Signs you are getting old

When I was a kid, we didn't have fancy things like cut-and-paste on computers. (I am young enough that I did have my own computer as a kid, so that means I'm less than 40, right?)

I remember when programs like WordStar and WordPerfect arived and let you copy and cut text from one place in a document and paste it somewhere else. It's amazing to think this was actually a new thing!

Then came Windows 3.x, with its fancy GUI. (OK, strictly speaking the Mac was there first, but I never played with a Mac much...) Now you could cut and paste between different programs! There was this thing called the clipboard, and a desktop for you to put all your files, so you could easily find them (Hahaha, that was a great idea -not!)

Things have stayed fairly much the same since then - computers are faster and Windows has gone through some changes in terms of look and feel, but the clipboard has pretty much remained as-is. If you were really bleeding-edge you could get a program to duplicate your clipboard across machines - useful when you are writing code or doing email on machine A and debugging on machine B.

Now, in the always-online age, it seems logical to use the Internet as your clipboard, and we now have various websites devoted to this (called Pastebins). Sites like Pastebin.com and Paste2.org are all the rage. Initially created to allow "collaborative debugging", it didn't take long for 1337 H4x0rs to start using them to share stolen passwords, credit card numbers, and exploits.

PS: Remember when collaborative debugging was done over email, newsgroups, or web forums?

Not the sort of thing you'll find in every phrase book

This is a sample phrase from from the Eastern ǃXóõ dialect, provided by the linguist Anthony Traill:

"Give them their stinking genitals with the fat!"

Makes "My hovercraft is full of eels" seem tame in comparison...

Certified Man Cave

What is a certified Man Cave, you ask? Well, thankfully, this website provides the answer:

• Construction must be managed by a Man Cave Builders licensed contractor using elements such as: Wood, Stone, Leather, Metal and Glass.
• Media design and install must be overseen by a professional Man Cave Builders media representative.
• The project should include at least 3 of the following components:
• Bar
• Multiple TV Monitors
• Game Table
• Video Game Console
• Comfortable Seating: couches, love seat, bar stools, theater seating
• Audio/Video Media Center
• Must be a dedicated space for entertaining.
• The new Man Cave room must be themed to fit within the Man Cave philosophy and standards and be "marked" accordingly within the Man Cave Certification process but always tastefully befitting the room's design.
• The three founders of Man Cave Builders must fully inspect and are required to "sign off" on the room's certification.

Right, well, I'll get right on that then...

Lhasa Beer

I noticed a display in our local Whole Foods store for a new beer: Lhasa Beer.


Made in Lhasa, Tibet and claiming to plugh back 10% of profits to benefit Tibetans, I was initially highly sceptical. I suspected a clever marketing ploy from a Chinese-owned brewery (probably not even in Tibet)...



However, after looking at their website, it looks like they are the real deal. Their brewery is actually in Lhasa. 72% of their employees are ethnic Tibetans (52% are women). They are co-owned by Danish company Carlsberg. They have links to NGOs that operate in Tibet.

It looks like people are divided on whether to buy Lhasa Beer:

• Should We Really Boycott Lhasa Beer?
• Don't buy Lhasa Beer

It's highly likely that the Chinese government own a portion of the Lhasa Brewery (why else would they allow it to operate?), and the cheaper alcohol that would logically be produced by a large Lhasa-based brewery is likely to have an impact on the level of alcoholism in Tibet...

I guess I will have to think about this some more.

A Confederacy of Dunces

{A} and I saw the Seattle world-premier production of A Confederacy of Dunces at the Book-it Repertory this past weekend.

I was a little nervous - this book is full of zany characters and a takes place in several locations around 1960s New Orleans, a place with a unique culture. Capturing all that on stage would be hard... The good news is I think the production mostly did a great job - the leads were fantastic, Brandon Whitehead as Ignatius Reilly, and Ellen McLain as his mother were pretty much perfect and just as I imagined the characters.

Todd Licea made a great Mr. Levy and Kevin McKeon was great as Mr. Clyde, the proprietor of Paradise Hot Dogs. (His portrayal of Claude Robichaux was a bit too old and doddering for me...)
Charles Norris was good as Burma Jones - perhaps not as towering a figure as I had imagined when I read the book, but he played him with a nice "cool cat" attitude.

The ending felt a bit rushed and too hard to follow for people that didn't have the book freshly in their memory. The play probably will be most appealing to people that know and love the book and can put up with the minor flaws in the script, set or performances. People that have never read the book will have fun most of the way through, and hopefully will get their curiosity piqued enough to want to check out the book.

I leave you with a link to the Ignatius' Ghost blog, which takes you on a tour of modern New Orleans looking for the locations mentioned in the book.

Bogart Recipe

Here's a recipe for a yummy cocktail served at the Big Picture in Redmond. I'm posting it here so that I can find it in the future when I forget the recipe - it's easy to make at home (assuming you have fresh sage leaves).

Ingredients:
1 measure Gin
1/2 measure Triple-sec
1 measure Margarita mix
2 fresh sage leaves

Put a few ice cubes in a shaker, add the gin and triple-sec and sage leaves, and muddle well. Add the Margarita mix, shake, and strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a sage leaf if desired.

New "7 Worlds Collide" album from Neil Finn et al

Last night I saw that there is a new album by Neil Finn and friends (who call themselves "7 Worlds Collide'), called Sun Came Out. There's more info on the ReverbNation website here, and you can listen to the album here.

This new album seems to contain all new songs. From the album page:

7 years ago, Neil Finn & friends first got together to perform some live shows – and release a resulting live album. In December of 2008 and January 2009, Neil did it again, only this time bigger and better! He assembled a group of his friends and fellow artists in Auckland, New Zealand to record a brand new album of all new & original material.
The cast list this time includes Neil, Sharon & Liam Finn, Wilco, Johnny Marr, KT Tunstall, Ed O’Brien & Phil Selway of Radiohead, Lisa Germano, Bic Runga, and others – all contributing to the performances and songwriting.

The previous "7 Worlds Collide" album he did "with friends" was 7 Worlds Collide - Live At The St. James. "Down on the Corner" and "Edible Flowers" are really good, as is "There is a Light that Never Goes Out" - plus a few live versions of Crowded House and Finn songs.

Excellent news!

French oysters

This is the 2nd year in a row that French oysters have been hit by a mystery "plague" that is killing young oysters. This year 90% of the young oysters have died.

Producers in Normandy are so worried that last month they handed out free
boxes of the shellfish near Caen chanting: "Take these oysters, they may be the last you'll ever eat."

Playing the Enemy

{A} mentioned a segment on NPR's "To the Best of Our Knowledge" which aired on KUOW on Friday. The segment covers the 1995 Rugby World Cup match between South Africa and New Zealand, and how Nelson Mandela's support of the Springboks helped to unify the country. I remember watching the match and the euphoria that swept the nation in the weeks following the South African victory. It was one of the many highlights in Mandela's term as president.

You can listen to the podcast here, skip to around the 38 minute mark for the start of this segment.

The show is based on the book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation by John Carlin - one I will add to my "to read" list. I hadn't fully appreciated how brave Mandela's support of the Springboks was.

Happy Hour in an Irish pub

You'd think happy hour in an Irish pub would be a great time to get some cheap(er) Irish beer, right? Nope, that's not the case at Bellevue's Paddy Coyne's.

Instead of discounts on Guinness or Smithwick's, they offer cheap Bud and Bud Light. A pint of Irish beer will set you back the regular price of $6. Somehow that just strikes me as lame - they'd be better off not having any beer specials during happy hour.

Giving Nigerians a bad name...

It seems that Nigerian officials are not fans of the movie "District 9".

While it's true that Nigerians are portrayed as crime lords in the movie, running the underground market cat-food and weapons market (not to mention prositution), I think the thing that really irked the officials is the naming of the main "baddie": Obasandjo sounds a lot like former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo. And it doesn't help that he's a superstitious megalomaniac that wants to eat aliens to inherit their power and control over alien weaponry.

