Tag: Gen X at 40 and its Readers

Friday Again – Time To Yap

Sharing from you to me that is…

  • Things are going well here in the snow belt. I think we had more snow in the last 12 hours than in the last two winters. Good for the Christmassy feeling. We are not going totally insane with the shopping this year and all but one package to be mailed has been sent. I have bought less from the internet this year, all at amazon. Because we started early I wanted to actually have a human experience for the most part. Any tricks to share for the last week?
  • The CBC gig has been interesting so far. It is particularly neat to see how change in a couple of elements of the structure changes your approach. There are no comments and posts are checked by an editor. That is quite fine – not so many spelling mistakes – but it means it is more like writing a short daily column than a chatting area like this space. Right now the site looks like it has been hacked but I think it is just getting some early morning maintenance. No massive bump in stats although the beer blog is up a bit.
  • On a more serious note, it is shocking to read that the Iraqis had al-Zarqawi in its possession but let him go earlier this year.

    Iraqi security forces caught the most wanted man in the country last year, but released him because they didn’t know who he was, the Iraqi deputy minister of interior said Thursday. Hussain Kamal confirmed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — the al Qaeda in Iraq leader who has a $25 million bounty on his head — was in custody at some point last year, but he wouldn’t provide further details.

    It sure was handy that Hitler had that funny moustache so people knew who he was. I suppose these things happen. On the upside, as Jay notes, yesterday was a great day of the Iraqis.

  • And I watched a bit of the first debate last night but was stunned how dull the process was, no face-to-face argument, kinda what I think of when I think of the word “debate”. Stephen Harper has now said he would not use the notwithstanding clause in section 33 of thge Charter to over-ride same sex marriage. He has also said he would allow those already married to remain so. This leave a really weird position where person “X” would supposedly have their rights recognized but person “Y”…or maybe “X2…would not depending on the date of application for a marriage license. Seeing as this is patently unconstitutional treatment – a discriminatory difference without a purpose – do not expect the courts to uphold it and, without use of the over-ride clause, expect it to fail. Are the socons that easily fooled? I would think this would be as offensive to them as the Tory spending spree would be to fiscal conservatives. No word yet from the neo-me-o-cons but they have a hard time breaking away from the mirror long enough to notice the real world.

That is it for now and it is fairly placid. If you have some stormier issues, let’s have it.

Last Day To Vote

Have I been a nag? I have, haven’t I. Well, today is the last day. Round One of the Canadian Blogging Awards is over at midnight tonight and then we will see if the place and the beer blog get a top five ranking in any of the categories. You know, fourth is not bad. I am not demanding a first and – secret secret – it was I who nominated the Flea for best blog as I think he simply is the best one going.

So do vote. Incessantly. All that soft stuff above is nothing but a veiled attempt to make me come off as reasonable when all I want is the shower of praise and the spotlight and the prizes. There are prizes, right?

Vote Vote Votevotevote!

Don’t let the moment slip away. Now is the time to suck up to my ego and vote for Gen X at 40 and A Good Beer Blog in the Canadian Blog Awards for best blog, best culture blog, best group blog and best blog post series. I sucked up to my ego just now myself. I feel better for it. Just today and tomorrow to get through the first round. In exchange, I provide you a small glimpse of the art of someone else, a pleading moment captured in pastels between Kirk and Spock. It’s like he’s saying “Vote, Spock, Vote!” Isn’t that fair exchange?

Friday Chatter

Just as with the child whose non-meal time symptoms passed within a day and a half, so it has come to pass with me. I credit the chanting and the placement of the gerbil statutettes. So it is Friday and it is a day off booked far in advance to coincide with an teachers’ in-service day and as we monitor the route south, it is interesting to note how useful the New York State road condition web pages are. One would be content to wait until tomorrow were Ithaca not the sort of place where you can curl with rutabagas…rutabagi?

So it is sunny and clear here, we have new winter tires and are likely wise to stay put and chat. Topics?:

  • VOTE EVERY DAY!!! The awards let you vote each day from yesterday to next Wednesday. We need you to make your mark as often as you can. And join the GX40 nation while you are at it. There is a rumour that you should vote in every category to make the web widget work. And look for both beer and here in best blog, best culture blog, best group blog and best blog post series. And remember…your idleness is the Flea’s best friend.
  • Now that the necessity of scrounging is done…are winter tires the best value for technology or what? $425.00 gets you a full set installed including taxes and they take away the old bald things you were driving on. Can an iPod do that? I have driven year round on winter tires to the amusement of others but been caught in tornado inducing downpours and stuck to the asphalt while all around me hydroplaned. Plus you have only one set of tires to buy every two years. I expect vigourous discourse on this topic. It’s a gem.

I need a coffee to consider other topics. But that one above is a winner. Go with that for a while.

Update: I took a look south and you can see Watertown. We are making a run. If we are stuck in Watertown, we will find a high school basketball game to watch tonight. You could even see a laker:

Click for a bigger view. I don’t know why it is blue. I must have had the camera set on something other than auto. The wall of cloud behind the laker in the big picture is the lake effect show machine.

Where The Heck Are You?

I have asked you all before who you are and where you might be. Now you can show it on a map of the GX40 Nation from Frappr! Click on the “Ad Yourself” link to the right of the Frappr screen. I’ll figure out how to run an updating version of this map sooner or later.

Let me know where you are or if there are any other widgets we could add to this space.

