Wired Cola

Beer blogging double: Petrus Dubbel Bruin, Duvel

2008-08-09T05:34:09-07:00

It was a double of Belgians tonight. Well, really, one last night and one tonight, but we're blogging 'em as a doubleheader. Last night's was the Petrus, third from the right, and tonight's was the Duvel, second from left:

The Petrus Dubbel Bruin may be my favourite of the group so far. It's a fine, complex dark beer, like strong and nutty and intruiguing Guinness. 4/5. The Duvel was merely okay. A drinkable strong beer, but not magical. At the prices of these lovely imports, I expect greatness, not goodness. 2/5.

Beer blogging: Chimay

2008-08-06T22:50:33-07:00

And for some reason, I had another beer tonight after a hard evening of tech support. I went for the Chimay Blue, an honest-to-goodness Trappist beer. It's the, er, blue-labeled beer in the middle.No bonus points for the plain but classic label, zillions of bonus points for being a for-real Trappist ale (unlike the Karmeliet, which is merely in-the-Carmelite-style, as it were) made by real monks.
And truly, this is God's own beer. I had it a little too cold (the instructions call for a balmy 10-12 C), but it's still lovely and kind and happy and an easy 3/5. If I was giving half-marks, this would get 3.5. If I didn't find it complex or novel enough, I suspect the problem is with me. It's good, smooth, beer, in that same mysterious way as Unibroue: it's lovely and drinks easily, and only later do you realize you've had the ale equivalent of a double. Not a literal double-fermentation, but it's a strong beer.
The history of the abbey is interesting, too. Scourmont is a relatively young monastery, founded in 1850. The beer itself, as best as I can figure, a relatively new recipe too, dating to the 1940s, though it appears they've been making beer of one kind or another since their formation.

Beer blogging: La Binchoise Blonde

2008-08-06T17:45:10-07:00

Today's beer is La Binchoise Blonde, a blonde ale, but "only" 6.2% ABV. Far left in the reference photo:

It's nice. Smooth, goes well with my pasta, and tastes just fine. If I sound faint in my praise, this may reflect my simple inability to distinguish one nice blonde ale from another. This one isn't a wheat beer, mind; it's a perfectly sensible sort of barley-based brew, and I'd drink it any time.
I'll leave finding oaky nuttiness in my beer for some other reviewer. I'll tell you this tastes good, but isn't obviously more astounding than other nice blonde ales I've had. 3/5? Sure. I'm a tough marker.
As for the label, I don't know what the deal with those guys is. It's creeping me out, just a little.

And now, a brief review of my Zune 8 GB

2008-08-06T07:47:03-07:00

Some weeks back, Matchstick was kind enough to send me an 8 GB Zune (think iPod Nano and you've got it), which has some mildly clever features and is very pretty. It looks exactly like a very tasteful clone of the iPod Nano as designed by Microsoft, and I mean that as a compliment.

It is also a very competent media player (mostly music, really) released at the very moment in time when standalone portable media players have ceased to be interesting.

Even without the iPhone showing the way of the future, and the iPod Touch as some sort of bellwether of the present, the Zune is going to run in second place to the other alternative: the mediocre capabilities of your current MP3-playing phone.

And let's be serious: if you bought a phone in the last year or two, it's unlikely you didn't get one with music playing built in.

Want to see the near future of standalone music players? Look at the recent past of standalone personal digital assistants.

Beer blogging: Tripel Karmeliet

2008-08-06T06:33:02-07:00

Day 2, and our selection is the one with nuns on the label, Tripel Karmeliet (danger: Flash, noise, no direct link to the beer itself, a veritable panoply of flashcrap), the one on the right in the photo:
It's a wheat beer, and being a triple, it's a heavy hitter. As a great fan of Unibroue, I have to compare it to Don de Dieu, their potent wheat ale. Also, I've had the Tripel Karmeliet site running in the background while I wrote this, and the insanely annoying music loop repeats about every 15 seconds. If I were to meet the web designer in the next few minutes, I'd probably assault them.
Okay, website closed. I don't know what there was to learn at the site, though it looked very pretty. Too bad about the insane music loop. Do people who order up these websites just never spend more than five seconds using them, or do they have some inability to recognize how insane that music is?
Ahem. Unibroue makes about three of my four favorite beers, and maybe the top three, so comparing a beer to that is tough competiton. I think the Karmeliet is a little less subtle and a little less smooth than Don de Dieu, and a little more fizzy. I have no idea if it's fair to penalize a beer for a bit of fizziness, but I do.
Karmeliet is nice. I like wheat beers, and I like strong beers, so a strong wheat beer has no problem being my friend. But put a bottle of this in front of me and a bottle of Don de Dieu, and I'll take the stuff from Quebec every time.
And not just because of the bigger bottle.
We'll call the Karmeliet 2/5, only because a better, cheaper option is available. It's utterly drinkable, and very nice. If you like wheat beers, you know what to do: a little food, a summer's day, maybe lemon if you're totally gauche (and I totally am, except right now).
While I'm here, though, I have to credit the label for being so pretty. This qualifies as the beer bottle I'd most like to keep for aesthetic reasons.
I'm letting the beer warm up right now, as the label says 6-9C, which is way warmer than I actually poured it at (fridge temperature, whatever that is).
It's at about the right temperature now, and my verdict stands. Maybe it seems a bit smoother and a bit more bitter now, but no less fizzy, and I think I still prefer the Unibroue. Good stuff, though.

