Brewing: Saison

A little over a week ago I brewed a "Saison"... I don't have the grain bill (my friend in Seattle put it together for me) except that it has 1lb. of flaked rye in it.

For the boil I did this:

• 60 minutes 1oz Nothern Brewer
• 30 minutes 1os Saaz
• 5 minutes 2oz Saaz
• 5 minutes 1 tsp ground corriander
• 5 minutes 1/4 tsp ground black pepper
  

Then I intended to add orange zest to the boil, but instead was going to substitute orange marmalade (since I didn't have fresh oranges), but I forgot so I just added about 1/4 cup of orange marmalade to the primary.

OG: 1.076

I think I made dry hop with Saaz, but we'll see what the hoppiness is like when I rack it.

Bailing out...

I’ve decided that running a half marathon was a bit of an aggressive goal to start with. Pretty much I wanted to be like Daniel. I have however replaced this goal with a much more attainable run an 8 minute mile. And I even started today. I’m on a business trip staying in a hotel and I used the fitness room; hoisted myself out of bed early and got on the treadmill. I started off easy for the first lap of a mile. Then I ran the remaining 3/4 mile, and I did it in about 10 minutes without stopping and kept a very maintainable heart rate. So long, and best of luck to you all. Perhaps I’ll be back to join you in the future.

See more progress on: run a half marathon

Score!

Hi aharbick!

You may have heard on the grapevine that we planned to
reward our dear Flickr members who bought a Pro Account in
the early days. Well, it's true! And since you're one of
those lovely people, here's a little something to say YOU
ROCK!

1. Double what you paid for!
Your original 1 year pro account has been doubled to
2 years, and your new expiry date is Oct 16, 2006.

2. More capacity!
Now you can upload 2 GB per month.

3. 2 free Pro Accounts to give away to your friends!
This won't be activated for a day or two, but when it
is, you'll see a note on your home page telling you
what to do.

Thank you so much for putting your money where your mouth
is and supporting us, even while we're in beta. Your
generosity and cold, hard cash helped us get where we are
today.

Kind regards,
The Flickreenies.

That's a nice surprise! Anyone want a pro account? Drop me a note.

Lance to retire

Sigh Now I'm REALLY going to have to go

Thought bloging

I need something that reads my mind and blogs for me. I have lots of blog worthy thoughts throughout the day, but most of the time I forget about them by the time I get to a computer to type.

I now "get" podcasting

Until today I never really understood why Podcasting would be so popular. Sites like Odeo and iPodder have gained a lot of popularity, and perusing del.icio.us you can find a ton of podcasting information. But today, I GET it.

I'm in Seattle on a business trip an I decided to walk to the office from the hotel. It's probably about a mile walk and took 20 minutes. I had my iPod and I spun a little Pedro the Lion, Postal Service, and Third Day. However, as I walked I had the desire for some news of some sort. Sure I could've had a radio, but then I need two devices. It would've been nice to spin some MP3 news tracks. Hence podcasting. My bet is that podcast consumers are disproportinately urban, walking commuters.

Why the hubbub?

There's too much interest in real estate solutions that apply clever mapping techniques like craigslist + google (which is an interesting derivative/synthetic application) or redfin. Don't get me wrong, I think these applications are clever and interesting, but IMO they don't do much to advance the state of the art for buying or selling real estate. They basically just automate a formerly manual process with some wizzy technology. I can buy a paper map and plot real estate listings on it. Having either solution does little to inform me as a customer (or even agent) of real estate services. I hope that next generation real estate solutions will focus on leveraging data in better ways to better inform the customer instead of rehashing mapping/GIS applications.

In the works...

I’m cooking up a scheme to fly over to France for a week to see bits of the Tour this year. I figured it may be one of the last times that I could see Lance compete in the Tour. Anyhow, I’m considering three options. In all of them I fly to Paris and then travel from Paris to other parts of the race, watch/travel for a week, return to Paris and go home. Here are the options:

1. Fly from Paris to Nantes and rent a car…. Catch the opening 5 stages while driving back toward Paris and leave from Paris.


2. Take the train from Paris to St. Etienne. Rent a car in St. Etienne. Catch Issoire->Le Puy, and the TT in St. Etienne. Then take the train back to Paris and watch the last stage and leave the next day.


3. Fly from Paris to Marseilles. Rent a car, and drive to Grenoble, and catch Grenoble->Courchevel, Courchevel->Briancon, Briancon->Digne Les Bain, and Miramas->Montepelier. Fly back to Paris from Marseilles and leave.

Which would you do? Something entirely different?

See more progress on: see the Tour de France live

Social software in e-tail

buy.com just recently launched yub.com a social networking experiment in online shopping. I don't quite "get it", but it does seem novel. Parts of it remind me of Amazon.com's "Share the Love" feature, but as far as I can tell that never really took off.

Real hackers use Macs?

David Heinemeier Hannson asserts that he would have a hard time hiring a programmer working on a Windows platform for 37 Signals. He bases the claim on deep conviction that Macs are great machines, and also because Paul Graham was stirring the pot about Mac adoption among hackers. I don't dispute that Macs are GREAT machines (I'm happily writing this from my 17" Powerbook), or even that Apple started a bit of a revolution among talented software engineers (I've watched close to a dozen of my most talented engineer friends buy powerbooks), but puleeze.... A talented engineer doing web-development (as is 37 signals/DHH) doesn't need a Mac. Sure, they can use fancy and cool little apps like CocoaMySQL, but in my book any REAL hacker only needs a shell and Emacs (or I suppose some lesser editor).

Mediocre coffee rules America!

My family just returned from a road-trip to and from Indianapolis. It was a GREAT trip, and I've got a few thoughts that I want to blog about it when I get a chance, but I figured I started with a quick one.

We drove I81 S to I64 W, to I65 N to get there. It was a pretty and very straightforward route. Driving through Lexington KY was particularly beautiful; ACRES of genteel horse farms line the road for at least 30 miles. That and Kentucky must have a law against those big tacky billboards because I don't recall noticing them (perhaps at all) in KY, but they are LITTERED throughout I64 in West Virginia, and on I65 in Indiana.

Anyhow, one thing I noticed is that it is DARN hard to get good coffee when you're travelling. Gas stations, hotels (even fairly expensive ones like Embassy Suites) restaurants... All serve something hot and black, and more or less enjoyable to drink, but it isn't really fair to call it coffee if you're going to compare it; even to something pretty standard like Starbucks (which along our route was non-existent) The only good coffee that I had was with our friends (who came from Seattle) in Indy. I think it was a special blend Starbucks coffee, but it may have been Zoka's.

Wake up America, your coffee isn't good, and it's certainly not worth the prices you charge for it.