if they have one of those "by appointment" seals? (Ha!)

In case you are wondering what a naartjie is (they do a so-so job of describing it themselves), think of a satsuma (a.k.a. mikan) - I think they are basically the same thing, although naartjies have a slightly different flavour and feel to satsumas - maybe due to the climate in which they grow.

New Coldplay album, and more new Brit music

I've been listening to the new Coldplay album for a few days now. It was a bit underwhelming at first, but it's growing on me more and more. The single hyped by Apple and used to promote iTunes, Viva La Vida, sounds a bit washed out on the album - I wonder if Apple did some funky remixing to make it bassier? Some of the production reminds me of William Orbit's ambient style - no surprise since Brian Eno did the bulk of the production...

One thing that has been driving me nuts is the opening track, Life in Technicolour. The repeating tune (on sitar, I think) that starts around 00:41 sounded very familiar, but I couldn't place it.

I think I finally have it! Nirvana's All Apologies. I wonder if they credit this "borrowing" anywhere?

In other "new British music" news, I downloaded the debut album by Adele, 19. What a fresh, interesting voice! (A bit like Macy Gray) Nice lyrics too... (Listen to the track Tired to see what I mean) I see what the UK critics have been raving about.

Sarcastic Amazon reviews

What do you get when you mix stupid products (like $500 Cat-5 cables), and Amazon reviewers? Well, if you are lucky, you get some brilliantly funny, sarcastic reviews:

• Audiophiles beware...
• I'm not sure Wagner would approve...

Exceptional wines for big and small budgets

Back in May, Mike Steinberger wrote an article for Slate about great lower-price wines (under $15 per bottle). He followed that up yesterday with an article on more expensive wines (under $150 per bottle).

• Wines under $15
• Wines under $150. {K} will no doubt take issue with Taylor Fladgate port being on the list!

I agree with this comment from the first article:

One usually surefire method of finding interesting foreign wines: Let the importer be your guide.

I have noticed quite consistently that foreign wines that I like come from the same importers. That's probably an artifact of the weird Washington booze laws, and the fact that we have a lot of great importers in this area, so they tend to dominate the stores. Still, if you find a wine you like, check the back label for the importer info, and remember it. Often, they will specialise in wines from a certain region (e.g. Spain, Australia, France), so having found a wine you like you can try other wines from the same region in relative safety. (They are not likely to import bad wine and ruin their brand...)

Sometimes they will have a website with more info on the wines they import, so you can build up an idea of what to try next. If you are in a physical store, you can just look for the wines from the same importer.

Hell's Kitchen game

After last night's episode of Hell's Kitchen I noticed an add for a computer game based on the show. You can play it here for free (Windows-based PCs only currently). I haven't had a chance to try it out (that will come tonight), but it looks like it could be fun for a few minutes.

It looks like it might be bit like the Sushi restaurant game {C} sent me last week. That game is very addictive (and quite hard!)

In terms of this season's HK, I must say I don't really think any of the chefs are that impressive, and I'm not so invested in any of them. I predict Christina will win, but that she won't actually get to cook much at Gordon's new restaurant. (They'll probably leave that for the real chefs).

In other Gordon Ramsay news, the US version of Kitchen Nightmares will return to Fox in the fall. While it is not half as good as the UK version, it will have to do. Perhaps they will try to emulate the UK show a bit more, instead of trying to stir up drama and conflict.

Blind tasting wine glasses

When most people do a blind tasting they simply put the bottle of wine in a paper bag and pour it incognito for their guests. If you are lucky you might have someone else select the wines and pour them for you in another room (This is what {A} and {R} did a while back when we threw a blind tasting party).

However, if you have a lot of money and not much sense, you are probably wondering "What can I do that will make me look extra cool?" Riedel have the answer for you: Blind Tasting Glasses. I quote:

Riedel has introduced a jet-black glass called the Blind Blind Tasting Glass. In addition to concealing wines' grape, type, region, producer and vintage, as is the case in normal blind tastings, this glass hides wines' color, (white, red or rosé), depth of color, clarity, brilliance, and effervescence.