Sadly, this type of thing really happens in some parts of Africa, including South Africa. (It's called "muti killing"), so there is some real-world inspiration for the crim lord's behaviour. Add to that that a large amount of crime in today's South Africa is due to Nigerian gangs, and you can see that to a large extent the writer/director was just drawing on current events. You can read more about the director's reasons for making the crime lord a Nigerian and referencing muti, in the interview here.

Fidelity password fail

I called Fidelity customer yesterday and was asked to authenticate by entering my ID and PIN using the phone's keypad. At first my mind was blank - what was my phone PIN? It turns out you use the same user ID and password as you use on www.fidelity.com.

Convenient, yes? The problem is that this means the "secure" password I had chosen, which contained upper and lower-case letters and numbers, was actually being stored by Fidelity as a string on numbers.

For example, suppose your password is "MaGic8" . Using the phone keypad mapping for letters this becomes the number 624428. The sad thing is you can log in to Fidelity.com using 624428 as your password. You could also type in "NCHHCU" since this maps to the same numbers.
In this example, there are 4096 (4^6) different passwords that an attacker could enter and that would all allow them access to your account.

Instead of 62 or more possibilities per character (uppercase, lowercase and digits), you're effectively using 10 possibilities per character. That's a drop in entropy of 10 bits (or a factor of 1000) for a 6-character password.

What's odd is that they don't seem to do the same thing for the user ID - typing in the numbers your ID maps to doesn't work.

The Ultimate Yuppie Gym

I was amused to see an advert for a new gym in Bellevue that is due to open in the new Bravern building soon. The gym, the first West Coast location in the David Barton Gym chain, makes most five-star hotels look shabby. Not surprisingly, it will share The Bravern with Neiman Marcus (a.k.a. "Needless Markup"), and Microsoft.

Barton was quoted saying , “My new gym will be so inspiring that even techies will start looking like their fantasy characters.” For a look at what the new gym will look like, see the gallery on their website.

The terms "ostentatious" and "poor taste" come to mind, but I'm sure nouveau riche Seattleites will be keen to show off by going to this gym. Just another sign that some people have more money than sense.

Tea at Butchart Gardens

Victoria Trip 2009
Originally uploaded by Mr Snootyhamper

This is the spread *for one person*! Way too much food - we tred to slowly make our way through this over the course of an hour or two, washed down with copious amounts of tea, but alas some things had to go unsampled (like to chocolate truffle).

The ginger and cucumber sandwiches were especially good.

BC Parliament in Victoria

Victoria Trip 2009
Originally uploaded by Mr Snootyhamper

I like the way they light up the building at night!

Victoria Sunset

Victoria Trip 2009
Originally uploaded by Mr Snootyhamper

Here is a nice shot of the sun setting over the inner harbour in Victoria, BC. You can't really tell from the photo, but it was actually raining a bit when we took this.

Good times in Victoria, BC

{A} and I recently went up to Victoria, BC in a seaplane to celebrate our 1-year anniversary.
Here are a few highlights from our trip:

• We had dinner and brunch at one of our favourite places in Victoria, ReBar. We first went to ReBar on our first Victoria trip several years ago, and their food is as good as always. Their fresh fruit and veggie drinks are also great (try the Sundance Kid!)
• The Royal BC Museum had an exhbition from the British Museum titled Treasures, that was amazing. Worth the trip just to see this stuff...
• We got to visit Butchart Gardens (finally!) Summer is definitely the time to go, although I hear the gardens are worth seeing in all the seasons. Some pics from the gardens are in the set on Flickr
• We had an amazing tea at the gardens. From what I've heard, the tea at the Empress hotel is more expensive and not as good. (I've not been to the Empress myself though). Good things about tea in the Butchart Gardens: you can sit on the veranda and enjoy the garden views, great tea and yummy food, and it's reasonably-priced!
• This list on Yelp.com pointed us at a few food places, which were all good. Notably...
• Decent brunch at MoLe (worth another look), a place with lots of veggie options and some yummy smoked tuna eggs benedict.
• Amazing cocktails and service at Solomon's. These folks take their drinks very seriously and have some fantastic, unique concoctions as well as making a great Sazerac. They also had great food, from tapas-style small plates to some interesting-looking main plates. A large table of chefs was there enjoying a tasting menu (it looked like they were tasting 10 courses!) - apaprently a regular gathering that I'd be happy to try duplicating next time I'm in town.
• A delicious Italian meal at Pagliacci's with live gypsy/Yiddish music. It looks like this place is a real institution and has been going for decades. A cosy, lively atmosphere and some of the tastiest Italian food I've have had for a while!

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore

I was reminded today of the great comedy duo of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. One of my favourite sketches (which I was sure I had posted here before, but it seems not) is the pub sketch. Here it is:

The next Iron Chef America could be from Seattle!

I spotted an interesting blog post today on the "Eat All About It" blog:

The Food Network released the names of contestents for The Next Iron Chef, and Holly Smith is on the list. Smith, of Cafe Juanita and Poco Carretto, joined nine other top chefs in five weeks of worldwide taping, flying ‘from Los Angeles to Japan to New York to compete in the food fight of their professional lives.’

"New Orleans is drinking better"

This is one of the interesting news snippets you get for friending New Orleans on Facebook: An article in the LA Times titled "New Orleans is drinking better lately". And the obligatory teaser:

Anyone invoking the world's great drinking cities has to place New Orleans pretty close to the top.It's the birthplace of Peychaud's bitters and Southern Comfort, of the Sazerac and the Ramos gin fizz. And it has a long-standing absinthe legacy, including in 2007 being the first port of entry for the liquor since it was outlawed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1912. Not a bad inheritance.

However, the cocktail revolution sweeping New York, San Francisco and Chicago -- the speak-easies and fedora-sporting bartenders alchemizing booze into transcendent mixology -- has been slow to come to town. But a new crop of bars and bartenders are giving the Big Easy's drinking scene a decidedly upscale flavor.

LBJ Can Haz Pants?

A friend on Facebook posted a link to this classic recording of a phone call made by then-president Linden Johnson: Linden B. Johnson orders some new Haggar pants

In this telephone call, which has become one of the more famous exchanges LBJ
recorded, the President asked a leader of the Haggar clothing company for some
custom-made pants, providing specific (and sometimes graphic) instructions on
how they should be customized for him.

Never let it be said that I don't post educational information on this blog!

Chris Walker cameo in "Inked"

Chris Walker, of the Contemplative Programmer blog, recently was involved in the 48 Hour Film Project in Seattle, getting to act in one of the entries, titled "Inked". You can watch "Inked" here, and see prior films from various cities around the world here.

He has a single line in the film, a single word in fact, and it's very apt if you know him. In the security team at Microsoft, Chris had a knack for spotting bugs in code, and would often send out gems to the team with the email subject line "Code du jour". I miss those mails...

"Nothing up my sleeve" numbers

I just came across the term "nothing up my sleeve number" today, and it made me smile. Sometimes geeks chose pretty cute names for things :) See the Wikipedia entry here.

The related entries on differential cryptanalysis and S-boxes is interesting too. I am not a crypto geek, so the intricacies of this stuff is beyond me, but the higher-level descriptions and the history are fascinating.

Spam, spam, spam, bacon, egg and spam

One wonders what the advertising folks were smoking when they came up with this new TV advertisement for SPAM.

Attaching a VHD to a Windows 7/Server 2008 host from managed code

This past weekend I had "fun" working on a project to attach VHD files to a Windows 7/Server 2008 host machine. My aim was to have a C# app be able to do this and then read the files off the VHD...