Beer Blogging: Echt Kriekenbier

2008-08-04T22:55:00-07:00

As a very special anniversary present, TLO bought me a monkey-puzzle tree.

She also bought me a bunch of fancy Belgian beers, and I thought it might be fun to blog them. Fun for me, that is: I get to drink 'em. You just get to be jealous.

So today's new beer is Echt Kriekenbier, a cherry beer that I had with some sweets at lunch. It pours out ruby-red, with not too much head. The taste is deceptive: full of cherry flavor but still quite dry. Well-suited to drinking with something sweet, and I'll say, um, 3 (of 5) if we have to put a number to it. Definitely a special-occasion beer, not something I'd have with dinner.

Sentence of the week. Heck, this is August; probably sentence of the month

2008-08-03T22:16:15-07:00

"We propose a fundamental principle to be observed at the outset of this debate: Let's not try to protect ourselves from crazy people by trying to out-crazy them."

From "The Post editorial board on the Greyhound murder: The government's best policy response is to ... do nothing"

Found in Translation: Greek musician interviews

2008-07-25T13:51:30-07:00

Last summer I extolled the perverse joys of the musician interviews in Pelagos magazine, the house publication of Hellenic Seaways.

Alas, I left the magazine in Greece instead of bringing it home, and couldn't quote any of the major weirdness. However, Blue Star Lines has its house magazine (OnBlue) online, and their musician interview [pdf] captures much of the fawning, pretentious, slightly-ESL character I remember from Pelagos:

How can an artist be liked by everyone and for ever? How can he secure his course in the music arena for a long period of time? What should she be careful of?
A singer has to be careful of his or her own self and win over their "dark" side.

The photography, while pretentious, doesn't quite live up to the over-the-top spread in Pelagos that featured the musician posing with a raptor.

Overhobbied

2008-07-24T01:54:11-07:00

I'm late on editing footage for the Gastown Grand Prix. Argh.

How do I compensate? Well, a bike project whose existence I have mooted for months just got a lot more concrete. Unusually for a project that has not even reached the "complete build kit acquired" point, the bicycle already has a name: The Cheat.

Because it will be the cheatingest bike ever. Version 0.9b1 will be a proof of concept rather than a perfect implementation, but what a proof it will be. And while I said I haven't got a complete build kit in hand yet, I already know I have a critical mass of parts such that everything will work out shortly.

Overheard in Port Moody

2008-07-14T21:49:40-07:00

INT. TLO and Me are CLEANING UP. The TV is off.

TLO: "The remote is asking me a question I don't understand."

Me: "What's the question?"

TLO: "It says, 'did that fix the problem?'"

Me: "Just say yes."

TLO: "I see you're of the Mill-ian school."

The Everywhere Girl phenomenon

2008-07-14T13:00:47-07:00

Late to the game as always, but Slate posted a story about stock photography which led me to the strange phenomenon of Everywhere Girl, who isn't the only everywhere girl out there, just the most famous.

Department of esoteric Flickr groups

2008-07-08T23:59:34-07:00

The one devoted to pictures of shipping containers.

Yeah, I love it.

Esoteric bike-tech post, please move along

2008-07-07T12:49:15-07:00

Road bike bottom bracket designs are starting to get esoteric, with world+dog using some form of external-bearing fun, and at least three incompatible new standards introduced in the last few years for putting those bearings back inside the bottom bracket: the already-abandoned Pinarello MoST, BB30, and Trek's magical Precision Fit Sockets (?!).

BMX stuff was confusing me, though. I don't read enough of the buff books, so when I started looking through catalogs and discovering "Spanish" bottom brackets a few years ago, I got confused. this is the most clarifying link I can find on the subject of current BMX BB standards, at least as far as ones that anyone is using. Please ignore anyone who mentions Overdrive.

This blog never has baseball items, so you know that now that it contains one, it must be a doozy

2008-07-07T00:56:42-07:00

First, I found this video, courtesy Jack Shedd, of an ambidextrous pitcher facing off against an ambidextrous batter in "A" minor-league baseball. It's actually quite funny, as the two each attempt to switch stances for advantage (if you don't know, switch hitters in baseball are rare; switch-pitchers barely exist at all).

It was such an amusing situation, I corresponded with Colby Cosh about it, since he is a vital national resource on matters concerning baseball, rule minutia, and general weirdness. He directed me to the existence of the Pat Venditte Rule, which pretty much exists because of the play in this video.

Pretty cool, huh?

Lame placeholder post

2008-07-06T09:55:27-07:00

Don't bother reading this update. It has few links, so you'll have to Google everything.

Weight loss is slower than expected, but progress is being made. On Thursday night, with Rebecca away with her mother, I did the grisly "Wayne Gretzky 99" ride: 35 km to Richmond, race the Coastal Thursday Nighter, 35 km home. A metric century with a race in the middle. At least I was smart enough to bring lights for the ride home.

Note to self: if you have rat traps under your house, check them often, or else they will become the answer to the question "what's that horrible smell?"

Trailer axles have many interesting dimensions. But not that interesting.