State of Home Theater 3D - End of 2009

Sooo, apparently 3D could be here quicker than I thought, though I'm still guessing it'll be more of a trickle at first, not exactly the tidal wave that Best Buy would have you believe is ready to break the dam. Even Sony, who's planning to lead the way by releasing a software update allowing existing 2D games people have already purchased to be played in 3D if you buy a display that is 3D enabled, isn't planning to get this out until a vague "sometime in 2010".

http://www.hd-report.com/2009/12/18/3d-specs-finalized-for-blu-ray-to-hit-market-next-year/

http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/17/blu-ray-3d-specifications-finalized-your-ps3-is-ready/

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/05/sony-hedges-on-plans-for-ps3-update-to-enable-3d-gaming-on-old-t/

At a Glance

• Firstly, the 3D specifications for Bluray were just ratified yesterday, December 17th.
• Secondly, the specifications for Bluray 3D involve using a version of the H.264 codec already supported by Bluray (Multiview Video Coded-MVC), and supports (all?) existing 3D display technologies.
• Thirdly, the newly agreed upon specification is backwards compatible with the 2D version of the codec, allowing 2D movies to still be played on newer equipment designed for 3D "of course only in 2D" as well as allowing 3D discs to still be seen in 2D on older 2D compatible equipment.
• Fourthly, the Playstation 3 seems to be your best bet for a player that is available TODAY that already supports all the standards required for 3D (when paired with a 3D technology display).

SO! If you want 2D content in 2010 (come on, 2009 is pretty much over), make sure your display is capable of supporting one of the various 3D schemes (which I believe would include 120Hz display WITH glasses) and get a Playstation 3...or wait awhile and see which display technology becomes more mainstream and then just buy a new Bluray player or new video card whenever you decide to take the plunge and buy the new display.

Even when it’s bad, it’s good

Sunday Night Dinner Menu:

• Spring Mix salad topped with crushed walnuts and dried cranberries tossed with oil, apple cider vinegar, and salt and pepper.
• Coconut Risotto with sautéed onion
• Braised Beef Roast served with sweet potatoes and carrots
• Pillsbury Grands! Biscuits
• Torta al Vino made with red wine and blueberries (based on Lidia Bastianich’s recipe from Lidia’s Italy)

Translation:

• Salad with stuff in it
• Fancy Rice
• Pot Roast
• Pillsbury Grands! Biscuits
• Blueberry Cake

We had a very nice dinner Sunday and we had Malcolm and Mary over; it was really nice to get to catch up with them. Life gets busy and it is entirely too easy to let things slip until you are counting the number of times you see your friends in a per year manner instead of a per month manner. We’re drifting that way, and we’re trying to remedy that.

I got a dutch oven for my birthday present this year, and hadn’t gotten around to using it yet. So this weekend I cooked a roast. We were still getting ready when Malcolm and Mary showed up. They were nice enough to pitch in so Mary helped Amon with the cake and Malcolm offered a hand putting the risotto together. He did a great job and the flavor and texture were great. You could notice the individual grains of the risotto, but it definitely had a creamy texture. We used coconut milk as the liquid, which is a bit of a guilty pleasure, and then the sautéed onions, garlic, salt and pepper finished the flavors.

I made a bid to time the ingredients as they went into the dutch oven to make sure they didn't get too mushy. The roast started off in the dutch oven by itself with the vegetables added in the end. I had shocked the carrots to make sure they stayed nice and bright orange.

Unfortunately, the potatoes weren't done at the same time as the roast and carrots. I had timed the carrots right, but should have put the potatoes in earlier. My fault.

I took the carrots out and let the roast rest while the potatoes finished up in the oven. Things could have been salvaged if I had served everything here. My final mistake was when I put the roast and carrots back in with the potatoes to make sure everything was good and warm, and left them in while we ate the salad.

I had taken the roast out initially when it reached 160 degrees internal temperature. After resting, my roast had this beautiful light red center surrounded by a blush/pink fading to a wonderfully caramelized exterior. After going back in the oven to warm up, it had turned into a dull medium well with a uniform brown all the way through. Worst of all, the potatoes were now soft. It was very frustrating. The only thing that ended up just as I wanted them to were the carrots.

