I’m not really big on the expensive subscription models for antivirus protection — so I hopped on SourceForge and searched for some free software and found this great open source application called ClamWin. I’m not sure how good it is in terms of comprehensive protection along the lines of Mcafee, but it’s better than no protection at all.
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Like yesterday, I’ve still got a lot of video left to render here — about 45 minutes left on this one section of video — so I thought I’d blog about the brewing process that I started yesterday evening and give kind of an overview of the process and pass along some of my thoughts (for what they’re worth).
Filed under: Mmm...Beer
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I’ve got a bit of time to kill here while this video renders at work here (about a 30 minute process for five minutes of video) so I thought I’d take a second or two to talk beer.
As I mentioned in a previous post, my wife got me a home brewing starter kit with a winter ale to get me started. I’m quite excited to start this first batch and document the process along the way with photos and video. I may even put something together like what my buddy did for French pressed coffee, complete with music and voiceover instructions. I’ve got some decent editing gear/software at my disposal, so maybe that’ll be a project for February when my first batch is done.
I’ve been curious as to what really makes a good beer after reading through the complex, careful instructions — so much goes into the process between preparing and boiling, sanitizing, the two fermentation cycles, and the bottling process. But I was still left wondering, what’s beyond the kits that you can buy and what really makes the flavor unique to each beer?
I headed out to the WYeast site for more information about the particular yeast used in my kit and came to discover the MANY different types of yeast used in ales, lagers and such. I guess I didn’t realize just how much of a role yeast plays in creating the flavor that goes into a beer. You hear so much about the hopps and grains in the commercials but you never hear anything about yeast. From what I’ve read alone on that page, yeast plays just as much of a role in flavor as do the hopps and grains and mixtures.
Perhaps after having done a few pre-packaged kits I’ll try mixing it up a bit with different types of yeast with different hopps and grain mixtures. I really want to figure out how to make a nice chocolate-espresso stout. I think that’d be so cool — maybe even with subtle notes of mint in there.
Anyway, the brew process starts tonight with the boiling of the ingredients. I’ll try to blog about it a bit tonight.
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More proof that you can waste time and bandwidth with a Casio keyboard.
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Natalie and I saw “The Producers” last night and I can’t say that I’ve laughed that hard for quite some time. Both Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane put on a stellar performance — and Uma Therman wasn’t bad either.
Though I haven’t seen the broadway production or the original movie, I thought that the movie was simply astounding and absolutely hilarious. The costumes, soundtrack, the choreography — it was all good. There were a lot of hilarious bits in it and a number of funny choreographed moments in there amidst all the song and dance.
I highly recommend seeing this one on the big screen before it heads to video — maybe leave the kids home if you don’t want them taking in suggestive material. There’s a few inuendos and suggestive shots, but despite that it’s still relatively clean and good fun.
Oh, and some of the songs are quite funny too… especially the song, “Keep it Gay“. Talk about play on stereotypes…
…No matter what you do on the stage
Keep it light, keep it bright, keep it gay!
Whether it’s murder, mayhem or rage
Don’t complain, it’s a pain
Keep it gay!
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Christmas was pretty good this year — not too eventful or stressful, and one of the first Christmases Natalie and I were able to buy each other some decent gifts as well. The past several have been kinda lean and weren’t in much of a position to really spend a whole lot.
Well, even though I sorta hinted at it, Natalie surprised me and got me a great starter home brew kit complete with a winter ale blend to get me started. Quite a few pieces involved in it, but it looks like it’ll be a fun hobby. One kit makes about 50 some 12 ounce bottles… so Jamison and Pete, you’ll have some beer comin’ your way in about a month.
We’re going to see The Producers this evening, one that we’ve both been wanting to see. Perhaps I’ll give a review of that later.
Anyway, back to the chaos tomorrow. It was a nice break, but not nearly long enough.
