the KOHFЮザTR0N

2011 Michigan Brewer's Guild Festival

2011-07-24T16:25:00.000-05:00

The annual Brewer's Guild Beer Fest held at Riverside Park in Ypsilanti is by far of my favorites summer events in the Ann Arbor area. Sure it's usually Sold Out and crowded, and there's a good chance you'll get your shoes muddy as it often rains in late July, but there's no better way to truly get a taste of the range of beer Michigan has to offer.

So this year I took a cab over to the 14th annual festival with much anticipation. As the even usually fills to capacity, the lines can be long at certain brewer's tables. Luckily (and surprisingly), it's usually the big breweries that attract the biggest lines - Arcadia, New Holland, Short's. I can try these beers at any self-respecting Ann Arbor bar, so this year I adopted the strategy of going to whichever table had the shorter line. I must say, although it helped me try ton of stuff I haven't before, the success rate was quite low...

This year I've tried the following:

Detroit Brewing Co - Detroit [Red] Dwarf
Dragonmead - Sin Eater Dark Belgian Strong
Great Baraboo Brewing Co - Hop Through Summer Ale
Grizzly Peak - Sheerwater English IPA
The Hideout Brewing Co - Cherry Mango Chile Pineapple Pilsner
Liberty St. Brewing Co - Emperor Norton Russian Imperial Stout
Lily's Seafood Grill & Brewery - Propeller Island Pilsner
Dark Horse - Fore Smoked Stout
Malty Dog Brewery & Supplies - Big Lake IPA
Odd Side ales - Peach Tea Blond
Big Buck Brewery & Steakhouse - Banana Bourbon
Mount Pleasant Brewing Co - Iron Horse IPA
Saugatuck Brewing Co - True Scot Ale
Schmohz Brewing Co - Bone Crusher Stout
Jolly Pumpkin - Noel Holiday Ale
Brewery Vivant - Zaison "Super" Saison

The Vivant Saison was the surprise favorite, being both extremely light and drinkable, and still possessinga bit of a bite with a peppery aftertaste:

Although I'm biased since I've tried a lot of Saugatuck beers, their Scotch Ale was up to par as well, and they are my second favorite of the new MI breweries, right after the excellent Milan, MI based Original Gravity.

Despite the low success rate I was glad I went, as this might be my last MI beer fest for a while. The fun of having so many choices to try definitely made up for all the mediocre samples I ended up with due to my shortest-line strategy.

How do you share your music?

2011-07-17T08:42:00.001-05:00

After a couple of weeks playing with Turntable.fm and Spotify I still haven't found a music service that makes it easy and fun sharing music with your friends. Turntable comes close, but a lot of time it's too much work for people who have full-time jobs. Both services let you share and link your FB friends, but both suffer from the Google + complex - there aren't enough people using them to make it interesting. So, I ask you - how do you find new music and share it with friends?

If you know me, you know I'm not a big hip hop fan. However, there have always been certain songs I liked and I knew there must be 'good' and 'bad' hip hop, and if I filter out most of the stuff on the radio, there will be some gold dust down there somewhere. In the past few weeks, thanks to both turntable and spotify I've gotten a lot of exposure to a lot of good new and old hip hop. So if you're not a hip hop fan, and you trust my music tastes (I'm looking at you Dad), here are 5 rap/hip hop albums that I think are indispensable, and more importantly - a lot of fun! This will be a duh for those who listen to this kind of stuff, I'm not going for obscurity points.

1. Deltron 3030 - Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Kid Koala and Dan the Automator
2. Danger Doom - Danger Mouse, MF Doom
3. Doggystyle - Snoop Dogg
4. The Chronic - Dr. Dre
5 Bizarre Ride II - The Pharcyde

So there you go, two fairly recent ones and 3 classics. What's your favorite? And where do you play and share your music?

A million ways to die

2011-07-10T09:08:00.000-05:00

This is why I usually don't read the news in the mornings. You're enjoying your cup of coffee and then realize...

You can be shot with a high powered rifle and be left near a water well,

cheat death and then fall off a roller coaster,

go out to the ball game and go off the rails,

give up technology and passenger airbags, since they wouldn't help anyway,

push the emergency break and make it all worse.

And that's only a day's worth of news.

Life Fantastic Indeed (Man Man, Life Fantastic; May 2011)

2011-07-02T16:49:00.001-05:00

Man Man, originally from Philly, recorded their latest album, Life Fantastic, in a studio in Nebraska. Perhaps there's something about this combination of Eastern indie noodle-ing and Midwestern sensibility that helps hold this whole album together. Man Man to me was always a band that teetered on the edge of chaos in terms of their musicality, especially during their live show. Despite many visits to the big stage, they're still not a band that makes singles, and sometimes the dissonant creepy keyboards are, well, creepy. But in the studio it seems they have a way of channeling their disorder to make fun songs you can actually hum and sing along to. Some songs on this album read like Tom Waits, others remind me of Firewater, but you can always tell it's Man Man (largely thanks to Honus Honus' raspy vocals). There's a few snoozers, ("Oh La Brea,") but there are plenty that will get stuck in your head - "Life fantastic," "Pirahnnas Club . So although wikipedia still brands them as an 'experimental' band, I believe by now they know what they're doing quite well, and their experiments come with a clear hypothesis and lots of grant quality specific aims.

Genomics for Better Booze

2011-06-18T09:11:00.001-05:00

I was out and about on NCBI this morning and noticed a few ongoing genome sequencing projects that seemed to have their priorities straight:

Organism	Group	Status	Consortium
Saccharomyces cerevisiae Kyokai no. 7	Fungi	In Progress	National Research Institute of Brewing
Saccharomyces pastorianus Weihenstephan 34/70	Fungi	Assembly	SUNTORY LIMITED (Japan)
Saccharomyces cerevisiae Lalvin QA23	Fungi	Assembly	The Australian Wine Research Institute
Saccharomyces cerevisiae VL3	Fungi	Assembly	The Australian Wine Research Institute
Saccharomyces cerevisiae Vin13	Fungi	Assembly	The Australian Wine Research Institute
Saccharomyces cerevisiae FostersB	Fungi	Assembly	The Australian Wine Research Institute
Saccharomyces cerevisiae FostersO	Fungi	Assembly	The Australian Wine Research Institute
Saccharomyces cerevisiae AWRI1631	Fungi	Assembly	The Australian Wine Research Institute
Saccharomyces cerevisiae AWRI796	Fungi	Assembly	The Australian Wine Research Institute

Saccharomyces is of course yeast, and the apparently at least some in the liquor industry want to know very well what they're brewing and distilling. From a couple of quick google searches, it seems that most of the strains here are for wine making, although it would seem reasonable that the FostersB/O strains from an Australian institute might be those used for the beer. Of course, these are only the projects that are willing to make their data public (through NCBI), so perhaps the beer brewers are just keeping all their secret genome sequencing projects in the basements of their breweries.

Nature vs. Man (in photos)

2011-05-06T21:11:00.001-05:00

On the left side is grass growing through some paint chips left from last summer. The other two are old window well covers, which due to the transparency encourage things to grow through them.

Summer/Fall Beer Lineups

2010-12-11T17:02:00.001-05:00

Here's a sampling of the beers I've been trying out this past Summer and Fall. You can click through to the Flickr image to see the details, but I'll just mention my favorites here. From this lineup I think my favorites were the Michigan Brewing High Seas IPA and the Old Curmudgeon Ale from Founders. The former is a very refreshing IPA without overdoing the bitterness, and the latter is nice evening beer with a kick (9.8 abv) which is somewhere between an American Ale and an English Ale, especially good if you're a fan of the earthy barrel-aged taste, like I am. It's only brewed in May though, so you gotta be quick.

Although they're hard to see, these are the beers from October/Novermber. I was actually pleasantly surprised by "Costco" Kirkland beer, which came in Amber, Pale Ale, German Ale and a Heffenweizen, all brewed by Gordon Biersch. They're not anything out of this world, but for a Costco-sized variety pack it's a much better deal than beer of comparable price. I also really liked the Cable Car Lager, a small batch from City Brewing, although the Beer Advocate reviews of it are pretty crappy. Again click through to Flickr for more detail.

