Gulf Coast SPFathon

I get sunburned if a single photon lands on exposed skin. Spending a week at 30 degrees north in August not the best environment for me, but I didn't want to spend all day indoors, so I tried an extensive range of sunscreens. Least favorite: nutragena spf 110. I forget the exact name, but it was supposedly sweatproof, but that was not my experience. Coppertone Sport Ultra Sweatproof lotion was the reliable go-to product -- worked well even in the water and sweating. Generally I used spf 50. They make an spf100 spray that is basically like coating yourself with a layer of polyurethane or really good furniture wax. Weird and hard to get off later, but seemed to work ok. My overall favourite, although not nearly as cost effective as the coppertone sport, was Bullfrog Marathon Mist Continuous Spray (spf 50). I would go through half a bottle in a single application, but it went on quick and easy, worked well, felt ok going on and smelled ok as well. Expensive but good.

Gulf Coast

Down in the redneck riviera. Very encouraging: loads of life in the water. Lots of big blue crabs (surprisingly scuttling around in the water on the gulf side, normally they are more likely to be found in the bay side), fish of all shapes and sizes -- catfish, ladyfish, spanish mackerel, and many others. Even some dolphins.

UPDATE: also swam with a southern stingray, shovelnose guitarfish, and some bigger fish that looked like sheepshead. Plus a bunch of smaller ones I couldn't identify.

UPDATE2: the bad news: conspicuously absent are the donax, little clams that always used to be everywhere here. They are supposedly quite sensitive to pollution.

Brew Britainnia: Better Late Than Never

British brewing is about 20 years behind the US. In the past few decades, the US has witnessed a thriving and maturing brewing scene. The enthusiasm has been both broad and deep. The canonical brew, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, is what I'd call an APA, an American Pale Ale. But the market has not limited itself to even a narrow range of styles. Everything's been fair game -- from Belgianesque ales to wheat beers to fruit beers to light lagers to all manner of porter and stout. Beers invented in Britain but not brewed here for a long time were revitalized in the US and are finally being picked back up by British brewers (thanks to Will Hawkes for excellent coverage).

Seems to me that cheap lagers have been eating the lunch of the brit bitter brewers. Why so much complacency? Hard to say. I was astonished in the 90s to see so much budweiser in the isles. Would it have killed the breweries to put out some decent lagers, properly chilled? They really only have themselves to blame. And CAMRA needs to share the blame. Cask-conditioned "real" ales are a fine thing and worthy of preservation, but all that enthusiasm so narrowly directed, while opportunity after opportunity passed by ungrasped.... The same enthusiasm in the US translated into support of the whole craft of brewing, even for the "unreal" avenues. The brewers were slow to adapt. The enthusiasts too dogmatic. The decline of the pub has been well-documented, but beermakers were way too slow to respond to competition from bars and slow to push into the home market. Craft brewing sells well in the US. Is this because there's been a craze for "pubs" sweeping the states? Err, no. Not at all.

Fortunately, the long idiotic slumber of the British Brewer seems to be ending. Inspired by their American Cousins, they are churning out new beers, new types, new marketing efforts. And small brewers are popping up! Not regional ones that simply churn out a localized bitter (yawn), but ones showing a bit of wit and creativity. As with the US in the early 90s, it won't all work. Some will be in it for marketing rather than for the craft (long ago famously labelled "markebrewers" as opposed to "microbrewers" by my friend Zim, no shabby homebrewer himself). But many are diving in for love of the craft and it's about time!

First, please bring on the APAs! They are good cold. I hear that refrigeration is sweeping the nation here in the UK, and many homes hope to have these new-fangled devices before too long. Beer is good with food. You can buy beer in bottles, put these in your "fridge", and have them at hour leisure. You don't have to belly up to the pub rail with bearded blokes and tedious dipsticks like James May to enjoy a good beer. Uncap your cold, carbonated ales, pour your ports, let loose your lagers, stock up on your stouts! "Were they the sons of tea-sippers, who won the fields of Cressy and Agincourt, or dyed the Danube's streams with Gallic blood?" Hell no, they were beer drinkers!

Some signs of the change

Sign from a nice little boozer on Goldsmith Row, in Hackney. Not a posh pub, not a posh area, but SNPA! Even more surprising, Brooklyn Brown!! British breweries should be embarrassed.

Brodies -- an East End brewer in Leyton. Their Seven Hop IPA is nearly great. It's hopped to American levels, would make Three Floyds proud, but the big flaw is that it's well over 7%, halfway to a barley wine! Too strong. Keep the hops but dial it down a couple notches and this could be remarkable.

Camden beers are solid. I'm also enjoying Meantime Pale Ale from, you guessed it, a Greenwich brewer that seems to make consistently good beers.

Small brewer from Bermondsey. To be honest, this tasted like a so-so homebrew effort, bit sour and flat but with potential. Happy to support them because London needs more brewers.