It turns out the easiest part was opening and attaching the VHD file. The VHD APIs are pretty straight-forward, and a simple managed wrapper lets you call these from C#. (I chose a Managed C++ wrapper, but there is a C# wrapper here)

By default AttachVirtualDisk will mount all the volumes on the virtual disk, which is what I wanted. (You could also tell the VHD API to not mount them and do it yourself for the partitions you cared about, but that sounded like a lot of extra work to me...)

Now came the fun - which drive letters were assigned to the mounted partitions on the VHD? It turns out the VHD API doesn't provide this information - the most it will give you is the physical path for the drive device (see GetVirtualDiskPhysicalPath)

I looked around and found some examples of people using Powershell to mount VHDs and figure out the drive letters. Some folks were using the Virtual Disk Service (VDS), which has a managed wrapper in Server 2008 (Microsoft.Storage.Vds.dll) - Taylor Brown talks about this on his blog.

That wouldn't work on Windows 7 though, so I was left considering writing a managed wrapper for the VDS COM interface. My head was beginning to hurt... :)

Luckily I found some hints at using WMI to get the info - using WMI from .NET is not too complicated once you figure out which objects and queries to use. Here's the resulting code (Managed C++) which retrieves the logical drive for the first partition on the VHD:

// Return the logical disk for the VHD's first partition
property String^ LogicalDisk
{
  String^ get()
  {
      String^ physicalPath = this->PhysicalPath; // Calls GetVirtualDiskPhysicalPath API wrapper
      String^ logicalDisk = nullptr;
                       
      // Use WMI to get the logical drive for the first partition on the VHD disk
      RelatedObjectQuery^ q = gcnew RelatedObjectQuery(String::Format("\\\\.\\root\\cimv2:Win32_DiskDrive.DeviceID='{0}'", physicalPath), "Win32_DiskPartition");
      ManagementObjectSearcher^ searcher = gcnew ManagementObjectSearcher(q);
      String^ firstPartition = nullptr;  
      for each (ManagementObject^ o in searcher->Get())
      {
          firstPartition = o->Path->ToString();
          break;
      }
      if (firstPartition != nullptr)
      {
          // Now see which volumes are related to the partitions
          q = gcnew RelatedObjectQuery(firstPartition, "Win32_LogicalDisk");
          searcher->Query = q;
          for each (ManagementObject^ o in searcher->Get())
          {
              logicalDisk = o->GetPropertyValue("Name")->ToString();
              break;
          }
      }
      return logicalDisk;
  }
}

"Molecular biology for computer scientists"

I just saw this rather intriguing post on Bunnie's blog: On Influenza A

In it he muses about the similarities between the influenza virus and computer virii. Some really interesting stuff, and some links to other reading.

A snippet to entice you to click on the link above:

If you thought of organisms as computers with IP addresses, each functional group of cells in the organism would be listening to the environment through its own active port. So, as port 25 maps specifically to SMTP services on a computer, port H1 maps specifically to the windpipe region on a human. Interestingly, the same port H1 maps to the intestinal tract on a bird. Thus, the same H1N1 virus will attack the respiratory system of a human, and the gut of a bird.

The non-sucky re-finance experience

After complaining about my experience with WaMu/Chase, I'm pleased to report we've closed on our re-finance with Quicken Loans.

I called them the afternoon that I realized WaMu/Chase were not going to work out, and within a day I had received spoken to a loan officer and received an estimate. The next morning I signed forms electornically locking in our rate and starting the credit reviews, etc. Within a week of applying the property valuation was done, and the loan was approved. During the whole process I was able to easily speak to my loan officer (email and phone calls answered within a day). Title search took about a week and a half, and we then signed the papers at our house. The whole process took under 4 weeks.

I was also really impressed that Quicken Loans sent us the full set of papers we would be signing the day before, so we could review them and ask questions if needed. No other lender I've worked with has done that, or offered to do signing at a location that's convenient for you instead of them.

Another nice thing: The property valuation report was very detailed and has some great info, such as comparable properties in the neighbourhood that have sold or are listed for sale now. More data than most estate agents give you when you are considering listing your home and trying to figure out a realistic price...

All in all I was really impressed with these guys and would recommend them to my friends. If you are thinking of re-financing or purchasing a home, give them a try.

Abita Beer in Seattle

So, I have been a bad muppet and not posted anything about our trip to New Orleans. {A} has been much better and posted several entries already, so I recommend you read them in the meantime :)

One of the highlights of the trip for me was the discovery of a local brewery - Abita Beer.
Their Turbo Dog beer was quite nice and already had made an impression, but one night we had dinner at a cute cafe and I tried the seasonal Strawberry Beer from Abita. Wow.... Love at first taste?

This is one of the best summer beers ever - light, crisp and refreshing. The Strawberry refers to local, Louisiana strawberries. (The beer is a spring/early summer speciality, made in small amounts).

When the waiter suggested it, I thought "Ugh, it'll be too sweet". (I am not a huge fan of sweet beer or hefeweizen, although I do like some Belgian lambic beers like Kriek and Framboise).
I would say the Abita Strawberry beer captures the aroma and flavour of strawberries without picking up the sweetness - the beer is still nicely balanced and almost tart.

Now, on to Seattle. Not surprisingly, given the distance between Louisiana and Washington state, I have not seen Abita beer available here. Until I visited New Orleans, I had never heard of them. Looking at their website, though, it appears a few places in Seattle stock their stuff. On the eastside where I live, the only option seemed to be Larry's Market, which recently became a Top Food.

I can happily report that the Top Food in Redmond does sell Abita beer - only the Purple Haze was out when I was there, but there may be hope of getting Turbo Dog or some seasonal beers too... I will update this post if I find out more! :)

Update: 6/13
I spoke to the beer & wine buyer at Top Food in Redmond, and he said he'd be happy to order other kinds of Abita beer if I would be willing to buy a case. Sadly, though, the Washington State distributor, Columbia, only sells Purple Haze, Turbodog and Amber. No seasonal ales like the strawberry or satsuma.

I also found this discussion on Chowhound, which mentions that the Bellevue Whole Foods is an option. (I can report that the one in Redmond doesn't have any Abita beer...)

New Iain M. Banks book, "Transition"!

Ooh, goodie! I enjoyed The Algebraist and Matter and can't wait to get started on this one!

It sounds like a bit of a departure from his Culture and far-future sci-fi, as this one is set on Earth in the (near?) future. It sounds like it may be more like some of Ken Macleod's books (or dare I say it, "The Diamond Age"). There's not really enough info on Amazon's page to know, though. So I guess I should be patient :)

It's available now for pre-order from Amazon (hardcover)... The softcover version will be out later in the year.

There is also an interesting article featuring Banks and other sci-fi authors on the BBC website here. The topic is "Can science fiction keep up with modern science?"

Meet the Contemplative Programmer

Chris, who until very recently worked in my team at Microsoft, started a great blog. The official description is "musing about programming, management and old computers". He has lots of interesting anecdotes, such as the current post concerning Guest accounts, and an earlier post on core memory.

You can read the blog here: http://contemplativeprogrammer.com/

Powell's Sci-fi Recommendation

Powell's Sci-fi Recommendation
Originally uploaded by Mr Snootyhamper

The kind people at Powell's Books in Portland offer expert advice on science fiction books, as this sign shows.

I think I've seen this guy moonlighting where I work too...

What's Sue McCown been up to?

It turns out Sue McCown of Coco La Ti Da and Earht & Ocean dessert fame has not been hiding under a rock for the past few months. This blog post describes her work with Seattle's Cupcake Royale to help them improve the texture and longevity of their cupcakes. (They noticed that many people bought them to eat the next day, and they tended to dry out overnight...)

For some reason when I read the description of Sue making batch after batch of cake mix, tweaking one variable each time, I picture a female Alton Brown doing a "food science is fun" routine. I'm not sure Sue would like to be labeled "the female Alton Brown", though :)

On Sazeracs...

One of the things I did in New Orleans a few months ago was become acquainted with the Sazerac, an "old-fashioned" cocktail. The "official" website and recipe are here: http://www.sazerac.com/cocktail.aspx. Wiki has some good info too.