Funnel Web Spiders

2010-09-19T16:05:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I noticed a funnel-shaped spider web along the grass next to a roof drain. I asked around to see if anyone knew what kind of spider weaves such a web. No one knew, so I looked it up, and what do you know - the funnel web spider. Unlike their Aussie counterparts most of the U.S. species are pretty harmless, and pretty common. They make sheet-like webs that narrow down to a funnel-like cave, in which they chill out or eat their catch. The funnels are around an inch in diameter on average.

Anyway, now that you know, here are some photos from 10 different webs found around my house.

Signs and Maps from South Africa

2010-07-17T09:25:00.003-05:00

I have a bit of a compulsive obsession, during travel, of taking photos of signs, maps, street art and graffiti that catch my eye. Here are some of the more interesting signs I saw in South Africa:

Graffiti was frequent, but more so in Johannesburg, where I mostly saw it out of a taxi window, and only managed to get two average examples.

The road signs in South Africa were phenomenally thorough (and perhaps new, due to the World Cup preparation) and I would have had a tough time getting lost if I had to drive there myself. Unfortunately not a lot were "decorated" with graffiti or sticker (again perhaps due to the preparations). My favorite was a set of stickers appended to STOP signs to make slogans such as "stop worrying," "stop & dream," or a less zen "stop wetland development."

I did manage to find a well-stickered sign in Melville, Johannesburg, and even a clever sticker on the back of a map sign out on Cape Point.

The most helpful maps were those around the stadiums, since there was often chaos in terms of fencing a crowd control and a quick glance at the map could help you avoid getting stuck at bottlenecks.

The rest of the finds were mostly ads. However there is one photo I really like - a news stand on the day of South Africa's first Cup game. The anticipation in the city was palpable, and it was great to see such blanket optimism from every local, and every local newspaper.

You can check out the whole set, with descriptions on Flickr.

FOOD and ROADS; Two photo sets from SA, now with descriptions.

2010-07-11T11:22:00.005-05:00

ROADS

The roads in the Western Cape in general are in very good condition, and the scenery along them changes from one spectacular view to another with the fickleness usually reserved for the local weather. Check out the set and see how you can go from wine country, to snow, to desert in a matter of a hundred miles.

FOOD

South Africans like their food, especially grilled meat and veggies. This is a local street vendor favorite that consists of boerwurst (farmer's sausage), grilled onions, and a sauce of your choice. A friend of mine taught me a good trick. When trying to choose one sauce out of 10, without knowing what any of them taste like, choose the container with the least amount of sauce remaining - chances are you're getting the favorite; and as such also the most agreeable to someone with a late-night munchies, who like you, ends up at one of these vendors. Check out the national breakfast, the most average sushi in Cape Town, and other hits and misses in the set.

New Six Pack Maps

2010-07-10T15:17:00.004-05:00

Updated with three more maps. Breweries in OH, PA and NY this time. Download and view in your favorite KMZ viewer (such as Google Earth).

A week of World Cup

2010-06-26T09:29:00.004-05:00

I recently spent a week in Cape Town and Johannesburg attending four Cup matches and accruing way too many airline miles. If you're a fan of detail, you can see the chronological sets of all the photos here, I tried to add some descriptions where possible.

Here's a view of Table Mountain, the ever-looming symbol of Cape Town.

Below is the panorama of Green Point Stadium, where we saw France, Italy, Paraguay and Uruguay play.

I'll putting up more themed sets on Flickr and commenting on them here in the next couple of weeks.

RC Copter Painting

2010-05-05T19:58:00.001-05:00

ligh

Multiple exposures of a tiny RC helicpoter flying around flashing it's multicolored lights, relative speed can be seen by the length of the "dashes." All the way on the right is a tight spiral - just making the helicopter spin around as fast as it can.

The year so far, on Flickr

2010-04-04T15:56:00.005-05:00

The year was welcomed by a blue moon, accompanied by the unusually white rock. The plentiful snow was enjoyed by the working dog. In January cars big and small made their annual pilgrimage to Detroit. More snow and ice made life difficult for humans and quadrupeds alike. A panorama of the U of M basketball arena also made a brief cameo. The snows of winter are behind us now, and signs of spring are popping up everywhere. Now get out of here and take some of your own Spring photos!

Finally a proper winter's snow

2010-02-22T10:20:00.002-05:00

Snow pie is made out of Snow

2010-02-10T22:20:00.001-05:00

The snowfall in Michigan didn't measure up to the NY-NJ-CT tri-state area this past week, but we still got enough to enjoy us some snow pie. Mmm.

Winter Wonderland

2010-01-14T22:26:00.001-05:00

A pipe burst over christmas break and created this ice sculpture in the back of the Natural Sciences building on Michigan campus.

Cupcakes

2009-11-22T16:55:00.002-05:00

I call the mutant one!

H1N1 v.s. U of M Bus (Sticker)

2009-11-12T11:39:00.003-05:00

Due to the shortage of the vaccines, H1N1 clinics have been rare, and only priority patients (which primarily consist of pregnant women) have been able to get the shot. Recently a campus-wide email announced there are 200 vaccines available for a student body of thousands. So far, no reports of pandemic on campus though....

Face Blend - Picasa 3.5

2009-10-10T14:41:00.001-05:00

Picasa 3.5 finally catches up to what 3.0 should've been - integrating face recognition into the desktop client, fixing the horrible keyword (label) interface and patching up the buggy and massively inconvenient Import intereface. The People Search addition is probably the one I've been waiting for the longest since I organize my photos mostly by events and have tons of photos with people that I'd like to be able to bring up in parallel rather than going folder-diving. Previously I had to use the keywords, which was a pain in itself (why would you make keywords case-sensitive?). Another cool feature about the face recognizer is that now Picasa can process only the recognized face region instead of the whole photo in a bunch of its batch tools. The image above is a multiple exposure collage of all the ~300 images of my face Picasa has identified so far. A lot of them aren't forward-facing so much blurring occrs, but the general features that Picasa uses to recognize my face are clearly vizible - the bags under the eyes, the creepy Joker smile, and of course my awesome jew-nose!

Have Picasa 3.5? Make your own face blend. Just click on a person in the "People" collection, select all the images, and go to Create-->Picture Collage. Choose the "Multiple Exposure" layout and click create. Be prepared to wait a good hour or two if you have more than 100 faces.

September Beers

2009-10-09T18:24:00.005-05:00

Below are the beers of September. I would have to say my favorite new try was the Michigan Brewing Co. I.P.A, recommended by my landlord. The Lithuanian-sounding Pils seemed a bit waterish, and the Vanilla Java Porter from Atwater was way to sweet and tasted like a caramel latte. I haven't had Bell's Kalamazoo Stout in a while and was happy to find out I liked it this time around as well. What's your favorite, vote -->

From left to right:
Atwater Vanilla Java Porter (6.00%)
Stella Artois (which I pour incorrectly according to their website)
Bell's Amber Ale (5.8%)
Michigan Brewing Co. High Seas I.P.A
Bell's Kalamazoo Stout (6.00%)
Lagunitas Pils
Smithwick's

Crappy Mobile Shot of a VW Trike

2009-09-20T15:56:00.002-05:00

Sighted at Taco Bell in Clarion, PA

TMBG are even better when they're FREE.

2009-09-17T19:53:00.000-05:00

You can't beat a free show. Especially not when the show is a They Might Be Giants Show (and some Gin Blossoms before that) and it's 5 minutes from your house! Knowing I was in town for the week my awesome friends Viko and D alerted me to the Union County Music Festival, which occured at a golf course just minutes from my house and right next to theirs. There's nothing like spending a nice Sunday evening with a beer in hand, listening to one of your favorite bands with some of your favorite friends. And rock on Edison for being so close to the border with Clark township (which is where the concert technically was). If this becomes a yearly thing it might just be worth driving back for the next summer.