PS: If you are a Gary Vaynerchuck fan, you might be interested in this event in Seattle on June 28th. I can't make it, so if you go, be sure to ask him what he thinks about the blind tasting glasses and let me know.

Why I'm voting Republican

(Donning flame-proof suit...) This video really says it all:

Yuppy baby food

Today I was leafing through a recent copy of the magazine 425 (a glossy "lifestyle magazine" for Seattle's Eastside).

One advert near the end of the magazine caught my eye and made me laugh: World Baby Foods produce a range of baby foods inspired by food from around the world. Flavours like "Lullaby Thai", "Tokyo Tum Tum", "Sweetie Tahiti", "Baby Dal" and "Baby Borscht". It's made by a doctor, so you know it's good!

I'm looking forward to the sous-vide and molecular gastronomy line of baby foods! :)

PS: No, {A} is not in the market for baby food...

Pomum wines on WLTV

I just noticed that Pomum Cellars was featured on an April episode of Wine Library TV.
As you may remember, I "discovered" them last year during the Woodinville St. Nicks Day Open House and really liked their stuff.

See what Gary thinks about their wine by watching the show here.
(And I am looking forward to the 2006 release!)

Sammamish farmer's market

{A} and I went to the Sammamish farmer's market yesterday - this is the second week that is has been running. It's pretty small (about half the size of the Issaquah and Redmond farmer's market), and the weather was not very good, but it was still quite well-attended, and there was some great produce.

I was very impressed with the stuff from Cha Gardens (not sure of their name) - they had the most amazing greens I have seen in a long time. A lot nicer than the stuff we've been getting in our Spud produce box.

A more irritating store was a local bakery with some nice-looking breads. They made a big deal about using emmer flour - I had not heard of emmer before and the guy at the booth seemed really into his grains. I tasted the bread, it was pretty good (not great), but I thought I'd buy a loaf. Silly me for not asking how much it cost! :) $7 later I had a small loaf of bread. (Yes, I should stop whining since I paid for the bread and could just have said "No", but heck, sometimes I like whining!)

$7 for a small loaf? Wow! I guess I do live in yuppieville! What really irked me though was the ingredient list, which I only read when I got home. The main ingredients are normal whole-wheat flour, with the "unusual" grains like emmer right at the end of list (before the salt). I guess this means there is 1 teaspoon of emmer flour per loaf? Sheesh.

The market did have some other nice stalls which will be drawing me back in the coming weeks. Our local bagel shop, Blazing Bagels, has a stall, there's a local honey producer, and a great bakery with evil goodies like apple pie, huge donuts, nice "everyday" whole-wheat bread.

Hugh Masekela coming to Seattle in August

I just noticed that Hugh Masekela is playing at Dimitiou's Jazz Alley on August 4th.
Sadly, {A} and I will be out of town - on our honeymoon! - so we'll have to miss this show. Needless to say, if you like jazz, I highly recommend seeing this show.

If you'd like a sampler of his music, check out this recording from the 2007 Tanglewood Jazz Festival, provided by NPR.

I was also really pleased to see that Ian Herman (ex-Tananas) is on percussion during this tour. I've been a huge fan of his since discovering Tananas back in the 90's in SA, and having the pleasure of seeing them live a few times. (Including once at the WOMAD Festival in Marymoor Park!)

Here comes the flood!

B27 flood
Originally uploaded by Mr Snootyhamper

Last night we had a bit of unexpected excitement - a water pipe burst and flooded the 1st floor. Luckily my office was spared - I think the dam we built using a desk helped a bit.