The traditional drink should be made with (good) rye whiskey, Peychaud's bitters and Herbsaint (a pastis, like Pernod). Absinthe can also be used, and there are a few now available in the USA, even some made near us in Seattle.

What is odd, though, is that ordering this drink outside New Orleans is a bit like trying to find Marmite outside the Commonwealth.

About 50% of the places I try ordering one have no clue how to make it. I guess this is not too surprising, since the cocktail is not "in vogue", and many other old-fashioned cocktails have fallen by the wayside. I've also had more than one person say that Absinthe is still banned/illegal in the USA... :)

There are a few places that know what a Sazerac is, and mix a good one. I was very pleased when the friendly barman at Pazzo in Portland sid he knew the recipe. He warned me that he did not have Peychaud's bitters, but they had some that were made in-house by the chef. The resulting drink was pretty close to the ones I had in New Orleans.

I'll update this with any other success stories...

San Diego

{A} and I are in San Diego for a few days for my cousin's wedding, and having a great time so far.

The wedding was yesterday, and was beautiful. Strangely, it's colder and greyer here than it was in Seattle when we left, butt luckily the rain held off, and the fog lifted in the evening so we could enjoy some of the view of the bay at the reception.

We're staying downtown in the Gaslamp district, which is bit like Seattle's downtown - lots of shops and restaurants, and a bustling nightlife. We explored a bit on foot on Saturday and discovered Nobu's within walking distance - I'll have to see if we can make it for lunch or dinner :)

We went to a really nice little cafe this morning for breakfast - Chocolat. (Their website is worth a look just to see the fun photo panning they have). They mainly focus on gelato, but also do some yummy paninis, bruschetta and pancakes (savoury and sweet). They have some seriously good coffee too - imported from Italy, I think, although it was not brand I had heard of... Well worth a visit if you come to SD.

Our hotel is nice, but I can't recommend the food at the hotel restaurant, J Six. Terrible room-service on Friday, and lacklustre breakfast on Saturday were enough to make us skip them for the remaining meals...

We had fun today exploring the Hotel Del Coronado and the surrounding beach, and then took a short drive north. Lunch at Rubios, a local chain of Mexican restaurants, was surprisingly good. I had great mahi mahi tacos (soft corn) with great fresh salsas.

Later today we are driving to the suburbs in the East to meet my aunt and uncle for dinner and to see their 8-month old ridgeback puppy :)

Abita Purple Haze

I am happy to report that the Abita Purple Haze beer I bought at Top Foods in Redmond a few days ago lives up to the high expectations I described previously.

Purple Haze reminds me a bit of Belgian lambic beers and gueze's - not surprising, really, since this is a wheat beer with raspberry puree added after filtration. (I think they are going for a summer-friendly version of Framboise). Flavour-wise, it's lightly tart and fruity, but like the Strawberry, the fruit is more of a perfume than a strong flavouring. There is no real hoppiness, and the finish is clean and crisp.

This one is a nice summer beer, but I think I prefer the Strawberry.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo in Seattle

A quick add-on to the previous post about summer concerts:
Ladysmith Black Mambazo (from South Africa) will be playing at the Woodland Park Zoo. More info here.

Music, comedy and other link clearances...

This will be a bit of a "grab bag" of links.

Some music news:

• A new album from Eels is coming out on June 2nd, called "Hombre Lobo". Check out the video for the first single here, and pre-order the CD here.
• Elvis Costello has a new album "Secret, Profane and Sugarcane", also coming out on June 2nd, and is on tour. He'll be at Ch. Ste Michelle this summer.
• Amadou & Mariam will be opening for Coldplay at Washington's Gorge amphitheater on July 11th. I guess they have arrived :)
• Marymoor have some fun concerts this summer, such as Duran Duran and The Decemberists.

Movie news:

• "A Matter of Loaf and Death", a new Wallace and Gromit short will be shown during SIFF.

Humour links:

One of the British folks in my team at work mentioned this comedian, whom I had not heard of before: Bill Bailey. Apparently his "Guide to the Orchestra" show is great, and is coming out on DVD in the UK, so I hope it ends up being released across the pond too.

Here are some Youtube links in the meantime:

• Foreign Ambulance Sirens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRyvsRAo8T8
• Dr Who: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfMVFp-SAlQ
• Emo Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4oX2qK9yMg
• American Rock: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no7tyW31ekE
• German Love Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj6GX8gOwgc
• Kraftwerk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82HHglwXA24
• Belgium (and the oddest heckle ever): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7rCqFOENaI

WaMu/Chase and the sucky re-finance experience

I've been waiting for weeks to hear back from WaMu ("Now part of Chase") about my mortgage re-finance (which was meant to close by tomorrow). I finally heard back today, and it turns out they are "running behind" (no sh*t!) and would only be able to close in another month's time.

This whole process started in early February, with me dealing with a really pleasant guy on the phone. (This was after WaMu sent me snail-mail saying I could refinance for "no cost" - turns out that means $700 in application fees.)

The pleasant guy on the phone soon made way for an incompetent local property valuator that called me to say WaMu had cancelled my application and she was therefore not doing the valuation... After spending a few days playing phone-tag with WaMu I managed to talk to someone only to find out the application was still active and they were waiting for the valuation... (WTF?) So, a week or two later and a new valuator came out to look at the house. All was well, my credit rating came back in the high 600's and it looked like all would be well.

Then my application went to underwriting for review. Dawn, my loan officer, said they were running about 3 weeks to do the review, so after waiting 3 weeks (plus a few days grace), I emailed Dawn to see what was up. Nothing for a week. So, I started calling Dawn and leaving voicemails asking her to contact me. Nothing for weeks. This week I tried calling her again and realized her voicemail message has changed: she's now "out of the office for an extended period", and requesting that no-one leave voicemails for her.

OK. Let's try the operator number she suggests I use.... It turns out that is equivalent to listening to gaping void of deep space - not even muzak to while away the time. Next I try callign the number for Dawn's manager, only to get voicemail and a message saying she has chanegd teams and I should not leave a message.

I spent some time hunting around for 800- numbers to call, and finally speak to someone that gives me the name and number of Dawn's new manager. I call and leave voicemail. Repeat for 3 days... Finally today I hear back from Juan, the manager, and while he is extremely appologetic, the gist of it is that I am up a proverbial creek with a proverbial paddle.

They will not be able to close until mid-June, and my rate-lock expires tomorrow. For $1000 I can extend the rate lock (or I guess I could let it float, but Juan didn't really seem interested in that option?) At least they offered to refun the $700 I've paid in application fees, so now I can start the whole process over again with another lender... Wish me luck!

PS: If this is how WaMu/Chase treat their customers, Heaven help them!

David Byrne's new EP

I just heard that David Byrne is selling a special live EP recorded during his current tour, with proceeds to benefit Amnesty International. Definitely a worthy cause, and a nice addition to the studio album ("Everything That Happens Will Happen Today").

For more info and to listen to the EP, go to David Byrne's site here.

Sushi Me

This is a quick recommendation for a new sushi place that opened a few months ago in Bellevue: Sushi Me. They are a kaiten sushi restaurant (a.k.a. conveyor-belt sushi).

Previously, the only kaiten sushi places I had been to were fairly unimpressive in terms of quality, and some took the no-frills theme a bit too far for my tastes.

Suhsi Me strikes a nice balance - they have a modern, clean feel, with a more inventive menu than traditional sushi places. They are definitely trying to appeal to both sushi newbies, and fans. They have lots of interesting rolls and some great veggie dishes: edamame, inari (tofu skin) and tamago (egg) sushi and basic veggie rolls. Something really unusual was their breaded and deep-fried tofu. They also have a few cooked dishes on the menu (like ramen soup).

I will still go to more old-fashioned places like Kiku Sushi when I am craving really good nigiri sushi (their aji is great), but for a mid-week lunch, Sushi Me is my new favourite sushi place.