Paws In the Park

2009-08-22T13:52:00.009-05:00

The benefit of having a dog in the house is that it's pretty hard to sleep in on weekends. I say benefit because I personally like to get the most of the two days and if I sleep in too late I feel like I lost a lot of precious weekend day light hours. This weekend we headed to Paws In the Park in Canton (MI), a dog walk/fair benefiting partly the Humane Society of Huron Valley and partly a new off-leash park in Canton.

As most of these types of events go, the walk itself wasn't too substantial, but the park still has a few nice places to sit for a photo...

The booths inside varied, catering to canine fashionistas...

...as well as their simian owners.

There were performances by agility dogs set to music in which many kids of breeds participated, from large...

...to medium...

to small...

Every dog had it's own motivation. Some were more obviously driven by food than others...

Some liked to dive.

Some liked to play frisbee.

Of course most of the attendees just sat and watched...

As always, Luma made lots of friends,

and even learned a few new tricks!

Meanwhile Yuri and I got to enjoy some fresh air and load up on free samples, novelties and brochures. Morning well spent.

Ok. One more.

Culinary Adventures - Flagelladog

2009-08-09T14:22:00.007-05:00

I love hot dogs, and I love pasta. In fact, I frequently eat the two together as lunch and dinner. It's a bit of Russian thing, so I wasn't surprised when I found this post on English Russia describing a recent Russian internet fad of hairy hot-dogs. A brilliant and simple idea. Poke the hot-dog through with the pasta before cooking and when you're done, you get a seemingly un-natural yet extremely appetizing little meal. Of course this probably not for those easily grossed out by anything creepy or crawley. Here's my attempt at a hairy hot dog (HHD):

Raw ingredients:

I did one poking the vermicelli through laterally and one length-wise, we'll see which turns out better.

The lateral wins hands down! It's great to be able to take one bit out of the HHD and get both kosher animal byproducts AND Meijer Select Pasta! The "hair" also nicely holds ketchup and other juices and sauces you put on and around your HHD. Full flavor in every bite.

Seen in: this English Russia post
Flagelladog joke courtesy of Jeremy.

Gotta love Japanese snacks

2009-08-09T14:02:00.001-05:00

Nickolay

-Sent from mobile device-

Little dog, big city.

2009-08-01T09:42:00.001-05:00

Nickolay

-Sent from mobile device-

Of the many fruits of the sea at the Jersey shore

2009-07-18T18:11:00.001-05:00

My Huron Barton Dam Loop

2009-06-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

Went canoeing on the Huron River for the first time in all my residence here in Ann Arbor. We started off at the Argo livery and made our way to Barton dam and back. The usual river trips were not operating because the water level was too high after the recent rains around here, so we got to freestyle-it up the river and back in a 4 mi loop that took about 2 hours. It was a nice day to be on the river, and by the end of our trip we all, some by accident, some intentionally, got to take a swim. In the image above the orange is a GPS trace of our trip from and back to Argo.

GPS via G1 and RideTrac
Image via Google Earth

Hairy Wrench

2009-06-21T09:18:00.001-05:00

Hairy Wrench
Originally uploaded by Khaz

The other day I took some random photos of this dirty old pipe wrench I found in the breezeway, as you do. After opening them up on my computer, I realized that there's a tiny white hair - undoubtedly Luma's - that somehow made it onto this thing despite it being out of sight and out of sniff to her. Times like these I imagine how white and fluffy my lungs must be on the inside from all her hair...

Photos from Peru

2009-06-19T18:03:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago I went on a trip with Peru with my parents. We spent a week in Cusco and at Machu Picchu, taking tours, hiking and walking around town. Both places are major tourist hubs, but the Peruvian culture still came through, just like it did during the Spanish invasion. I mention the conquistadors because you can't visit a single historical site without being reminded of their impact on the region, its religion and the people.

I was most impressed with the Andes, especially on the train ride from Cusco down to Machu Picchu. The ancient slate peaks look like they're covered in moss with all that jungle vegitation. Hiking a part of the Inca Trail was a real treat, and I'm glad I didn't have to do the full 4-day hike. The towns were less impressive, but once you look past (or accept) the tourist-based economy you can find the local small-town charm right under the surface. That and the food was really delicious, despite alpaca being a tough meat.

Anyway, enough talking. Take a look at the photos and then go see it for yourself, and see if you agree.

Click here for Peru photos.

A well deserved bath.

2009-06-15T21:23:00.001-05:00

After nearly a year of neglect, my car finally got a bath this weekend. I need to do this more often, especially since in only a couple of months till she's officially all mine.

Island Lake Park - Mountain Bike Trail

2009-06-14T22:04:00.002-05:00

Finally got to use my mountain bike on some trails for the first time this summer. Did the 9 mi Blue Loop at Island Lake park. The trail was tough because I haven't had much practice on the bike recently, but it was great to ride. The scenery switched every mile and there was a good balance of flat and hilly parts.

The picture is the GPS trace of me riding the trail. It took 1 hour, 4 minutes to complete.

Tracked on G1 using RideTrac
Mapped in Google Earth

Hmm, first name or last name, what will it be.

2009-06-12T23:00:00.001-05:00

Nickolay

-Sent from mobile device-

Tip: Excel Data Point Labels

2009-06-12T18:21:00.009-05:00

There are some things in Excel that make my life so much easier - formulas for one. Being able to auto-update data and graphs is a cool feature, and Excel spreadsheets are easier to share than R code with accompanying data files. However there are other things that drive me mad. For example, the insistence of cells to auto-format any text that looks like scientific notation into a number. Since I work with 4-letter PDB structures with names like 2E50, there are plenty of times when my cut-and-pasted or imported data ends up as 2.00E+50. Of course hat particular annoyance can be overcome by explicitly setting the format of the destination cells to 'Text,' as annoying as that is to remember.

One thing that annoys me to no end however is the inability to add labels to scatter plot points. If you have X and Y values your only choices for the labels are either the name of the series or the values themselves. Usually I got around this either by doing my graphs differently or using R to make these 'fancier' plots, but today I finally needed to make a chart like that in Excel, and it was Google (not Bing) time! Luckily someone, actually a lot of people, already had this issue and there was a MS knowledge base article on it. Apparently the 'easiest' solution (apart from setting each label by hand by clicking on it and filling in the formula) is to write a VB macro that adds the labels brute-force in a one-time run. Here is the kb article for your reference, the sample data and the graph it makes:

"How to use a macro to add labels to data points in an xy scatter chart or in a bubble chart in Excel"

If you have data like such:

Residue	Price	Effective Pixels (millions)
Canon EOS 1D Mark III	$4,160.00	10.1
Canon EOS 5D Mark II	$2,629.00	21
Canon EOS 10D	$324.00	6.3
Canon EOS 40D	$917.00	10.1
Canon EOS 50D	$1,213.00	15.1

You can get a chart like this:

Sure it's not the pretties chart in the world, but it does the job. And with that, my love/hate relationship with Excel continues...

data from dpreview.com

Axis of Evil Soccer

2009-06-06T09:43:00.003-05:00

Earlier this year me a couple of buddies were lucky enough to score some tickets to next year's World Cup in South Africa. The ticket lottery works in such a way that we had to pick certain matches in the schedule before we even know who will be playing in them. With the qualifiers still going there are multiple possibilities for the match-ups we will get to see, but my pessimistic side fears we will end up watching a match of two teams that we absolutely have no interest in - Tunisia vs. Burkina Faso? Trinidad vs. Cameroon? Ok those might be fun, but I certainly hope we don't end up stuck with something like this:

Iran is to play North Korea in the qualifiers today (Saturday June 6th) for the privilege of being the Evil representative to the Cup. The news says the result of the match might even skew an upcoming Iranian election. I for one am rooting for the North Koreans, because you know the players will be killed otherwise (or forced to get plastic surgeries to look like Kim's son for when he's president).

