Joel Robuchon

2 January 2012 : gastronomy

We went to Joel Robuchon while we were in Vegas, and I celebrated my 31st birthday. It was on the bucket list, and now that that’s done, I doubt we’ll return. It was an impressive meal, but far from the best I’ve had. The recipe was, more or less:

• Lots of truffles
• Lots of caviar
• Lots of gold leaf
• Lots of foams
• Lots of excess

It’s hard to go wrong when you toss all of that into a dining experience. The service was generally good and all of the dishes were generally good if not great. Very little of anything, however, was exceptional.

The bread cart is the first of the three carts you encounter; it’s several dozen types of breads and rolls; all are good, but none are truly exceptional. Having had exceptional bread and pastries from legendary pâtisseries and boulangeries in Paris (which is in and of itself a claim, as there are perhaps better offerings outside the city), Robuchon’s offerings just aren’t up to the same level. Realizing this, they seem to have opted to succeed via excess and quantity, with more offerings to distract one from the fact that their current choice may not be the greatest bread they’ve ever had. I’d much prefer a single small perfect demi than twenty good rolls, but perhaps I’m taking the wrong approach. But perhaps I’m not, and Robuchon is the most American French restaurant?

The philosophy is pervasive; the first half of the courses are either stuffed with fine caviar or copious amounts of truffles. I don’t want to give the wrong impression; the asparagus was the best I’ve ever had, but I think that was more because it was a third, by weight, caviar, than that it was so expertly cooked, selected, or prepared. So it works, but it all feels like cheating; nothing feels like magic.

The most amusing dish was the amuse, which was a decomposed/inverted sangria (the sangria was pudding, in effect, and the things in it were liquid) served over a globe of dried ice in water (I presume) to create a nice visual effect. As a bit of a hint of what was to come, however, the glass of my amuse was chipped visibly and substantially around the rim; the attention to detail was just not there.

Platings ranged from elegant to obnoxiously tacky and over the top. This is perhaps the trademark of the restaurant, but I found it distracting from the dining experience itself.

There were some goofs; our first sommelier completely failed to deliver the red wine pairing with the ribeye. With only two savory courses designated to be paired with the young Bordeaux from the right bank, this gave us an awful lot of wine to drink with the savory grains and an awful lot of nothing to drink with the ribeye. After realizing her mistake, we were given the senior sommelier for the rest of the evening, who granted us a “bonus” glass of relatively extraordinary white Burgundy with our cheese course to try to smooth things out. Ever professional and attempting to smooth over the gaffe, no mention of any of this was made, but completely fucking up wine service when there are only five wine servings in a four-figure meal is inexcusable.

Another goof came with the bill, a point I didn’t argue — I was under the impression the champagne we selected pre-meal was ostensibly included in our wine pairings (when we selected the pairing, she mentioned “and you’ll start with the Champagne as part of that, which you’ve already received.” Yet, we were charged $150 for the Champagne.

Melissa having a bivalve allergy, one of the courses had to be prepared without clam juice in the sauce. When the dishes arrived at the pre-service station, the servers got into an argument about which was the special order and which was the regular, with one of the staff making an executive decision seemingly at random after several exchanges. I should never be exposed to this sort of behavior and there should never be a question when food allergies are involved. I’m sure some of you are thinking “what a blowhard douche bag” as I write this sort of thing, but we are talking about ostensibly one of the best restaurants in the country which ostensibly prides itself on exceptional service. This was not that, this was Applebee’s bullshit that should never belong in the front of the house.

Finally, the menu we received as a commemorative document of the evening was not even close to accurate — in many occasions it mentions courses wholly different from what we consumed! Since it’s something made after we make our dinner selections, and printed before we leave, I don’t even understand how this is possible.

I don’t want to give the impression that we had a bad time — our server was extremely professional and attentive, without being overbearing or distracting (far different from my experience at Le Bernardin). Despite the epic goof, our first sommelier was quite professional and knowledgeable and catered to our interest in wine; the second (and far more senior) sommelier was, however, incomparably better, offering in-depth details from his visits to the makers of the wine he was serving. The other wait staff, which were often never really seen except when a dish was provided (to explain what it was) were all exceptional; on the way out each that I ran into quietly wished me a happy birthday.

