dresese

Panther

I bought the new Mac OS X version, Panther, last weekend. It costs a lot, I think. $129. However, after a somewhat long install, I tried it out and was fairly impressed. One of the first things I noticed was something I haven't read on any of the reviews: the new DVD player is much better. It's much faster then the previous one. The previous one slowed down my machine, and the menus were very slow to move around in. This one is very responsive, doesn't slow down my computer as much, and has the ability to start a DVD watching session from the same place you left off the last time you played the DVD. Very nice!

Other than that, the whole OS does seem faster. I like the new finder. The new Mail seems good, but I haven't had too much change to use it yet. Emacs crashed, but after a rebuild of the sources, it worked fine again. The screensaver is improved, I actually can use my iPhoto album with it, which only sort of worked before. Now it works fine, although there is a big lag before it actually starts up. Expose is nice, but I don't use it too much yet.

Dinner at the Fifth Floor

To celebrate our wedding anniversary, Greta and I went to eat at the Fifth Floor in downtown San Francisco last weekend. We had previously eaten there a few years ago, but they have a new chef now, Chef Laurent Gras, previously of the Waldorf Astoria. The restaurant was awesome the first time we went, and this time it was even better. Greta and I got the chef's tasting menu, and here's what we got:

• An amuse bouche - Greta got a two cherry tomatoes in some sort of sauce, and I got a piece of chicken in some sort of rich tasty sauce. These details have escaped me, sorry. It was very good.
• A wonderful dish of a base of (raw) hamachi tuna, with oyster on top, and a light sprinkle of caviar on top of the oyster. The hamachi tuna had been marinated briefly in lemon, ceviche-style. It was absolutely wonderful. The hamachi tasted so fresh, and the oyster and caviar tasted like the sea.
• Scallop, in some sort of sauce, with very thin strips of chorizo. It went very well together, and it's the first time I've had chorizo so nicely prepared. I usually have it on a taco, with onions and hot sauce. That's good too.
• Skate-wing, on artichoke puree, with some sliced artichokes. This was the best skate-wing I've had. It was fried. Was it perhaps very lightly breaded? I can't remember, but it was perfectly cooked.
• Capon breast, two ways. I can't remember what those two ways were, but they were good ways. You may be wondering what capon is. So was I. I asked, and it evidently is a neutered male chicken. After it is neutered, the breast enlarges, and it is very tender. It was in fact very tender.
• Braised pork belly with black truffles. Not only was is braised, but it was exceptionally well carmelized. So much so that the bottom of the piece of braised pork belly was quite hard, like a piece of rock candy. I've never had a piece of braised meat like that. There was also braised apple and potato, each piece just beautifully done - a perfect brown glaze on everything.
• A lime sorbet in watermelon juice. To cleanse the palate. It not only cleansed, it also amused.
• Chocolate mousse and passion fruit sauce. The tangy passion fruit was a good balance to the rich chocolate.
• A selection of little desert things. It seems like every nice restaurant we eat at does this now.
• Little donuts with passion fruit sauce inside. This was a special for our anniversary. The plate had "Happy Anniversary" written on it, in chocolate. It was very nice, but we were so full it was hard to truly enjoy it.

It was a great dinner, and I would recommend it to anyone. As far as nice meals we've had, I'd say only Chez Panisse and the French Laundry have been better. Perhaps Charles Nob Hill was as good, but my memory is too faded to be a good judge.

Comment spam

I recently got a load of comment spam today. There is no way to deal with this right now by default in the Movable Type system. You have to go through and manually delete them all, as well as do something to make sure it doesn't happen again. IP banning is pretty useless. So there really is no clear way to solve the problem. But I read up on Movable Type's API, and wrote a script to solve the problem.

If anyone want to use it, be sure and change the directories around. This script can be easily modified to erase all comments with a particular word in it. However, I think deleting by IP is good enough for now.

As far as ways to ensure they are not posted, it's something I'm thinking about. However, it's hard enough for email, in a similar way there's no way to stop everything except to have a whitelist, which sort of defeats the purpose of having a blog.

Kill Bill

I saw Kill Bill today. It was absolutely incredible. I noticed just how much Leone-isms there were, from the cartoony violence, improbable plot, the inhuman level of skill displayed by the hero, the lack of much clear difference between the hero and villains, and of course the music, which often sounded just like Morricone's. There were references to Yojimbo and many other movies as well.

When I heard about this movie, I thought it was a bad idea to split it up into two movies. Now I think it was the right move. Three hours of such incredible violence would be a bit too much to bear in one sitting.

Jay's new mustache

My old friend Jay came up to see us a few days ago. Surprisingly enough, he was sporting a brand new handlebar mustache.

So you see it's sort of a "grumpy pitcher", or "1890's stockbroker" look.

Ferry building

Have I mentioned that Vignette is acquiring my employer, Intraspect? It happened a few weeks ago. Keep tuned to this blog, you may get more breaking news two weeks after the fact.

So anyway, yesterday I went to downtown San Francisco to have a meeting at Vignette. After the meeting, before I headed home I looked at the recently renovated Ferry Building. It's quite nice. It not only has a Farmer's Market on Tuesday, Thursdays, and weekends, the inside has many nice stores. Some stores sell organic produce, some sell organic meats, or nice chocolate, or other nice things. It also has an outpost of LuLu's restaurant, and will have an outpost of the Imperial Tea Room (the only Chinese tea house in the U.S.). I suppose some might call it a yuppie haven, but in my experience, the food from the farmer's market really is the best, even though it does cost quite a bit. If the rest of Ferry Building has such high quality, it will be a great resource if I spend more time at the Vignette offices.