Boddington Ale

2009-06-05T19:32:00.001-05:00

Friday alcohol of the week

Saline Neighbors

2009-06-01T19:03:00.000-05:00

Our neighbors are extremely nice people with a yard, a dog and 3 kids. The only thing they're missing is a white picket fence - which is a good thing. A couple of days ago we heard a knock on the door while unpacking some remaining boxes. At the door were the two youngest from next door with large zip lock bag in their hands. Turns out grandma's farm had an unusually large harvest of asparagus and they had some left over, so they brought it by. How...rural! We cooked some up that night for dinner and it was indeed quite delicious. There was some left over for grilling and then some. See, there are some perks to 'adult' living out in the boonies, besides being able to listen to music as loud as you want.

Franz Ferdinand Show

2009-05-04T19:28:00.005-05:00

Franz Ferdinand played in Pontiac, MI last night. It's about an hour from Saline, so definitely worth a drive. Didn't come early enough to hear Born Ruffians, but I think we only missed a couple of Franz songs. Either way they played their new singles and some more experimental synth-y stuff that almost sounded LCD Soundsystem-ish. I also liked that they took the liberty to jam a little more in their older songs, to make them more interesting. It was a very satisfying show and we even shelled out for some Franz Ferdinand coasters (cause we didn't have enough cash for the T-shirt ((wtf? who doesn't take credit?)) ).

A Bit of Wet Lab Work

2009-05-02T15:14:00.007-05:00

One of the quirks of the new house is that it stands on a private well, which means we don't get water from the city, which also means the water does not necessarily adhere to strict EPA standards. We noticed right away that the water was harder, but after a bit we also started noticing that sometimes it smells a bit sewage-y and there is significant rusting everywhere around the washing machine and other appliances. So to get of the bottom of things Yuri brought this home:

I got excited looking at the beakers, I haven't done any wet lab work since 2003! The instructions give you an idea about the barrage of tests this kit includes:

We did all of the tests (some in duplicate! ) and determined that in our water the triple-threat was definitely alkalinity, pH and hardness. For those tests all of our readings exceeded recommended EPA levels. In the image below you can see the test trip laid on top of the instructions, there are little tick marks where we thought the colors best matched. I'm pretty sure the colors are off a bit on the camera, but you can definitely see we're not on the low end for any of these!

Apparently we also have way too much iron in our water (results not shown), which we found nicely explains the sewage odor - iron bacteria. According to a co-worker of mine "this is what you get" for having a private well in South-Eastern Michigan, the place where the automotive industry built the factories because of iron-rich mines.... Hmm. I thought the Michigan mines were all in the UP? Stupid geology.

Mom, Dad, don't worry. None of these levels seem to be harmful to your health, unless you count dry skin from all the soap you can't wash off. However I have now made a mental note for the next time I try to rent/buy a house with a private well - ask if there is a water softener!

2009-04-27T19:38:00.006-05:00

While in Saline I've grown to rely on the nearest Busch's supermarket for most of our standard day-to-dare fare. My usual re-stocking mission includes a tub of sour cream, a package of DanActive, chocolate chip cookies, and a bunch of meat. Today I felt like something special though, so how could I pass by this Ollie-esque (GOOD WINE! GREAT PRICE! BUY THIS!) Busch's sign.

They strategically place the wine racks next to the bacon and frozen chicken nuggets. Curse you, proven marketing techniques tailored to the local demographics!

I think the best way this wine can be classified is "red." But I suspect it's a Chianti-ish. Either way I suspect it's a better pick than Beefmato, which I judiciously set down after snickering out loud in the aisle for a few seconds.

Well bon-apetit!

Movin up.

2009-04-26T09:51:00.005-05:00

Usually long (month-ish) periods of silence in this blog are followed by a flurry of activity, and it is likely to be the case with this latest outage. Over the past month I haven't really had anything interesting to say as most of my time was spent working or preparing to move.

That's right, this past week I've made the move I didn't think I would be making for a while, from an apartment to a full out house. Now calm down, I'm still renting, so this isn't a settle-down kind of house at all. I would not be crazy enough to buy a house in Michigan at this point. Although I moved from one side of Saline to another (or maybe even just down the middle) it's a world of difference. I now have a huge yard, a garage, a usable basement and more trees and birdhouses than I can throw a rock rock at.

I found lots of cool things around the house during the move and now have material to actually write about that you guys will find interesting. So keep an eye out. Meanwhile.

Meanwhile, check this out.

Old backyard.

New Backyard.

m00t - 4th most influential person in 2009

2009-03-19T19:39:00.004-05:00

As of 8:00 pm Thursday March 19th, m00t (of the 4chan fame) is the forth most influential person, as voted by TIME.com readers (or bots?). Ahh intertubes, never fail to amuse.

I could've sworn she was a white dog.

2009-03-15T11:31:00.002-05:00

This is what happens when I go out of town on 'bidness' and leave 'the girls' alone...

-Sent from mobile device-

Thanks to retardita for the photo and for taking the 'Toid to the park.

San Francisco as viewed from Twin Peaks.

2009-03-15T11:30:00.001-05:00

Thanks J for giving me the all-in-one tour :)

-Sent from mobile device-

15 years in America!

2009-03-13T20:06:00.001-05:00

In the true American spirit I am celebrating with Betty Crocker Warm Delights Minis - a cake mix that comes with its own bowl and takes 30 sec in the microwave to bake. Topped with rasberry jam, vanilla ice cream and whipped cream.

KoXa
-Sent from mobile device-

Triple the Fudge Triple the Fun

2009-03-07T14:33:00.003-05:00

100 calories per serving. Suggested servings - 1.

Suggested serving by me - 400 calories. Mmmm.

Thanks 2-Pac and Jamal, you guys rock!

-Sent from mobile device-

Excalibur Willow

2009-03-05T18:16:00.002-05:00

He who can get this out of the ground will reign supreme in the kingdom of York. Seriously though it is stuck in there good.

-Sent from mobile device-

My Gmail stickers have arrived!

2009-03-02T18:45:00.002-05:00

Wanna trade?

-Sent from mobile device-

Vegas - A few words about a few days

2009-03-01T11:38:00.008-05:00

Last weekend Yuri and I spent a long weekend in Las Vegas. I've been to Vegas previously, but it was Yuri's first time, so we went easy on her. We stayed for cheap at the Marriott Grand Chateau in exchange for sitting through a timeshare sales pitch (we also got a free dinner out of it). The rest of the time we spent exploring the hotels immediately on the strip, hitting up a couple of shows, trying to find a decent reasonably-priced meal, and taking a day-trip out to the Death Valley National Park. Below is a few words on the hits and misses of this trip.

The Hits

Restaraunt: Diego at MGM Grand - Great 'modern' Mexican food for a reasonable price. The restaraunt is tucked away at the far end of the MGM food court, but it's worth the hike from the strip. The setting is decidedly modern (with multimedia projections on the wall and bright, clean minimalist decorations) and the food is deliciously savory. We had a prix fix tasting menu that included 3 courses, plus a drink and made out with around $50/person, which is a steal considering the portions were tasty, large and 'authentic' and the drink was a sizable margarita. Before the meal there is also a complimentary set of 3 different salsa (verde, classic and smoky) with chips and 3 types of flavored salt for you to dip your appetizer in. Definitely a good date spot.

Show: Penn and Teller at Rio - The best magic show I've seen; witty, original and no-less impressive than the biggest Burton illusion. Penn and Teller are some of the smartest enterntainers I've met, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out they're also music buffs. While Teller exhibited only slight proficiency on the xylophone during one of the acts, Penn was up on stage incognito 45 minutes before the show funking up a storm on an upright bass along with (what I assume is) a professional piano player. You couldn't tell it was him unless you've seen the show before or were sitting close enough, like we were. I was impressed. The show itself was texbook Penn and Teller - do a trick, explain how it's done, do something more that defies the explanation. Well worth the price.
Random treat: Siegfried and Roy Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat - A mini-zoo that will exceed your expectations and make you forget you were ripped off $15 for seeing only 4 types of animal. The habitat only admits groups of about 20 people at time, which means even on a busy day you'll have plenty of space to get up close and personal to the underwater window into the dolphin pool or the railing at the alpaca enclosure. The real treats as you'd expect are the big cats. White tigers, albino lions, leopards and a panther will entertain even if they're sleeping. You feel much closer to them here than you would in a zoo, and the handlers will try to get them playing and running around both for their well-being. Be ready to push your way through children and kawaii-screaming Japanese tourists to get the best view. If you visit in the near future (2009) you'll catch a newborn leopard cub in the nursery portion. Worth the $15 to get away for an hour from the bustle of the strip.