The videos Jonathan made are unavailable for now - I'll update this entry when they go back online :)

Vaynerchuck on Eat Drink or Die

Gary Vaynerchuck has some short videos on the new site Eat Drink or Die:
http://www.eatdrinkordie.com/gary_vaynerchuck

While they seem to be aimed at frat-house wine noobs, as usual Gary does a great job making the presentation lively and fun, and I found myself enjoying them a lot. I agree 100% with his philosophy - ignore the pretense and snobebry and just "taste the shit".

Oh yeah, the fake Borat-style intros are a very lame ("Ya exclusive - I laaaiik!") Still, I will check back to see what Gary gets up to...

Spell-check your code

I find it amusing when I stumble on mis-spelled API functions and structures. The irony is that a gaffe by one programmer becomes a documented interface, and it's often impossible to correct the mistake.

Take for example the PrintProvidor entries in Win32:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa506097.aspx

Luckily the person writing the surrounding text was able to use the phrase "print provider".

Advice for people travelling abroad

Just a quick bit of advice when travelling:

Don't assume that no-one else around you will understand your native tongue. Sure, it might be tempting to say something snarky about people you see, but you never know who might be able to understand you.

If you speak Navajo you might be OK, bit there are often surprising people around. You might even run into an Asian-looking man in Portugal that understands Swedish and helps you find your train... Or people in the USA that understand Afrikaans.

All this was prompted by a South African family that sat behind me on a recent flight from Seattle to Oakland: They used Afrikaans to make loud rude comments about other people, discuss their flatulence and generally behave boorishly. If you want to skinder* about people, do it under your voice so no-one else can hear... Or better yet, just don't do it :)

* gossip

New wine store in Issaquah

Today I noticed a new wine store in Issaquah called Wine Styles. They're in the big strip mall close to Safeway and REI.

I went in to browse around and chatted with the owners a bit. They were very friendly and their selection is interesting. Like Vino100 in Bellevue, they are part of a nation-wide franchise. And like Vino100, they have an interesting approach to arranging their wine to make it a bit more accessible to the newbie.

Wine Styles arrange their wines according to, well, the style. Whites are borken up into Crisp, Silky, Rich and Bubbly, while reds are broken up into Fruity, Mellow and Bold. They also have a Nectar category for dessert wines. Nice and simple, and it makes it easy to find to suite the combination of weather, food and your own tastes.

They also offer a wine club with 2 wines per month for around $38 (which is a slight discount over buying the same wines from the store). I signed up to try it out (1 red, 1 white for summer), and got this month's selection - two bottles of Portuguese wine:

• 2006 Casa de Cello Vinho Verde Escolha Quinta de San Joanne
• 2004 Herdade do Esporão Reguengos Esporão Reserva

I'll report back in the coming months on the wine club selection...

Wombles

Yet another example of how much British TV I got to watch growing up in South Africa is that I know who/what the Wombles are. They were surprisingly environmentally-conscious and Green for their time, and the show was great fun to watch. (Granted, I was about 5 at the time).
Here's their theme tune on YouTube. And, Dear Lord, they were on Top Of The Pops.

There's something about the sound of the word womble that makes me want to still use it every now in coversation. (I tend to reserve the term for stupid people I come across at work. Muppet works well for the same purpose - what is it about furry kids-show characters being well-suited for insults?)

The 17th Karmapa

Short on the heels of the Dalai Lama's recent visit to Seattle, the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, is visiting Seattle later this summer.

There's been a lot of activity, with Nalanda West in Seattle hosting him - that meant raising $100,000 and constructing special quarters for him. (Hmm... Perhaps out of security concerns?)

One thing that kind-of surprises me is that in all the websites and emails I've received, there is no mention of the controversy over who exactly is the real 17th Karmapa. (Wikipedia covers it here).
Obviously each side is defensive and probably wants to pretend the other does not exist, so I don't expect the Nalanda West folks to say "Hey, we know there's this other dude making some claims, but trust us, we've got the right one".

Still, one would expect the press to be a bit more balanced. For example. the International Herald Tribune has an article titled "Tibetan Buddhism's next leader?" that doesn't mention the controversy at all.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out...

