And Slaters Go Plop

Been busy and not all that inclined to keep the blog up to date lately so here’s a bullet list:

• Just got back from Beervana in Wellington. Some amazing beers and some stinkers (oddly, a couple of the biggest duds were also the most expensive). New Zealand is producing some really top quality beer and I was surprised to discover many companies I’d not heard of before.
• Came 3rd at the Western Brewer’s Conference for my Comte Ordinary Bitter
• Reading The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker at the moment after watching the documentary Flight from Death. Interesting but having difficulty stomaching wacky Freudian fascination with the anus, castration, Oedipus and so on. I mean, really?? Come on. But I think Becker might be onto something with the whole fight/flight reaction to the concept of death and the need to use culture, symbols, beliefs and other illusions of immortality to quell that anxiety. Threaten someone’s culture/beliefs/illusions and expect an extreme response.
• Just finished Truth, A Guide for the Perplexed by Simon Blackburn, Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels and Matter by Iain Banks
• Next up: Escape from Evil by Ernest Becker, Two Little Boys by Duncan Sarkies, The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell and The Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant
• Got a Kobo e-reader. Verdict so far: pretty good. Linux under the hood. EPub and PDF formats. 100 free books.
• Visited Steam Brewing in Ota-two-hus. Fascinating!
• Heading off to Australia on Thursday with Sal for a month of travelling around. Adelaide to Perth by train. Fly to Broome and pick up 4×4 camper. Three weeks through the Kimberley to Darwin. Going to Powderfinger’s last ever concert in Darwin. Fly to Brisbane to catch up with bro and family. And then home, home again, I like to be here when I can.
• I’ve been mostly vegetarian for the last three months or so.
• Not running enough and got the Auckland Half Marathon sneaking up on me.
• GST change causing headaches for a number of applications I’ve been involved in. Didn’t think of that at the time. Doh.
• I agree with Phil Plait about ‘dickish’ behaviour. Don’t agree with PZ’s approach. Sorry to hear about the Hitch but refreshing to hear straight talking in the face of mortality.
• That’ll do for now. Sorry for the silence but there’s not going to be much happening here for another month or so.

Read the background story and listen to the chillout song. Ahhh.

HT Boingboing.

For many years I’ve been an admirer and occasional practitioner of the art of typography. I’ve got an old (and dusty) hole punch and I’ve always admired the typography on this label.

I’ve been looking at getting a couple of brewing books and have just been through the tedious exercise of comparing prices. Not sure whether the results would be similar if I was looking for popular novels instead.

Here are the prices in NZ dollars and including shipping:

Amazon — $61.24
Morebeer — $109.26
Whitcoulls — $59.00
Mighty Ape — $73.98
Fishpond — $84.96
The Nile — $66.48
Seek Books — (Didn’t have both books)
Goodbooks — $69.98

Whitcoulls wins but is closely followed by Amazon which puts the other NZ book stores to shame. If you know of a good alternative please feel free to share.

[**edit**]
David, in the comments, informs me of The Book Depository over in the UK who beat the rest at ~$54.00 including delivery.

I recently purchased a four ring burner, assembled it and boiled up lots of water only to find that it didn’t do a very good job and blackened the bottom of the pot at the same time. I did a bit of Internet research and discovered that, due to the way I’d set it up (the instructions weren’t clear), I was potentially in danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. So it’s probably a good idea to get the information out there.

When burning with gas you really don’t want to see a yellow flame. It’s an indication that you’ve got an obstruction or that not enough oxygen is being mixed with the gas before burning. It’s the yellow flame when burning gas that causes pots to have blackened bottoms. It’s also the yellow flame that’s generating carbon monoxide which is undetectable and will kill you without sufficient ventilation.

On my setup, there are adjustable disks that can control the flow of air that is mixed with the gas. I had these tightened flush so that not much air was being mixed. They should have been wound back a bit to let more air in which gives a bluer flame and is more powerful at the same time.

That’s all. I hope this saves someone’s life. You never know.

From RealBeer.co.nz:

SOBA, New Zealand’s consumer beer advocacy group, is excited about the April 1st release of Mac’s Brewjolais seasonal beer, and is looking to celebrate the event in style and en masse.

Mac’s Brewjolais is a beer which has been brewed annually by Lion Nathan at the old Mac’s Brewery in Wellington. It is brewed to celebrate the hop harvest, and uses freshly picked “wet” (undried) hops from Nelson late in the brewing process to impart their aromatic and distinctive notes to the finished beer. It’s a rare type of beer, and one that SOBA believes deserves recognition, particularly when brewed by one of NZ’s largest breweries who could be expected to opt for the ‘safer’ and more commercially viable styles of beer.

SOBA plans to show its appreciation for Brewjolais by organising a synchronised toast to Lion Nathan and the beer at all of the locations it will be served. SOBA members will descend upon the six Mac’s Brewbars around the country and raise a glass of the deliciously hoppy beverage to the brewers who make it, and the company which gives them the freedom to push the boundaries of beer a little.