The Misses

Show:KÀ - The Cirque Du Soleil Show that's more Soleil than Cirque. It's certainly a grand production. The fully articulated stage does things that stages shouldn't do, maybe shouldn't be able to do. You'll learn to suspend your disbelief and walk away scratching your head at the amazing technical achievemens that KA incorporates. However I was less than impressed by the acrobatics the Cirque is so famous for as they were completely overshadowed by the staging. In addition, the foray into martial, which this shows touts as a 'feature', actually makes takes away from the act and makes the performance look gimmicky and forced (imagine taking Cirque acrobats and throwing them into a WWF ring). I've seen 3 other Cirque shows and this ranks second after Mystere, which is the oldest Cirque show on the strip. Go if you can get tickets for cheaper than retail, otherwise, go see Mystere.

Retaraunt: McFadden's at Rio - This Irish-themed pub disappointed nearly all the senses. The food was blah, although palatable by pub standards and the best thing about the place when contrasted with the live piano players and the nearby din of the slot machines and aroma of smoking grandmas. We though the seating with the view on the casino floor would be fun for people watching, instead the only people we watched were 4 old ladies sit at the penny slots for 45 minutes. We were lucky however to be on the opposite end of the restaraunt from the live enterntainment - a pair of pianists of which only 1 could sing. Despite the dissapointing food and atmosphere this place seemed the best choice to eat when compared with the mpty biker-themed pub/bar upstairs, and the obviously overpriced Italian place across the casino floor. If you hear a siren and see flashing lights around the corner while enjoying your dinner don't panic, it's not a fire, it's just the bartenders at the nearby floor bar showing off the bartending skills and giving out free shots in a twice-an-hour event that's part of Rio's 'bevertainer' experience.

View Larger Map

The Day Trip

If you have a free day to kill in Vegas I highly suggest renting a car and getting away from the city for a bit. There are plenty of landmarks to see, Grand Canyon being one of the most obvious ones. Death Valley is about a 2 hour drive in the opposite direction (west) and is a very managable day trip. We spent about 6 hours in the park and fit in a canyon hike, a desert hike and many scenic drives on some of the side roads winding through the valley. For the price of a rental car and a $20 entrance fee you'll see some of the most varied and impressive geological features in the Western US. A sure stop should be the Badwater salt flats - the lowest point in North America at -200+ feet below sea level. I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking.

Phun with Peptides - Asparagine

2009-01-29T11:13:00.007-05:00

I spend most of my days in lab staring at data from protein structures. Proteins, as you learned in school, are made up of amino acids - 20 flavors of them. That's not too many, and you would think that after working with these 20 guys for almost 4 years now I would know a thing or two about them, like their physico-chemical properties, their story of discovery and what their favorite ice cream flavor is. Well I don't, so to rectify the situation I'll try to find out a little more about these little guys, and share anything interesting with you.

I'll start with Asparagine, as you're probably more familiar with this amino acid than you know.

Asparagine (Asn, N) is a pretty run-of-the-mill amino acid. It's average in size, polar but not charged, and is a non-essential amino acid that your body can live without. However it's not always the electrostatic properties and size that matter. Asparagine was the first amino acide ever to be isolate (back in 1806) from... you guessed it, asparagus juice! And if you know your asparagus, then you know that when you eat a lot of it at that fancy Italian restaurant you are committing to at least several smelly trips to the urinal over the next half a day or so. It's the metabolite products of asparagine that so pungently hit some people's smell receptors.

KoXa
Asparagine can also be as pleasing to the eye as it is displeasing to the nose. On its own it's heavily studied as a component of the nervous system, and makes quite pretty crystals, like this one imaged by photomicrographs:

Microscopy UK

Let's have a chef have the last word though...

"You know, when you get your first asparagus, or your first acorn squash, or your first really good tomato of the season, those are the moments that define the cook's year. I get more excited by that than anything else."- Mario Batali

Stop having a boring life

2009-01-23T16:03:00.006-05:00

Half a year ago I was a regular person, just like you, who upon being questioned about the name "Vince Offer" would shrug his shoulders shake his head. But then, my life was changed forever. One evening while watching a weekday NCB evening line up I was witness to the advertisment of ShamWow! Instantly my life was changed. I was full of questions that nobody probably had answers too - How do you spell chamois? Is this guy for real? Who was on the other side of the headset? Can I really live without ShamWow?

Now almost a half a year later I have found the answers to two of those questions. Is this guy for real? Yes. His name is Vince Offer, and he is the official poster-boy for ShamWow, a comedian, and a semi-failed film director who's movie was criticized for being too vulgar. Awesome. I felt I was making progress, when just this past week I was tuning out a commercial and happened to hear a familiar speed-talking swagger...

I'm speechless, and if you think you can live without the SlapChop, Mr. Offer's nuts, and a martini made of cheese you should obviously get some psychiatric help and slap your troubles away!

Oh. And yes, I CAN live without a ShamWow!

Image chensley via ebaumsworld

UPDATE: ShamoWow has made it to semi-finals of CNBS's 'As seen of TV' showdown. Can it make it to #1? Only you, the voter, will tell.

UPDATE: ShamWow won CNBC's As Seen on TV showdown!! Read an interview with Vince here.

G1 - A month in review

2008-12-21T11:29:00.008-05:00

It's now been a month since I joined the modern phone age and replaced my old Razr with the T-mobile G1. Here are my first impressions based on that month of use and abuse.

Pros:

Googles - Duh. It syncs with your gmail contacts, mail, and calendar, keeping you updated on all your google-world happenings. Gtalk is also built in, but does not yet allow video chat. It would be nice for other Google features to be incorporated, such as the Reader (which now is viewed through the browser), the new Tasks feature of Gmail, and perhaps in time the Google Docs. For now though it suffices, and even shows the Google contacts buddy icon when a call is made/received.
good GUI - the Android OS strikes the perfect balance between Apple's chunky icons and Windows Mobile's tiny checkboxes and menus (I can't operate a Windows phone without a stylus). The icons are all sized for touch-screen use, and the full keyboard takes care of the typing without the need for on-screen keyboard. There is no multi-touch, but the scrolling is fluid and all the touch-enabled actions are very intuitive.
app market - for a new release, the android application marketplase has quite a few useful items. "Any Cut" for creating custom shortcuts is a must, as well as the bar code scanner to look up the cheapest price while doing your holiday shopping and an ssh client to get some lab-work done while on the run. I also downloaded a voice recorder and a note-taker (both of which should've come built in). Opera is availible as an alternate browser, but Chrome seems to handle most of my needs (see Cons).
mini-usb charger - If only all phone manufacturers moved to mini-usb! Why do phone chargers have to be so complicated? I have a half dozen mini-usb cables (some from previous phones) so I can keep one anywhere.

Cons:

camera - While the camera is high resolution, it's slow, clunky and non-intuitive. Sometimes it takes up to 10 seconds to snap a photo after pressing the shutter button. It doesn't auto-turn off either, so forgetting to go back to the main menu after using it can drain your battery in a matter of minutes.
t-mobile - spotty 3G, especially in MI where is almost doesn't exist. However, t-mobile does have an agreement with AT&T, so half the time I'm "roaming" on their towers.
battery power - if using the camera, or watching video with sound the battery drains before your eyes. It can last a day if you use it strictly for phone purposes and perhaps some email, but I have needed to charge every night.
dialer - the number buttons (used for those pesky phone menues for example) are actually on-screen, so unless you have your keyboard flipped open while making a call (which is awkward) you have to unlock the phone, flick open the dialer and then press the number. This makes such simple tasks as pressing 7 to delete a voice-mail un-neccesarily diffucult.
no flash - :( Maybe it's an effort to funnel video-watching to the specialized YouTube app, but the lack of flash support on web pages haunts Android alongside its mobile cousins. I wouldn't care so much, but this puts a severe damper on my ability to watch the puppy-cam (speaking of which I couldn't get 3GP streaming video to work either, argh).