Wine in baby bottles

Wow... This place in New York certainly has an interesting way to serve wine:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/dining/reviews/22brief1-002.html

The joke is that the French word for baby bottle (biberon) is also slang for a bottle of booze. The idea to conflate the two originated at Le Refuge des Fondus, in Paris, which La Cave is modeled after, down to the tightly set communal tables and benches that require clambering over your neighbors.

Sounds like a fun place to try next time I visit the Big Apple!

Cooking tofu using the dry-fry method

Hello everyone, and I hope you had a great Easter and Passover!
I just got back from a fun trip to New Orleans, which I will be writing about in the next few days (so much to blog about!)

In the meantime, I thought I'd share this quick tip that I came across on the veg*n discussion list at work. Do you love deep-fried tofu at Thai and Chinese restaurants, but hate frying food at home (or do you just want a healthier option?)

This webpage describes a method to cook tofu that yields a yummy browned crust and makes it soak up more flavour from the sauce/marinade you use. The trick is to use a non-stick pan, no oil, and slowly cook the tofu on medium heat, removing some of the water and giving it a delicious crust.

I tried this last night when I made some barbecued tofu and it was amazing... (Do the tofu as described above, remove from the pan and mix with some diluted barbecue sauce, sautee some onions in a bit of olive oil, and then add the tofu and sauce, simmer for a few mins).

Good news for fans of Tully's

Via the Seattle P-I : New Tully's deal means more stores, more items on store shelves

This is great news, since it means Tully's have a reprieve from filing for bankruptcy or scaling back. {A} and I usually make it to a local Tully's once or twice a week, and I know I would go more often if there was a location on the way to/from work. (During the week I grudginly go to Starbuck's for tea or less grudginly go to Kitanda when I want coffee).

Nicolas Cage is the true Wooden One

{A} is fond of referring to Clint Eastwood as "The Wooden One".
After seeing "Knowing" last night, I would have to say that Nicolas Cage deserves this title 100x more than Mr. Eastwood.

Despite some wooden acting, the movie was surprisingly fun. (It helps when you walkin with next to no expectations)

The polar opposite of NPR

This week the local NPR station KUOW was running their spring pledge drive, which meant that at various times (when the fund-raising banter got too much to bare), I switched channels or (gasp) turned off the radio.

One such time was Thursday evening's drive home. I hit the "FM/AM" button in the car accidentally, switching to some other preset FM channel. Hitting it again I hopped over to AM, which I pretty much never listen to. Preset 1 on AM for some reason was set to KTTH, and I found myself listening to Savage Nation.

Pretty amusing stuff, and a bracingly different kind of show from the usual stuff I hear on NPR ;-)
I will have to remember to tune in every now and then to ensure I maintain a balanced perspective...

Interestingly, Wikipedia says the top three radio show hosts in terms of audience are:

1. Rush Limbaugh
2. Sean Hannity
3. Michael Savage

Sexist advertising then and now

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Asteroid Cafe is not closed, after all

A while back I mentioned here that The Asteroid, a great little restaurant in Seattle, had closed down.

Well, today I happened to go their website and noticed this message from January:

You may have heard the Asteroid is closed. Well, we were for about four days at the beginning of September. The ownership of the Asteroid has changed however that is the extent of the change. We are still proud to have Chef Matt Wolfe manning the pans and creating outstanding specials. We will be restarting wine tastings in just a few weeks, probably Wednesday evenings. More to follow... Hope to see you soon!

I will be checking them out ASAP to see if the food and service are as good as they used to be. Hopefully the very friendly barman is also still working there... :)

The Seattle Times actually covered this a while back but I must have missed it...

Tunnel needs amusing

Lately I have been mis-reading a lot of the news headlines about the proposed tunnel which will replace the Alaskan Way viaduct.

For some reason the phrase "Viaduct bored tunnel" makes me think of a tunnel sitting listlessly in the mud, wondering what to do... Perhaps we should get some balloons for it?

PS: It looks like we may get our own version of the "Big Dig" if this plan goes ahead! I must say, it was quite exciting to ride through the huge tunnels in Boston - some even went under the water! Freaky!

Spring is Sprung!

Spring is sprung, the grass is ris.
I wonders where the birdies is?
They say the birds is on the wing.
Ain't that absurd?
I always thought the wing was on the bird.

I wish M+S well on their trip to Japan - hopefully the cherry blossoms will be out! (It looks like we will have to wait another couple of days in Seattle)

10 years - 10 lbs

So, last week was my ten-year anniversary at work. (I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by...)

The tradition is that for every anniversary you bring in X pounds of chocolate. (People are often sometimes creative and bring in candy, donuts, or other treats in some quantity that represents the length of time). Perhaps unsurprisingly people also tend to send announcements in binary, e.g. "100 Years at Blah Company!"



I spent a fair amount of time trying to think of something cool to bring in today, but finally settled on loads of little chocolate eggs (lucky that we're close to Easter!) I have milk & dark chocolate, almond-filled and caramel filled. 10 pounds of eggs looks pretty cool!

Update: 3/19/09

Added a picture of the chocolate eggs.
I was a bit worried by the end of Tuesday when the eggs seemed to not be moving that fast. (I had visions of them sitting outside my door for weeks...) Luckily someone with a real craving for chocolate came around overnight, and by Wednesday morning I was down to a few dozen. By the end of Wednesday they were all gone!

So, 72 hours is all it takes for 10 pounds of candy to be consumed at work :)

What's on TV? Radio, actually...

{A} and I are big fans of NPR (especially shows like "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and "This American Life"). Usually we listen in the car, since we get pretty bad reception at our house (yes, I am too lame/lazy to put up a decent FM antenna to solve that...)

I was quite pleased a few weeks ago to find a nifty Public Radio application for my iPhone which let us stream the radio over the Internet. We have a line-in on our stereo, so it's easy to plug the iPhone in and have the radio shows audible through a few rooms in the house now. But it turns out there is an even cooler way (I think) to listen to the radio... Use your TV!

To be more precise, cable TV. Our cable feed includes a lot of radio stations, and the audio quality is better than most Internet streams. {A} discovered the KUOW channel, and we've since used it to listen to a few shows. But what makes it really cool is that if you have a DVR, you can now record specific shows that you might otherwise miss... Not all shows have podcasts available, so this seems like a good way to "time-shift" radio shows.

Whoa! "Wolverine" movie is directed by a South African!

I just saw that the up-coming X-Men movie about Wolverine is directed by Gavin Hood, a South African! :) One step closer to world domination...

Gavin won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film on 2005 for Tsotsi, which I previously blogged about here.

Cake of Resignation

Quite a novel way of resigning! :)

"The Colonel"

Via SeriousEats:

News from Riebeek West

Hello all! Firstly, you may have noticed I've been a bit absent on the blog recently. I've mainly been hanging out on Facebook, posting links to thinks there instead of here.

Anyway, I will try to break the trend and post more goodies of general interest here... Starting with this bot of news from Riebeek West in South Africa. (Just an hour's drive from Cape Town)

Their annual OliveFest is coming up soon, but a new event for this year is MedFest. The idea is simple: the various restaurants and wineries in the valley have teamed up, with each pair representing the food of a Mediterranean country. There are a lot of restaurants that have popped up here in the past few years, some of them really good if my mom is to be trusted :)

This is a cool idea, and something WA, CA or OR wineries could try doing too... (Hint, hint!)

Here's their full blurb:

A Taste of the Med in the Swartland

Friday, 27th March till Sunday, 29th March.
Riebeek Valley, gem of the Swartland launches its inaugural MedFest, a unique new culinary expedition for foodies. It is touted as a celebration of local and regional cuisine presented as tapestries of tastes and flavours of the countries and regions surrounding the Mediterranean and its immediate hinterland.

