existence trainer

Appearance - A deep dark cloudy amber with soft cascading bubbles that form a large frothy white head that dissipates slowly, leaving a beautiful lacing around the glass. Smell - A sweet piney scent (with the sweet predominating) and a touch of citrus. Taste - Coats with mouth with a great balance of malt and hops wrapped up with an underlying caramel base. Mouthfeel - Thick, smooth, and creamy, with a gentle carbonation. Fantastic. Drinkability - I want to drink more, but I'm hesitant to do so when I need to wake up early. My mouth wants more for sure. Maybe one more wouldn't hurt... A/9

Politics, Religion, Science These also happen to be the three most prominent items in the present culture wars. Historically, I wonder which of these three has lead to more deaths generally.

Yay for the next season of The Office!

Bravo fellas, bravo!

I've been watching a lot of hulu.com video's lately. Ok, so they are embedded by with ads. Not a problem. They do everything else right: high quality streaming video feed, they allow embedding, there is lots of good content, it works on multiple platforms (unlike siverlight), and the ads are not that intrusive. And they are pretty damn secure too - I've been trying to figure out if there is any way to download them, and I've yet to figure it out. Good job so far!

If you haven't seen The Office (the american version), then it is definitely worth checking out. Season 5 started today - I'll embed the video once I find it. For now, here is the last episode of season 4.

Appearance - Pours a light, clear amber with a medium white head that retains well and leave a nice lacing around my glass Smell - A citrus smell, with underlying floral and pine notes. Taste - Citrus (mainly grapefruit) and hops upfront. The bitterness from the hops is prominent. The taste lingers in the mouth. Mouthfeel - A nicely carbonated, balanced feel. Crisp, clean,  bitter, giving way to soft creaminess. Drinkability - Very tasty. One of my favorite pale ales (a staple of mine). Strongly recommended! A-/8

This makes me somewhat sad. Its obvious that Letterman has great respect for John McCain, so its a shame that McCain ditched Letterman for a different interview. In response Letterman gives him a proper lashing. And Letterman's makes a great point as well: McCain should not suspend his campaign - he should have let Palin take the reigns of the campaign in his stead. (I mean, if she can't do that, how can we expect her to be ready to lead the country. The answer is obvious - she can't.) Sad. I still respect McCain, but I'm having a hard time trusting his judgment as of late. David Letterman Reacts to John McCain Suspending Campaign

First, by year (my top 5 for each year): 2000 Kid A - Radiohead Transcendental Blues - Steve Earle Heartbreaker - Ryan Adams American III: Solitary Man - Johnny Cash Since I Left You - Avalanches 2001 Gold - Ryan Adams Time (The Revelator) - Gillian Welch The Swimming Hour - Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire At Dawn - My Morning Jacket Burnside on Burnside - R.L. Burnside 2002 Demolition - Ryan Adams The Creek Drank the Cradle - Iron and Wine Jerusalem - Steve Earle Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - Wilco Control - Pedro the Lion 2003 Hail to the Thief - Radiohead Master and Everyone - Bonnie Prince Billy Blackberry Belle - The Twilight Singers Terroir Blues - Jay Farrar Give Up - The Postal Service 2004 Real Gone - Tom Waits Set Yourself on Fire - Stars Good News for People Who Love Bad News - Modest Mouse More Adventurous - Rilo Kiley Seven Swans - Sufjan Stevens 2005 Illinois - Sufjan Stevens Jacksonville City Nights - Ryan Adams and the Cardinals Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Ye...

I just found this show. I'd never heard of it before, but it is both funny and insightful (and somewhat prophetic). Here are some clips:

Get it here .

Classic, original Mac vs Windows TV Ad

A word of warning, this ad is very annoying (he's trying to hype something that really sucked). It reminds me of the movie UHF. Ripe for parody and laughs. Windows 1.0 ad

Some beers don't really deserve a review. Coors Light is one of them. But because I'm really poor until I get my next paycheck and I'm procrastinating right now, here's a review nonetheless. Yes, I'm even going to go through the standard rundown: Appearance - Pours a crisp, golden color, with big bubbles that form a quick white head that disappears immediately. Looks more like a 7-up than a beer. Smell - A little sweet, a little malt, a little chemical. The smell of cheep beer - reminds me of college. Taste - Carbonation, water, and a touch of flavor. Mainly water. Maybe a hint of corn or grain. Drink it while it is cold, because when it warms it does aquire more of a taste, but not in a good way. Mouthfeel - Not even sure how to address this one. Light. Watery. Gets flat fast. Drinkability - As long as it is cold and you swallow it down quickly, its drinkable. Best after mowing the lawn (even recommended!), but other than that not much going for it. In light doses ...