Edison Shmistorical Timeline

2008-12-21T11:24:00.000-05:00

The official website of the City of Edison NJ has recently published an "Edison Historical Timeline" on their website. Here are some high-lights in Edisons 200 yo past and the link to the full list.

Apparently the most exciting event in 1693 was a burial of someone named 'Mary Jones'. earning her distinction of being the oldest marked grave in Middlesex County.

1777 The Revoltionary War Battle of the Short Hills/Oak Tree Engagement took place in Edison on June 26

OK that's pretty coool. I'll give you that.

1795 Raritan Bridge (now known as the Albany Street Bridge on Route 27) built.

You can't go to Rutgers and not drive up and down this bridge all the time.

OK, so maybe a few cool things happened here in the Revolutionary past, but how about in the past 50 years?

1960 "Edison Times" published in Edison.

Umm. Yeah. OK

1970 Exit 10 on the New Jersey Turnpike opened.

1982 Clara Barton School Closed.

1982 Stelton School Closed.

1989 Mayor Anthony Yelensics dies in office.

1996 Edison Township Online is opened to the public.

2005 Jun H. Choi is elected mayor at age 34, becoming the youngest mayor in Edison history.

So let's summarize. Over the past 50 years the most significant events in Edison have been limited to a highway onramp, several school closings, a death, and a young Asian mayor. Oh and of course - a website! Edison is certainly not a sleepy little town, but maybe its good so little happens here. It keeps it boring, quiet, safe and expensive. Just the way I like it.

Glad to be home for a while.

Home cookin

2008-11-29T10:04:00.002-05:00

Thanksgiving Roll

2008-11-27T11:18:00.002-05:00

Along with the rest of the nation, I was Rick-rolled this thanksgiving while innocently turning on the Thanksgiving Day parade.

Multimedia Wednesday - Friday Edition

2008-11-20T10:54:00.010-05:00

It's time to revive Multimedia Wednesday. Recently I've come across (or more accurately - was pointed to) several really refreshing collections of images and videos that I wanted to share. While those who read this blog have probably received some of my excitement-fueled emails giving links to some of these, I figured I'd summarize them here for everyone's benefit.

Time's LIFE magazine recently unveiled a portion of it's image archive dating back to the 1860s (before LIFE itself has been around). The collection is hosted on Google Images and is fully annotated and tagged, even making full use of google's face-recognition and annotation. My dad and I curiously discovered that in the "West" Lenin was known by a false pseudonym "Nikolai" rather than his true name Vladimir. So for the Russian-speaking of you if you see Lenin tagged as Nickolai in the collection, don't go emailing google about their "error." Cause we all know, google is never wrong....

Although I haven't see the TV show, the website for Discovery's series Time Warps has really cool interactive high-speed videos of things that are...well..really cool as interactive high speed videos. Ever wonder what happens to your face mere milliseconds before a head-sized water ballon smashes into it? Know how your dog's tongue laps up that water from the water bowl? Now's your chance to find out, and then play it backwards for a really trippy view. All you pyros - check out the grease fire videos.

Some of you might have heard this following glorious news, as it's sweeping through the geekternets like wildfire. The geniuses of comedy from Monty Python's Flying Circus decided to release their material for free on the internet, on their own YouTube channel. For those of you living under a rock and unfamiliar with the classics of British humour, this is the skit-show equivalent of the Beatles putting their entire song collection up on a MySpace page. Hopefully this will encourage a whole new generation of Python lovers and keep those limited-edition re-releases of Holy Grail coming due to continued demand.

Finally, I've been watching more TV than usual lately. Well, not really watching, but paying attention too. I at least hit the main 8-10 block of NBC at least 3 or 4 weeknights. So while I'm not usually a TV critic, I would like to recommend two shows from the myriad of options now flooding your Cable Guides.

My first choice is Life, which on the surface sounds like the dullest show ever - two detectives (one of whom spent time in jail) go around and solve cases, with one pursuing a side-story vendetta against the people who framed him years before. In reality, the show combines the engrossing plots of SVU with wry humour and simple approach of Columbo. It will have you laughing at the most unexpected moments and draw you in to the most improbable of crimes. Give it a shot.

The second one is Chuck. Even though I'm not into light comedy sitcoms, and resisted this one for a while, eventually it won me over with its un-pretentiousness. Chuck is everything My Worst Enemy isn't. It's been on longer than Life so you've probably heard about it, but if you haven't watched it yet I would say try it, but give it more than one episode.

How to park like an asshole who drives an F150

2008-11-17T16:13:00.001-05:00

How to park like an asshole

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM

2008-11-14T20:59:00.004-05:00

Today's headlines on Drudge Report.

If there is any company that will get more out of the crappy economy than Hormel it's Walmart, which is going to sell the said SPAM.

Go SPAM!

Yep, that's a bike in a tree.

2008-11-11T14:46:00.003-05:00

This is the building I work in. The tree is next to the entrance.

Animals of Science - Where are they now?

2008-11-08T09:51:00.000-05:00

Talking to my friend about stem cell research today I found out that her stance against it was purely skittish in nature. She was no-so-much bothered by the moral implications of ending a life of a sentient being as by the pure creepiness of the whole process in general. The topic wandered onto cloning (since 49% of people in MI can't tell between the two, those who voted No on Proposal 2), and soon we were talking about Dolly. I remembered hearing about Dolly dying sometime in 2003, but didn't remember the details. So I looker her up.
Apparently Dolly - the famously first cloned sheep now serves out her afterlife in a display case of the Royal Museum of Scotland. Her lifeless face, frozen in a smug grin, still mocks the intelligence of people like my friend. People who believe that unchecked, Science will produce an army of human-alligator clones bent on eating the bodies those poor graduates of "Christ's Creationist College " and having their brain matter for desert. Jokes aside however both me and my friend had to agree that Dolly's fate itself was a bit surreal, and more than a bit creepy.

All this got me thinking... whatever happened to those other famous animals of Science after the limelight faded on their laboratory cages? Most of the below facts are not heavily researched, but hey, if Wikipedia says it, it must be true!

Alba - the transgenic GFP bunny. A creation of the artist Eduardo Kac this rabbit incorporated a popular molecular marker in its DNA, causing it to glow green when excited by the proper wavelength of light. Supposedly Alba died in mid 2002, at 2.5 years of age of unknown causes. Her death is still shrouded in mystery because of the tense relationships between the artist who conceived her and the researcher who made her a reality.
Laika - the first dog in space. Actually she was the first living creature to reach space from Earth...for about two hours. She died a shortly after the launch, although the general public didn't find out until much later. Several monuments around Russia now honor the memory of the space-bound canine.

Koko - the sexual harassment gorilla. OK, actually Koko is known for supposedly learning 1000 words in American Sign language. However, she apparently used a lot of her talents for communicating her love for human nipples (who doesn't!). As a result Koko has been the target of several sexual harassment lawsuits until as recently as 3 years ago. Now at 37 years of age she seems ready to put her racy past behind and settle down in Hawaii for retirement.

CC - the first cloned cat. Born in 2000, CC was also the first feline to educate the public on epigenetics a few years later. Although her DNA was an identical copy of her "sister" Rainbow, the two cats had markedly different coat colors, and dispositions. The most recent news on CC I could find is that in 2006 she mothered a litter of kittens, becoming the first cloned animal to successfully give birth. It appears she remains a healthy and famous kitty.

Mike - the headless chicken. OK, so this really isn't a famous science animal, and it's long dead but it's the first time I heard about this thing and it was fascinating. Apparently somewhere mid-last century there was a headless chicken running around at circus sideshows for 18 months. Its head was removed by the owner, who being a bad shot with an axe failed to sever the brain stem, leaving the chicken with fully functional motor skills. Mike quickly adjusted his balance to correct for the lack of head and walked around pecking at the ground with his neck. The owners fed him through the appropriate hole in the neck until the poor thing choked on a grain one day.