For visitors, the epicurean weekend has been made very simple: restaurants in the Riebeek Valley have teamed up with local wineries in the Swartland, each team representing the cuisine of one of eight Mediterranean countries and islands. Each restaurant will offer its own themed set menu with a small selection of starters, main courses, desserts and a salad.

The focus of each menu will be on authentic food from the country that is represented, made with the freshest local produce.

For more info see our website www.riebeekvalley.info
For enquiries or bookings contact the Riebeek Valley Tourism Office Tel: 022 4481584

Auto-summarizing Steve Ballmer's mail

Microsoft Word has an auto-summary feature that supposedly allows you to extract the most important information from a document and highlight it or generate an "executive summary".

For fun (and based on {R} mentioning this last night), I thought I'd see how Word does on Steve Ballmer's recent email announcing layoffs at Microsoft. Here's a link to his complete email.
With the default settings to extract the most important 25%, this is the summary you end up with:

In response to the realities of a deteriorating economy, we’re taking important steps to realign Microsoft’s business. Today we announced second quarter revenue of $16.6 billion. Our products provide great value to our customers. Our financial position is solid. We have made long-term investments that continue to pay off.

Our response to this environment must combine a commitment to long-term investments in innovation with prompt action to reduce our costs.

As a result, we reduced operating expenses during the quarter by $600 million. We
must make adjustments to ensure that our investments are tightly aligned with
current and future revenue opportunities. Our leaders all have specific goals to
manage costs prudently and thoughtfully.

To increase efficiency, we’re taking a series of aggressive steps. We’ll cut travel expenditures 20 percent and make significant reductions in spending on vendors and contingent staff. We’ve scaled back Puget Sound campus expansion and reduced marketing budgets.

Our priority remains doing right by our customers and our employees. The decision to eliminate jobs is a very difficult one. Thank you for your continued commitment and hard work.

WTF? No mention of any layoffs until an oblique reference at the very end. I guess the sentence from Steve's original email was too buried for Word to find it... The term "shit sandwich" comes to mind when reading Steve's email - positive-sounding wrapping around the tough message in the middle. For some reason, doing this when you're communicating with executives is frowned on - they want the juicy details bubbled up in the first paragraph. Might be nice if they did that when they communicated "down" to the company too...

NYT: South African wines step onto the stage

I recently came across this article on South African wine from the New York Times. Here's a brief excerpt to whet your appetite:

Forgive me if I’m excited, but I can’t help it. I want to tell you straight out that South Africa, of all places, is one of the greatest sources for moderately priced cabernet sauvignon on the planet today.

I suspected this before, but after the wine panel tasted 25 South African cabernets recently, I can say it unequivocally, without the usual hedging and qualifications.

Well, almost, but I’ll get to that later.

Great Ken Levine quote

Ken Levine has some thoughts on the inauguration, including this great zinger aimed at Cheney:


"We always knew Dick Cheney was Dr. Strangelove"

Happy Inauguration Day!

It's done - the USA has a new president! I missed hsi speech, but will watch it tonight. From the snippets I heard on NPR, it sounds like he did a great job (as usual).



Here's a screenshot from the Photosynth mash-up I mentioned previously:

Inauguration countdown!

I haven't been this excited for a US presidential inauguration since, well, forever! It looks like we will have the event screened in a large conference room at work, so I will try to sneak away to watch part of it.

It's also quite cool to see that PhotoSynth will be used to create a "mash-up" of everyone's photos of the event. CNN will feature a live fly-through of the photos on their "Magic Wall".
Read more about it here, and be sure to send some pictures if you are there!

Watching BSG webisodes on your XBOX 360

I've been playing around with ways to watch online movies on my PC and XBOX, mainly due to the new Battlestar Galactica webisodes which have been released on SciFi.com. I thought it would be cool to watch them before the new episode airs this coming Friday, and since we will have a few people over at our house, I wanted to get them up on our TV screen instead of watching them on a PC.

There are several tools available to grab movies (which in this case are Flash .FLV files) from a website and save them locally. The one I used is Orbit Downloader, which works OK but seems to make Internet Explorer 8 very unstable. (I uninstalled Orbit as soon as I had the files I wanted). Another option (not tried by me) is Keepvid which seems to not require any software installation.

Anyway, once you have the .FLV files locally, you might want to watch them. My system didn't have a codec to play these files, so I installed the current version of the K-Lite codec pack. Depending on which tools you use to convert the files (see the next step), you could skip this.

Finally, you need to convert the .FLV files to a format that the XBOX can play. I chose to use a tool I already had installed, Handbrake. (Handbrake is also great if you want to transfer videos to your iPhone/iPod Touch)

In Handbrake, simply select the files, and choose the XBOX profile. I chose to increase the video size to 1024 wide so it would look better on a large screen. (The XBOX can also stretch video to fit the screen, but it looks more blocky). The resulting MP4 files that Handbrake creates can be put on a USB storage device and played on the XBOX easily.

Lupper and déjouper

This great post from the "French word a day" blog introduced me to the word déjouper, a meal that stretches from lunch time to dinner time and cover lunch and dinner. (Kind of the same as the made-up English word lupper that we used to use when I was growing up).

Usually lupper was what you had when you forgot to eat lunch at the usual time, got really hungry in the afternoon, and had an early dinner. Déjouper on the other hand seems to be more of an informal dinner party with friends and family that starts around 1:30pm and stretches on into the early evening. It sounds very civilized, and like something I need to do more often!

S&M Dining in Seattle

This article in Seattle's The Stranger newspaper caused a flurry of mail on the food & wine mailing list at work. While many people tool exception to the overall negative tone of the article and got very defensive in response, I tend to agree with a lot of what is said and didn't think the author was being unreasonably cranky.

I've not yet been to any of the restaurants mentioned, although Poppy is high on my list of places to try in the first few months of this year. I wonder if the communal dining thing is a fad, or whether the hard economic times will force restaurants to be more accomodating and offer a la carte menus with cheaper options? Time will tell...

Have any of you been to communal, fixed menu restaurants? What's your take on them?

Spot the defect!

From this zuneboards post, the Zune New Year's bug. Can you spot what is wrong? :P

year = ORIGINYEAR; /* = 1980 */

while (days > 365)
{
    if (IsLeapYear(year))
    {
        if (days > 366)
        {
            days -= 366;
            year += 1;
        }
    }
    else
    {
        days -= 365;
        year += 1;
    }
}

'Twas the vuln before Christmas

As a Christmas gift to Microsoft, a hacker released proof-of-concept code for a Windows Media Player crash that at first was reported to be exploitable.

The SVRD bloggers quickly poured cold water on that, but I found this poetic response amusing enough to link to from here: http://vrt-sourcefire.blogspot.com/2008/12/vuln-before-christmas.html

A quick snippet:

A file template built, Pat now had the vision,
To find oddness in song tempo, and time division,
and what in my windbg window should appear,
but a #DE error, no int overflow here!

Now checking in IDA, and tweaking edx,
no memory moved, no additional wrecks,
not a vuln at all here! Not nearly the same,
I can't believe we stopped drinking for something so lame!

The "earn less, spend less" movement

Or, Why not start your weekend on Wednesday?
See the thought-provoking article by Tim Harford in Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2207406

Here's a snippet:

Here's the big question of the season, then: Why don't we do as countless moralists urge every year and focus less on money and more on leisure (or spiritual concerns, if you must)? Why haven't we all decided to work less, spend less, and consume less?
There is an anti-consumer movement with a ready answer: We're helpless, enthralled by advertisers and hooked on shopping. I've always had a slightly more optimistic view of human autonomy.

A more convincing answer is that we work hard because income is linked to our desire for status, which is collectively insatiable, because status is largely relative. A famous survey by economists Sara Solnick and David Hemenway found that many Harvard students (although few Harvard staff members) would rather have an income of $50,000 in a world where most people were poorer than an income of $100,000 in a world where most people were richer. The survey has arguably been overinterpreted in the 10 years since it was published, but it does seem to point to an important truth: It matters to us how much money other people have.