A great tutorial can be found here . From the article: In case you are wondering, Dropbox is an online storage site that allows you to back up and sync your files right from your desktop. It comes with a desktop application that you can install in your OS and backing up files is just a simple drag and drop to the Dropbox folder in your hard drive. Any files added/removed from the folder will be automatically sync with the online server as long as you are connected to the Internet.

Apparently Michael Reiss , the first ever director of education at the prestigious Royal Society, has caused an uproar with his comments about creationism and science classes. And what did he say? The complaints of his critics make it sound like he wants creationism taught in science class. Just listen: Richard Roberts : "I think it is outrageous that this man is suggesting that creationism should be discussed in a science classroom. It is an incredible idea and I am drafting a letter to other Nobel laureates - which would be sent to the Royal Society - to ask that Reiss be made to stand down." Rowan Hooper : "to the dismay of many scientists in the UK, the director of education for the Royal Society, Michael Reiss, has called for creationism to be taught in biology classes in the UK." The only problem - these claims are false. False and easily disproven. These critics seem to have binary lenses on: viewing anyone who talks about this issue as either for creationi...

Spot on. Brilliant! Hillary Clinton Sarah Palin Press Conference A more stable link is found here, but it starts with an ad:

Lately a bunch of sites have been moving from Flash to either Silverlight or Adobe AIR for their video feeds. Unfortunately, neither are officially supported yet on the Linux platform in general, or on Ubuntu in particular (that said, there is a lot of hard work being done to change this: check out mono and Adobe AIR for Linux ). Its easy to feel left behind. For example, I wanted to watch the live feed from foxnews.com on the huricane Ike. Unfortunately, it requires Adobe AIR. What could I do? I'm not one to feel sorry for myself, so I figured I'd do some hacking and tinkering around and see if I could get it to work anyway. And I did! Here is what you need to do: First, download the alpha of Adobe AIR for Linux here . Using the command line navigate to the download, and type: chmod 755 adobeair_linux_*.bin Type: ./adobeair_linux_*.bin [this will execute gksu automatically] Follow the directions. Once it is installed: close and restart Firefox [I'm not sure this step is...

She didn't do a horrible job, but definitely didn't hit the ball out of the park. The partisan right is on the defensive on this one, blaming Charlie Gibson and the "leftist" media for the weak performance. The partisan left, on the other hand, is going to view this interview as clear indication that she doesn't know what she's talking about (as if a good performance would have changed their minds). One of the main problems, though, was the fact that the McCain campaign shielded her from the media for two weeks, which indicates that she's not ready for the office on day one. So its no surprise that Gibson made this the focus of his interview. Her fairly canned responses didn't indicate to me that she has thought in an independent fashion about many of these questions. Where all the questions fair? Not really. The one about the "Bush Doctrine" seemed to me to be problematic, for example. There are two ways to look at it: It could be seen as a ...

This one is one of my favorite stouts. Appearance - Dark and smooth. The medium head is infused with brown, and laces the glass nicely. Smell - Hints of chocolate and a little bit of coffee. A touch of roasted malts. Taste - Starts with a malty taste, espresso middle, and then ends on a sweet chocolaty note. Once its down, it leaves a hoppy bitterness, making my mouth want the next sip. Complex, delicious. Mouthfeel - VERY well balanced, somewhat creamy. My mouth sooo approves. Drinkability - I want to drink this slowly, enjoying each mouthful. Not too heavy. A+/10

This ad is a new low for the McCain campaign - it is pure slime. Unforgivably so. This is Rovean politics at its worst. Remember your out-of-wedlock black baby, McCain? Yeah, this shit is in the same league. It's been thoroughly debunked here . I hope Carville is right (the second video) and that McCain didn't really know about it. I still believe that McCain is an honorable, decent person. I hope he repudiates it and fires those who put his name on this despicable ad. Education Carville: McCain Too Honorable to Have Approved Sleazy Ad

"I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift boat politics. Enough is enough!" - Obama Couldn't agree more, the phony outrage pisses me off.