The Mac’s brewery in Wellington where Brewjolais has been brewed is being closed down for economic reasons, with Lion Nathan citing higher costs involved in running the smaller scale brewery. This fact makes the 2010 release of Brewjolais bittersweet for beer lovers who fondly remember some of the excellent Mac’s beers to roll out of this brewery. While sad to see the brewery go, SOBA is optimistic that the beer will continue to be produced, and hopes its gesture will help convince Lion Nathan to continue production each year.

SOBA was formed in 2006 in order to increase awareness of and appreciation for flavourful crafted beers. The organisation is often perceived as “anti big brewer”, but in actuality is simply “pro good beer”.

If you appreciate a good beer and want to help celebrate you will be able to do so at one of the following locations:

Northern Steamship Co. – Quay Street, Auckland
Nuffield Street Trading Co. – Newmarket, Auckland
Neighbourhood – Kingsland, Auckland
Shed 22 – Taranaki Street Wharf, Wellington
The Vic – Trafalgar Street, Nelson
Poplar Lane – cnr Ash & Poplar Street, Christchurch

I’m going to be in Christchurch over the next few days and hope to get myself along to Poplar Lane. There will be a synchronised toast at each of these locations at 6pm tomorrow afternoon (Thursday 1 April).

A conversation I’ve felt needs to become commonplace…

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Keeping with the theme of quirks of the English language, here’s one courtesy of Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct:

This one requires a lot of scene-setting, let’s start with,

Cats whom dogs chase like to eat mice.

which can be shortened to,

Cats dogs chase eat mice.

We can place the cats, dogs and mice in locations:

Christchurch cats Dunedin dogs chase eat Masterton mice.

What if there is no chasing or eating, just bullying?

Christchurch cats Dunedin dogs bully bully Masterton mice.

Why not make them all live in the same town?

Christchurch cats Christchurch dogs bully bully Christchurch mice.

Let’s only talk about cats who are bullied and who themselves also bully:

Christchurch cats Christchurch cats bully bully Christchurch cats.

Let’s move them to the town of Buffalo in the US:

Buffalo cats Buffalo cats bully bully Buffalo cats.

Swap the cats for buffalo instead:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo bully bully Buffalo buffalo.

And did you know that another word for ‘bully’ is ‘buffalo‘? Let’s do it:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

There, perfect sense.

This is likely to be familiar to many people. It’s about how the addition of punctuation can turn a seemingly nonsensical set of words into a technically correct sentence, usually with a story to go with it.

So,

There is not enough room between fish and and and and and chips

makes sense when I tell you that a shop owner is telling the signwriter that the words for his fish and chip shop are too close together:

There is not enough room between “fish” and “and” and “and” and “chips”.

Ok then, try to add punctuation to the following to make it make sense:

Jack while Joe had had had had had had had had had had had the teachers approval

Answer below the fold.

(more…)

I’ve been incredibly slack over the last nine months or so. One reason is that I’ve been fairly flat-out on a contract to a company in town during that period and so my available ruminating time has been quite limited. But perhaps the real reason is that I feel like I get more from life when I spend more time listening than opining and being busy is a convenient excuse to say less.

So anyway, here’s a quick summary of what I’ve been up to lately:

In June last year I took up a position as a contractor for a fairly well-known New Zealand ISP and web-hosting company tasked with the job of implementing a content management system for six websites running in a LAMP environment but with occasional SOAP web service integration into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We ended up going with Drupal which we wrote a couple of our own modules for and re-themed for each site. It’s a pretty nice system once you get to know it but I’m not sure I’d choose it over my own mini-framework when it comes to day-to-day rapid application development, especially given that my other clients rarely need multi-site, multi-user content management systems.

I’m finishing up there at the end of this week but will probably occasionally be called in from time to time over the next few months. From here I’m back to looking after my other, neglected clients who I’m in danger of losing if I neglect them any longer. Looking forward to the variety once again but will miss the security and profitability of this latest job.

Back in September of last year I became afflicted with a terrible addiction. It is commonly called ‘home brewing’. I started with a couple of batches of kitset beer straight from a can with a bit of water and yeast and quickly moved to boiling plain extract with additions of hops, proper yeasts and resulting in much cleaner, more flavoursome beers. I’ve even done partial mashes of grain to augment the flavour and complexity of my brews but I’ve yet to slide completely into the abyss by going all-grain mash and leaving the happiness and safety of malt extract behind. Be warned of lots of upcoming posts that will be of absolutely no interest whatsoever to many of the past visitors here.

I’ve been reading some pretty good books too. One that is of particular interest to me is Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter which was recommended to me by a commenter called Simon last year. He’s quite right, it really is ‘insanely mindblowing’.

Meals on Wheels continues in a fairly non-eventful way and my weekly catch up with my Big Buddy little buddy is going really well. He’s 9 now and really coming out of his shell which is infinitely rewarding. If you are an average bloke in Auckland and have the time to spend three hours a week with a boy kicking a ball around or doing other things that you are supposed to have officially grown out of, then get into contact with them. There are a lot of boys who are growing up out there without really getting to see how ordinary adult males deal with life.

My wife continues to be lovely and we manage to get out of town frequently which keeps us both pretty happy. We’re lucky to be living in this time and in this country.

That’s really about it. Non-controversial. Not particularly interesting. But that’s life eh?