Saint Where?
6
Jun2
Jun2
While Saint Paul, MN might not be one of everybody’s top destinations, it might start creeping up that list if things continue like they are. Something must have got into the water supply and caused people to open a frenzy of great new restaurants and shops.
There’s Grand Old Day tomorrow, which isn’t really part of my list, but it did force me to go do some Grand Ave shopping today - avoiding the pure chaos tomorrow.
I hit Northern Brewer and picked up a Cream Ale kit to brew this weekend. Northern Brewer is a nationally reknowned home brew shop that is primarily mail order, but if you live in St. Paul you are lucky enough to be able to pick up your supplies in person.
I then went down to the new St. Paul Cheese shop - run by the France 44 folks. As far as I know this is St. Paul’s first Cheese shop and the staff was great. I tried about 10 different cheeses and walked out with my by the slice selection of a few great cheeses. The Montenebro, a ripe full bodied goat cheese I hadn’t ever tried, is now one of my new favorites. To round out my cheese buying, I walked next door to the Breadsmith to pick up some cheese delivery vessels. This is a killer combo of locally owned and operated shops.
There are lots of other places that recently have been springing up that make staying in St. Paul to eat worth it:
- The Cheeky Monkey Deli - I have raved about this place already – house cured and smoked meats, fresh baked breads, awesome sandwiches on Selby.
- Brasa – some of the best rotisserie anywhere is opening on Grand Ave.
- Barrio – Minneapolis’ tequila bar and taqueria is opening a second spot in Lowertown.
- The new Mississippi Market is opening next month and will hopefully continue to roast their own sandwich meats.
- The Blue Door, Flat Earth Brewery – I could go on and on.
The list is only new stuff, I could go on about some of the ol’ standbys, but need to go eat more of my cheeses.
Out with old…
2
Jun1
Jun1
It is that time of year again. The time when I decided to start updating this website again. Maybe give it a fresh makeover only to probably be neglected again in a few months. Iwill be making an attempt to blabber on about things that I probably am overly interested in at any given moment. This has been known to include Bacon, Ham, Gadgets, Cheese, Bread, Beer, Beans, and who knows what else.
We’ll see if anything ever gets written down. If not, see you next year.
Amazon Unbox – Not Super Fantastic.. just barely fantastic.
26
Mar3
Mar3
Last week I wrote up a blathering chronicle of how Amazon Unbox was the digital media king and had made Blu-Ray and DVDs obsolete with its DRM free (sort of) downloads of all the latest movies and TV. While parts of my story were true, but I have to digress a little- I take back a big part of what I said. The downloads are not portable! Not in the least bit, which is extremely deceiving considering they play in Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center and look like good old fashion Windows Media Files. Not even with the Zune, it is partly Microsoft’s fault for creating a walled garden for the Zune.
And definitely Amazon’s fault for creating another proprietary format wrapped in some ugly DRM(!!!) to keep them from being portable, unless of course you have one of the 8 obscure MP3 players that actually will support them. Basically these players have a mini version of Amazon’s player – which is the opposite of portable and not user-friendly. Aaaargghh. While Amazon does specify the players it supports (in fine print) I think they should have definitely made this more clear in the Amazon player, when you are prompted to download a portable version of your recently purchased movies or TV shows.
Plus, 12 of the 20 players supported are old and not even for sale anymore, not even on Amazon. So, unless you own the Archos 404 from 2006, you are pretty much out of luck.
Stupid Amazon, and Stupid Movies. Figure it out already and make it easy for us.
Blu-Ray or HD DVD – doesn’t matter…
15
Mar1
Mar1
With the official end to the format war and Blu-Ray looking like the winner I started thinking about why it doesn’t matter.
The interweb is full of proclamations claiming Sony’s Blu-Ray format is the future of our mind-numbing in home entertainment.
I just don’t see it. See my review of some of the popular download services.
The number of people with High Definition TVs is still not that high and the number of people with Blu-Ray DVD players is even closer to rock bottom. (I know my parents make at least 1 consumer in the world).Not to say it isn’t an enjoyable setup to have, but the fact remains most people just down have the moolah or the interest in this kind of equipment.
While the format war is over, and Blu-Ray marches on, I think by the time the average household catches up Broadband access and bandwidth will have reached acceptable numbers to provide every household with High Definition movies without a player at all, but instead in a file format that can be played from cheap Media Centers, TIVO and Extenders (or Apple TV if you fell for that.)