These are all the animals I could find interesting recent stories on, if you know of any more Science-related animals who led interesting lives, please let me know. Thanks to MB, JQ, and CD for their suggestions, which all appear above.

2008-11-07T17:24:00.002-05:00

Although my cell phone shot doesn't do it justice, the sky was really beautiful over Ann Arbor today. The small spec towards the upper right of the photo is the half-moon.

A sobering night to be spent drinking.

2008-11-04T19:49:00.004-05:00

Kentucky is in. As of 8 pm tonight Kentucky is the only state called and it goes in favor of McCain. But I'm not sweating it. Personally my prediction is for Obama, but honestly I'm not cheering for either of them.

I was undecided in this election until the moment I stepped up to the booth to fill out my ballot. Largely it was because neither of the candidates (and I'm including 3rd party ones) seemed to me like they would make a decent President. McCain with his stupid grin and stupider speeches, and Obama, a shell of a man, representing everything but standing for nothing. We will see Change in this election whichever way things go, but I honestly don't think it will be for the better either way.

8 pm. Polls close in half the country.

I didn't vote today to vote for a President. My motivation were the local elections and the proposals on ballot in Michigan. If it wasn't for those I probably would not have voted. Still, just as it did 4 years ago, voting made me feel a little better about not having done anything else politically in the past 4 years. Hopefully I contributed something small and ideological even if non-consequential. Hopefully with my help by tomorrow Michigan legalizes medical marijuana and stem cell research.

Hope all y'all voted and have fun watching the crazy wacky roulette wheel of a ride that is the election coverage! And of course, don't forget the drinking games!!

UPDATE: Both propositions 1 and 2 that I mentioned passed in Michigan

What's in a Whiskey

2008-10-19T09:43:00.003-05:00

Yesterday I opened up the first bottle of whiskey I brought back from Japan. It was a 12 yo single malt Yoichi, from the Nikka distillery I visited while there. It was labeled as "Peaty & Salty" and that's pretty much what I got out of it. It was not as smooth as I expected a 12 year to be, but it was still very good.

I shared a sip or two with a friend who is not that all into whiskeys and immediately we started talking about the ins and outs of the preparation and what grain was used to make this one. I was confidently insisted on whiskey (especially scotch) being made out of barely while he seemed to think it was corn. After much back and forth we looked it up on Wikipedia, and sure enough, we were both right. So for those of you who are whiskey fans, don't make the same mistake I did, remember, Scotch = barley, American whiskey = corn or rye and Bourbon specifically is mostly corn.

That's your random tidbit for the day. I'm going to go read more of my Whiskey book.

The simple pleasures of having a Flickr account.

2008-10-01T10:28:00.003-05:00

Check out this web feature at the California Center of the Arts about the architect Renzo Piano. The photo of his New York Times building accompanying the article is by yours truly.

It's a rare pleasure to be contacted by someone who actually wishes to use and credit your work for an interesting purpose. Here's hoping that all people using royalty-free images will someday be so thoughtful.

Vieques - The cradle of Northern Europe, according to Yahoo Maps

2008-09-28T12:28:00.004-05:00

I was being happily productive geo-tagging my Flickr photos this afternoon when all of a sudden I was awarded with an original geography lesson. Apparently when I visited Vieques on vacation a couple of years ago I missed many wonderful sights in the heartland of this tiny little island off the coast of Puero Rico.

Below is a screen shot of the Flickr Maps interface showing me the island of Vieques, which is about 15 mi long, covered with a nice trail of fluffy clouds.

Below is a screen shot of the same island one zoom level down in altitude in the same interface. Now it appears that the whole of Northwestern Europe resides in the middle of this island, alond with several (perhaps subterrenian) bodies of water. It's an interesting twist on international cartography that's unique to Yahoo maps, although it's partially understandable, considering the majority of the islad has been occupied by a US Naval training base for nearly 60 years.

I wonder if this means I have to double-geo-tag my Germany photos?

Spore - Pre-first impressions

2008-09-26T08:05:00.007-05:00

I haven't legaly purchased a PC game in over 10 years, so buying the new EA/Maxis title Spore was a pretty big decision. Last time I played a Maxis game it was Sim City 3000, and the last EA game I played on the computer was Need for Speed II. That's not to say I've reverted to n00b during that time. I've seen (and experienced the painful but brief addiction of) Sims, I've seen the latest and greatest MMORPGs and I think I have a fairly good understanding of what a current video game should look, sound and feel like. As such, giddy with anticipation I broke down and decided to indulge myself in one of the most hyped and supposedly revolutionary games of the past several years.

No, not Petz 5.

Yesterday I finally received the game in the mail and was excited to try it out. I only had my

handy-dandy Inspiron 6400 laptop with me, so I decided to install it on that. Sure it's not a gaming machine, but it's got a spunky little Core 2 Duo. I insert the DVD, hit autorun, and let it go...

...while it's running I have time to tell you a story. Back in high school I remember a friend buying Baldur's Gate, which came on a then-unprecedented 7 CDs! It took a loooong time to install, it was almost 5 Gigs after all, and you had to switch out all those CDs. That was 1998. Oh wait, nothing has changed....

... About an hour later the game finally finished installing. Before the installl fully finished I was assaulted with a prompt to install EA's update manager to keep my game all patched up. Well, I don't really like installing 2 things when I only purchased 1, but what the hey. Can't be worse than Windows Update. Another half an hour goes by....

...The game is finally installed. But wait. Where is it?

There was no Program folder, no icon, no nothing. The only thing I now see is a pesky EA icon in my system try. Argghhh! What can be better than manually hunting for a game executable you just paid $50 for?

I finally found SporeApp.exe and lauched the game. As soon as the swirly galaxy-like menu loaded the game informed me that a patch was availible, and prompted whether I would like to install it. Sure. Might as well....

...20 minutes later I was staring at a progress bar that subsequently went from 0% to 100% and then back to 0%. At this point I left it alone and went to play Wii Mario Kart. It installed sometime during the next hour and I was way too frustrated to touch it again.

Long story short, after two decades of game development, a powerhouse like EA still can't get something as trivial as game install on a widely used OS (Vista) down to a reasonably-timed and straightforward experience.

Tune in next time - when maybe I'll actually get to play.

Brief Update

2008-09-21T14:46:00.006-05:00

I haven't written in a while, so I figured I'd kind of sum up what's been happening lately, instead of sitting around doing nothing on a Sunday afternoon.

First I don't think I mentioned here that I did finally put up all my photos from Japan up on Flickr. If you don't have me as a Flickr contact let me know and I'll send you guestpasses.

After much shopping I finally got a new bike. A Raleigh mountain bike with disk breaks and front suspension. Apparently dual suspension bikes are really expensive these days. Weird, since I think I bought my last dual suspension bike for around $100. I got from Two Wheel Tango, which is a pretty nice bike shop here in Ann Arbor area that a couple of my labmates recommended.

After driving back and forth to New Jersey I also finally gave Tink a well-deserved hand-wash.
I knock on wood, but this Galant went 4 years without any major (or minor) problems and there are only 1 or 2 tiny rust spots that need fixin' up.

I've been doing a lot more work lately, re-writing my Perl scripts into Python with the help of the mmLib a package for working with protein structures. I found it more useful that anything on BioPython that involves protein structure bioinformatics. If you know of others out there, let me know! I'll buy you a Taco Bell lunch.

After much procrastination I finally caved in and ordered Spore, for PC of course, which should be arriving sometime next week!

I've also been on RiffTrax a lot lately, buying some of the hilarious $0.99 video shorts. They're mostly made from old (70s and before) PSA programs and other bizzare historical videos you might find in archive.org's Ephemeral Films section. I was pretty impressed by the way they chose to make the files availible after I pay. They have a file list of everything you've purchased on the website and you can download one of 5 different format and content versions such as a DiVX, MPG, AVI and WMV versions of the video with commentary overlaid, the commentary itself in MP3 and often the original public domain video (which also usually means everything's DRM-free). I usually end up downloading the video every time I want to watch it, instead of transfering the file from computer to comptuer. I highly recommend "Drugs Are Like That" and "Buying Food."