Mountains to Sound Greenway Days

The Mountains to Sound Greenway is a 100-mile long expanse of preserved land along the I-90 corridor linking Seattle to Eastern Washington, and is full of great hikes.

This competition being run over the summer looks like a fun way to discover new places along the Greenway... Or you could just look at the sites here and plan some fun outings...

Fun with pointers

For the software geeks out there... What is the output from this code? (No cheating - compiling this and running it isn't allowed!)

void Func() {

   char *c[] = {
        "ENTER",
        "NEW",
        "POINT",
        "FIRST"     };

   char **cp[] = { c+3, c+2, c+1, c };   
   char ***cpp = cp;

   printf("%s", **++cpp );
   printf("%s", *--*++cpp+3);
   printf("%s", *cpp[-2]+3);
   printf("%s", cpp[-1][-1]+1);
}

Silly adverts

I just saw an advert for Jack in the Box that touted a "bakery style bun" for their hamburger.
What, pray tell, is that? Aren't all buns made in a bakery?

Next they'll be praising the cow style sirloin...

Portishead guest DJ

Portishead are the guest DJs on this week's All Songs Considered. Check out the podcast here.
I've just started listening to their new album, Third, and so far I like it.

The Beeb have a review here which you can peruse...

I like Brazilians...

Brazilian espresso's, that is. There's a fairly new coffee shop in Redmond callnd Kitanda that serves excellent Brazilian coffee, espresso and some tasty pastries and imported goodies. (Their beans are 100% Brazilian, custom-roasted by Caffe d'Arte).

Their location is a bit sucky, so I think most people don't even know about them -I'm doing my small part to spread the word. Plus, they are offering 12oz drinks for $1.99 currently (a great deal!) And they have free WiFi.

My favourite drink is their Brazilian Mocha (which doesn't have any chocolate in it - just espresso, condensed milk and regular milk).

Here's their address:

Kitanda Redmond
15230 NE 24th St. # 1R
Redmond Wa 98052
Phone: (425) 820-4381
[map]

Free Tibet! (Made in China)

I heard about this story on Marketplace last night, and couldn't decide whether it was outrageously funny, or sad:

"Free Tibet flags made in China" (BBC News)

Funny: Irony abounds. The all-mighty-dollar rules, even in Communist China.

Sad: You'd think that people ordering items like this would want to check where they are made (and maybe even have them made by Tibetan refugees?) I sure as hell hope the stuff the ICT sends out is not made in China.

Juggernaut

The word "juggernaut" came up in a meeting at work recently, and some non-native English speakers hadn't heard it before.

There was some joking reference to the comic-book character (and some people thought this was the origin of the word). Someone explained that a juggernaut is an unstoppable force or object, to which I replied "I don't know about that. I think Wolverine could stop him..."

The real origin of the word is quite interesting: it comes from the Sanskrit word Jaganatha, as this Wikipedia page explains. (This list of English words of Sanskrit origin is also pretty interesting - e.g. candy, cash, ginger, jackal, jungle, lilac, loot, sugar)

Zimbabwe Embassy Call

So the election in Zimbabwe is dragging on and ol' Mugabe seem intent on hanging on to power until the bitter end.

To make light of a dire situation, check out this comedy skit from a South African radio show...

Ahoy, me hearties!

I just saw that NPR's "All Songs Considered" has a new podcast with Colin Meloy of The Decemberists acting as guest DJ. He also has a new solo album out - a few songs are included in the podcast.

And what's this I see about a new Portishead album? Wow, that's a blast from the past...

"You drank my milkshake"

It's always fun to see a new saying enter the English language, and it seems "drinking someone's milkshake" is well on the way. (For example, I've now seen it used in email subject lines at work)

Everlasting fame goes to the first commenter to identify where this saying comes from...

He's a remorseless killing machine...