Little of what went into my mouth was downright exceptional. The two that were probably the most memorable bites were the foie gras carpaccio, whose texture, seasoning, and balance with the white truffle shavings was exceptional, if somewhat classic and predictable. The sheep’s milk Roquefort was the other one, and I can say with little compunction, that it was perhaps the best single bite of anything that has ever entered my mouth. It’s perhaps silly to praise a bite of cheese that much, but this cheese was an incomprehensibly good example of balance, assertiveness, elegance, and complexity.

The restaurant was not crowded, and indeed could not be, given the need to push the various carts through. There are but a few tables in the restaurant itself, and there are a handful in the private room adjacent to it; we were seated in the best of the tables in this alcove, and I can only offer praise to that — being given a full table for four to dine was far more comfortable than the experience several other couples had with a much smaller table.

Anyway, a lot of mixed messaging above. I’m glad we went and would say that the experience was worth the money to do once, but I would not pay to repeat it. Just for the sheer excess of much of it, it’s probably still one of my top five most memorable meals, but I’m not sure it’s in the top ten for best meals. Go here if you want to just be awed by that — the carts (bread, cheese, dessert), the caviar, the gold leaf, the truffles — it’s hard to imagine another experience that so delights in this particular approach to excellence.

2011, In Review

1 January 2012 : rambling

It’s easy enough to realize I need to eat better, exercise more, and drink less. Or something like that. This year I’m looking at things in review, rather than setting goals for next year.

So, I’m looking back at the last year of my life and taking stock.

Travel

I didn’t travel as much as I might have liked. We went to Guatemala early in the year. It was a bit surreal. It was a strange trip, as it was with friends and their family, and as such we were somewhat bounded by their priorities, agendas, and schedules. I would have been lost (or worse) in the country without their help, but I realized the value in having more freedom on a vacation. Vacation on anybody else’s schedule is far less restful and freeing than one on your own schedule. I will surely vacation with others again, but I won’t enter into it expecting the same solace that comes from vacationing alone.

Been to California a bunch of times for work. More often than not did very little than work, eat, and sleep at the hotel. Didn’t spend any time on the boundary having fun. Regretting that a bit. I used to go to California on work and find opportunities to do interesting things on the side but I seem to have lost that ability, growing old and exhausted, and constantly interrupted by things in other regions — operating globally takes its tolls. Or something like that.

Went to Paris once for work. Should have gone twice. Alas. Need to get better at my French, I’m an embarrassment when I’m there. Ate some crepes, lived on that and vending machine fodder, due to being too afraid to eat at a real restaurant. Would that I could change one thing about my life it would be to force myself to have learned more foreign languages.

Two years ago I set the goal to visit Galapagos in two years. I’m no closer to this objective. If anything I’m even further away. That’s rather depressing.

Board Games

I haven’t played more than a half dozen or so games in the last year. I’m not super happy about this. I’m still hovering around 450 board games that I’m obviously not playing. Ugh. Need to kick off a gaming night again. Or something. Maybe I just need to sell the majority of my collection. I stopped gaming due to certain social decisions that I made a few years ago, and professional decisions I’ve made since then have cemented the deal, but it’s sort of depressing. I like playing games. I like having people over to play games. I still have cats, and people get allergic to those. I’m not sure what I want here, but I should probably focus on either selling off my stockpile or getting serious about playing with others soon.

Wine

I have a lot more wine than I did 15 months ago, when I started collecting wine. There’s a lot of young stuff set up for aging that will start to make this an interesting collection in about 10 years or so. There are two bugs I need to work out in the coming year. The first is that I need a better allocation of stuff that is drinking well now. The second is that I need to put some more focus on the varietal holes (largely talking reds, here): I have a bunch of Pinot Noir, Bordeaux blends, Cabernet, and Tempranillo. Rhone varietals and off-the-beaten path stuff needs some work. Late in the year I discovered the joy of a good Cornas, among other things, and realized I’ve been doing it all wrong. Not all wrong, really, but I’m optimizing in only a few dimensions when in fact my curiosity spans several.

Home Life

I’m now engaged to Melissa, who I started dating in September of 2010. I’m very happy to know her and be spending time with her. We moved in together in a larger apartment next door the office that mercifully has air conditioning commensurate with my needs. Even in January, the air conditioning runs regularly. I’m an odd duck, but it works out. But, I’m really pretty happy with things there and every once in a while I find myself enjoying my life. That’s pretty neat.

Not having to commute to work has been a blessing. Walking to work in a few minutes permits staying up later and getting up later. Or, alternately, it permits getting up earlier and having a lot of time to oneself in the morning. It’s nice. If I have to work until late at the office, it’s still only a few minutes to get to my bed.

