Ploafmaster General

So I'm writing this from my hotel room in Paris after a long exhausting period of travel.

We left on time from Dulles yesterday and even arrived in Amsterdam twenty minutes early. Then our flight to Paris was delayed an hour and twenty minutes. Then our train from Charles de Gaulles had to stop inexplicably in between stations for about a half hour. Then it stopped for good at Gare de Nord, one stop ahead of where we needed to transfer. Then we went through a rigamarole in that station to get our tourist passes for the metro. Then we finally, three hours after landing in France, made it to our hotel.

We are in a freaking awesome part of town.

There are loads of students around since were' in the middle of some of Paris' major universities, which means there are loads of amazing looking places to eat with some prices that seem amazing even after the exchange rate. We had dinner tonight at a restaurant called Le Grange on Rue Mouffetard where I tried (and thoroughly enjoyed) escargot. We had a half bottle of nondescript Cote de Rhone red wine which was amazingly fruit-forward for an Old World 2006. And the sorbet du cassis was AMAZING and flavorful. Valerie's mousse au chocolat tasted like whipped chocolate chips. WOW.

And finally, after about a half hour of shut-eye back in l'hotel, we cruised out to see La Tour Eiffel at night. I'm seriously hoping some of my long exposures turned out alright...

Anyway, off I go. It's 11:45 PM here, and I'm bushed. More later as the awesomeness unfolds!

Okay, so tomorrow I leave The States on vacation. The ol' blog may be quiet tomorrow while we make our way first to Northern Virginia, then to our initial leg of the trip - Amsterdam. We have a two hour's layover before hitting the skies again to Paris where we expect to arrive the morning of Good Friday.

The MBP is coming with me, so I'm hoping to post from Paris in the evenings on my trip - restaurant write-ups, journal-ish entries, perhaps even some pics from the digital camera (if they're worth it). I'm really excited to shoot film in Paris, though, and with the aid of my tripod I hope to capture some great snaps. Here's hoping my lead-shielded film bag protects all the rolls :-)

If a ninja and a race car had a baby, it might look like this:


(via Autoblog)

If you happen to have access to high definition television and ALSO have Mojo, you should check out London Live.

London Live is a concert series that explores what's heating up in the British music scene. Each episode consists of a few single-song performances from different acts with interviews peppered in between. It seems like a nice way to discover some new music, though that remains to be seen :-)

Read. Laugh.

I just received my new kicks by way of Zappos.com. They rock hard, but what I'm really impressed by was my first experience shopping from this online shoe purveyor.

I placed the order for my shoes on Saturday and paid $15 for 2nd day shipping so I could receive them by this Wednesday before my trip to Paris (despite my flat feet running shoes, with their light weight and good cushioning, are ideal for trekking about an old city in my opinion). Well I received an email from Zappos on Saturday evening informing me that they were upgrading my shipping for free! Sunday I received my UPS tracking number, and they shipped it on Sunday afternoon! Now I'm wearing the new pair, and I'm so impressed by the seller that I may start buying most of my shoes from them in the future.

Rock on.

Momentum from ploafmaster on Vimeo.

Ze Frank posted this video on his website, and it's pretty much the coolest animated short I've seen in years:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-yldqNkGfo&hl=en&w=425&h=355]

I was so impressed, in fact, that I had to know more. I found that this masterpiece was crafted by Stefan Nadelman as part of his own Tourist Pictures. Peruse, and be sure to check out his 2007 demo reel.

My main homeslice Dave started up a Flickr account, and some of his pictures are really freaking cool, especially when you consider is low-end digital. I'm guessing he's hit his upload limit for the week or else we'd be seeing some of his film shots, but be sure to keep track of him. He's learning the ropes of manual film photography, and he's learning very fast.

Okay, I admit it...I indulged a bit much last night, but I had to experiment with what seemed to be an extremely luxurious entree idea.

So I took one lobe of a hanger steak I'd purchased from the butcher, and after salting and peppering, wrapped the whole thing in slices of Prosciutto di Parma (sliced so thin you could see through them - no joke!). I rendered the fat from some chopped pancetta and then cooked the wrapped beef in it - rolling occasionally on high heat before transferring the whole thing to the oven to finish.

