Jeremey's Weblog

Houston: The Drive

The whole set (so far): Houston: The Drive

Eliana Grace

Our first baby girl was born a week ago! Take that, family tree!

Sunset, Sugar Land Memorial Park

Texas Capitol, Austin

Tequila Basil Mojito

• 4 Tbsp fresh lime juice
• 3 Tbsp agave nectar simple syrup (or to taste) see below
• 10-15 fresh basil leaves
• 2 oz good tequila (I used Riazul)
• 2-3 oz soda water
• ice

UPDATED: I flubbed the measurements when I wrote this down the first time... it's 2oz of tequila (ish) and similar (or a little more) of soda water. NOT 4!

Muddle the lime juice, agave nectar, and basil leaves in the bottom of a collins or other tall glass, thoroughly, to release the essential oils in the basil.

Fill the glass most of the way with ice. Add tequila and soda water. Stir.

On tequilas: I think any type of quality tequila (note: I don't mean any brand or name) will more or less work here, depending on your mood. I happened to be recently out of silvers and reposados, so I used an añejo (Riazul, quite excellent). The choice will definitely affect the flavor, so adjust to taste.

On sugars: since writing this, my wife informed me that agave nectar is pretty suspect as sweeteners go, as it often contains the sorts of sugars found in HFCS, and is a long way from a natural form of agave. So I've altered the recipe to use simple syrup. 3 Tbsp agave is probably a bit too sweet, anyway... definitely adjust to taste.

Update on Hario Grinders

A quick update... several people have asked about the Hario grinder modifications, and I'm sorry to say that Max's attempts to modify the Hario with bushings did not succeed. The tolerances on the Hario are just not tight enough to allow a bushing to consistently work. I'm not sure if the issue was that each grinder is different from every other, or if most of them simply wouldn't work even with the perfect bushing.

I hear that the search for a more suitable hand grinder is on, and there is a candidate, but I don't know more about it right now.

That isn't to say that the Hario is a bad grinder, but it isn't going to be very consistent, especially at coarser grind settings.

Bloggy Restarty

Wow. I've been busy! At the beginning of the year, I started a new phase of a project at work that has been wall-to-wall ever since. So le blog has suffered tremendously. Trying to get back to it now!

Our Boys

Our boys keep getting bigger! Surprising, I know. I had the studio gear set up and we threw them in there and took some pictures... love these!

Technorati Tags:
photography, kids, portrait

I Still Haven't Found...

Wow. We went to the U2 concert Wednesday night, and they did not disappoint. This is a band I've loved for more than 20 years, who have continued to produce new music throughout that time, and who have deeply impacted the world, far beyond music. I last saw them live 17 years ago, and seeing them again felt like seeing history. When they were finally done, after a surprisingly long (and wonderful) set, they walked off, together, on the long public walkway off the stage, not via the hidden walk underneath it, taking their time to enjoy and respect the fans.

The show was fantastic. I thought the sound was quite good, especially given the venue (Reliant Stadium), and of course, the stage was amazing and ridiculous and incredibly fun to watch.

The stage, before the show (shot with Pano on the iPhone):

The high point for me came fairly early in the show, when they played "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". It's a beautiful song, and the crowd was singing, and the sound was perfect, but there was something more; it was one of those moments infused with truth and history and beauty and community and love and worship.

I think my second favorite moment was "With Or Without You", near the end of the show. The lighting was incredible and the song sounded SO good. It's such a simple song in many ways, and Edge's guitar was just beautiful.

The articulated cylinder of LED screens was pretty amazing, and I would have loved to have seen those spotlights from outside the stadium:

They made good use of the stage an interacted with fans in 360 degrees. Here's Edge playing at the "back" of the stage:

It was all pretty awesome.