I loved this bit at the end of a recent blog post on the Matasano blog:

Has Mark Dowd simply outclassed us? Should we pack it up and quit?
Yes. But don’t feel bad about that. You’re a human being, and he’s a remorseless killing machine. Big Blue crushed Kasparov, and now he’s not the prime minister of Russia! At a certain point, you have to concede the field, moving on to games where human beings still have the advantage. Computers haven’t solved Go, for instance. For us researchers, I suggest we take advantage of Mark Dowd’s robotic inability to love, and take up the arts, such as watercolors or interpretive dance.

This comment comes at the end of the 2nd post commenting on Mark's recent software security paper on Flash. The paper itself is quite brilliant - going from a write-AV on a NULL dereference, to running unverified ActionScript and pwning Flash.
For a more high-level summary see these posts: #1, #2 on the Matasano blog.

Incidentally, enabling ASLR on Vista would be a way to mitigate against this attack, but sadly Adobe haven't yet released a version of Flash with the required option set in their binary. If you're geeky and want to turn this on yourself, you can use a recent link.exe from Visual Studio or the WDK like so:

link.exe /edit /dynamicbase filename

Flash files live under %windir%\system32\Macromed\Flash or %windir%\SysWow64\Macromed\Flash on 64-bit Vista.

And of course it might be a good idea to install the latest version of Flash from www.Adobe.com

The Julian Lennon of physics

Last night {A} and I saw Eels live @ the Showbox. The show was really good, but what made it really stand out from the average rock show was the documentary that was shown first (en lieu of an opening band).

The documentary, "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives", tracks Mark Everett (a.k.a "E", the driving force behind Eels) as he delves into his father's past. His father was distant and withdrawn at home, and E never really got to know him before he died. It turns out his father, Hugh Everett, was ground-breaking physicist who proposed the controversial "many worlds" interpretation of Quantum physics. Nowadays, with the increased attention being given to High Everett and his theory, E said he sometimes feels like the Julian Lennon of physics. :-)

The documentary was really nicely done - a very personal look into E's family and a gradual discovery of what made his dad the way he was. It's been nominated for 2 BAFTA's and is well-worth watching if you can...

Bumbershoot 2008

The sneak-peek lineup was posted this week, and it looks good!
Some that got me excited:

• Beck (new album due out this year, produced by Danger Mouse of Gnarls Barkley fame)
• Stone Temple Pilots
• Neko Case (just recently "discovered" her...)
• Del Tha Funky Homosapien (Gorillaz, Deltron 3030, ...)
• Jakob Dylan (with the Wallflowers? I can only dream ;-) )
• Tim Finn (Split Enz, Crowded House, Finn Brothers, and a great solo artist)

In other music news, I am stoked to be seeing Eels this Friday!

Sir Michael's chill-out album

This is one the weirder bits of news I've stumbled on for a while. While checking out the news on the William Orbit website, I saw William interviewed Sir Michael Caine about his recent entry into the music buisiness.

Yes, you read that right... I must admit to not having heard of Sir Michael's album, Cained, until now. It's a collection of "chill-out" tracks from various artists. I might have to give it a listen, assuming Napster has it...

Wrongly correcting people's English

I had an interesting experience yesterday flying back from a quick visit to San Francisco... A Chinese woman was seating in the aisle seat, next to another woman, and I was in the window seat, so I could easily hear the conversation beetween the two women.

The Chinese woman struck up a conversation and quickly moved on to a question: "Is it incorrect to say 'speak wrongly' in English, for example: 'People in America don't correct you when you speak wrongly' ?"

It turns out the Chinese woman was in San Francisco for an English class and had chatted to someone earlier that evening while waiting for the plane. She had lamented the fact that people generally don't correct non-native English speakers when they make mistakes. People are too polite or forgiving and let things slide, assuming they understand the gist of what the non-native speaker is saying. The other person, thus encouraged to be critical of her mistakes, had told her "You can't say 'speak wrongly', that's not correct English. You should say 'speak wrong'..."