This was just one more in a long string of lessons about the importance of not only Mise en Place, but timing your cooking to make sure the right ingredients are added at the right time. Good food tastes delicious, great food has good taste, appearance, and texture. On a scale of 1-10, I’d give last nights dinner a 9 for taste, an 8 for appearance, and a 7 for texture. It’s a work in progress.

It is equally true that we are our own harshest critics in cooking as in other aspects of life. We know what we were going for, even when other's don't. Also, unless you're a professional chef it's likely that the people you are cooking for are more concerned with spending time with you than eating a perfect meal. Even when I felt that the dinner could have been better, it was delicious food and more importantly it was good time spent catching up with great friends.

I mean, how bad can pot roast with roasted vegetables and biscuits be?

Mise en Place

I continue to frustrate myself with my impatience in the kitchen. It’s so hard to force myself to get all my prep work done before I start cooking even when I know that everything is going to turn out better if I do.

Yesterday I made grilled cheese, tomato soup, for Amon and chicken salad for me with a tossed salad for us to share and I did a decent job with the prep work. The true test is going to be this weekend’s semi-annual brunch party. I have no doubt that things are going to get hectic Thursday, Friday, and Saturday morning.. I’m going to be helping Amon out in the kitchen quite a bit as we throw together the different recipes leading up to brunch kick-off.

The recipes we have on tap so far include:

-Onion and cheese quiche, one of Amon’s new favorites. This recipe calls for three very, very, slowly caramelized onions mixed with cream and eggs and a handful of your favorite cheese. The recipe calls for Gruyere, which I think we’ll stick with this year.

-Sausage Pie, Mike’s new favorite. I promise myself I will limit this dish to being served/eaten only on holidays, so far I’ve succeeded. The recipe calls for a pastry crust on bottom with a layer of browned sausage, apples cooked down with brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a splash of apple cider, a layer of cheddar cheese, and then a topping of crumbled pastry crust mashed together with brown sugar. It is the most wonderful combination of savory and sweet that I’ve ever had the pleasure to try. Major thanks to the Krist family for allowing us to use this recipe.

-Banana bread, one of Amon’s recipes. I’m not really sure what all she puts in this one, but I have yet to try a banana bread I didn’t like.

-Cinnamon Scones, Amon’s been waiting to make this one correctly for several brunches but couldn’t find cinnamon chips she thought would work. This year we got them, so it’s back on the list.

-Breads and Spreads, the low maintenance brunch food. We’ll be picking up several freshly baked baguettes from Whole Foods and cutting them, thinly and on the bias, to be served with a variety of spreads including lemon curd, Nutella, and various jams.

-Drinks will include coffee off course, as well as apple cider, orange juice, milk, and mimosas. Delicious, delicious, Mimosas.

Espresso

The Espresso Book Machine promises to allow anyone to print a 300 page, library quality paperback book in varying sizes in less than four minutes for a consumer price of less than $10.00. This overcomes the quality, quantity, and price barriers that have stood in the way of small count printing since the first book was hand written. Combined with digitization and availability of the raw information, the benefits of this on-demand model include unprecedented access to material and decentralization of printing.

Setting aside the digital revolution for a minute, a new distribution model for books is being put forward in a more convincing way than ever before. Home printers have existed for about 30 years, but printing a library’s worth of books has been the domain of publishing houses for centuries, ever since Johannes Gutenberg first threatened the jobs of all those monks in the 1400s. Due to cost, printing books was risky and making money was only possible by selling many copies. The resulting model focused on selling large quantities of a few books. On-demand publishing however brings the ability to publish small quantities of many books, popular or niche. On-demand publishing addresses the business models from other markets influenced by the internet as described by Chris Anderson in the Long Tail.

Until on-demand publishing became feasible, local stores were unable to compete with mail order giants like Amazon due to the amount of warehouse space required to stock the many possible books needed to serve niche markets. On-demand publishing reduces the amount of storage space required which could prove to be a major advantage for brick-and-mortar book stores who can now serve niche markets by selling a few copies of many different books.

Whether checking a book out from the library or purchasing, one problem has always been simply locating the book. If your bookstore or local library didn’t have the book, they had to find someone who did. The internet makes this easier in many cases, but it still depends on there being someone willing to send you the book. If a book is out of print this becomes much harder and if a book is rare it may be simply impossible. On -demand publishing combined with digitization means that a physical copy of a centuries old manuscript or first edition of a favorite book could now be available anywhere in the world.

