Rest in Peace Stanza

Back in 2009, when the Kindle was only a year and a half old, Amazon bought Stanza. At the time, Stanza was probably the most popular (speculation) and certainly the most usable (opinion) ereader app for iOS devices, like the iPhone. I speculate and post these opinions because at the time I was reading almost exclusively with this app on my iPhone and was amazed at how do-able it was to read on my phone and had done lots of research on picking the app. There were lots of other people using this app and it is no surprise that Amazon thought it a good idea to acquire this company.

Fast forward to October of 2011 and Amazon has finally let the Stanza app die. What does this mean? As of iOS5, Stanza no longer functions as a stable application due to the lack of updates from Amazon. With no announcements from Amazon about updating this app for iOS5, and quite frankly no incentive with its own Kindle app now purring along happily on iOS, I feel safe saying this app is essentially dead.

It is a shame that the Stanza app has died because there was a huge following of users who appreciated it for a number of stand-out features that none of the other ereader apps feature. For me personally, the most appreciated core feature was the ease of adding books without wires or syncing from the vast catalog of Project Gutenberg, as well as accessing other pre-loaded stores and the ability to add other custom sources for books. In addition to this core feature set, Stanza also had the ability to sync to your own collection of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of books easily through a relationship with Calibre, an ebook management software for your computer. Finally there was the vast and very flexible set of features that allowed a user to tailor the reading experience to their exact preferences, including fonts, sizes, margin sizes, between line AND between section/paragraph spacing, black on white or white on black schemes, the ability to lock rotation from within the app, and best of all, the ability to quickly adjust screen brightness using a simple vertical swipe.

It was clear from the very beginning that Stanza wasn't designed by a company looking to bolster sales of books from their own ecosystem, but rather by people who loved to read books FOR people who loved to read books. Clearly Amazon saw the level of detail and care that had been put into this app and were happy to get their hands on it. Whether the intention was to someday incorporate all of this power and flexibility into their own kindle devices and apps, or whether it was simply to get rid of the competition is anyone's guess. I know I have my own theory.

In the meantime, I’m auditioning replacement apps that will give me back the core feature set of being able to access large quantities of public domain books with the added benefit of being easy to use. The apps I have tried with limited success have been Bluefire and Megareader with the nod going to Bluefire so far. While I intend to review at least my final selection at a later date, it does seem relevant to comment on both with regards to how they stack up against Stanza.

Bluefire is the best contender for a Stanza replacement that I've found. Up front Bluefire is free, as was Stanza. With Bluefire there is a set list of book sources and doesn’t seem to be anyway to amend this list. While Project Gutenberg is absent, it does have Feedbooks which has a pretty good selection of public domain books. As a compromise, Bluefire does support loading books through iTunes file transfer, which means that public domain books not on Feedbooks can be downloaded on your computer and then loaded into Bluefire through iTunes. I’m not thrilled with this compromise, but it is a good starting point. The second biggest concern for me is the ability to read a book in a way that is intuitive and non-invasive. Bluefire really shines here. Although the options in Bluefire are more limited and prepackaged, there is nothing missing that will really cause me to suffer in terms of enjoying book reading. One standout highlight I would list is the book mark and annotation feature in Blufire. Book marking and annotation are joined into one feature that seems to work really well. You can jump to any of your book marks or annotations, they preview very nicely, and the annotation is highlighted on the screen.

Megareader is very easy for me to review. It costs $1.99 and allows you to access Project Gutenberg perfectly, however once you get the book downloaded to Megareader, you may not want to read it. The criticism is a bit harsh, but honestly, I would only ever use this app to read books that I simply can’t get in Bluefire through Feedbooks. The settings within Megareader are limited and most critically it has no bookmark or annotation system. It compromises with a simple “last place” memory that will open the book back to the last place you read. However, if you want to jump back to another chapter and then come back to where you just where, be prepared for lots of page flipping to search for your spot. The lack of any sort of book mark or annotation is incredibly disappointing from an otherwise promising app, especially one that costs.

Assuming Amazon has abandoned Stanza development as it seems, the options are currently limited. One would hope that either the ecosystem level players add the option to access public domain catalogs like Project Gutenberg to their repetoir, or independent developers pick up the torch and keep running the race. Time will tell and in the meantime I’ll continue to look for the best compromise.