Apple CEO "Choose Your Own Adventure"

I was just reminiscing about the old "choose your own adventure" books I read as a kid, and now I see there is an online version in which you get to see what happens after you pick a new CEO for Apple.

Merry Christmas!

I'd like to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas from a decidedly white Seattle - it snowed a few more inches today and I made a decent snowman (pics to come).

Wherever you are, I hope you are surrounded by friends, family and loved ones.

A cheaper XBOX 360 wireless adapter

Instead of paying close to $100 for the XBOX 360 USB wireless adapter, I came across some how-to's that describe modifying a cheap wireless router so that it can be used to get devices onto your existing wireless LAN.

This article matches the current DD-WRT firmware the closest, and I got things working eventually using a Netgear WGR614v8 and DD-WRT v24-sp2. The firmware UI makes it even easier to set up than the article describes. You just need to:

• Use an ethernet cable to connect to the client router. Connect the admin page (usually http://192.168.1.1) and change the admin username/password as prompted.
• Go to the Wireless tab and select "Client Bridge", and enter the SSID for your existing wireless LAN. Set up the WLAN type and encryption if needed.
• Make sure your WEP/WPA key is entered correctly - the "unhide" option is useful. (I had a typo which initially made things fail)
• Back on the Basic Setup tab, you should see that the WAN interface is disabled, and the DHCP server is disabled too.
• Give the client router a static IP on the same subnet as your main router. (E.g. my main router is 192.168.1.1 and my client router is 192.168.1.2). If needed make sure your primary router is assigning DHCP addresses in a higher range, e.g. starting at 192.168.1.100
• Apply the settings, and refresh the machine that's plugged in to your client router. (Un-plugging and re-plugging the ethernet cable is the easiest)
• You should now get an IP address from your primary router, and be able to ping the primary router's IP, 192.168.1.1 in my case. You should be able to connect to the Internet.

Forgettable Pinotage: 2008 Zarafa

So, I've just gotten to taste the 2008 Zarafa Pinotage I bought at Trader Joe's a week or so ago.
A while ago I moaned about how bad the 2005 vintage was, but now I wonder if I got an off bottle?

The 2008 vintage is perfectly fine for a cheap ($4) red wine, think "3 Buck Chuck" from South Africa. While it is not bad for the price, I can't say it really represents the Pinotage varietal or South African terroir. It might as well be cheap Merlot.

Silly CAPTCHAs

Ken Levine has a fun contest underway on his blog: whoever can come up with the most humorous made-up definition for a Google CAPTCHA wins a cool prize. You enter by posting a comment under the post linked to above.

I have a few entries posted already, and in the process was offered this CAPTCHA which is too rude to enter:

More SA wines on WLTV

Peter May pointed out an old episode of Wine Library TV where more South African wines are tasted - this time some premium wines.

Gary really liked one of them - after tasting the 2004 Kanonkop Pinotage is one episode, he decided to do a follow-up show focusing on this wine and seeing how it changed with different amounts of breathing time.

Episode #218 is here, and #219 is here.

Another reason I like Washington State

Where else would the State Capitol put up a sign from an Atheist group to balance out the Christmas nativity scene? Strangely enough, not everyone is happy with this. I think seperation of church and state is a great idea. So, either it all goes, or it all has to get equal airtime :)

PS: Go see Bill Maher's movie Religilous. And read the His Dark Materials series. You'll be in good company when you land in Hell with the rest of us...

Pinotage tasting on WLTV

Gary Vaynerchuck tastes some Pinotage from South Africa in today's Wine Library TV show.
Check it out here. Sadly he stuck with the "value" wines, instead of the big guns that win awards. Why is it that mostly California and France get featured for expensive wines? How about a show with $30+ South African wines just to show people that there is some really good stuff along with the more value-driven wines.

On a semi-related note, I noticed Trader Joe's is still selling the Zarafa Pinotage, which was really awful last time I tried it. Perhaps I had an off bottle and it's worth another try?

Proposition 8

Thanks to Lucia for pointing this out! (If the embedding doesn't work, try this link instead)

The long, slow death of Zima

From Slate, an interesting look at the evolution and gradual demise of this much-maligned beverage. "Tinfoil soaked in Fresca" indeed...

Slate's take on fake turkey

Slate has a nice article on veg*n turkey options, covering the venerable Tofurkey and a few more recent products.

The Whole Foods one sounds quite good, and I'm tempted to pick one up to compare with the Tofurkey we always do. (My main gripe about Tofurkey is that it's a bit rubbery and dense).

Quorn is perhaps the most realistic (I like the way the reviewer complains that it's too realistic - bland and dry like real turkey!). I've had Quorn "chicken" before and to me it tastes just like the real thing (I used to eact chicken until 6-7 years ago).

Oh, and it's great to see Seattle-based Field Roast in the list too!

Thankful

Here's my list of 100 things I am thankful for, in no particular order:

1. My lovely wife
2. Coffee
3. Napster subscription
4. The Interwebs
5. Wine
6. My job
7. Living in Seattle
8. My cats
9. Sheepskin slippers
10. Good health
11. The symphony
12. Scrambled eggs
13. Farmer's markets
14. Good cheese
15. Sunny winter days
16. Being able to travel
17. Good friends
18. Sane family
19. My car
20. The Connector
21. Things on toast
22. Mushrooms (boletus edulis, I'm looking at you...)
23. Good books
24. Netflix
25. Movies at The Big Picture
26. Flexible schedules
27. A great team of co-workers
28. Our house
29. Mt. Rainier
30. Going skiiing in winter
31. Puzzles
32. Sudoku
33. "Man perfume"
34. The way A smells
35. Gin & tonic
36. Beer on a hot day
37. Lint rollers
38. Microprocessors
39. Security bugs (a.k.a. job security)
40. Harper's magazine
41. Marmite
42. Sushi
43. Our garden
44. Walks around the neighbourhood
45. Dark chocolate
46. The West Coast
47. Living in a stable democracy
48. Indian food
49. Olive oil
50. Garlic
51. Having nice in-laws
52. Hot water (showers, baths...)
53. Down duvets
54. Time-shifted TV
55. Oysters
56. Being able to cook
57. Dreaming
58. Not having to watch American football
59. Good mustard
60. Road trips
61. Swimming
62. Hiking
63. Snowshoeing
64. Watching a good movie at home
65. Snuggling
66. Spring in Seattle
67. Uwajimaya
68. Trader Joe's
69. The King County Library System
70. Click-lighters (not matches)
71. Braais
72. Long days
73. My education
74. Serendipity
75. My prior incarnations (must have done something right)
76. Good memories
77. Good mammaries
78. Being able to use Afrikaans words every now and then
79. Having lived in Cape Town
80. Knowing what Kathmandu and Lhasa look like
81. Great teachers
82. Kind people
83. LOLCats
84. BBC TV
85. Having feet down below my knees
86. Popular music (a long and varied list)
87. Jazz (a shorter list)
88. Being exposed to a wide range of things growing up
89. Having a sense of humour
90. Spelling colour with a 'u' if I want to
91. KUOW
92. Plays
93. Musicals
94. Ferry rides
95. Being close to Canada
96. The Internet Superheroes
97. Monty Python
98. Mrs. Balls Chutney
99. Good service
100. Wikipedia

60 Minutes story on the Pelindaba raid

Tali mentioned this last night at dinner, and I was surprised that I had not heard about this when it happened about a year ago.

In Nov 2007, armed robbers broke into the Pelindaba facility (in South Africa) which contains a stockpile of weapons-grade nuclear fuel (a.k.a. highly-enriched uranium or HEU).

Check out the 60 Minutes story here. Not too surprisingly, it sounds like staffing is a major problem at Pelindaba.