Self publishing in the centralized publishing model involved either steep prices for books, making it less likely for the book to sell, or large printing numbers that may prove difficult for a first time author to sell. With such a low publishing cost and no minimum printing numbers, the barrier to self publishing are effectively gone. With the addition of digitization, to the equation, the self published book can reach audiences around the world. The only limit to the success of the book is now the interest or usefulness of the writing and the ability to market the book.

An additional advantage to local stores as well as to the environment is the reduction in shipping costs. Instead of shipping paper and materials to the printers, then crates full of books to retailers, then shipping the unsold books to outlet stores, and finally shipping unsold books back to printers to be recycled, with on-demand publishing a single shipment of paper and materials goes to the book store, and the new owner walks the book out of the store in their hands. The book didn’t have to be shipped from a printer to anyone. This model cuts out several middle-men that each require resources for shipping.

On the verge of the book’s digital transformation a new distribution model looks to extend the life of the printed book. With numerous iterations of the eBook reader waiting to be declared the next book killer, can an on-demand book printing model reserve a place for the printed book? Will this new generation of readers remain dedicated to printed books for traits like durability and being non-powered, or will the instant access to any printed book at a moments notice erode the feeling of nostalgia previous generations have felt for their first edition leather bound books, for their hardbacks and collector’s editions?

Fall Origins

Today was fall. It doesn’t start until September 22nd at 5:18 PM EST according to the astronomers and those responsible for all the various standards around the world. But today was fall.

It had felt quite autumnal several days this week, but this was the first day of fall. When I went outside it was distinctly cool. It had been cool several days this week. On my way to work, the sky was gray. It had been gray several days this week. I could tell it was now fall because when I got to work, all I wanted to do was go home, lay on the couch drinking hot tea and watching depressing movies. Instead, I listened to depressing music while I drank tea and drafted. It wasn’t ideal, but then it wasn’t my idea to have fall start two weeks early. I wasn’t prepared.

If I had stayed home and watched movies, the movies I would have watched in no particular order would have been:
-High Fidelity
-Royal Tenenbaums
-Amilie
-The Princess Bride
-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Each of these movies is on the list for their own reason. Most are on the list because they have good music, are familiar enough that if you dooze off you don’t have to worry about waking up and not knowing where you are, and they fit the fall mood fall. The Princess Bride is on there to keep me from actually getting depressed. It’s good to laugh and remember that Fall’s only one of the four seasons.

So, that’s an update on what I didn’t do today. So go drink some tea, coffee, hot chocolate, or spiced cider, make sure your sweaters are ready, and have a Happy Fall!

Home Improvement

We’ve had lots to do in our new house, but most of it has involved the actual move-in, deciding where to stage boxes, placing furniture, unpacking, etc. We’re still a number of weeks, possibly months, from truly being un-packed. For that matter we still have to get rid of a large dresser that is sitting in our living room. It’s very nice looking actually, but is more classic/antique than most of our furniture. So for now it is sitting in our living/dining room, preventing us from really setting up or dining table.

It’s going to be a great roadblock conquered when we get rid of that thing. We could just have Large-Trash-Pickup from Montgomery county haul it off, but we’d rather it go to someone who needs it than sending it to a land-fill. The problem is, we don’t have any way to get it anywhere. We’re looking into American Veterans or Goodwill pickup services.

In the meantime I’ve done my first “home improvement” projects. One turned out great, and the other, well, I’m waiting to see. Most exciting is that we now have the over stove microwave mounted in our kitchen and working. It’s wonderful because it isn’t sitting somewhere else taking up space, there isn’t a big hole in our kitchen cabinetry, and mostly, because we have a working microwave in the kitchen now. Hooray.

Equally useful, I hooked the water up to the refrigerator myself. To do this, I had to get a water supply line kit at the store, drill a hole in the kitchen floor, find the hole I’d just drilled in the basement, run the copper supply line, and connect it to the refrigerator and tape into an existing cold water supply. The “tapping in” part consisted of assembling and installing a “self-piercing” or “self-tapping” saddle type valve. Basically it’s a fitting that gets screwed onto the existing pipe, and then when you turn the valve all the way, a pin pierces the copper pipe, allowing the water to flow through the valve and into your new supply line.