WOW, this thing was packed with flavor. In retrospect, I could've done without the salt (or at least much less) on the beef considering how salty prosciutto is, but over all it was one of the tastiest cuts of meat I'd consumed in a long time. The meat was done just right - medium rare - and cut cross-wise like I cut pork tenderloin, it was far more tender than many reference sources indicate.

I'll be purchasing this cut on a regular basis, I think, though certainly not for such an opulent preparation as last night.

Fresh snaps up on my Flickx0rz. Check it.

I didn't get close to as many keepers as I'd hoped, but that's mostly because of overcast weather for my outdoor shots. I'm realizing that I'll have to lower the shutter speed a notch or two for better exposure, or open the aperture if need be.

I was reading A Brief Message, as I am wont to do, and last week's post about lasting artistic products resonated with me quite a bit. Hugh Graham extols the virtue of art and manufactured items which last in durability and/or significance. This reinforced my own appreciation for skillful craftsmanship - be it a traditional barber shop, a local butcher, or architecture. Even crafts where the end result is fleeting (especially when it comes to food) hold the capacity for great artistry.

Maybe it's just my need for all things authentic, but I much prefer the handmade to the machine milled. I like to see the individual character added to a piece of furniture or a house or a photograph or wrought metal. I'm saddened that such things as bespoke clothing and shoes are now luxury items rather then necessarily commonplace. I'm sad, more so, that the affordable mass-produced goods we have today reach obsolescence or disrepair within a few years of production.

Anyway, enough of this dolorous tone. Here's something obliquely related: Steve Harwood has an awesome photo set of his camera collection on Flickr. There are nice descriptions to go with them, and it's worth noting that many of his cameras still function, even though some are around 100 years old! How's THAT for lasting craftsmanship? I wonder how many digital cameras will still be useful 30 years from now, let alone 100.

Johannes Leistner is an amazing photographer with a prodigious amount of work available on Flickr. What really caught my attention, though, was his series of fisheye photos around Paris. Considering my impending vacation one week from tomorrow, it's pretty easy to understand why these snaps arrested me.

As much as I've been shooting film lately (I'll hopefully be uploading some more tomorrow), this inspires me quite a bit to take as many pictures as I can around the City of Lights. I'm not looking forward to packing the lead-shielded bag for my film rolls, but I'm excited about the potential results.

Speaking of text messages...

Ever wonder why SMS allows 160 characters, but Twitter - intended in part for use with mobile phones - only allows 140? No? Well pardon my nerd, I'm explaining anyway.

It's more realistic to look at this as a limit on the number of bytes in the message. Most phones can only handle 140 bytes, which translates to 1120 bits (8*140). Mobile phones, it seems, use the standard ASCII character set which contains 7-bit characters. This allows 160 ASCII characters in the message. Computers, on the other hand, typically use 8-bit characters, putting us right back at 140 characters.

Now you know. But you probably still don't care :-)

The Nilson Report is a publication for they payment systems industry, and in the February 2008 issue they indicate that banks intend to start using SMS to communicate with their customers. One of the primary reasons cited is the reading rate of text messages vs. email: 94% and about 50%, respectively.

Do you want to know why 94% of text messages are read? BECAUSE WE DON'T YET RECEIVE CRAP FROM BANKS OR OTHER BUSINESSES. I bet that 6% of text messages going unread are the free ones delivered from the cell phone providers indicating the addition of a few new towers. What useful communication do financial institutions hope to deliver in 160 characters or less, anyway? "You have overdrawn. You are now in the hole an additional $50. Standard texting rates apply to this message."

I'm sure some marketing "geniuses" were sitting in a room on the 32nd floor in Midtown Manhattan saying, "Hey! You know what all the kids use to talk to each other these days? Text Messages! There's a channel we're not already flooding with useless information!"

Your food is still too expensive for what you get, compared to your competitors. You're still an also-ran that hit the over-sized burrito chain restaurant scene a little late. You still have little to distinguish yourself in a market fast becoming crowded by both national chains and regional operators. You still look as stupid as Chipotle when you charge for tortilla chips - something every cheap and fast Mexican restaurant gives away with free refills (though I'm sure you laugh at that with every paying customer).

But, Qdoba, you won my heart last night with your Ancho Chile BBQ burrito with shredded pork. That sauce, with it's slow building heat and tangy sweetness, made the whole thing. I would've eaten my computer mouse covered with that stuff. It certainly helped that the pork was flavorful as well.