Technorati Tags:
houston, u2, concert

Sara - Senior Portraits

I had a fun senior shoot recently, where I got to play with some new toys. Specifically, portable power for my big strobes and huge Alien Bees parabolic umbrellas. Being able to use the strobes outside is awesome! Talk about controlling light. Anyway, a few pictures, out of many I loved:

Twitter Mention Spam

Wow, I've been getting a ton of "@-reply" spam in my Twitter mentions feed. I propose the following algorithm:

If I follow the user, mark it as a mention.

If at least X percent of the people that user follows follow that user back, mark it as a mention. I'm thinking X = 30 or 40 for accounts that have existed for more than a month, 50 or 60 for accounts less than one month old.

If some percentage or number Y of people I follow follow the user, mark it as a mention.

...insert additional rules here...

Only display posts *marked* as mentions in the mentions feed. Mark anything else as "possible spam" to be watched more closely.

Something along those lines would prevent almost all @-reply spam from showing up in mentions feeds, I think. If Twitter is to succeed, this really needs to be dealt with (unfortunately).

Technorati Tags:
twitter, spam, mentions

Road Trip Coffee

We went on a road trip to Chicago for my sister-in-law's wedding (which I was photographing). My wife was extremely kind and researched all of the best coffee places along the route on CoffeeGeek and Barista Exchange, so I actually had good coffee in almost every city we spent any time. The notable exception was Kentucky, there was just not much there (apologies to any Kentuckians).

I did have one Starbucks latte (in Kentucky). It was wretched. I actually didn't drink it. Anyway... here are the places I went:

The Coffee Roastery, on Pearl St., Jackson, MS: I had to send my wife in because it was on a downtown corner and there was little parking to be found (and we had 3 kids in the car, of course). Got a latte, it was bad, I hardly drank it. Bleh.

Wired Espresso Cafe, on N. State St., Jackson, MS: Pretty good! Not a great latte, but far better than sbux or the one I got at Coffee Roastery. No art, though. I drank this one.

Kaldi's, on De Mun Ave, St. Louis, MO: Pretty good. Got a couple lattes for the road, they were good, not great. Better than anything I got in Jackson. No art, though.

Intelligentsia, on Jackson St., Chicago, IL: This is a weekday-only source of caffeination for Chicago folks, but it was closer to our hotel than the Randolph location (my favorite). Intelligentsia, of course, rocks. They're brewing on a 3-group Synesso, they have great coffee, etc. At this location, the temperature of my latte was a little hot, IMO, maybe 10 degrees hot. But excellent, as always, and good art. Blew away everything I'd had up to this point, of course.

Intelligentsia, on Randolph St., Chicago, IL: Ahhh... Saturday came and forced me to hop on the El to get over to the Randolph location, but I was rewarded with a perfect latte, beautiful latte art, and a ginger scone. It doesn't get better than this, really. I had maybe five lattes here over the course of our stay in Chicago, and they were all perfect. How anyone in Chicago can set foot in sbux, I don't know. Had a single-origin capp which was also excellent, though the latte is where my heart is. Also had a Clover of something that I don't recall now. Sad to leave!

Starbucks, Florence, KY: Worst latte ever. Except possibly one I had at Inversion back in Houston. Ugh. DID. NOT. DRINK.

Ray's Monkey House, on Bardstown, Louisville, KY: Decent latte. So much potential not being fulfilled! They roast their own, have decent equipment, with a little proper training they could make great coffee. It frustrates me when I find indie places like this that could be great but just aren't. Better than sbux, though. Side note: the whole time I couldn't help but laugh to myself about those "monkey-fighting snakes" in the edited-for-TV version of Snakes on a Plane (which I didn't see, but heard about, and with the name of the coffee shop, and, well, anyway...).

Crema, on 1st St. South, Nashville, TN: Great! We were debating which place to hit in Nashville when Heather found latte art pics from Crema, so it was decided. Had a brief but good conversation with the people there, and got a couple lattes for the road, which were excellent. Good art, the whole deal. Later on I figured out I was actually following them on Twitter already! (they're @CREMACREMA)

Primavera, on White Oak Dr., Birmingham, AL: Excellent. Had multiple lattes here (some for the road), all excellent. Good art. Again, great coffee people here... they roast their own, and clearly do a pretty good job of it. They sell Chemex gear, etc. I bought some beans to bring home. People of Birmingham, send them your business!