Xbox live, and others, already provide downloads of HD content to be watched on users TVs. I think the number of these users will grow a lot faster then people looking to use a more physical format like Blu-Ray or the now obsolete HD DVD.
The format war will have moved on to file formats and hopefully we can all agree on an open portable format and by that time the Movie industry will have let go of its grip on obsolete licensing strategies.
Let’s have some crab legs while we wait for this whole thing to sort itself out!
Zune 80 Review: "Don’t Call Me Radio, Unit 91."
11
Mar0
Mar0
As I mentioned last week, I finally broke down and replaced my old workhorse iRiver H340 which had to be the most durable player ever made. I had dropped that thing several times while playing and it never skipped or froze, ever. However, it had its laundry list of problems.
Enough about that, my new Zune Original arrived on Monday, two days early! Never hurts to get a surprise package. I was quite satisfied with my Super Troopers reference and the appropriate Jam Box logo.
So, with as much lipstick applied to the Zune’s shiny exterior, I wondered if it would all be a distraction from what was really going on.
I fired it up for the first time and the battery was mostly charged, which is a huge plus. I didn’t have to wait the standard 1-8 hours to play with my new toy.
The first plug-in of the device causes the Zune software to prompt you for mandatory updates and then causes several restarts, relatively harmless and quick.
I have about 3500 songs that required uploading, and I was super excited to watch it chug through the sync process since my
iRiver H340 never had a working Sync feature – no matter how many times I tried….
Sadly, for reasons unknown the Zune didn’t make it through in one shot. It got song #2211 and from then on out was on a Zune themed lunch break. Every song the software attempted to send to the player, would fail for “Reasons Unknown” – yikes. Better luck next time.
Anyways – I stayed calm and let the zune software error for the last 1300 or so failed attempts at transfering a file.
Once it finished – I followed the troubleshooting steps and unplugged my Zune, shutdown the software, shutdown the Zune, and finally reconnected my Zune.
I am happy to report this time around it did finish syncing although the numbers in the Device Status screen on the Zune software page were way off…. oh well. I later added a few podcasts and everything works great! All said and done I think it took about 2 hours to do the initial sync.
There are too many variables here to blame just the Zune for the problem I encountered, could have been my computer or perhaps the weather. Who knows, so as long as it doesn’t happen again, I will assume it was just that the initial sync was so large.
I setup wireless sync next and that worked first try – just had to enter my router credentials in the Zune software and I was on my way.
Everything else works as advertised. I like the “Squircle” control a lot. It takes a few swipes to get used to the sensitivity, but makes browsing through my library of songs a breeze.
The screen is beautiful for watching Video Podcast clips of “The Soup”. The quality and resolution are fantastic and the screen is surprisingly bright.
The headphones are really clear and crisp. The magnetic backs make storing them really nice since the cords won’t tangle. Not to mention the braided cable!
I haven’t encountered the problem with the Zune turning off at random (due to static electricity). There is an issue with battery life in stand-by, but it is easily avoided by turning the Zune off each time you are done using it. (Hold down on the squircle and hold the back button for 5 seconds). It takes about 4 extra seconds for the Zune to come back on next time, but saves ‘yer battery.
Revisiting a recurring Facebook Photo Exploit
10
Mar2
Mar2
A while back – actually about 8 months ago, I wrote a post about what I think is a major privacy hole in Facebook’s Photo service. It never seemed to pick up any traction, but maybe people didn’t quite get what I was saying. I still think this is a major problem and a major flaw in the Facebook Photo Service, so I decided to revisit the topic once again.
PROBLEM: I can see FULL photo albums of people I am not friends with on Facebook.
ILLUSTRATION:The photo, from You, Me and Dupree which illustrates the classic third wheel scenario, is a perfect definition of the problem that exists in Facebook’s Photo service.
The illustration is meant to serve as guide to your understanding of why this is a major problem in Facebook.
SCENARIO -
- Dupree and ‘You’ (Matt Dillon) are long time friends from college and beyond. Both have Faecbook profiles to keep in touch with old friends.
- Now, ‘You’ and his girlfriend, ‘Me’ (Kate Hudson) are also friends and have Facebook profiles.