I guess what I’m saying is I’ve realized that there’s an incredible amount of value to violating the intimacy gradient and to getting work and home nearby so that one can stop spending a material part of their life commuting.

Work

I’m still an engineering director at a financial services firm. I’ve got employees in several offices and several countries. I don’t write any code anymore. It’s not what I pictured myself doing a decade ago. I’m not clear yet on whether I’m good at it, or if I’m just better than the competition. There are times when it’s soul-crushingly difficult. There are times when it’s truly rewarding.

Other Shit

My last living, and most important, grandparent died this year. She was the woman that raised me when my folks were working. This was a tough loss. It still unsettles me from time to time. I miss her. I didn’t do as much as I should have in the last few years of her life to talk to her and visit her.

Going home for the holidays was tough this year; I should probably have gone to the graveyard and paid my respects, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that. Not ready, I guess. I saw the plot after the funeral, but it’s going to take a year or two before I’m ready to walk down that path.

Listened to Maurice Sendak’s treatise on love, loss, and who knows what else on the way to Michigan. Beautiful stuff but soul-crushingly depressing and terrifying.

I’m not sure what hits me harder, Sendak’s interview on Fresh Air or listening to the radio chatter on the last landing of the Space Shuttle. Both tore at my heart and left me in pain.

It’s been a painful and emotional year.

The Physical Me

I’m fat. I think I mentioned that already in the introduction.

Tools

There are a lot of really great tools out on the Internet. Some of this stuff is software installed on a computer (be it a mac, PC, iPhone, iPad). Some of this is on the web. Some is both. Whatever. The distinction isn’t interesting anymore. The ecosystem is mixed medium now, get over it.

I had an iPhone 4, I have an iPhone 4S now. Both are great. It’s hard imagining life without smart phones. If this isn’t intelligence amplification, I don’t know what is. Anything more magic than this is grey goo.

I use Google Chrome because it’s relatively fast, relatively stable, and doesn’t suck too much. It keeps crap in sync. It works on all PC platforms.

Pixelmator is a great photo editor. Combined with Aperture, I don’t need Photoshop and don’t feel like I’m missing anything. That’s pretty neat. Welcome to the future and goodbye Adobe and all that.

iTunes is horrible and all, but it’s still where all my digital music is stored in ALAC. ALAC is open now I guess. I used it even when it wasn’t. I liked FLAC and all, but I like devices that just work better. I’m a simple guy.

Vim remains a fantastic text editor. I don’t know why I would ever use anything else. It’s not for everyone.

I use simplenote constantly. I use it to jot down random crap on my phone, computer, iPad, whatever. It’s great. It’s just a damn notepad with notes and a few features I don’t really use. Stupid, simple, easy technology that just works. For some reason on OS X I use Notational Velocity, but I just use the web/mobile interface everywhere else. It works out.

I’d love to say my use of dropbox is relevant, but it isn’t, because files and folders are dead, you just haven’t caught up with that fact yet. Instapaper is incredible, but my attention span isn’t, so it also just flails in the wind.

Pinboard is where I store bookmarks. It’s great. Go pay for it.

Twitter is my party line. I’d love to say it’s something more but I’m not sure it is.

Flickr’s great for photos, but I’ve stopped taking photos. Maybe I’ll start again.

Cellartracker is quite possibly the best piece of purpose-made software I’ve ever used. It’s relentlessly optimized to doing one thing extraordinarily well. I hope the redesign fails because it is perfect now for so many reasons so few people will ever understand.

Google Reader died this year. That’s probably the third thing that makes me sadder than I can really express. It was a carefully cultivated list of friends, and I worked to carefully cultivate a content stream, and now it’s just another fucking news reader. It’s the one thing I wish I could revert in 2011, the death of my grandmother included. That sounds pretty extreme and silly, but Grandma was pretty miserable at the end of things, and had been for years. Google Reader was pretty great and now there’s nothing like it; definitely lost a community there.

Facebook is pointless. Google+ is a joke. Social media is artifice? I don’t know. It’s not for me.

In Summary

I’ve no point to make, but it’s 2012 and I’m in my thirties. Now what?