So, fast-forward to the conversation next to me in the plane, and the Chinese woman has just posed the question to the American woman next to me. "Yes, that's correct. Wrongly isn't a word", she said. I could tell the Chinese woman was puzzled and trying to make sense of this - she had been using wrongly for several years. (I should add that in general her English was good, with a fairly heavy Mandarin accent though).

The Chinese woman seemed to have a superior grasp of English grammar and asked the other woman "But isn't wrong an adjective? Can you use it as an adverb too? 'Speak wrong' means that wrong is an adverb, right?" The American woman seemed a bit confused at this and admitted that English was never her strongest subject in school, so the academic discussion ended there.

It should be obvious that I was squirming in my seat and wanting to butt in, but I wasn't sure how to enter the conversation and not make the woman in the middle of us feel bad, plus I would then be talking over her to the Chinese woman, possibly for much of the rest of the flight... So I stayed quiet.

Needless to say, wrongly is a word and can be replaced by "incorrectly" in the Chinese woman's original usage: "Speakign English incorrectly". I hope she does a check in her dictionary when she gets home, or asks her English teacher. Then she can confidently correct people when they tell her she's "speaking wrong" in future! :)

Using RED for fair bandwidth usage

George Ou recently wrote an article titled "Fixing the unfairness of TCP congestion control" which starts off (my emphasis added):

Bob Briscoe (Chief researcher at the BT Network Research Centre) is on a mission to tackle one of the biggest problems facing the Internet. He wants the world to know that TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) congestion control is fundamentally broken and he has a proposal for the IETF to fix the root cause of the problem.

All this is quite topical given Comcast's attempts to throttle peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic on their network, the FCC's involvement, and Comcast's recent promise to "stop meddling".

Nate Lawson wrote two great blog posts to address George Ou's article - effectively saying that the TCP/IP stack does not need to be swapped out and we don't need a complex new protocol to deal with the congestion problem. A simple option is to use RED (Rapid Early Discard) and Nate goes on to explain why this would work. Nate's 2nd post addresses Check the out here:

• A TCP stack swapout solves nothing
• How RED can solve congestion problems

3D graphics in Excel

Cutting-edge computer games use different graphics subsystems -- so-called 3D graphics engines. Source (used in Half Life 2), Unreal Engine (Unreal Tournament), idTech 4 (Doom 3), CryENGINE2 (Crysis) or Clever's Paradox engine are well-known among the players and the game industry experts.
It's time to learn a new 3D game engine name: Microsoft Excel.

See the full article here, and be sure to check out the movies too.

My hat is off to you, sir!

They don't break plates here...

In Cape Town I used to enjoy going to some of the great Greek restaurants, and was always amused at the custom of smashing plates. (You can image how cool this seemed to me as a kid). Most of the restaurants would charge a small fee per plate you broke, and it was not too common to see people doing it, but rowdier parties and group celebrations would often end with ouzo, music, dancing and plate-smashing.

So, it is fairly interesting to note that in Seattle, not only are Greek restaurants less common than in SA, but plate-throwing is unheard of. It looks like the custom is on the way out everywhere. For example, in the UK restaurants have switched to less dangerous activities like tossing flowers, mainly to avoid the risk of injuries to customers and law-suits.

PS: You know you're in a Seattle Greek restaurant when you see salmon on the menu :-)

Ag Pleez Deddy

This song by Jeremy Taylor became a part of South African culture to the extent that even though I was born a decade or mroe after it was released, I still grew up hearing and singing it.

Here's a YouTube video of the older Jeremy Taylor singing a shortened version, so even the readers from the UK and US and A can appreciate its glory!

In telling {A} about this song, I realized my memory of the lyrics was a bit fuzzy, so I was happy to find them online. Have a look at the full lyrics here (be warned, some of the words would be percieved as racist/non-PC now). That website also has some nice details on the song.

The joys of wedding registry shopping at JCPenny's

Warning: Shameless whining and venting ahead.