Cocoa Bean Pastry Shop, on Morris Ave., Hammond, LA: Decent coffee, not great, but great baked goods. This was a long shot and it turned out better than expected. Definitely better than hitting sbux. It got me home. :)

Technorati Tags:
coffee, travel, jackson, st louis, chicago, nashville, birmingham, hammond

Snow Leopard!

I upgraded to Snow Leopard yesterday, and it is fantastic. Noticeably snappier in every respect. The Exchange 2007 support is great, it took a while to initially sync all my mail (mass quantities), but after that it has been singing along. Address Book integration is nicely done, it doesn't try to merge, it keeps your accounts separated, but provides an All Contacts view. GAL search works too (and in mail compose).

Snow Leopard comes with 64-bit Java 6 out of the box, woohoo! I loathe Java, but as I'm working with it now, I am very grateful for the massive speed upgrade, and the JDK 6 support.

I installed MySQL 5.1 x86_64 and it runs perfectly. The PrefPane is 32-bit and requires an (automatic) relaunch of System Preferences, but that's no big deal, it is used infrequently.

*Everything* is faster. So far the only casualty is Checkpoint SecureClient, which I knew in advance.

Good stuff, Apple!

OH!! I also got back almost 15G of HD space! LOVE.

Technorati Tags:
apple, snow leopard

Spoon Bread

I have said before that corn bread may be the best food on Earth, but I may amend that to include a slight preference for spoon bread. My grandmother recently died and the family compiled some of her recipes. Spoon bread was one of my favorite things she made as a kid (2nd only to banana pudding, I think).

If you're aren't familiar with spoon bread, it's a variation on simple corn bread, that results in a mushy, slightly sweet, buttery "bread" that you eat with a spoon. TO. DIE. FOR. Literally, maybe, because it absolutely must be smothered in butter to serve.

Here 'tis:

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 1/4 tsp salt
• dash of sugar
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 1 egg

Mix water, cornmeal, salt, sugar in saucepan over medium heat. Stir until thick. Remove from heat.

Add butter, stir as it melts. Stir in soda. Beat the egg into the buttermilk and stir into cornmeal mixture.

Pour into a greased casserole. Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes, or until well set and nicely browned on top. (I needed 35+ minutes)

Serve hot (immediately), with butter.

Technorati Tags:
recipe, spoon bread

It's The FAIL WHALE... What Do I DO??

This morning I woke up to find Twitter had ceased to exist. Off the map. Gone. How will I tweet about Twitter being down?! Then I went to Facebook to post about Twitter being down... but Facebook was down too!! It's the Twitpocalypse!! What do I DO??

Then I remember I had a blog. Haha, we'll bring out the big guns. Take that, o thou whale of fail.

So now I have blogged about being unable to update Facebook about being unable to tweet on Twitter. Social media, what hast thou done to us??

:)

UPDATE: But I can't post a link to this on Twitter... sigh.

Technorati Tags:
twitter

10th Anniversary!

No, not of this blog, though it will be getting there in not too many years. :)

My wife and I celebrated 10 years of marriage last week! We went to Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw) Island in Michigan and had a fantastic time. No motor vehicles are allowed on the island (except emergency vehicles), so everything is got to by foot, horse, or bike. We loved it.

I took a bunch of picture (you're shocked), and put together a collection of black and whites that capture Mackinac for me. Here they are:

If you're ever looking for advice on Mackinac dining, lodging, etc., hit me up on Twitter or email. I can't recommend it enough as a "change of pace" vacation. We went sans kids, too, which helped.

Technorati Tags:
photography, travel, mackinac

Dear Blog, I Do Miss Thee...

I have a blog? Oh, right... this one. Oops. Have a picture.

iPhone 3GS (vs. E71)

So I upgraded to the 3GS on release day.