Review: Blood Music

1 January 2012 : reviews

Blood Music was interesting. The concept of the story and the description of how a singularity takes place because of a biological take-off is pretty awesome. Probably the best grey goo concept I’ve read. The ending is pretty shaky; it’s clear that Bear sort of bolted it on as he bootstrapped the short story into a novel, but I don’t think that’s enough of a reason to dissuade you. Overall, it’s a pretty compelling thought exercise, and a quick enough read (barely larger than a novella) that this should probably be required reading in the canon. 7/10.

Review: Naked Wine

18 December 2011 : reviews

Couldn’t finish Naked Wine; finally gave up in disgust. Incoherent, unfocused, unconvincing. Feiring seems to be just writing random crap with no particular theme, focus, point, or study. Maybe it’s just not for me, but I can’t see the attraction of this book. Avoid.

Review: Steve Jobs

9 December 2011 : reviews

There’s probably not much new I can say about the biography of Jobs, Steve Jobs. The latter third of the book is a bit more bolted on. It follows a more or less typical progression of a biography, starting somewhat chronologically, and then falling into a pit of overlapping but, for the most part, monotonically advancing chapters. It’s impressively thorough and it’s pretty impressive that it was brought to market so quickly. There’s an awful lot of redundancy and rehashing and heavy-handed foreshadowing, but maybe that’s a feature of the genre? I think it could be polished a bit, but it’s a well-done work as far as I can tell. I haven’t read enough biographies to really be a good judge or to rate this, but if you’re curious about Jobs, you should read it. 7/10 (much stronger on content, but a bit rough in structure as things start unraveling in the latter third).

Of course, with any biography, a lot of the study is not in the author of the biography, but the subject. Jobs turns out to be an interesting amalgamation of things: a child, a genius, and a complete fucking nut. I don’t wish to emulate his style, but I admire ability to develop a singular, maniacal, all-encompassing focus on something. His attention to detail is fascinating. At the same time, it sounds like it’s completely bewildering and unsatisfying. Reading about his eating disorders, insane diets, and complete irrationality, it’s hard not to think of him as a half-insane addict. The notion of an argumentative raging asshole that will just as soon break down crying in the middle of a tough negotiation is pretty foreign to me.

I can’t argue with the end result; he made some pretty cool things happen in the end. It does leave me with some doubts about Apple’s ability to focus in the future. Ive may be a design genius, but the book makes it sound like more than anything else, he knew how to produce work for Steve. I wonder a bit what will happen without a raging ass douche to balance out his happy demeanor. Does being a downright fascist dictator really produce greatness? Does it only work if said dictator is also an incomparable genius? Or just a dragon-chasing hippie? I’ve got no idea.

So yeah, I guess it’s a good book.

Review: Jawbone Up

4 December 2011 : reviews

When I first read about the Jawbone Up, I was really excited. The idea of a passive device that tracks activity, sleep cycles, and eating struck me as magic. All I had to do is sync it with a phone and it would sort out the bodies for me.

The reality hasn’t been nearly so sexy. I ordered the thing shortly after it was announced, because the marketing materials made it sound like a magical device. I waited several weeks, and then got an email of “whoops, more people want this than we thought, how about we give you a different color than what you wanted, and $10 off?” This was okay, but it was a bit of a surprise, especially given that it took so long to fail to deliver.

Anyway, the device showed up and I’ve played with it for a couple of days. Here’s the thing. It’s not magic. It tracks steps automatically (though I’m not sure accurately). Most everything else seems less than automatic. I got the impression that it would magically figure out when I was eating or sleeping, but the reality is I need to to tell it these things. While I may tell it that I’m going to bed, I may lay awake for several hours. This seems flawed.

I’m not sure how the smart alarm works yet. Maybe it works well? We’ll see on that one over time.

The activity reminder idea sounds good, but I can’t really figure out if it’s working. I’ve definitely had it go off while walking around for several minutes, and then I’ve definitely had it not go off while sitting and not doing anything for an hour. It’s not particularly reliable.

On the surface the device seems like a pretty neat reality augmentation/intelligence amplification device to nag oneself into being more aware of their body, but I’m not yet sure it works. We’ll see in a few weeks if my thoughts change?

Update 1

So a few days later, the activity reminder seems to be working better. I can’t really explain why it’s doing so, but it is. It’s not perfect, but I’d say false alarms are maybe 20% of the time now with 15-minute intervals, which isn’t bad. Step tracking still seems absurdly high versus reality.

The sleep alarm thing, I’m not sure yet — it always wakes me about 90 seconds into the alarm window. Going to need a few more weeks to figure out if that really works or not.

