I spent a few days this week at the same cottage where I was last August. Once again, we had a ridiculously bright moon while there. I visited some of the same sites as last time (County Cider Company, Buddha Dog, the cigar store, the Sandbanks) and a couple new places (Fifth Town Cheese, Duke of Marysburg pub). I took this photo outside the aforementioned pub, probably my favourite pic of the trip:
I then headed to Montreal to meet up with my friend Matt from library school. I hadn’t been to Montreal for 12 years which is pretty ridiculous. We checked out Dieu du Ciel where we drank some amazing beer. As you can see, moderation was not the watchword that day:
Favourite beers were Chaman (Double IPA) and Peche Mortel (Imperial Coffee Stout). I also really liked one of their single IPAs but was unable to determine if it was Corne du Diable or Vaisseau des Songes. I’m thinking it was probably Corne du Diable because it had a massive grapefruit flavour more common in AIPAs than EIPAs.
Been watching a couple of series I hadn’t seen before, one older and one current:
When HBO’s Oz originally aired, I gave it a miss. I think I was burned out on prison-set movies at the time. That’s unfortunate since it was a great show. The show’s executive producers were Barry Levinson and Tom Fontana who were both involved in Homicide. While that show was groundbreaking for a network series, you could tell it was straining against the limits imposed by that environment. Oz was HBO’s first hour long dramatic series and it certainly set the stage for other gritty shows like The Sopranos and The Wire which would come later.
The show follows the story of Tobias Beecher, a lawyer imprisoned for killing a child while driving drunk. He finds himself in Oswald State Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison. All of the standard prison themes are examined here: violence, racial tension, drug addiction, homosexuality, rape. It’s a tribute to the writing and the acting that this show remained fresh and watchable for six seasons.
One of my favourite things about the show is recognizing all of the actors who have passed through my other favourite tv shows like Homicide and The Wire. There is no shortage of crossover here.
The other show I’ve been watching is more recent, the FX comedy It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. It’s about four “friends” (actually three friends and a sister) who own an Irish dive bar in Philly. It’s like Curb Your Enthusiasm only with 4 or 5 misanthropes instead of just one (Danny Devito joined the cast in the second season; imagine his nasty Louie character from Taxi transplanted to a bar environment). This show is like the anti-Cheers. The characters are constantly backstabbing each other, running each other down and just generally being complete a**holes. And like Curb, no subject is taboo for laughs. Definitely check this out if you haven’t.
I found John Wohlers’ presentation on drupal’s flag module from the recent Chicagoland Library Drupal Group to be quite interesting (skip to 1:20:50 in the stream for that presentation). This module looks like a promising way to allow users to bookmark/favourite content on our new site as well as to flag inappropriate content. I also really like Waubonsee’s approach to an A-Z list of databases where entries are initially collapsed to save space. I think we’ll steal this!
I previously wrote about backing up stored passwords in firefox and there was some discussion about some more robust password solutions. I still have not tried any password utilities but if I was going to, I would probably give LastPass a shake first. It was covered on a recent Security Now podcast and Steve gave it a clean bill of health. It looks really slick, is available for all platforms including mobile and is free. There is a dollar a month premium version but I think you only need that for the mobile apps.
I recently watched this biopic about them and really enjoyed it. I’d never really listened to their music although I’m a big Joan Jett fan. “I Love Rock N’ Roll” is one of my favourite songs of all time and “Bad Reputation” is pretty awesome too. The Runaways were kind of like the Sex Pistols in that originally they were a manufactured band that got away from their svengali (in this case, Kim Fowley).
I subsequently also watched Edgeplay, a documentary about the band. It was interesting but with Joan Jett not participating, incomplete. Sort of like documentaries about Apple with no Steve Jobs. Kim Fowley comes off as even more of a bastard in this one than in the Hollywood version.
Very cool documentary about the American beer industry. Covers the rise of craft brewing as well as the underhanded business tactics engaged in by the BMC (Bud/Miller/Coors) swill merchants to try to maintain their market share. Sam Calagione from Dogfish Head is featured prominently and to a lesser extent, the always amusing Greg Koch from Stone. Here’s the trailer:
I sat in on this webinar last week. Ostensibly about all of the contrib modules which have been brought into core for d7, that was really only a small part of what was covered. They also talked about Drupal Gardens. Wanna play around with d7 now? Drupal Gardens is the easiest way and it’s free…
I hadn’t been to GRB since the spring for Curmudgeon IPA (my mouth waters just thinking about it). I finally gave up on their website as an information delivery vehicle…it hasn’t been updated in six months. However, I noticed a new beer on their profile page on BA so I gave them a call and asked what their current seasonal beer was. I was told they had two: Plowman’s Anniversary Ale and Raspberry Pils. The anniversary ale is in honour of their third anniversary (yup, sounds about right).
I went over and picked up several bottles of the anniversary ale and one of the raspberry pils. I’m not big on fruit beers but figure I should try everything of theirs at least once. I asked the owner if the anniversary ale was the same “Plowman’s IPA” which was entered in the IPA Challenge at barVolo and he confirmed that it was. The labels on the bottles remind me why “drinking local” is desirable if you have access to a decent brewery: with bottling dates within the last week, that’s fresh beer!
The story with the anniversary ale is they have taken the regular Plowman’s Ale and upped the hops (70 IBU), the ABV (6.5% vs. 4.7%) and the malt. To be honest though, I don’t see how that makes this an IPA. While Curmudgeon is clearly recognizable as an IPA of the English variety, I don’t buy this as an IPA. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that this is a bad beer, it’s not. But I don’t like it anywhere near as much as Curmudgeon and to be honest, I’m not even sure it’s better than the regular Plowman’s. Maybe my expectations were just too high…
When HBO’s 