Run With It

I have no ideas why Fridays are the quietest day of blogging. Could it be people yak on blogs to divert themselves from work and you’re not really working on your Friday? Do you have day dreams of a lawn chair and a brown pop to keep your mind occupied? Please do me a favour and trigger a long and mindless discussion or argument on the comments today. Suggested topics:

  • Gen X at 40 is magnificent / in a rut.
  • Bush / Martin is visionary / a waste monger.
  • iPods are for losers / cats.
  • TV was better in the 1970s / 1990s.
  • The Red Soxs will repeat / not make the playoffs.

Just don’t be rude.

The Benefits Of Fame

I got up here in the wee hours to check the stats from the citation in yesterday’s New York Times, page C4 for posterity, and was surprised to see that it does not alter the alignment of the planets.


Good Beer Blogs Stats – 13 June 2005

As you can see, last Friday when I was nothing and a nobody the beer blog had 965 visits from 519 sites. Yesterday when I was a star…I really was, you know…I had 1007 visits from 590 sites.

Woo.

Despite the extremely intersting process and the very intellegent and interested reporter, it appears that I am just never ever taking anything written on page C4 as important at all ever again. No way. That page is just for the likes of me and Sean Penn. You did notice I was one column and 2.5 inches from that big Sean Penn story, right? Oddly, there was a bigger bump here for some reason: 10453 visits from 1742 sites, both up 20% – but nothing on the “Gomery” googling insanity of early April. Sic transit gloria blogi. Google bots clearly do not drink ales and lagers. [You know, I should have gone with that sherry blog idea.]

Sadly it is clear that the goal would have to be getting into Section A of the globe’s paper of record…but Canada never appears in actual news section of the New York Times. Likely any chance of Section A fame would require slipping over the border, something about police tape encircling a northern New York shopping mall and a quote from my mother to the effect that I was, after all, a bit weird growing up.

Not The Cover Of The Rolling Stone

So there I am, in the last paragraph 14th story in The New York Times, Business Section, Media and Advertising page, web edition index at 6:37 am Monday morning with the precious URL, all live and linky:

No seized web site or anything. No referrers yet as I can see. Oh well. Wait for the entire workforce of New York City to get to work and turn on their computers to slack off for the morning by flipping through the web edition, I suppose…

It was an interesting process being interviewed via email by the reporter who has lots of web industry writing experience but not a homebrewer or anything. She noticed this post I made January on the nutty idea of an “open source beer”. Too bad they did not use the full quote – which I thought was really helpful – but, true, would have needed a separate section:

I have not tried the but think from what is provided that I would not like to try to make it or drink it. Making the beer would be difficult for most homebrewers given the volumes provided. Most homebrewers brew in lots of 20 litre or perhaps double that but an 80 litre boil as required in this recipe would find the brewer facing over 200 pounds of boiling sticky sugar syrup needing transferring by the brewer, a near impossible task in the average kitchen. By contrast, even the small end of the microbrewing scene expects an entry point at the 5 or 7 barrel scale of brewery. One barrel of beer is about 170 litres. Here is some information from the brewery manufacturer DME: which may help understand the scale: http://www.dmeinternational.com/brewing/brewbup/naturalbrew.html. So it is unclear for whom this scale of recipe is devised. Recipes can be scaled up or down but you might want to start with a point that is useful – or even safe – for one type of brewer or another.

That being said, there are issues with the ingredients, too. Beer is basically made of four things: water, yeast, hops and malt. In this recipe, there is detail provided about only hops and malt. As a result, it the same ingredients were used and made with the soft water of Dublin or the hard water of Burton-upon-Trent, England, the resulting products would be very different. These effects can be reproduced by adding water treatments which mimic one location or
another. But without any guidance as to water quality, there is a great deal of variation left to the imagination of the brewer. The same is the case of the yeast. The recipe does not tell us whether it is lager yeast or ale yeast, the two general hemispheres of the beer world. Further, it does not state which of sub-type might be used. Consider this web page of a homebrew supplier which offers 33 ale yeasts and 16 for lager, aside from the 18 for the specialized wheat and Belgian styles of beer: http://www.paddockwood.com/index.php. Selection among these yeasts will greatly affect the outcome of the brewing process. But no guidance is given.

Where there is some guidance, we are still uncertain. We are told that “1 kg of caramel malt” is required. That usually defines a class of malts with a sugary aspect but they differ in the taste they impart according, among other factors, to the degree they are roasted. As a result, a pale crystal malt may give a slight nuttiness to a beer where a dark one provides a strong raisiny flavour. Just saying “caramel malt” in not specific enough. Similarly, the recipe includes 4 kg of sugar but we are not told if it is corn or cane, light yellow or dark demarara or even whether Belgian candi sugar is to be used. Sugar is not sugar is not sugar.

So in the end it is very difficult to determine what a brewer might do with the recipe as it is really only part of a recipe. If you take the information provided and run it through a popular beer recipe calculator used by homebrewers for planning you get a beer which is somewhat pale and normal strength at 5.2% but a bit cloying due to the moderate hops and likely richness of some residual sugars. It would also have no to very rich yeastiness with anything from a slight nuttiness to a strong raisin flavour. Here are the results from when I ran the test:
http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator?6074722#tag. Except for the odd ingredient “300 g Guarana beans” this could be half the beers I have ever encountered depending on how the unstated variables are addressed by the particular brewer. It is interesting to note that guarana bean is included in the new Budweiser product, B-to-the-E: this author does not find that product very pleasant:
http://www.wisinfo.com/postcrescent/news/beerman/beer_20024917.shtml

I do go on, don’t I.

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