Update 2

Yesterday I synced the band in the morning and was at 93%. By lunch it was dead. I recharged it, verified it was at 100%, by bedtime it was … dead. Charged it all night. Took it off its charger (it was white, signalling fully charged) and it wouldn’t power on at all. It’s a piece of junk right now. Contacting Jawbone.

Update 3

The Jawbone support wasn’t helpful (they asked more questions, but never responded after that). The CEO sent out an email to everybody that bought one saying the thing is flawed and we can request a refund. So, I Requested a refund. Bummer.

Update 4

And the check arrived; the product was flawed, though interesting, and hopefully it’ll be better next time around. The customer service wasn’t particularly responsive, but I did get a full refund, and as indicated, with no questions asked. I’ll hand it to them, they at least stand by their product.

Review: Kindle Touch

4 December 2011 : reviews

When the Kindle Touch was announced, I ordered one on day one. The third-generation Kindle had a lot of things that irritated. One, it was too large in pretty much every dimension. Two, the side buttons sucked. Three, the lighted case, while necessary, sucked.

So I imagined the Kindle Touch would solve all of my problems. It supported one-handed, instead of two-handed, reading. It didn’t have stupid buttons. The cover had a light in the middle of the page, rather than the top right only. It’s way smaller and lighter.

As the whole Internet knows, Marco Arment has already pointed out how terrible the Touch is, especially with regards to the speed of the device. I don’t want to beat a dead horse, thus, but I want to at least get down my biggest gripes (some of which are consistent) about the thing:

1. It misses page turn requests all the time. Sometimes I’ll hit/tap the page advance three or four times before it triggers. This is highly frustrating.
2. You cannot try to brush dust/crap off the screen, because that will change chapters or something more drastic. You have to turn the device off, clean it, and then turn it back on. This is more irritating than you’d expect.
3. You’re going to accidentally swipe, be it with your finger or by brushing the device with your clothes if you briefly turn the Kindle over or rub it against your shirt or whatever. Swipes do horrible things.
4. It’s slow as shit. Marco’s right and more thorough on this point.
5. The UI is unintuitive. Marco also explains this in detail.
6. The lighted case is criminally stupid. It has sharp edges that will cut you in the dumbest place (like on the throw for the light). Far more seriously, the light isn’t covered like in the old lighted cover — if Kindle is tilted away from you more than 0 degrees, you get blinded by a super-bright point source. I taped an old membership card over it to provide a shield, but this is shoddy industrial design. Reading Steve Jobs on the device I was all the more insulted by how much of a hack job the whole damn thing is.

So, I wanted to argue that this device is better than, say, Marco suggests. It’s not, though. It has a lot of promise, but it’s ultimately a piece of shit. If you have a Kindle you like, don’t “upgrade.” If you don’t have a Kindle, get one. If you’re going to get a Kindle, get the Kindle 4 with its dumb buttons and be happy. Buy some sort of stupid clip-on light, though, as the official cover is crap.

Review:Children of the Sky

29 November 2011 : reviews

Was in a lot of pain and couldn’t sleep last night, so decided to finish Vernor Vinge’s Children of the Sky. Children picks up directly from A Fire Upon the Deep. Stuck in the dark ages of the slow zone, Vinge uses the setting as an opportunity to, more or less, write fantasy instead of science fiction. In a way, he’s writing a singularity book, but he’s focusing much earlier on the curve — how the industrial revolution plays out for a society with advanced information but without advanced assistance.

Spoiler incoming, so stop now if you care.

The planet, baring two small exceptions, stays in the slow zone for the entire book, so the science fiction mechanics leveraged in the first two novels is not relevant. Instead, the book focuses on the political and social aspects of the tines, and of warring factions, secrets, espionage, and so forth. There’s a little bit of exploration of the riders and emerging super-intelligences, but it’s tacked on as an afterthought at best. Thus, the book ends where it starts: The blighter fleet is still approaching, they’re still stuck in a slow zone, and in the scale of the Zone of Thought frames, nothing happens.

There’s obviously a setup here for a fourth novel to actually start dealing with none of the problems of this book really being resolved.

I guess I shouldn’t expect much from a sequel written twenty years after the fact. Vinge’s style and sensibility has changed quite a bit. There’s a decent setup here for a good book to come, but the things that really sucked me in and made me thirsty for more with the first two Zones of Thought books is just completely missing here. This is at best an infantile attempt at writing in a style that Vinge just does not excel at (cf. the character development and “color” of the first two books in the universe, but now focus on that for an entire book), and the result is pretty much crap. The only really redeeming part of the book is as a study of what an alien intelligence might be like in early stages of its “awakening” … but then we get that more or less verbatim with A Deepness in the Sky and, well, with A Fire Upon the Deep in the first place.