Winter Reflections

As the days of February slowly approach and the temperature timidly toys with warming up, experimenting with an occasional day in the 40s, I was reflecting this morning on Winter as a season. I wanted to share the following.

Christmas will forever be, for me, the crowning jewel of this whitest of seasons. As a child growing up I experienced winters in the mid-west and in the south. With a father in the military my childhood was spent moving from to different houses and environments every four years. One constant though was my grandparents’ house. Every year our Christmas tradition was to travel back to my mom’s parent's house for a Christmas eve celebration that brought together large portions of a large family. In a not-over-large house, there would be my immediate family, Grandma and Grandpa, handfuls of aunts and uncles, dozens of cousins, and plenty of food.

We were never cold with that many bodies piled together in one house, and there was never a shortage of food. My Grandma would prepare food days ahead of time, and towards the end of our tradition at that house people would bring over dishes potluck style to spare her the preparation time. Relatives would come back from far and near. We would be able to catch up regardless of how many times we had or had not seen each other since last Christmas.

After the Christmas eve family dinner, many of us would carpool to my Grandparent’s church where they would proudly fill several pews with their returned family. After Christmas inspired sermons, many carols, and a candle lit “O Holy Night” we would end with “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and sometimes my grandfather would let me ring the Church bell at Midnight to announce Christmas was here.

And so, growing up my idea of winter came to focus around family gathered together, food shared, warmth, and community. Looking back now and seeing what Christmas has historically meant, I read other's stories and realize that mine are in the company of those privileged few who have family to join with, who have homes to gather in, and who have food to put on the table. I see now that not everyone has those things, and how lucky I was to have this experience. Come time to recount what I’m grateful for, winter makes it easy not to take things for granted.

Winter is a time of contrasts. While it is frozen outside, we can be thankful for the simplicity of a warm room. While the fields are barren, we can be thankful for the simplicity of an orange, or a slice of warm bread. While the parks and sidewalks are sparcely peopled, we can be thankful for our community of family and friends.

I've been reading a lot of MacDonald lately and I think I just read my favorite of his books, so far. I wrote a review of "At the Back of the North Wind" in a hurry tonight after finishing it today...

At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am so delighted to have found this book amongst the treasures of project Guteberg. Thank goodness for public domain books and ebook readers! With the low price of admission, I find myself reading more and more books that I might not have otherwise taken the time to look up, or might not have remembered when I got to a library.

Once I started reading this book I couldn't put it down. However, as opposed to most books that pull you through solely with plot, I found myself going back and re-reading passages to think about the things MacDonald was saying. To me, this was the best MacDonald book that I've yet read. As with Sir Gibbie the main character is a boy who seems almost too good for this world. However, far from seeming a prig, this innocent ends up bringing the best out of all those around him. Without giving too much away, I'll just say that the imagery, the story, and the very feel of the book will now be one of my definitions of mythopoea. I can see how these MacDonald books would have so strongly influenced Tolkien and Lewis in their future literary works.

So many of the conversations between North Wind and young Diamond are underlined that I have a hard time picking my favorite part of the book. However, I think one of my favorite conversations may have been between these two characters when Diamond is asking North Wind whether she is real or just a dream. I feel that this must have in some way influenced Lewis in his ideas presented in his essay Weight of Glory, and in his idea for Aslan.

Although the end of the book is something that I suspected earlier on in the book, it did not lose any of its impact for this suspicion. To me this was wonderful proof that if a book has true substance behind it, then a suspected end does not ruin the overall story but in fact adds to it due to the sense of realism. Maybe this realism is a good refute to those who dismiss fantasy as escapist?

View all my reviews

Equipping a Home Kitchen

When I got married 3 years ago I found myself considering what things we wanted or needed to get to equip a “new” kitchen. My wife had most things needed, and I brought a few with me, but much of the equipment was hand-me-down or cheaply bought. Hand-me-downs CAN be great, but some things, like cheap knives and a few thin pots were clearly going to have to be replaced. I did a fair amount of research and thinking about what I would really use before registering. Since then, we’ve picked up a few additional things, but by and large we continue along with the items we had before marriage and the few key things we registered for.