This past weekend {A} and I went to the local shopping mall to get our wedding registry kick-started. We had some some research and planning in advance and knew which dinner set we wanted, and the prices that Macy's and JCPenny's charged for said set. (Let's refer to JCPenny's JCP from now on - they seem to like that abbreviation too...)



Needless to say, JCP was cheaper than Macy's. (For my SAfrican readers, JCP is kind-of equivalent to Mr.Price, whereas Macy's is more like Stuttafords or Woolies). So, off to JCP we went... To do a wedding (or general gift) registry, JCP has gone the totally automated, inpersonal route. (The first warning sign). A PC kiosk asks you for your pertinent info and then plays a "training video" with the audio so low you practically need to plaster your ear to the case to hear anything. Lovely... Part of the training video related to dinnerware, and instructed us to use the "Dinnerware Selection Book" at the kiosk to find the set we wanted ("choose from our extensive collection" yadda yadda), and then use a bar-code scanner gun to read the bar-code of the set we wanted. All well and good, but the afore-mentioned book was no-where to be found.



Thinking "outside the kiosk", we searched around the actualy dinnerware display area, but came up empty-handed. A helpful cachier redirected us to the customer-support / catalogue counter (which was next to another gift registry kiosk - a good sign I though). The person behind the counter looked at us blankly as we explained what we were looking for, and we very quickly realized she had never heard of this book. So, I resorted to Plan C (or perhaps Plan D, I lost track...) We used the telephone on the side of the registry kiosk to talk to - gasp! - a real person!



The helpful chap on the other end of the line informed us that the book should be under the keyboard at the kiosk, or very close to it. I informed it was not there. He then suggested I speak to the store manager... So, back to the person at the catalog counter to chase down the manager. For some reason the manager was only available over a walkie-talkie. (I guess phones are passe?) Luckily the counter-person cranked up the volume so that we (and everyon in a 1-mile radius) could hear the manager: Evidently the book had been discontinued in January 2008, and we were SOL (sweet outta luck). No apologies. No mention of an alternative. No humble admittance that the kiosk video is out-dated and misleading...



So, {A} and I were left feeling incredibly frustrated and disappointed. We decided to not register for anything at JCP and instead went to Macy's and were almost ready to not register for any dinnerware at all (since Macy's didn't have the color we wanted available online and their price was almost double JCP's ). A real person took our personal details and walked us through using the bar-code scanner (uh, thanks) and we then started browsing. Most of the linen and bed stuff was not our style, so we had difficulty getting started, but the kitchen department fixed that, and we soon had a lot on our list.

We had also asked the store assistant whether the dinnerware we wanted was available in the color we liked, and yes, he was able to find it! Despite the price being higher, we added it to our registry, and got a nice surprise when we got home and checked our list online: the dishes were the exact same price as JCP had been offering! So, after all that mental anguish, we were able to get what we wanted, with great service, and without paying more!

Poetic booze advice from around the world

There are a few verses in different languages that all purport to give advice about what to drink when (i.e. which order to drink things in). The sad thing is that they can't quite agree amongst themselves:

• English: Beer after wine and you'll feel fine; wine after beer and you'll feel queer
• German: Bier auf Wein das lass sein; Wein auf Bier das rat' ich Dir. (Roughly: Don't touch beer after wine; but wine after beer is fine)

The French notably ignore beer and instead focus on red versus white wine:

• Blanc sur rouge, rien ne bouge; rouge sur blanc, tout fout le camp. (Roughly: White on red won't go to your head; red on white and you're out for the night.)

This page on the Gaurdian website goes into more detail on these and other sayings.

The Perry Bible Fellowship

{A} and I went to Portland this past weekend for a little post-Valentine's-day break. This of course meant we visited Powell's, and one of the fun things I discovered there was the Perry Bible Fellowship - wickedly funny cartoons for fans of The Far Side. ("The Trial of Colonel Sweeto" is the book.)