If you’re content going into the fourth novel of the series with the knowledge that nothing of import happened in this book, and the blighter fleet is still coming, you can be happy not wasting your time and being disappointed. At best it’s a sloppy attempt at fantasy; at worst it’s a prolonged and contrived romantic comedy. 5/10.

Review: House of Chains

6 November 2011 : reviews

So, House of Chains was awesome too. Do you like epic fantasy and have you enjoyed the Malazan Book of the Fallen thus far? If so, read this book, because it’s awesome. If not, ignore this review, because it’s irrelevant..

Review: Learn Python The Hard Way

27 October 2011 : programming

Learn Python The Hard Way is Zed Shaw’s introduction to programming for non-programmers. He uses the Python language and gradually introduces concepts via examples. The exercises and instruction are reminiscent of the rote repetition of mathematics in grade school, with the complication that each lesson seems to build on the past; there’s never another zero-point along the way.

I have a hard time evaluating such a work, as I am not the target audience. I have written code before. I’ve even seen and played with (albeit briefly) Python before.

My benchmark for introductory programming language books is K&R. It may not be the best book on a programming language ever, but as introductory texts go, it covers an amazing amount of ground. One of the key aspects of K&R is that the examples are nontrivial; the authors build upon what they’ve explained previously to develop real programs, rather than just exploring a lot of toys.

I don’t mean to imply that the best programming language books have to be like K&R, but it is a yardstick by which I measure.

The rote approach is thorough in covering basic language mechanics, and not particularly redundant. It encourages careful study, reflection, and side projects for learning more, but doesn’t force one to do these things. I don’t think this is a bad approach, for people that learn by repetition.

What I’m not sure is if good programmers learn this way. I guess that’s my sticking point.

With that said, one’s either going to appreciate Zed’s style or they’re going to be offended by it. I think the same is probably true of the book; as much as I can’t accurately speculate on behalf of its target audience, I suspect people will either find it condescending, frustrating, and toy-like or they will find it enlightening, empowering, and educational.

Some of the advice isn’t something I necessarily agree with; I think lesson 36 does a good job of hand-waving and giving potentially dangerous/silly advice, which while perhaps appropriate for the beginner, could set an unfortunate precedent.

And then chapter 37 shows up and says “go teach yourself all of the key features of Python.” And, after that, I lost interest. We went from a somewhat exploratory/rote approach to a “well, I’ve walked you through how a match works, go study every type of fire-starting construct ever made.” It’s sort of a logical next step, but after 35 lessons of barely incremental progress and rote, Zed gives up and tosses the reader into the deep end.

So, I’m not particularly fond of this book. The beginning seems well thought out for the beginner, but the last third of the book is if anything just an admission of how little had been covered prior to that point.

Home Wine Course 4 Part 2

22 October 2011 : gastronomy

So, didn’t end up really doing at all what Zraly wanted for this chunk. It is what it is. It’s hard to find the supply of precisely what he wants, and I’m too dumb about the specifics to get it right on my own. Also, this whole entry got wiped by accident, so I’m losing patience with writing this up, I guess?

Two Wines, Tasted Together: Louis Jadot 2007 Pommard Rugiens, Louis Jadot 2007 Volnay Close de Chenes

The Volnay was pale brick, toffee, vanilla, burnt sugar, cocoa, talc, berries, candied flowers. Dry, medium bodied, flabby acidity. Ugh. It needs some acid, it’s really missing that. And tannins, there just aren’t any. Moderate flavors of berries, cherries, cocoa. This wine is just lacking something: It’s really soft and mild, and would be great if it had the structure to back it up.

The Pommard loked the same, came with aromas of vanilla, spice, brine, iron, acetone, rose petals, aged steak, black fruit. It’s dry, medium bodied, smooth acidity, low soft tannins. Flavors of iron, metal, underripe berries, chocolate covered cherries, and green wood. It’s a nice wine — needs to settle down a bit, but this wine has potential, I think?