I wanted to put this experience down in words in case it can help anyone else considering a new knife or pan, or maybe looking to equip their whole kitchen. There’s a lot to tackle and I’m not trying to write a book here, so I’ll try to be concise and organized. I’ll talk about materials and quality, pans, pots, cutlery, and a few odds and ends.

Materials and Quality:

As a general statement, if you have the money and the time to clean them get copper and be done with it. Copper is the best cookery metal for distributing heat and it looks fantastic to boot. If you don’t want to spend the money, or the cleaning time on copper your best bet is a combination of stainless steel and non-stick pans. Non-stick can’t go in the dishwasher usually, and even with the best care you’ll likely still end up replacing them eventually. Stainless steel is often dishwasher safe, and if something is really stuck on you can take some steel wool or other abrasive cleaner to it. Stainless steel is the definite winner when it comes to searing food and developing good color, just remember to use a bit of oil/butter and get the pan good and hot before putting your meat/vegetable in and then don’t move it around until it’s seared on one side.

One downsides to stainless steel is that, unlike copper, it is not great at distributing heat. Aluminum is pretty good though. My recommendation for the ultimate in strong, good searing, better than average heat distribution is to get a pan that combines aluminum and stainless steel. Sometimes this is called, “tri-ply” in that they have distinct layers of aluminum and stainless. I have the Calphalon pan which has stainless steel on the top and bottom layers, which gives it the ability to sear well and work on induction stoves, but has a layer of aluminum inside which helps with heat distribution. I love this pan. It feels good in my hand, cooks well, and when used right is actually pretty easy to clean.

In choosing WHICH stainless steel or non-stick to get, I decided to go middle of the road. I felt it was important to get dishes that were well constructed and wouldn’t have to be thrown away because the handle was getting lose/falling off. I opted for cookware that all had solid metal handles and good solid rivets. Getting solid metal handles also meant I could transfer something from the stove top to the oven…just make sure the pan/pot is listed as being oven safe. Personally, I wouldn’t spend more than $50 on a pan or pot. I’d scour the internet and T.J. Max, but would not spend

Pans:

In general, if it has a single long handle it’s a pan, even if it’s deep. A deep pan may be called a sauce pan. Skillet is another word for pan. For my cooking habits I chose the following sizes. A 10” stainless steel for general searing/frying. A 10” non-stick for omelets and other general cooking tasks. A 12” non-stick for general cooking of larger quantities. That was it. The stainless steel I got is oven safe, so I can sear something on the stove top and then transfer to the oven to slowly cook it with indirect heat.

Pots:

We already had several larger stock pots so the only item I added was a good sturdy bottom sauce pan. I’ll list it under “Pots” because most of the time I use it like a pot, boiling water or making small batches of soup. This is a 4 quart stainless steel sauce pan with a thick steel and copper bottom. For this, I ended up getting a KitchenAid that has stainless steel on the inside, and a composite bottom that has a layer of copper and a layer of stainless steel. It give the pan a good thick/solid bottom that distributes heat very evenly, which is something important especially if you’re heating something “delicate” like milk that you’re trying not to scorch. Also, the handle of this sauce pan is stainless steel with a silicone rubber grip. This means that, I can put it in a warm/hot oven to keep it warm or finish cooking something without worrying about the plastic handle melting. I have found that because the silicone is only on top and bottom, that if I have been boiling something for any amount of time the SIDE of the handle can be uncomfortably hot so I bought a removable silicone handle “hot pad” to use with this as well as taking hot skillets out of the oven.

Cutlery:

It sounds counter intuitive, but the sharper the knife, the safer it is. The idea behind this is that, a dull knife requires more cutting pressure/force than a sharp knife. Having to push harder with a dull knife means you’re more likely to slip and cut yourself. So, which knives are best for you? Unfortunately this one is very personal. Some people only want one or two knives, some want a whole set. Some want every knife serrated, some despise serrated knives. My suggestion is to pick up AT LEAST, an 8” Chef’s knife and a smaller pairing knife. Both of these should be non-serrated in my opinion. The other minimum requirement should be a sharpening steel. If you are uncomfortable using this, ask someone at the store (if it’s a kitchen store) or watch a video on youtube. The sharpening steel will NOT put a new edge on your blade, it WILL help keep the very thin cutting surface aligned and working well. Ideally you would use the steel every time or every few times you use the knife. If you are looking to get a set, the most important blades, in my opinion, are the ones that come standard with most sets anyway. I frequently use: 8” chef’s knife/santoku, pairing knife, serrated bread knife, sharpening steel, and kitchen scissors/shears. I do use the carving knife several times a year and am very glad I have it when I need it. I was fortunate enough to end up receiving a J.A. Henckels knife set for a wedding present and it’s probably one of the most used gifts in the kitchen.

Dutch Oven:

Once you get past the kitchen essentials, there are endless doodads and “others” you can consider. One of my personal favorites is the Dutch Oven. I think of it as sort of a non-powered crock pot. The best thing, in my opinion, about a dutch oven, is starting a roast or other item on the stove top by searing it and developing wonderful color/flavor and then transferring it to the oven, lid on, to continue cooking slowly and letting the item cook slowly with low heat to get tender and juicy. I chose an enameled cast iron dutch oven. The great thing about this piece of cookware is that it should pretty much last forever. You can spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a dutch oven with someone like Le Cruset, but I found a good one at target for $49.99. One thing to look for here is a lid that really sits securely around the entire perimeter of the “pot”.

Accessories:

If equipping a kitchen from scratch, I’d recommend getting a combination of wooden, plastic, and metal spatulas and spoons. I use plastic on my non-stick, and wood//metal on my stainless steel. I like the wooden for spoons because they work great scrapping the “frond” off the bottom of a stainless steel pan when making a pan sauce or gravy. I like the stainless steel for spatulas to use with steel pans, and I like the plastic spatulas/spoons for use with the non-stick so I don’t scratch.

In addition to spoons and spatulas, you’ll want some trivets or cooling racks to set hot pans/pots/trays on when you need to put them somewhere to cool or to bring them to the table. We have both trivets and racks. Sometimes, like brunch parties, we’re using all of them, so you can’t really have enough of these.

Hot pads are essential, particularly taking things in and out of the oven. I really like the silicone ones we got. We have two kinds, the flat square kind that also work as a trivet in a pinch, and the folded “finger glove” kind that work really well for taking things out of the oven. Also, as mentioned above I got one that is shaped like a tube or sleeve that is designed specifically to slide over the handle of a pot, that makes removing skillets that have been transferred to the oven to finish, much easier.

Mixing Bowls: get ones that you like. That’s about it. Make sure you get a variety of sizes and enough that you can mix multiple things up, and use some as salad bowls. Some people like to keep one by their cooking area as a “trash bowl” so they don’t have to keep running to the trashcan if it’s inconvenient. No reason to get a specific trash bowl, really any big bowl will do.

Photography Workflow, such as it is...

Other than for iPhone pictures (which come straight off the phone and get emailed to flickr directly), my workflow is pretty much the same for all of my pictures. When I get home I load the pictures onto my hard drive and import them into Lightroom, the photo management/editing software I use most.

From there I cull through the many photos I took (over 1,000 photos in one week for this vacation, similar for Italy). I "stack" similar pictures so that I only see the best one from that group when I'm flipping through casually. Then once I only have the best of what I've taken showing, I look through and find what pictures interest me, even a little. I give those a minimum rating of 2 stars. Then I filter to only the 2 star photos and start looking for the pictures that really stand out. Those get 3 stars and then I edit most of the 3 star pictures. Out of 100 pictures I might have 20 or 30 that I think are really worth anything, this is partially because I end up shooting the same thing 4 or 5 times usually, to make sure I have an exposure and, if it's people, expressions that I'm happy with. Then out of those 20 or 30 pictures There might be 5 or 10 that are real keepers. Those 5 or 10, out of 100, are the ones that I edit first and post to Flickr.