You may have seen my E71 vs. iPhone review last October. Well, the 3GS pretty much reverses that conclusion, and then some. Here are some of the topics, revisited:

Voice quality: Shockingly, iPhone 3GS. I was very surprised, but the 3GS voice quality (compared to the original) is much better, and the radio works far better in our house than the original did. I think I prefer the equalization on the E71, but that's only when comparing a tinny-sounding source in strong signal.

Responsiveness: iPhone 3GS, by far. The speed boost and 3.0 did the trick. It's fast, and typing is fantastic.

Email: iPhone 3GS. The better UI, now with plenty of speed, server-side search, fantastic Exchange support, etc.

Cellular/3G data: iPhone 3GS. I had an original iPhone before, of course, but the 3G on the iPhone 3GS is great, and probably in part due to the processor bump, things just go more quickly.

Maps: Tie. Again, responsiveness has made up the difference. I still love physical keys here, but the iPhone has other features that make up the gap, so I'd say this is a tie now.

Home Screen: iPhone 3GS. The bugs in the E71 have bitten me lately, and with the processor bump, the iPhone is more responsive and I get to things quickly. Amazing what a little speed will do for your user experience.

Contacts: iPhone 3GS. Again, processor and OS bump made search fast and easy. Very nice now.

Typing: iPhone 3GS. Typing is now very fast and responsive. I'm MUCH faster on the 3GS than on the E71.

Local connectivity: Tie. iPhone supports stereo bluetooth now and some interesting Wi-Fi stuff.

Tethering: Tie, once ATT turns it on. iPhone has this, just needs the bloody carrier to support it.

Camera: iPhone 3GS, by far. MUCH better photos and video, autofocus, etc. And no pathetic "flash" which ruins every picture.

Battery Life: E71, because it doesn't get used. The iPhone 3GS does suck down the battery if you use it a lot, but that's true of anything. The fact is, you want to use it a lot. Not so much with the E71.

Search: iPhone 3GS. E71 doesn't have it, or it's application-specific.

I'm no longer "bi-phonal". I carry the 3GS only. It does Exchange better, it does phone better, it does Internet WAY better, it has orders of magnitude more and better applications, it has a coherent platform, the UI is great, and so on.

Technorati Tags:
apple, e71, iphone, nokia, review

Iced Coffee

I learned this from Max at Catalina. It's very simple, but delicious and refreshing, especially in the insane Houston heat this summer. All I do is fill the Chemex up to its "naval" with ice, then brew a pretty light 1/2-pot of drip coffee on top of it. I have a 32oz Chemex, so I brew for 16oz. That's it. Serve over lots of ice, of course. Awesome!

Technorati Tags:
coffee, summer

1 Million Processes in 98 Characters

For the #twitcode contest (see: Twitter contest: what can you code in 130 characters?)

This Erlang code (98 characters) spawns N processes in a ring and sends a message through the entire ring. Try N=1000000 (1 million processes!!). In 135 characters, I could pass M messages through the ring, but there was no way to get that under 130. So this passes 1 message.

a(N)->X=b(self(),N),X!m.
b(P,0)->P;b(P,N)->b(spawn(fun()->l(P)end),N-1).
l(N)->receive T->N!T end.

Complete with module definition and export:

-module(r).
-export([a/1]).
a(N)->X=b(self(),N),X!m.
b(P,0)->P;b(P,N)->b(spawn(fun()->l(P)end),N-1).
l(N)->receive T->N!T end.

To run:

$ erl +P 2000000
Erlang R13B (erts-5.7.1) [source] [smp:2:2] [rq:2] [async-threads:0] [kernel-poll:false]

Eshell V5.7.1  (abort with ^G)
1> c(r).
{ok,r}
2> P=spawn(fun()->r:a(1000000) end).
<0.39.0>
3>

It should run in under a minute (w/ 1 million processes) on most machines, maybe noticeably less. Obviously 1000 processes or so is instantaneous.

Technorati Tags: programming, twitter, twitcode, erlang