Two Wines, Tasted Together: 2009 Bouchard Chambolle-Musigny, 2009 Faiveley Nuits-St-Georges

The Chambolle is a pale ruby. Moderate aromas of strawberry, mulled spices, damp forest floor, smoke, meat, cooked fruit, and raspberries. It’s dry, light bodied, fresh acidity, with fair balance with a bit of excess on the acid side. Tannins are soft and low. Flavors of unripe dark berries, tar, spice, ripe grapefruit. It needs to settle down a bit, this just isn’t ready for drinking. I’ve yet to learn enough to know whether or not this will improve, but that would be my best guess — it’ll settle down and the complexity will come through.

The Faiveley is pale garnet, moderate aromas of vanilla, damp leaves, mushrooms, violets, caramel. It’s dry, medium bodied, smooth on acidity. Tannins are medium and soft, with good balance, a little excessive on the acid. Flavors of bourbon, vanilla, raspberry, stone fruit, brackish water. Finish is medium; it’s really young, as well — there’s a lot going on but it’s not well integrated yet — it’s a feast of parts rather than a complete effort.

Three Wines, Tasted Together: 2009 Perrin Cotes du Rhone Reserve, 2006 Jaboulet Crozes Hermitage, 2005 M. Chapoutier Croix de Bois Chateauneuf-de-Pape

And then we switch to Rhone. It’s a bit of a different game! The Cotes du Rhone is a deep red, medium aromas of cooked meat, cooked berries, dark cherry, menthol, and a hint of oak. It’s off dry, medium-bodied, smooth acid, low soft tannins, good balance, with perhaps excess alcohol. Moderate flavors of sour cherries, concord grape, alcohol, butter. It’s a decent wine for $15.

The Jaboulet is deep garnet and is very aromatic. Camphor, wet wood, fireplace aromas — what a charred wooden barrel would smell like? Earthy, tarragon, anise, bing cherries, spun sugar, tar, oil, rubber. It’s dry, medium bodied, smooth acidity, dry tannins, good balance with excessive tannins, perhaps? Flavors of … sun dried tomatoes and not much else. Is this baked? It’s weird. Medium simple finish, but it’s just more of the same. Sun dried tomatoes. Ew.

The M. Chapoutier is deep garnet. It’s powerful on the aroma front. Cracked black pepper, cocoa, camphor, mint, forest floor, kerosene, juniper. The damn thing is 16% though. It’s just gobs of alcohol. Too much. Way too hot. It’s dry, full bodied, flabby. High round tannins, fair balance (though it needs more acid). Finish is medium long and it tastes like meat and peppercorns.

My iOS 5 Experience

13 October 2011 : whining

Completely Broken

It took me about 6 hours to get iOS 5 on my iPhone 4 last night. Downloading the update was a solid 70 minutes. Apple doesn’t really have enough bandwidth to saturate anybody’s connection when a new release comes out. That’s understandable, but it sort of sucked, given that they can blast down new TV shows when they come out. Alright, that’s not a fair comparison. I just hate having a fat pipe and nothing to put through it.

Anyhow, after the 70-minute download, the update started and then, about 20 minutes in, failed. I forget the first error that popped up, but it was something to the effective of the restore servers being unreachable. My phone was left with backlight fully on on a black screen, and it wouldn’t do anything. I held down the lock button until it reset, which put it into “please connect me to iTunes” mode. That sort of sucked; the update failed, was probably likely to continue failing, and in the process, my phone was now unusable.

It took me another four hours before I got the phone restore and upgraded. I experienced numerous errors, such as “restore server could not be contacted,” “uknown error has occurred,” and “server timed out.” It was a complete mess. I can’t imagine how a “normal” (read: my grandma) would ever be able to successfully upgrade their iPhone without professional assistance when this sort of stuff happens.

So I unlock my new iOS5 experience, several hours later than I’d expected. It asks me to sign in with my apple ID. Or, if I have a mobile me account (this is in small print hidden behind a link under the login screen), I should log in with that, and then change my store account to be my apple ID later. So I log in with my mobile me account.

Mobile Me to iCloud Clusterfuck

Yes, I’m one of those weird dudes who actually bought mobile me. Having my calendars and contacts synced across devices, my mac, and my web browser, without needing to sync physically was worth the money to me, no questions. I had to fight with it for days to get it right originally, but once I had it working properly, not creating duplicates, and not randomly deleting shit, it was pretty grand.