Proof that the beerpocalypse is upon us. Yes, an "American Double IPA"... with a TESCO label! Holy mother of hops. I prefer my APA term, but "American Double IPA" works. Or, it would work if this weren't completely undrinkable. It's 9.2%! Seriously, it's undrinkable. Good hops but if you actually make a barleywine you need to round it off a bit. How did they brew this? Or did they just pour vodka into a stolen case of Anchor Liberty Ale and rebottle it? But hey, if this isn't a kick up the backside to the big British brewers, nothing is. Get on with it!

Bacon #2

Simple cure with maple, hot-smoked over hickory. Success! Curious now about cold-smoking. But even after hot-smoking, was nice sliced and fried.

Holy Smokes

Rural South in the US displays vast diversity of quality of food on offer. On the one hand the cheapest, most horrid, engineered, factory-extruded not-really-food food is available in abundance. On the other hand, I found a really nice unpasteurised organic cheddar at a regular grocery store. On the third hand, some of the finest fresh produce, fish, game, etc. can be easily and cheaply gotten. Had some freshly caught bluegill the other night. Loads of homegrown tomatoes. And a fantastic hickory-smoked chicken that was organically raised by our relatives here.

Speaking of hickory smoke, we also just finished a successful canadian bacon experiment, using a huge (and cheap, this was not a high-quality piece of meat) pork loin that we brine-cured (with, among other things, bunches of fresh sage and thyme from the garden) and then smoked. Turned out great. Disappeared quickly. Next up: a maple cured and hot-smoked bacon. Procuring the pork belly was harder than I expected, doesn't seem to be a common cut here for some reason, but we got one and it's curing now.

Amsterdam Travel Report

Thanks (again) to seat61.com, had a successful mission to Amsterdam in which getting there was part of the fun instead of something to dread. Took the train from London to Harwich -- relatively fast train from liverpool street station to manningtree, then an easy switch to Harwich International. We arrived a few minutes before boarding opened for the Stena Line ferry. A bit after 20:30 we were onboard, for a 23:15 sailing. The cabin was great. Comfy beds with nice bedding -- better than many hotels I've stayed at. Good sized window plus an en suite with a good shower. Another hit: TV with satellite channels plus some onboard cams -- fore & aft along with a puppy cam on the pet kennel. Cute.

We had a late dinner in the a la carte restaurant. The food wasn't all that good but miles better than airplane food and a lot more pleasant. Might've been better in one of the other restaurants on board. Had a really good sleep and then a buffet breakfast, which was much better far then the dinner. It's an early breakfast. Next time we'll eat dinner before boarding and get to sleep earlier, still going for the breakfast.

Exiting into the Netherlands was really easy, and moments later we were on a short train towards Rotterdam. Switched to a train into Amsterdam, walked to the hotel but it was quite early in the day still. Stayed at the Ambassade Hotel. The staff were friendly and welcoming, the room spacious and comfortable, and the breakfast the next morning was great. Lovely place.

Had a really nice time in Amsterdam. Sunday went home by ICE train from Amsterdam to Brussels, and eurostar from there. The ICE train was great -- good a/c, roomy, comfortable seats. Eurostar was annoying as always. The only good thing about the eurostar is the journey time. Checking in as if it were an airplane is pointless and infuriating. You end up stuck in a shitty waiting area with overpriced crappy choices for food. Train travel should be about walking up to the thing moments before it leaves, having wandered around a hopping train station or local neighbourhood to dine or amuse yourself prior to your departure time. Instead you get a little waiting room hell experience. Then the train itself is unfailingly stuffy and cramped. Bleh. It's a lot better than flying still, but we decided we'd much rather spend a few more hours on the return trip and go back by the boat again (the day boat, even).

Shabby HVAC

The British seem oddly incompetent when it comes to getting air the right temperature. My office building, not even 30 years old, is routinely too hot or too cold. This despite an external temperature range that is not excessively broad over the course of a year. Tubes are notoriously stuffy. There are brand new buses on the route I take to work and they come with ventilation in the upper deck. Not air conditioning, just powered ventilation. It seems to make no difference whatsoever, except to be really loud. 78 decibels! For no benefit. This would be unacceptable in Germany, but maybe somebody here is proud of this great advancement in bus riding discomfort (there's also a curved rail on the stairs, which makes no sense, but I might save that rant for another post).

Fireplaces are done well here, but anything involving forced air ends up a bit of a crapshoot.

Apps Update: Evernote, Omnifocus

I'm still really liking Evernote. Well worth the price for the premium edition. Glad to see they are doing well and raising more money. Maybe with that warchest they can buy Omni Group, if for no other reason than to integrate (the excellent on iPad) Omni Focus with Evernote. That seems to be a much-requested feature that's more down to Evernote's not providing easy (e.g. URI) access to notes than to any shortcoming of Omni Focus.