- Important: Dupree and ‘Me’(Kate Hudson) are NOT friends on Facebook.
- Now, here is the problem – Dupree is cycling through old photos on his computer and finds some hilarious pictures of ‘You’ doing really stupid things that you know find embarrasing. Dupree decides to create an album called “‘You’ doing stupid things”.
- Dupree is smart, so he sets his privacy settings on the album preventing other people from seeing these photos.
- However, here is the problem, ‘You’ (again, Matt Dillon) sees these pictures have been uploaded in his ‘Mini-Feed’ next time he logs in. He is rehashing the old memories and on one of the photos decides to comment. “Man how dumb was I? Hilarious!”. Comment posted.
- Now, ‘Me’(Kate Hudson) logs in. On here ‘mini-feed’ she can see the picture that her boyfried ‘You’(Matt Dillon) has commented on. Not a big deal, he commented on it, so now it is visible to people he knows.
- PROBLEM!!! – If ‘Me’(Kate Hudson) clicks on the image, she can now cycle through every picture in the album – an album by somebody she is not friends with and could never view their profile or pictures otherwise. This is a huge problem and a flaw. There is absolutely no enforcement of the privacy settings if a person ‘twice-removed’ from the owner of the photos enters the album this way.
If the metaphor is confusing – try it out yourself and see what I mean:
If the metaphor I provided here is hard to follow, I decided to post step by step instructions of how your privacy is being invaded on a daily basis.
- Log in to facebook.
- Find a friend of yours.. A friend who has recently commented on someone else’s photo. The important thing here is ’someone’ means someone you aren’t friends with, and you also don’t belong to the same network. (i.e. you can’t view their profile).
- In your friend’s news feed, click the thumbnail of the photo they commented on. It will take you to that photo. (In my opinion, this is already breaking the privacy rules).
- Once you are done laughing at the no doubt hilarious, mischievous or embarrassing photo your friend commented on, click the photo. It will take you to the next photo in that album. Click again and again, until you have been through the entire album.
- Next, wonder why on earth you could see a strangers photos.
- Last, be concerned that people all over the place are seeing things, that Facebook tells people ‘only your friends’ will see this.
The reason, I know this is an exploit, security hole, bug, or what have you is that while in that album – try to click “Back to Album” – it won’t take you to the album, it will take you the ‘you two aren’t friends’ view of that person. Also, the link to go back to the album and person’s profile normally in the lower right-hand side disappears. So there is definitely some strange behavior going on here.
Will Facebook fix this as fast as they did the ‘Advanced Search’ issue? Let’s hope. Is this old news I just missed the boat on? I don’t think so.
In the meantime, you may want to think about what you are uploading to Facebook – because your friends might not like it if they knew, regardless of what Facebook tells them, that total strangers, potential employers, or even their parole officers may be able to see it.
Leave me a comment if you try this out. Let me know if it worked or not.
Sausage Rabbits
8
Mar0
Mar0
Always looking for ways to keep lunch interesting I came across a great blog… The photographs are artistically done and the ideas are great as well. The ideas seem to be mainly aimed at keeping kids interested in lunch – so maybe I’m just a big kid.
The site is called “Lunch in a box : Building a better bento”.
Lunch in a box is full of great ideas and tips for lunching success… but I have to admit what really drove to write this was the Sausage Rabbits.
My own mom was responsible for some of the greatest school lunches.. but I don’t remember ever having sausage in the shape of animals it may be made from… nice!
Tapes ‘n Tapes Preview of "Walk It Off"
6
Mar0
Mar0
By 1pm Central time – it will be all over… I have been enjoying the gracious free Preview of the new Tapes ‘n Tapes album – Walk it Off. Which is due out in the US on April 8th.
I really like the artwork for it too. Looks and sounds like it is going to be a huge winner! Can’t wait for the full release.
Update: Every song is great – but I must say the drumming on Conquest stopped me in my tracks and prompted me to write that I love the drum work on this song. Woot!
Update, Update: Simply, wow. I am overly excited for this to be released and can’t wait to stroll down the streets to the beat of this album. Every song has prompted me to want to write an update about my excitement… but I will resist.
If you have a chance in the next 3 hours – go to: http://www.tapesntapes.com/preview and enter your email address to get access to the free preview while it lasts! Otherwise you will have to wait like the rest of ‘em.
10 Gallon Gallery