So I’ll make a long story short. The migration from mobile me to iCloud is a complete fucking mess. You have to upgrade all of your devices. Then you migrate online. Then you supposedly click some buttons on your iDevices and your computer, and everything magically works. Except it didn’t. My calendar on my PC got wiped out. Both my iCloud and mobile me accounts were around, but one was subordinate and it wasn’t clear who was winning the sync battle. I deleted the mobile me account on my computer and everything got wiped out. Luckily I backed it up, so I could repopulate it. My calendar then had duplicate items. Just like being on mobile me the first time, yay! You get the idea, I eventually got it sorted out. It took an hour.

On my iDevices, I now had mobile me accounts littered all over the place. Not just my store account, but my iMessage account, my sync stuff, etc. So I had to delete all of those and change those over to my apple ID.

It was, to be frank, a complete disaster. I imagine for those without mobile me, the process will be far more smooth. Once everything was migrated to iCloud, it worked surprisingly well. This is definitely not the old fucked up broken mobile me implementation, which is nice.

iOS 5 Reactions

Generally, iOS 5 seems … fine? More stuff needs to hook into it and take advantage of it before I rule on anything.

There are a few annoyances. One, the push-volume-up to take a photo thing … just doesn’t work for me. I don’t get it, but it doesn’t. The volume goes up if I’m unlocked, and I’m definitely on iOS 5 but this feature doesn’t work. The double click and press approach works, but that’s not the point. I really don’t understand this, and can’t seem to find any information online about it. Update: I just totally misunderstood what this was, is all, this works perfectly, and I’m an idiot.

The notification screen … has weather and stocks. Thw eather thing’s okay. The stocks thing … I don’t want. I like checking up on stocks, but I don’t want it on my notification screen. I can’t remove it, however. I can make it a giant blank rectangle, but I can’t make it away. Why the hell not? I’d prefer to have my own widgets up here instead that don’t have giant Yahoo logos on them. I’m all for “smart defaults, no options” but I feel like this is a huge design oversight. Update: There’s a way to do this from the notifications settings, so I’m dumb here too.

Travel Before It's Too Late

12 October 2011 :

Every six months I visit my doctor for a procedure. It takes a while for the drugs to kick in, so we chat for a few minutes beforehand each time. He’s an elderly man; I have no idea how old, but he’s definitely past retirement age. He’s been a doctor his entire adult life.

Today we talked about Paris. He’s never really traveled before; he and his wife have more or less stayed in the area or spent time with his kids over the years. Ventures outside the country have been rare, and vacations with just the two of them virtually nonexistent. So, he’s realized a couple of things. The first is that he’s traveled and vacationed very little. The second is that he doesn’t have that much time left to do these things before becoming dead, senile, or immobile.

He and his wife are going to Paris. They’re staying in a hotel that I’ve stayed in, and they’re going to spend a few days in the Loire Valley as well. I offered a few suggestions for the area and we got into a rather involved discussion about how his cell phone would (or wouldn’t) work in Paris. It was a good chat.

He said to come back in six months, and as I was walking out, instructed me to get a haircut, because I look like a hippie.

The Feynman Series

5 October 2011 : rambling

I feel it critically important that everybody read Carl Sagan’s The Varieties of Scientific Experience. It’s not my place to say that one should agree with the premise, but it’s a treatise worth understanding if only to compare one’s own beliefs with a set of beliefs well honed by science.

It’s probably little surprise, then, that the Sagan Series is something I think worth watching. It is beautiful, elegant, and poignant.

And that leads us to the Feynman Series. His locution is not nearly so poignant, succinct, and meaningful in and of itself. The videos of the Feynman series seem visually coherent but verbally incoherent. Grasping at straws, full of struggle, curiosity, and confusion.

And, for that, they are beautiful. For, as elegant and poignant as Sagan’s prose is, most of us can more easily identify with Feynman and his flustered confusion about all things. He’s with us, wondering just what the fuck is going on, and not really knowing what the answer to that is, and attempting to be okay with it. I mean, he’s a physicist that talks as much about dating and other random shit as he does about particle and nuclear physics. What a badass. He’s confused and bewildered. It’s strangely comforting.

So, go watch the Sagan Series, and marvel at it, for it is beautiful. But, go watch the Feynman series and cry, because it is human.

Review: Homefront

2 October 2011 : reviews

So, Homefront is this game where you kill Koreans that are invading America. My PC may not be the most up-to-date monster these days, but even playing at 1/4 my native resolution, the thing becomes bogged down and unplayable. Even ignoring that, gameplay is super-linear, flawed, and just downright horrible. Novel theme, completely half-assed implementation. 2/10.