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Digging in the shelves
The music stores in the Bay Area that sell both used and new music
absolutely trounce anything I've ever, ever seen in Vancouver. (Or to
be fair, nearly anywhere else, not that I particularly know where to go
look.) I used to think Charlie's Music in downtown Vancouver was nice
-- it still is -- but the ones here are amazing.
I'd thought Rasputin Music was awesome enough -- and it's
certainly more convenient for me to get to -- but I visited Amoeba
Music recently and picked up a bunch of discs that I've been
looking for for almost two years now. Yes, I could have found them
online, but that's no fun.
Birdy Nam Nam - with accompanying bonus DVD. Two albums by Jovino Santos Neto -- who I've never seen for
sale in any Seattle area store, and he's a Seattle native! Both albums by NOMO; the first was not a big label release as
far as I know.
I also found a CD by David Holmes, who composed the score for
"Out of Sight" and Soderbergh/Clooney's "Ocean's" series, and the new
album (major label debut) by jazz prodigy Esperanza Spalding.
If I'd only found CDs by Loop!Station, the Weepies, and Thao Nguyen, I
would have found practically everything on my CD hunting list in the
last two years.
posted at: 15:46 Tue 17/Jun/2008 |
/misc/music |
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Roulade a-go-go
So today I had the bright idea to attempt a roulade. I blame it on
watching too many astonishingly intricate roasts presented on After
Hours. I had turkey drumsticks, some dry stuffing packages
stocked up from the previous Thanksgiving, and some awesome fresh
mushrooms from the farmer's market.
(An aside: frankly, this is not one of my 100% culinary triumphs.)
I didn't really have a recipe, so my plan was just to prepare the
stuffing, debone the drumsticks, roll the whole thing up and truss it,
and then roast it in the oven.
I just brined the two drumsticks, then deboned them. I had forgotten,
unfortunately, that turkey drumsticks have a kajillion bone/cartilage
spurs to remove. So right there I'm way way behind schedule by the time
I get them all out.
The stuffing actually cooked more or less according to plan: cornbread
stuffing mix, mushrooms (white button mushrooms + a little bit of fresh
porcinis), and onions.
Then it came time to roll it up. (I made an effort to pound out the
meat a little flatter, but I didn't push it very far.) I didn't use
quite enough plastic wrap, so while the first roll attempt worked fine,
it fell apart immediately afterwards. Trussing was clearly going to be
out of the question.
So for my next roll attempt, I got the concept from Emeril: roll
it up in parchment paper, then in foil, then just roast the whole thing
while still in its wrapper.
This still led to a pretty fall-apart roulade, so I'm going to chill it
in the fridge overnight (still in a tight foil wrap) to try and shape
it.
Maybe I should have spiked the stuffing with a little gelatin or agar to
help the juices set up... Ah well. Next time I'm definitely going to
use a turkey breast, even though that violates my usual "no white meat"
rule. Deboning the drumsticks was a nightmare.
posted at: 01:59 Tue 03/Jun/2008 |
/food |
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Union St Fair
Through pure happenstance, I ended up at the Union Street Fair
today and caught a bit of a live performance by Vinyl, who I've only
heard before thanks to etree.
It was pretty fun. Also, I couldn't resist getting some garlic fries
topped with Dungeness crab. Mmmm.
posted at: 23:28 Sun 01/Jun/2008 |
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return of the bloglets
I bought some orange-flavored Tic-tacs recently. I don't actually think
they're that tasty, but they're nostalgic for me. My grandmother lived
in Seattle and she would take Greyhound up to Vancouver to visit us.
And for some reason, when we would pick her up from the Greyhound
terminal -- as far as I can remember this, anyways -- she always had
orange Tic-tacs for us. So that's what I think of when I eat one.
The Venture Vehicles VentureOne was supposed to arrive July 2008.
Now, more like 2010. Disappointed. The target price has
jumped a fair bit too.
To be honest, I kinda hope I'm in a place with decent mass transit by
that point...
Still, it looks like fun.
posted at: 00:05 Wed 28/May/2008 |
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bloglets
stuff too small to warrant individual blog entries on their own
I saw Iron Man at the nearby theater last weekend, in glorious
DLP. The promise of this technology is that by projecting a digital
image (like a mega-sized version of typical home/business projectors),
the movie will never suffer the scratches that real film does, or
judder, or whatnot. And in fact, this was true, and moreover I never
noticed any digital noise. But it turns out that such a clean image
only helps you notice how imperfect the screen itself is...
Power output for home theater receivers (aka "amplifiers", but that's
not really technically correct, though we are only speaking of the
amplification part of the component) is rated in watts, but there are a
host of ways to use misleading measurements to arrive at
impressive-sounding wattage ratings.
The most obvious and shameless is to not use RMS watts, but
instead "peak" or "dynamic" power, which can be 2x or more than RMS.
Another way is to rate amplifiers as a certain per-channel wattage given
a constant 1000 Hz signal, rather than the more honest (and demanding)
20-20000 Hz rating.
Another common deception is to rate amplifiers' per-channel wattage at
1% THD (total harmonic distortion or worse.
One slightly less common deception is to pick a nonstandard inductance.
Most speakers are rated at 8 Ohm inductance; an amplifier can achieve
higher ratings when driving 6 or 4 Ohms to the speakers.
The last way is to rate a home theater (surround) receiver based on only
driving one or two channels rather than all five (or seven).
30 Rock is the best show currently on TV.
I like Trader Joe's for the food they have there, but it's not much of a
store for cooks. There's a tiny meat aisle and a tiny tiny produce
section. Most of the food at TJ's is stuff to reheat, not ingredients
to cook with.
posted at: 01:12 Mon 12/May/2008 |
/misc |
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