Typically, my "editing" in Lightroom is pretty simple. I adjust the color a bit. Typically I tweak the exposure using the various sliders to get a picture where the light areas are just short of clipping, and there are some areas in the photo that have a true black area in them, and then use the fill light and contrast to punch up any dull or dim areas. Then I go through and play with the vibrance/saturation until the picture has the right effect. The last thing that I typically do is to adjust noise reduction and sharpening. The kit lens I have (the 18-55mm) is not the sharpest in the world, plus I really need to do a better job of keeping it clean for the crispest possible photos. Other things I might occasionally do include removing spots from the photo if there was something on the lens or something small in the scene, like trash or something, that would be easy to remove, and I sometimes crop the picture to focus on something in the picture or adjust the framing if I was in a hurry when I took the photo. I'd rather just take the photo properly the first time though that crop, that way I still have the most pixels possible left.

I have my camera set to save in RAW format only. The very last step of the workflow, for the "chosen" photos, is to export them to jpeg and upload those jpegs to Flickr. Typical workflow for, say 100 photos, takes about 10 minutes to sort, maybe 30 minutes to edit, and about 15 minutes to upload and title in Flickr. So all told about 1 hour, average. This time may be more or less depending on how many good photos really came from the outing. On average though I'm happy if 1 in 10 is decent and 1 in 20 is really good.

Things I'm not doing right now that I REALLY should be doing include: automatic backup to a second hard drive in case something happens to the first. This is probably the BIGGEST thing that I'm NOT doing that I really NEED to be doing. Other than that, I'm not exporting everything to JPEG, which I could be doing to let Amon have a more manageable photo library that she can use in iPhoto, and I'm not using a camera/lens profile within Lightroom to help optimize my photos.

Something else that I don't really consider part of my "workflow" since i just started doing it with the photos from this West Coast vacation photos, and it's really more of an "effect" is HDR. For this I've only done the most basic HDR workflow. I imported the photos into Lightroom as described above. From there I can pick and compare a few photos that have been taken specifically with HDR in mind. When I'm out shooting, if there is a scene with VERY high contrast, like a dim room with windows in it or a forest with bright sunlight breaking through, then I will use a tripod to lock the camera down, and shoot several exposures. Ideally I will take an "average" shot and then a photo exposed for the shadows, and a photo exposed for the bright areas. Then once those pictures are in Lightroom I identify which ones I'm going to use and start up Photoshop. Within Photoshop I use the automate->merge to HDR option and select the files I've noted. I use Photoshop to merge the photos and decide how much contrast/exposure the final photo will have using the information from all the individual photos. This photo is then imported BACK into Lightroom where I do the final tweaking that I would do on any other photo, export to JPG, and upload to Flickr like normal.

Test 2 w/ imbed

Map w/ imbed?
<iframe width="425" height="350" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"
marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="http://maps.google.com/maps?ui=maps&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;hq=&amp;hnear=11912+Centerhill+St,+Silver+Spring,+Montgomery,+Maryland+20902&amp;ll=39.0583,-77.072525&amp;spn=0.005832,0.013754&amp;z=16&amp;output=embed
"></iframe><br /><small><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ui=maps&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;hq=&amp;hnear=11912+Centerhill+St,+Silver+Spring,+Montgomery,+Maryland+20902&amp;ll=39.0583,-77.072525&amp;spn=0.005832,0.013754&amp;z=16&amp;source=embed
" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left">View Larger Map</a></small>

*Sent from a mobile device

Maps Test iPhone

http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=http://mapbookapp.com/maps?rn=4279243910362233

Route Link from PC

Experiment with google maps and mapbook iphone app.

This route is a bus ride I took yesterday:

View Larger Map

Daylight Long Exposure

Variation on a Theme III: Waterfall
Originally uploaded by mikeygibran

The Idea

While a long exposure at night can result in fantasy scenes with light trails and skies lit up like day by streetlights, a long exposure during daylight will typically result in so much light that the image is completely washed out. I have been experimenting with using a very dark filter to block enough light out to leave the shutter open for minutes at a time and still achieved good exposure.

Setup-at-a-Glance
Camera: dslr - Nikon d40
Lens: kit zoom - Nikon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Filters: ND filter - B+W neutral density filter, 10 stop
Mount: tripod - Manfrotto Modo Max

Behind the shot
This photo is from Great Falls park in Maryland. It’s another attempt at daylight long exposure. The amount of light from the sun is overwhelming to a long exposure shot. You may be able to set the aperture way down, say f/20-32 depending on your lens, but even then having the shutter open for minutes at a time will still result in frames that are solid white. That is unless you put something in front of the lens to block lots of light – enter the neutral density filter. The filter looks a bit like the glass in a welding helmet, very dark. It blocks light equally across the visible spectrum, meaning it doesn’t color the image or that it is “neutral”, hence the name.

