Month: June 2006

Today is the 3rd day that I’ve been laid up sick at home with a fever and flu that hardly seems to be getting better. I missed my last day of work on Friday, and will have to go back at some point next week to complete timesheets and so on. Bleah.

I start my new job on the 19th, and I guess I’ll be watching some of the world cup matches after all, since I can’t go out. I lost on two matches last night, with Paraguay’s unlucky own goal, and Sweden’s inability to break through Trinidad. I should have known better than to bet against a team making it to the world cup for the first time.

A friend read through my archives recently and observed that things here have taken a turn for the worse since late 2004. I agree but can’t be sure why yet. It’s probably a combination of being too busy to do more than post links, and knowing who comes by here often, and not wanting to say some things in front of some people. Maybe I should start just one more blog.

Discovered this last night when I upgraded my copy of Onyx (Freeware, Mac OSX only). You can change iTunes behaviour so that clicking one of the little arrows next to a song/artist/album/genre name brings you to a filtered browser list containing matches, and not the iTunes Music Store as it does by default. If this option exists in the preferences, I haven’t noticed it.

Example: Clicking an arrow next to “Ryan Adams” in a track listing will display all songs by Ryan Adams. Faster and easier than entering the browser and finding what you want when you’re already looking at it.

Woot wine is just as hilarious as regular Woot. On today’s Satanic coincidence date of 6/6/6, they’re selling Storybrook Mountain 6-bottle packs.

Tremble, heathens! A totally meaningless but spooky-sounding numerical coincidence is upon us, and the very seas themselves shall churn with boiling demonic wrath! Or not! We speak, of course, of the coming of 6/6/06, the Tuesday of the Beast. If this were, like, the year 1306, we’d round up some kindling, strike a couple of flints together, and have us a good old-fashioned witch-burning. Also, we’d be fleeing in terror from all these glowing, bleeping computers.

But this is the 21st century. We know now that our imperfect, man-made calendar has no real relationship to the birth of the universe, or even the precise birth of Jesus. We understand that the date 6/6/06 has no particular significance except to Scandinavian death-metal dorks and Hollywood marketing departments…

This week, stand up for post-Enlightenment values by fearlessly buying six bottles of 2003 Storybook Mountain Vineyards Napa Estate Zinfandel, Mayacamas Range.

Here’s an article on Adam Block [nytimes.com], the celebrity restaurant manager/opportunist who will be bringing Thomas Keller and a couple of other renowned chefs into Singapore’s new Marina Bay Integrated Resort development, developed by the Las Vegas Sands corporation. Block was also largely responsible for the celebrity chef restaurant explosion in Las Vegas itself.

But are satellite restaurants, where chefs spends a couple of weeks out of a year roaming the kitchen tasting (not creating), any good at all? This corresponding article [nytimes.com] published today declares that the sex is almost always missing. Even Gordon Ramsay has bollocksed it up. But how well can you train sous-chefs and staff to recreate Michelin star work? In Singapore?

Mark Bittman concludes by saying only Joel Robuchon has succeeded in maintaining quality:

[He] achieves this with a team of four people who have been with him for 20 years or more. Most multirestaurant chefs claim they’re operating the same way, with a training “team” and a surplus of talented underlings who are poised to move to Las Vegas, Hong Kong or even Dubai — and who will open their own restaurants if they aren’t promoted. Some of Robuchon’s team will accompany him to New York this summer, when he plans to open another L’Atelier, in the Four Seasons Hotel.Neither my brilliant meals at Robuchon nor my irksome ones at Ducasse, however, are representative; most operations lie somewhere in between.

Salesman hawking off-brand videocorders that take interpolated 11mp pictures:

[These can take up to] 11 megapixels! This is one of the most megapixel in the… (pause while thinking)… technology today!

Companion news story here: Video of grumpy Hong Kong man scolding fellow bus rider becomes Internet hit

This thing has become a massive remix/joke phenomenon, even outside of Hong Kong. Youtube has scores of song remixes from techno to rap, incorporating soundbites from the older man, and apparently his phrase, “it’s not settled” (x3) has become a catchphrase on the streets of Hong Kong. Personally I’d like to beat his face in, but he acts like a triad member.

Summer’s Eve Ad
Originally uploaded by sangsara.

“For intimate cleansing in between.”

I must meet the team behind this ad. Clearly there is much I have yet to learn. What a brilliant intersection of art and copy direction!!

(By the way, I’ve finally renewed my flickr pro account.)

Bigger than a timbuk2 Small, smaller than a Medium. Dimensions are quite close to timbuk2’s Medium but the holding volume is a lot less (14 litres vs 22 litres; Small holds 12 litres). I was going to buy from timbuk2’s excellent online store, but USD$50 for shipping is a little too much.

I basically bought it to hold two smaller bags, which were too small to justify carrying my Fux Deluxe around for:
+ !=

Hmm.