1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc

No, sadly this is not a personal tasting note of the '47 Cheval Blanc. (I should be so lucky!)

Slate has an interesting article by Mike Steinberger on how a "defective wine from an aberrant year" became (by all accounts) a great wine. It's a nicely written piece...

Dual-booting Vista and Ubuntu / Linux

I recently decided to fresh-install my laptop, and decided this time I'd like to have it dual-boot Vista and a Linux distro (I chose Ubuntu 7.10 after playing with it for a while, but what I write about below should work with almost any current *nix distro).

The tricky thing was that I wanted to keep using Vista Bitlocker Drive Encryption (BDE), since my laptop has a TPM and having the drive encrypted means I don't need to worry as much about having my laptop stolen and all my data being up for grabs. BDE is a bit tricky to set up at the best of times, but luckily at work we have a Remote Installation Services (RIS) server that makes it a lot easier.

So, I booted my laptop, selected a network boot, and selected the Vista Bitlocker setup from the RIS menu. This re-paritions your drive and creates two partitions for Windows to use (one small one for the Bitlocker boot stuff, and the main one for your Vista install). I selected the manual setup option so I could create two more partitions for Linux to use (one for extfs3 and one for swap). Then The Vista setup trundled along and within an hour I had a nice Vista setup (with Office 2007 installed already - how sweet it that!?)

At this stage, BDE is not yet enabled on your Vista drive - you need to go into the control panel and enable it. But I knew I wanted to hold off until my Ubuntu install was done, otherwise when the Ubuntu install changed the Master Boot Record (MBR) on the hard drive, Bitlocker would "throw a wobbly". (Yes, that's the technical term)

The next step was to insert the Ubuntu 7.10 CD and reboot the machine from it. The Ubuntu install is very slick and went without any hitches. Now when my laptop rebooted, I was presented with the GRUB boot loader, which let me choose between Ubuntu or Vista.

Now at this point I should mention that I subsequently found out that this is not the best order to do things. This blog has incredible information, but sadly I only found out about it after I had installed Vista and Ubuntu. The preferred order is to install Ubuntu first, then install Vista... (That way the Vista boot loader is one sitting in the MBR) However, using the information from the afore-mentioned blog, you can quite easily get the system working even if you've installed things in the "wrong" order like I did.

The key pages to read for instructions are this one and this one. The modified steps I used, based on the info in these pages, is then:

• Step 1 – Install GRUB on the Linux partition (outside of MBR) (See step 1 here)
• Step 2 – Get a copy of Linux boot sector (See step 2 here)
• Step 3 - Boot into the Vista Recovery Environment (RE) using the Vista DVD / RIS server. You'll need to run bootrec.exe and tell it to fix the MBR record. (See this page for info)
• Step 4 - You should be able to reboot from the hard-drive and Vista will load automatically (there will be no option to boot Ubuntu since Vista doesn't know about it yet...) Log in to Vista, and...
• Step 4 - Set up Windows Vista Boot Manager to boot Linux. (See step 4 here)
• Step 5 - Enable BitLocker on Windows Vista (See step 7 here)

(I also removed Vista from the GRUB boot menu, since we're now using the Vista loader to boot into Vista. This is pretty easy to do, just edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and remove the Vista entries form the end of the file).

Step 4 will take a few hours as it needs to encrypt the hard-drive contents, but once that is done you should be set...

Slate video blog

I don't normally go for the viral-video thing and don't subscribe to many video blogs (WineLibraryTV is the only one). Slate have managed to get me hooked, though. Their Slate V video blog is a great way to see the best videos doing the rounds, without having to dig through the dreck on Youtube.

Some recent highlights:

• Drunk History 2 and 2.5
• Tom Cruise / Hilary Clinton mashup
• "Ch-ch-changes" US Presidential mashup

Some ones that haven't made it to Slate, but that {A} introduced me to:

• "Charlie bit my finger"
• Harry Potter Puppet Pals - "The Mysterious Ticking Noise"