Virtual Planespotting

My new favorite app: planefinder/planefinder HD. Immensely gratifying geek credibility enhancement moment: displaying type, heading, speed, altitude, route, airline, recent path, and, if available, some snapped photos of the actual plane that's just interrupted your conversation by flying overhead.

Book Reviewing

I am well calibrated to some movie reviewers, e.g. Roger Ebert, to the extent that I can usually predict my rating of a movie based on the review. I've not found the same with book reviewers. In fact I seem to be get a bum steer every time I buy something on the back of keen reviews.

The most recent example is Robopocalypse (robocalypse?) by Daniel Wilson, which we bought after a gushing pre-publication nod from Corey Doctorow (usually spot-on, will give him a pass on this one). Got that sinking feeling not long into it. As someone who loved Max Brooks' World War Z, I expected to enjoy it, but it seems way more contrived (yes, I know, more contrived than zombiegeddon) and excessively derivative. Not only did he follow the pattern by first publishing an analog of The Zombie Survival Guide in the form of How To Survive A Robot Uprising, but he goes on to seemingly replicate some of the World War Z characters as well (e.g. old Japanese social outcast who defends solitary kingdom, selfish teen who discovers bravery). The recurring characters seem crafted to sell movie rights (well, should have known, but at least this has potential to be quite an entertaining film). There is way too much "telling" and not enough "showing" -- that is, too much of the narrator telling me that something was really important or influential or that someone was a great leader, rather than letting the story show me someone demonstring leadersheip, or show me the impact of events or actions. (Even the overrated but not bad Philip Pullman "Northern Lights" trilogy suffers from this, with almost every character randomly ejaculating love and praise for the awesomeness of that "little girl".)

Another problem is the premise. Here's where I kick myself for listening to recommendations. Thirty years ago I remember the publications that would accept sci-fi stories practically begging for no more "computer-gone-crazy" stories. And appliances turning on people was an old gag even then. And, seriously, robots suck. I recently watched a demonstration of some robots making breakfast. It was sped up to keep people from falling asleep watching it, and the robots were crap at every skill. Industrial assembly robots are awesome, sure, but compared to advances in computing, robotics is young and stilted. The computer on my phone is powerful enough to kick my ass at chess, but the world's most sophisticated robots can get an egg out of the fridge and fry it about as well as a trained dog. So when Doctorow calls the book "gripping, utterly plausible, often terrifying" I'm left baffled in disagreement on all counts. Premise aside, even the dumbest premise can make for a good read, but this book just didn't work for me.

Justin Cronin's The Passage was a widely gushed-over book that I got upon reading reviews. The prose was solid, definitely good craftsmanship on display in the writing. But, again, there was a big outtrade between the recommendations and my reading. It was... ok. It badly needed editing (real editing, I'm not talking about proofreading). And much of it that seemed to be building up to really big plot points or big moments for characters that either never really happened or turned out to be disappointing or kind of nonsensical. Lots of comparisons to Stephen King. Maybe that should have been a tipoff. If you want an imagined Stephen King experience without reading Stephen King, I'd try The Unquiet by John Connolly.

So either I find a book reviewer I can calibrate to or just ignore book reviews in general and solely taking recommendations from people I know. In that vein, the book I just finished that I'd recommend (although it's almost written like a play): Explorers Of The New Century by Magnus Mills.

English History for Americans

In 1066, Norman invaded England and forced King Arthur to sign the Magna Carta, which is latin for "molten card". Three generations later came Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth. The Shakespearian Age lasted until King George and the American Revolution, which to this day is the single most important event in all of English history and is still widely discussed and even mined for rhetoric in political speeches. Immediately after the abject failure of the Revolution, the Victorians came into power and ruled for 150 years, until Winston Churchill and WWII happened. After the war, England invented soccer, Churchill retired to be replaced by Margaret Thatcher, and Princess Di sat on the throne. More recently, England was admitted as 9th State of the European Union.



Fun Facts:
London comes from the Roman word "Londinium", their name for the element Lithium [Li] which was abundant in the brackish silt of the Thames marshes around the area now known as "Limehouse".


Although Victorians invented the stick-frame house, this was only ever widely constructed in America, as resource constraints meant English builders had to use bricks.

England's chief exports are sonnets, actors, and sarcasm.

The Bulge In My Trousers

I need a new wallet. Probably a new walleting model. It's way too thick. It's uncomfortable to sit on and not particularly flattering. I probably put too much stuff in it to boot. The contents of my wallet, with money folded and all the cards aligned into a single stack, are 14mm thick. Selecting only the things I have a 50-50 chance of using in any given week, this shrinks to 9mm. Not piling the cards in a single stack would reduce this further. My wallet, fully loaded, is 24mm thick. Nearly an inch! That's 10mm empty. That's thicker than my naked iphone (the slipcase for which regrettably adds another 4mm).

I should separate daily-carry items from mission-specific items and go with a more modular wallet approach, starting with something a lot thinner and more sensible than leather for the wallet. Let's see what mr. google suggests....