New House

Seems like buying your first home is a big enough activity to warrant a blog posting. It’s been forever since I posted, but things have been quite busy, and the culmination of that busy-ness is that we are now in our new house. At least, we are in the house physically, if not fully in. I remember how long it takes to get everything unpacked, but when you are counting on having access to every square foot of the house to make it usable, then every un-packed box, and every Thing that is out of place, becomes a road block to really being able to live in the house.

Last week was huge for us. We closed and changed the locks on Monday, the portable storage units were delivered on Tuesday, movers were there on Wednesday to help Amon get everything into the house (two hours and they were done!), Thursday we moved things around and Amon continued cleaning. I took off work on Friday to get some substantial work done before Amon had to go back to being a teacher today.

So after close to a week of moving, where do we stand? The kitchen is probably 90% set up. We really just need to install the over-the-stove microwave and do some final cleaning. The living room still has quite a few boxes as we are waiting to purchase some new shelving. The master bedroom is about 90% done, with our new bed put together, the closets almost done, and the big furniture in place. The second bedroom is being used for storage right now and looks the part. The upstairs bathroom is in need of some tile work before we use the shower, so until then we’re showering in the second bathroom located in the basement.

So that’s a brief update. The important rooms, kitchen, bedroom, and living room, are serviceable so we are able to live day to day, but the sheer amount of boxes and little projects are enough to keep us a bit on edge.

I cooked dinner for the first time in the new kitchen last night and it was mostly a positive experience. The obvious lack of kitchen space made things a bit challenging, but the new fridge, gas stove/oven, and Amon’s peg boards all worked beautifully. So far I’m loving cooking with gas and I’m looking forward to doing something a bit more exciting than spaghetti. In the meantime though, the simplest things are nice to have around.

I cooked whole wheat spaghetti, made some cheesy garlic bread, and a very simple salad. The water boiled fast, too fast really, so I had to add a bit more water, lower the heat and went ahead and seasoned the water, and put a lid on it while I worked on some of the other items. I sautéed garlic to put on the bread loaf we picked up at Trader Joe’s. I cut the bread length-wise, put the sautéed garlic, some butter, and shredded mozzarella in the middle, wrapped it all in foil and threw it in the preheated oven. By this time the water was back to a boil so I added the pasta.

While the pasta cooked and the bread got crispy, I cut up one of the peppers Amon had brought back from when she went to stay with Becky, sautéed that in the pan I’d cooked the garlic in and set it aside. The pasta was done so I strained it, added the sauce, tossed it and plated it, adding the peppers only to mine. The last bit was throwing together a salad made from romaine, a drizzle of olive oil, some apple vinegar we picked up from Zingermans, pine nuts, dried cranberries, salt, and pepper.

There was a bit of a learning curve as I had to figure out how hot to set the dials to get the pan at the right temperature (the garlic was dangerously close to being too dark and bitter, but the peppers were beautiful), and I had to micro-manage the amount of space I used for everything. I think the biggest take away was that my mise en place, prep work, is going to be very critical in the new kitchen as there isn’t really room to have many things happening at once. I think that if I prep everything ahead of time, so that I don’t need to have cutting boards out at the same time as strainers, at the same time as mixing bowls, etc. then I should be able to make this work. The focus of this blog may shift from living in the city to, “Big Idea - Little Space”. We’ll see how things go.

Amon & Mike at Coliseum

Amon & Mike at Coliseum
Originally uploaded by mikeygibran

We're back from Rome!!!

Happy and Sad. Check out the photos on my Flickr account. I'll update once we have a chance to pick our favorites and get the final photos up. Until then, feel free to click over and see what we have posted so far. (As of the day this was posted we had days 0-3 posted).

We Are One - Obama Inauguration Concert

We Are One - Obama Inauguration Concert
Originally uploaded by mikeygibran

Mike & Amon at Obama Inaugural Concert

Mike & Amon at Obama Inaugural Concert
Originally uploaded by mikeygibran

Amon and Me at the opening ceremony / Inaugural Concert Sunday. We head to the Inauguration on Tuesday. Sure, the high taxes and expensive rent are annoying, but it's moments like these when we remember why it's great to live in DC.

The people, places, and activities we get to share in are unreal and we are absolutely grateful. If you're not in the district you can still share in it along with us by checking out my Flickr account. I'm posting photos from this week both live and after I get home to comb through the hundreds of photos for the 20 or 30 best shots.

I put a few up on my blog as a teaser, but the best stuff is over here!

Cheers and God Bless!
Mike