One of my favorite recent Daily Show clips:

Part 1 can be found here . Barack Obama v. Bill O'Reilly - Part 2 of 5 - Sept 8 2008

Mark Shuttleworth just sent out an message giving the broad sketches of his vision for the iteration of Ubuntu after Intrepid Ibex, code named "Jaunty Jackalope". One thing I love about the way that Ubuntu code names work is that they are meant to reveal something about the focus of that development cycle, and ultimately the distribution itself. In the message Shuttleworth reveals three primary goals for Jaunty, which he decribes as follows: "The Jackalope is known for being so fast that it's extremely hard to catch, and breeds only when lightning flashes. Let's see if we can make booting or resuming Ubuntu blindingly quick." "Another goal is the the blurring of web services and desktop applications. "Is it a deer? Is it a bunny? Or is it a weblication - a desktop application that seamlessly integrates the web!"" "Those bizarre-but-fearsome antlers might well remind one of the intricate pattern of collaboration between developers in...

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex Alpha5 Virtualbox 2.0 OpenOffice.org 3.0 RC1 Mozilla Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 Not a bad week!

If you use Firefox, but occasionally need to pretend your browser is IE, Safari, or even the Iphone browser, you can using User Agent Switcher and the user-agents provided here by Brent Strange (thanks!). The import file includes the following spoofs: Internet Explorer MSIE 8 (Win Vista) MSIE 8 (Win XP) MSIE 7 (Win Vista) MSIE 7 (Win XP) MSIE 7 (Win Storage Server) MSIE 6 (Win XP) MSIE 5.5 (Win 2000) MSIE 5.5 (Win ME) MSIE 5.0 (Win 95) MSIE 4.01 (Win 95) MSIE 4.0 (Win NT) FireFox FireFox 2.0.12 (Win Vista) FireFox 2.0 (Win XP) FireFox 1.5.0.6 (Fedora Core 5/Linux) FireFox 1.5.0.4 (Debian Linux) FireFox 1.5.0.3 (Mac OSX) FireFox 1.5.0.1 (Win Vista) FireFox 1.5 (Win XP) FireFox 1.4 (Win XP) FireFox 1.0.7 (Win XP) FireFox 1.0.6 (Win XP) FireFox 1.0.5 (SlackWare/Linux) FireFox 1.0.4 (FreeBSD) FireFox 1.0 (Win XP) FireFox 0.9.3 (Win XP) Opera Opera 9.1 (Win XP) Opera 8.0 (Win 2000) Opera 7.6 (Server 2003) Opera 7.51 (Win XP) Opera 7.5 (Win XP) Opera 7.5 (Win ME) Opera 4 Opera 3 Opera 2 Op...

Overall, I was extremely annoyed by the crowd, but the speech was not that bad. The fact that Obama and McCain are the two presidential candidates attests to the fact that the conservative movement is languishing. 10:57 - His war story. Its worth hearing. 10:55 - He is trying to be post-partisian. It is falling flat on the crowd, but his record here is solid. This is a slap on the face of partisan hacks. This is why I've always liked McCain. 10:53 - A lot of what he says is an implicit criticism of the Bush administration. Good. 10:50 - Foreign policy segment. Nothing concrete, but his emphasis on working with other countries is a breath of fresh air. And his blunt claim that war is evil is very much needed. Reminds me of Obama's claim in Saddleback that sometimes much evil is done in the name of good. 10:47 - Constantly misrepresenting Obama's views, esp. on energy. Besides the Republican base's short-sighted emphasis on "drill here, drill now" I don't th...

Appearance - This beer is a translucent mix of orange, yellow, and brown. Reminds me of frothy unfiltered apple juice. Lots of sediment. Smell - Heavy sour apple smell. Pungent, and very sweet. Taste - Sweet (too much for my taste), ending on a sour, tart note. Takes a couple of sips for my mouth to adjust to it. Mouthfeel - The carbonation stimulates my tongue, making it a pleasure to roll it around my mouth. If it weren't so sweet, I'd let it linger longer. Smooth going down, but sticky on the lips. Drinkability - Overall I like it, but I'm sure I can find one better suited to me. The sweet overwhelms the subtlety this beer might otherwise have. B-/6 (out of 10) Btw, here's how my point scale relates to my letter scale: 10: A+ 9: A 8: A- 7: B+ 6: B-/B 5: C/C+ 4: C- 3: D/D+ 2: D-/F 1: F

Recently, one of my favorite firefox addons stopped working: CustomizeGoogle . This extension provided search suggestions when typing a query into google. Unfortunately, for some reason it stopped. After following the directions on the addon website and some additional fiddling, I was able to get it working again. Here's how: Set http://www.google.com as your homepage, not the one with the Firefox logo on it Disable Google Suggest in CustomizeGoogle. Click on preferences on www.google.com and make sure "Provide query suggestions in the search box" is selected. Click Save Preferences. Clear your cache (without doing this it still didn't work for me). EDIT: Doesn't seem to work with Google UK. More info can be found here .