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…well, okay maybe not lost… but most certainly my clothes and toiletries didn’t make it up to International Falls. x-(
The flight up to I-Falls via Hibbing wasn’t that bad [see side photo for the Saab 340 interior... I had the very back row to myself.]. Take off and landing was a bit rougher than the larger jets, but the flight was okay. The flight attendant was this hilarious lady and really made the flight enjoyable for me. Now if I can just get my clothes back.
So I’ll be clothes shopping this morning so I have something fresh to wear today. It didn’t help that I had to pull a 100 meter dash (exaggerated) from Gate G to Gate B (and not knowing about the shortcut skyway to B) in less than 20 minutes, as our flight to Minneapolis was slightly delayed. That was pretty nerve wracking.
Well, I’m going to go catch breakfast and then get some clothes and hair stuff so I can look half way presentable today.
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Well, this morning was pretty much a wash. After breakfast I slept in for a bit as 5:30 is just an ungodly time to have to get up when you have nowhere to be right away. So I got up, worked on a little video prep work for the Vision/Dental project I’m working on and went out to lunch and had yummy baked clams and a Guiness and then eventually made my way to the airport. Why? I was bored.
I pretty much exhausted anything interesting worth doing in San Antonio (with no one to hang with me).
So get this… I went through airport security and after repeated attempts to get through the metal detector (and failing it without knowing what the hell I was doing wrong) I was escorted over to the side for a closer inspection, pat down, and thorough search down — pretty much the third degree save for a cavity search. Turned out to be a rogue 9 volt battery hanging out in one of the bottom pockets in my cargo pants.
So after dealing with that hassle, I grabbed a coffee and tracked down an outlet and plopped down with my laptop and the Canon and transferred all 6 gig worth of video from the miniDV tapes to my hard drive. Unfortunately I don’t have Adobe Premiere on my lappy, so I can’t use the time to edit down the video while I wait.
Oh — and there’s this guy next to me playing his PSP (or whatever the heck they are) without any headphones. That was my cue to scramble for my headphones and play the hifi streaming feed of The Current [almost feel like I'm at home]. But this pay for web access stuff is overrated. It’s $7.95 for a day-long pass (24 hours) and like $5.95 per hour if you want to do the hourly thing.
Oh well. Semi expensive blog posting. 
Maybe I’ll download that trial version of Star Wars Galaxy. Lord knows I’ve got the time.
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For the most part, I’ve sung the praises of Google Maps — they’re crystal clear, easy to read, vector-based maps that make navigating relatively easy. That is, until you hit San Antonio, Texas. They failed MISERABLY in helping me find my hotel (placing it nearly ten miles SOUTH of where it actually was located) and now they didn’t do so well in returning a map of a specific address.
So I plugged in the address in Google Maps and it just gave me a zoomed out map of San Antonio with a search engine-like result suggestion for Schlotsky’s Deli. So then I have to click on that link to get a better idea of where it is. I guess that isn’t so bad — but what if the business didn’t have a listing in Google? Would you be left to guessing where you were supposed to go?
Then I decided to blow off the dust of MapQuest, one that I haven’t used for several months now. And whatdya know, it actually brought me right to the location without making me click another link again.
Granted, San Antonio has a pretty weird freeway system — specifically the frontage roads that follow the freeways and the goofy (but very useful) turnaround lanes. It seems Google has trouble with San Antonio’s Loop freeways and getting the address 100% of the time.
I would give Google maps a passing grade — say a C+ for at least giving me the Schlotsky’s link, but they fail for the hotel incident. Gas is a premium these days and I don’t care to drive ten to fifteen miles the wrong way because Google said that’s where I’m supposed to go. So it’s an F for you in San Antonio. Don’t make me click so much — your maps are cool and the usability generally great, but just return the address result in the map please.
My first full day in San Antonio was pretty packed with stuff to do — started out the day bright and early with the video shoot at the customer service center in northwestern San Antonio which went quite well. As a matter of fact, it went so well that we were done with the shoot by 11:00 a.m. So I decided to drive downtown and get some on-location video footage, eye candy type stuff for the introduction, giving context to San Antonio — the Riverwalk, Alamo, etc. (more…)
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