By using this type of filter, you can achieve the same results using long exposure shots during the daytime that you would get a night. There are lots of possibilities including turning water into a fantasy land mass of clouds, to getting the same sorts of trails from vehicles that you would at night, but with different types of detail since you pick up the entire vehicle, not just the lights, to blurring crowds of people. Another nice trick with long exposure shots in the daytime is that you can use them to make people disappear, literally.

If you are trying to photograph a building, and there are not many people walking by, but you just still can’t seem to get a frame devoid of people, use a long exposure shot. The building will be in the frame, not moving, the whole time, while any given walking person will only be in a specific spot for a brief time, at most a few seconds. Once you expose the photo, say for 120 seconds, the contribution to the image from that one person being there for 1 second, maybe 2, is minimal, and they disappear! Note that this won’t work with people standing around, or with huge crowds of people because you need to be able to see any given part of the building for substantially longer that the amount of time when there are people in front of it. It sort of “averages” out the people.

Process
So far I have found the best way to set these photos up, with my camera, is with a three step process: align the shot, add the filter, then set exposure. I align the camera and lens in automatic focus mode to get the exact image zoom, camera positioning, and focus I want while there is still enough light coming through the lens. Also, keeping the camera in autofocus mode prevents the focus ring from turning while you put the filter on. After setting up the frame and focusing, the filter goes on and the camera can then be put into manual focus mode. By putting the camera back into manual focus mode the camera will stay on the focus you've just set and not hunt for focus when you press the shutter release. If you leave the camera in autofocus with the filter on, it will most likely not have enough light coming through the lens to get proper focus and will just keeping searching. The last step is to use trial and error to dial in on the desired exposure setting, best done with manually setting the aperture and shutter until the desired image is achieved. You can tweak the balance between the aperture and shutter to get the best combination of depth of field and motion blur for the image you are trying to achieve.

La Madeleine III

La Madeleine III
Originally uploaded by mikeygibran

Just got new pics put up from our weekend with Jan. More to come? Check out my flickr photostream for the other great photos from La Madeleine

Telecommune with Nature

Written as Satire...

I can see a whole new market...you know how people go on nature retreats or go camping? They go out in the wood and, like, beat on drums and they howl at things? They drink really nasty tea, or eat burnt bread out of a filthy dutch oven...Something like that?

Well, who has the time for that today? And besides, it does mother nature more harm than good to fly out to Montana, rent a stinky SUV, and drive your cold metal tent stakes into the soft life-giving top soil. All the standard camping things are actually really terrible for the environment, cutting down trees to burn them and maybe leave live coals smoldering. Defecating in a trench and leaving the foreign bacteria there to reek havoc on the delicate ecosystem. Camping is horrible for the environment.

Introducing "Telecommune with Nature"

Just set up a tent in your living room and then log onto a website that has webcam footage and ambient microphone audio from "campsites" around the country at all the best National Parks. Additionally, friends and family can log into the same campsite so you can go camping with all your friends around the United States without ever leaving the safety of your home. Telecommuning combines the best aspects of the National Parks, video chats, and chat rooms.

“Experience” nature from the safety of your home. You have a bathroom, AC/Heating and a kitchen and the bears will have a hard time getting through your home security system. Your flimsy tent can't say that. So, logon now to Telecommune with Nature to find out how you can have all the best of the outdoors, without leaving your house or contributing to global warming.

Snow Crystals

Snow Crystals
Originally uploaded by mikeygibran

One of my favorites from the photos I just posted to Flickr. Go check out the whole set:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcolburn

Apple Tablet is Born!

New apple tablet was announced 14 minutes ago. The gadget world has been waiting for this for at least 6 years. In that time, several tablet type computers have been released by various companies and all have failed except for their laptop functionality. None have really started a new category of "tablet" as distinct from a laptop.

Will apples device live up to the hype? The next few years will tell.

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.