It also helps that I found a $5-off coupon in my work mailbox this morning for your West Broad St. location. Lunch is officially covered.

The video for the oh-so-tasty single from Vampire Weekend is as awesome as the song itself:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XC2mqcMMGQ&hl=en&w=500&h=418]

The following is an actual conversation which took place between an anonymous Fan resident and myself this afternoon.

[Ext., Meadow Park. DANIEL faces approximately NE having just turned 180 degrees after taking a picture of a Fan District house. He is looking to frame another shot when a gray-haired WOMEN approaches, disrupting his attention. There are bushes between them, about shoulder height.]

WOMAN (somewhat severely): What are you doing?

DANIEL (voice rising like a question, incredulous): Taking...pictures.

WOMAN: Why?!

DANIEL: Because I enjoy photography.

WOMAN: Why here?!?

DANIEL: Well I'm on a public sidewalk, so this is perfectly legal.

WOMAN: Well, there's also a terror watch.

[WOMAN continues to watch DANIEL and slowly walks backward, arms folded across her chest. DANIEL continues to take photographs as WOMAN retreats behind the glass door of her apartment building, watching suspiciously for another fifteen minutes.]

I know what you're thinking. He's on Today. He's almost as hyperactive as Robin Williams. Cheese-ball.

But Al Roker will always hold a special place in my heart. He's told me about the weather from WNBC in New York ever since I was a child in the '80s. His jolly disposition made me smile, and for the first year after my parents' divorce I watched him as regularly as Sesame Street.

Well, I was astonished today to discover that Mr. Roker has maintained (even if he hasn't updated since November '07) what is essentially a blog for over eleven years! His first post was on September 27th, 1996 - which beats Kottke by about a year-and-a-half, and comes in less than a year-and-a-half after Zeldman got in the game. Sure, the quality of content doesn't really compare to the two tech blog heavy hitters, but who knew the jovial weather man from Queens was such an early blogger?

It's a shame, though, that a man who apparently double-majored in graphic design and communications would make such heavy use of Comic Sans on his website :-)

Holy my crap, this is amazing! I couldn't figure out how not to auto-play the embedded video (non typical source), so click on to check it out.

http://bobandsylvia.com/player.swf?file=WINGSUIT.flv
(via ze frank)

I purchased the album from Plan 9 yesterday on my way to the butcher shoppe, and I have to say that Vampire Weekend is rocking my ears to the extreme.

Some of my favorite tracks (other than the previously mentioned "M79") include "A-Punk", a Police-meets-The Strokes piece that gets my feet shuffling for just over two minutes, and "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa", a song which musically sounds more Cape Town than Cape Cod. The instrumentation seems one moment spare, the next lush with strings and keys, and the vocals are clear and uplifting.

One more reason to wish I was at SXSW :-)

In response to a disparaging article, 37signals' Jason Fried essentially sums up his company's broad approach to doing business and developing software. This is a great article for anybody who creates products - not just nerdy computer types like myself. And if you couldn't tell from this post's title, I'm rather fond of the culinary example, as it echoes my own approach to cooking.

Mugs is writing some more. Do check out his site, but especially read, "Why I'm Jealous of My Son."

You really have to enjoy one to understand my rapturous tone, but a warm, buttered egg bagel is one of the sublime pleasures of eating.

An egg bagel is rather simple in concept: a plain bagel dough with egg added where it would otherwise be absent. But the flavor is rich, the color near unnaturally yellow, and when said bagel comes from The Bagel Oven in Red Bank, New Jersey, the baked ring of bread is dense, chewy, and covered in a barely crispy skin just thick enough to balance the texture.

I enjoy the occasional bagel from Panera or Einstein's, but munching on that glorious "o" of dough this weekend reminded me just how bagels outside of the North East try - and utterly fail - to be what bagels ought to be.

It feels good to be back in Richmond, home, and emotionally settling. While I have a less-than-delightful cubicle move today, I still plan to post when I can - it's been so long after all :-)

Anyway, here are some tidbits to catch us up:

1. My dad is buried in the same cemetery as the great Vince Lombardy.
2. There's a horrible new yipping dog across the street that doesn't know what noise ordinances are.
3. The 8-year-old can of Jones Soda "Whoop Ass Energy Drink" that I keep at my desk is still leaking at the top. Slowly. And that nasty jank still smells like crushed Flintstones vitamins.

That oughtta have me covered for a little while.