The US has offered to "help secure" the site, but as the Project on Government Oversight points out, the US has some weak areas that might be worth focusing on first. The US is also offering to "downblend" the HEU so that is not attractive to terrorists - something that the US has not done to their own sveral hundred metrics tons of HEU.

Secret Pizza

Updated: 11/15
There are a few posts on the Pacific NW Chowhound forum about this...
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I had an incredible pizza! Seriously,, my life is forever changed! Unfortunately, I can't tell you where I had it, or I will be killed...

Sound far-fetched? That's what I thought when I read the latest email offering from Garagiste (a wine mailing list I'm on). The owner, Jon Rimmerman, waxes rhapsodic for over 1,400 words describing a (presumably recent) pizza dining experience.

Garagiste have tickled my sense of humour/BS-detector a few times in the past, but this is a new level of tickling :) Is there anything more pretentious and snobby than this sort of email?

Here it is for your reading pleasure (spelling errors preserved) :


“So when do you open” I asked the keen looking gentleman standing inside the doorway outside this cult haven for pizza.


“I’m not sure, when do you want us to open” he said and stared at me with the eyes of a demon waiting for a response.


“How about now” I meekly stuttered as I glanced at the dozen other wide-eyed souls waiting outside, waiting for me (or anyone) to take charge of the situation.


“we'll see...we'll see”, his thick accent pierced the air as he slammed the door in my face.


....and so began my journey to one of the most talked about pizza establishments in the world (at the present moment) - no sign, no menu, no wait-staff. There may be nothing to eat, but there is everything to look forward to. If he feels like making pizza, you are graced with the most divine creation that basil, cheese, sauce and dough have ever quantified. If he doesn’t, you walk away knowing that there is always another day. The only clue that this “restaurant” may be open is a pyramid of hand-made mozzarella balls being depleted one-by-one as the pizzas are produced - you can glance through the window at the dwindling stack of rotund cheese bricks and gauge your chances of actually eating a pizza - if there are more than 20-30 people waiting outside and it looks like only 15-20 mozzarella balls left, you may as well leave. When the cheese is gone, they close - even if you’ve waited for 2 hours in the rain. All of this is certain restaurant suicide but, in this case, there is a longer line outside everyday.


How can this obtuse attitude be tolerated? Easy - the pizza in among the finest gastronomic creations in the world and the difficulty obtaining it is almost part of the appeal.


Every ingredient is made form scratch - everything - the cheese, the dough, the sauce. The basil is grown on site and a plethora of sea salts, vinegars and olive oils adorn the pies like necessary accoutrement in a haberdashery window. The pizza is so marvelous, so deeply complex that it renders the person enjoying it helpless to enjoy another more common pie again. Excuses are made for what used to be heavenly but your pizza reference will never be the same. Like the finest Musigny, once your lips have graced its presence, you are ruined for everything else...


...just then, I felt a hand on my shoulder, I quickly turned around and was face to face with the above mentioned demon “you, come inside now”. I didn’t question his invitation - in I marched toward what could have been the macabre, the underworld, the unknown - but I marched inside like a lemming toward the cliffs of Dover awaiting my fate...


Once inside, it was not what I expected - a few scattered, simple tables with other patrons chomping on what smelled and looked like the most divine food one could imagine. I stood there waiting and he stared, without so much as a blink - after what seemed like a full five minutes he faintly said, “What will you eat?”


I wasn’t sure if it was a trick question but I responded with one foot poised to retreat if I was wrong “Pizza?”


“Good answer and for you, because I can tell you are difficult, I will break the rules and make you a half and half...when it is your time”


With that he vanished into the den of burning logs, sticks and what appeared to be full tree branches smoldering away inside the most incredible wood-burning oven I’ve ever seen ( I would later find out that this secret combination of wood, some of it olive tree branches with the olive fruit still attached, was a secret to his success). A “half and half”? I pitied the more sheepish diners, who would not be amused with a no-menu policy - I consider myself to be among the more adventurous but stories of calf brain on pizza dough did not stoke my appetite besides, the mozzarella balls were being depleted quicker than I liked to see, one at a time, like sands through my hourglass, the chances of tasting this ever so hyped gastronomic achievement were dwindling (I still had not been offered a table yet).


Ball after ball was removed from the stack and my unsettled feeling increased until only four lonely pieces remained - they were the lock and key to the lucky few that would experience the splendor on this night - and then, when I was sure all was lost, my luck changed with ball number three, it was mine.


After hours of nervous anticipation, waiting in the rain and one of the most bizarre dining experiences I can ever recall, my pizza was presented....and what a creation it was. As I type this, my fingers tremble with the memory of a piping hot pie, razor-thin and so aromatic the charred scents of embers were embedded in the perfect crust and superlative raw materials that adorned the top. Visually, the pizza was indeed “half and half” - half was as plain as you can get - dough, sauce and hand-made cheese but the world “plain” does not prepare one for the perfection of the experience. The other half was very intriguing - what appeared to be wood-roasted onion, fennel, peppers of some variety and tiny specks of roasted fresh porcini mushrooms with the most delicate olive oil made famous in the region sprinkled on top.


The first bite was as anticipated as any first encounter I can remember and the aromatic and taste sensation was like a sensory explosion - with each nibble the ingredients would stand out as individuals (down to the flour and water) and then again as an amorphous whole as the pizza made its way down the gullet.


Rarely do I find myself in a circumstance where I keep glancing at the clock, not because I want the experience to end but just the opposite - I longed for each moment past to return unadorned, as I knew this pizza would end at some point and it seemed unfair. Each bite was from a place never before experienced - to say this was the finest pizza I’ve ever had was underestimating the detail and genius of the man that had tried as hard as he could to shoo me away only to captivate my gustatory senses like no other (and I’ve spent the better part of my adult life searching for the perfect pie)...


...and then one bite remained. One bite - the last bite. I looked at it for a few moments and wondered if I would ever experience this again - most likely not as the establishment was so off the beaten path that even I had trouble finding it and I was not sure I would ever pass that way again. It was immersed in a national forest of sorts, in mountains that were foreboding enough, if not made more mysterious by the dining experience within their deepest shadows.


The tap on the shoulder came again...


“You are not a journalist are you?” as he noticed my non-sensical scribbles trying to place what had just occurred into some form of language on paper.


“No, I write about wine - I just love food”


“You will not write about my pizza, correct?”, as the demon-like eyes seemed to stare through me and the wall behind me...


“No, well, yes I need to write about it - it was sublime, incredible, unlike anything else - I need to tell people”


“I will make you a deal - you agree not to write about the pizza and I will agree to let you to leave”


With that, I made my first deal with the devil - I made him a promise not to reveal the name or location of this singular shrine and in exchange, he agreed to let me to leave, to carry on with my post-pizza life. I’m still not sure if I received the better half of the deal.


As I walked toward the door, toward the crisp night sky, I resisted the temptation to turn around but I felt those eyes burning through me and in a hushed voice I’m certain I heard him say...


“You'll be back”

Yes, Africa is a continent...

Every now and then some talking head on TV will be enumerating a list of countries, and will include Africa in the list. Come on people! Africa is a continent! South Africa really is an independent state within the continent.

Now that the election is over, it seems Fox News is able to cover the fact that Sarah Palin didn't know that Africa is a continent (or which countries make up NAFTA). It's quite amazing to see how quickly the McCain campaign folks are distancing themselves from her. Perhaps this is partly to scupper her chances of running for election in 2012, and partly also so McCain is not totally tarnished.

Here's the Fox News video clip:

Is Obama the Mandela of America?

Nope, not quite.
But it's quite interesting to view the 2008 US election after having been through the 1994 elections in South Africa. Sadly, I was not eligible to vote in the 2008 US elections, so I can't say I took part in both of these historical events, but there are definitely some parallels. Hopefully Obama will also have the nation-building and bridge-building skills that Mandela had. 4 more years of partisan politics will not be helpful...

Nailin' Palin: the prank call

If you haven't hard it yet, the Huffington Post have it online here.