Well that's all the update for now.

Making up for a missed Whiskey Monday

2008-08-12T21:33:00.003-05:00

The 17 yo Hibiki is a well known blended Japanese whiskey from Japan's largest whiskey producer - Suntory .
While Japanese whiskeys are largely descendants 0f Scotch, Hibiki sets itself far apart with a much fruitier, sweeter taste. Money to quality it's probably one of the best valued Japanese whiskeys out there. The light smooth finish is perfect for a nice summer Tuesday evening, especially if you're making up for a missed "Whiskey Monday".

At Busch's

2008-08-06T17:31:00.002-05:00

Not very subtle marketing.

I officially declare Monday night Scotch Night

2008-08-04T18:38:00.008-05:00

There is perhaps no other evening in the week that is more appropriate for indulging in a glass of scotch as the Monday evening. After returning from work and realizing that tonight was just the first in a series of 5 days to be spent inside an office, lab, or whatnot, I couldn't help but turn to that familiar, warm, comforting burn of a well-peated scotch. Tonight's selection, Tobermory 10 yr single malt.

Tobermory is made on the Isle of Mull, in a town of the same name. It's the major distillery of the island, located on the North East tip. Tobermory is categorized as only a lightly-peated scotch, and so doesn't have an overpowering nose like some of its Isle cousins (Talisker, Laphroaig). For me, the 10 year is not an exceptional scotch, but it's certainly an affordable and palatable alternative to my pricier peaty favorites. I am not seasoned enough to list off the notes in the palate and and the nuances of the aftertaste, but I can definitely say that it does have a bite at the end of the sip despite a very mellow smell.

This has been a dose of your Monday Night Scotch Informative Programming. Thank you for reading now go pour yourself some.

A day at the Zoo

2008-08-03T15:15:00.011-05:00

A recent UK survey showed that children are more out of touch than ever with the outdoors. Some youngsters can't even identify common animals, and a large majority considers playing in the countryside a waste of time. Although I'm perhaps a little more grown up than the at-risk demographic, I decided to be proactive about not becoming a statistic and went over to the Detroit Zoo to beef up my fauna knowledge. OK, fine. The real reason I went to the Zoo is because Y has a membership, and we both get in for free. Ka-ching.

Detroit Zoo is about 80 years young and contains a pretty good variety of animals. Some of the first tigers and bears bread in captivity in the United States began their lives here. Recently they've revamped the huge central polar bear section and added several large species such as the warthog.

Below is a sample of what the Detroit Zoo has to offer:

The Red Panda (Малая панда) [レッサーパンダ], looks like anything but a panda. There were actually two but the other one was curled up napping on a tree.

A pair of Siberian Tigers (Амурский тигр) [アムールトラ], both females, one "rescued from a Crack house"*, the other acquired from another zoo.

A pair of African Lions (Лев) [ライオン], both born at the zoo.

A Rhinoceros (Носорог) [サイ], who also had friend who didn't get in the shot. I'm not sure the specific kind of the rhino this is though. I spent most of the time speaking to a docent about the "enrichment programs" the zoo provides the animals. It often boils down to giving them a ball (two balls in the case of the rhinos), a stick, or even an unfamiliar smell or taste once in a while, pretty much so the animals don't get bored

The Warthog (бородавочник) [イボイノシシ] is a new arrival at the zoo, but still gets more real estate than the lions or the tigers.

There was a significant amount of peafowl (Павлины) [クジャク] all over the place. Unfortunately this is not the mating season so males were hard to come by. The hens however, were parading around and poking visitors for food for their chicks. This one was nice enough to stop and pose for me.

The Hippopotamus (бегемот) [カバ] was pretty bored and only surfaced for a breath every couple of minutes, barely lifting his nostrils out of the water.

There were several empty enclosures in the bears section of the zoo, which was unfortunate. However this Grizzly Bear (Гризли) [ハイイログマ] wasn't shy about sticking his head out to take a peak at the people and was thus promptly captured on camera.

Only one of the Polar Bears (Белый медведь) [ホッキョクグマ] was out in the sun, and even then at an awkward angle to the spectators. I wonder if after a time the bears find the place to sit that's as far away as possible from all the loud people and then just stay there.

A lone Seal (тюлени) [アザラシ] splashed around the pool, while his buddy enjoyed the fresh exhaust of a pool pump over in the corner of the aquarium.

A pair of Giant Anteaters (Большой муравьед) [オオアリクイ] was perhaps the most active group of animals in the whole zoo. They waddled around their enclosure providing an excellent view for a camera. It's hard to see the scale from the photo but these guys grow to be 6-8 feet (1.8-2.4 m) long and up to 100 pounds (45 kg).

A Tree Kangaroo [キノボリカンガルー]is an animal I don't remember seeing before today, at least not in a long while. It looks a lot more like a big badger in a tree, rather than a kangaroo you usually think of. It is a full-blown marsupial though.

The Bactrian Camel (Бактриан)[フタコブラクダ] lives alongside several species of deer in a vast grazing field.

And of course, we can't forget the most amazing animal of all - the Human** (Человек) [人]. The Detroit Zoo is as excellent for people watching as it is for animal watching, and many common Human behaviors such as foraging, rearing the young, and socializing can be observed within its various habitats.

*That's what the docent's official info booklet said about the source of the tiger. Kid you not.
** Sorry I had too.

Trailer vs. Deli

2008-07-31T18:41:00.002-05:00

This is the sight in downtown Ann Arbor, where a trailer plowed into a local deli, starting a pretty ginormous fire, as you can see. I only witnessed the late aftermath after the fire crews and the police were gone and security guards were hired to stand watch.

And the Photos stream in.

2008-07-07T14:53:00.001-05:00

I started putting up photos from the trip, one day at a time.

June 19-20th I arrived in Tokyo and June 21st was a day of running errands in preparation for the trip. The photos are indicative of my first impressions of Tokyo (and by default Japan).

I recommend browsing via Flickr slideshow, with "info" on to see the comments.

2008-07-05T08:18:00.002-05:00

I'm back in the States. Sorry that there were no more posts, but it seemed towards the end of the trip I got more and more tired and less and less free to post. However, I've got my 2700 photos on my PC now and I'm ready to start uploading. I've got my work cut out for me during the jet-lag conversion period.

I'll post any links to photos here.

Hai-do from Hokkaido

2008-06-27T21:34:00.005-05:00

Greetings from Hokkaido, the "Yosemite" of Japan. This northern island is known for several things, one of which is being The Northern Island. Among the Japanese Hokkaido is synonymous with Alpine-like nature, sea urchins, spherical algae, herring, and of course beer. Yesterday was our fist day in Sapporo and we wasted no time in getting out of the way the most obvious attraction - the Sapporo Museum and old factory. The museum was free but we did pay a measely sum to sample spporo classic, a beer ONLY brewed and sold in Hokkaido. We got to keep the coasters, and of course a photo.

The reason I haven't been posting is because the past few days have been hectic and internet-less. We were concentating on fitting in all the sights and catching all the trains. We finished up Kyoto with a visit to the Monkey Park. In case you thought Japan was all steel and neon, no, there are still some pretty sweet monkeys here.

We also paid the obligatory visit to the gaudy monstrosity that is the "Golden Temple." This temple proves that anything more than 200 years old AND/OR covered in gold foil will never suffer a dearth of tourists. You can't go inside, but I wouldn't really want to, for the fear of bein blinded by a stray ray of light reflecting from the equally gilded interior.

Ironically we got a big break from tourists in Nikko, perhaps the most touristed spot in Japan aftr Tokyo. We spent the night before at a beautiful hotel nested in the mountanis and were early to rise to beat everyone to the temples and shrines. Accompanied by rainy and misty weather, we had the sights pretty much to ourselves for most of the morning. I'll put up the temple photos later, but as a teaser, here's what the view from our hotel looked like! You can imagine what it was like at the actual "pretty" spots people flock to see.

The rest of the time we spent on trains getting up north to Hokkaido. We had to take around 5 train altogether (each less than 1.5 hours) to get to the Nothern tip on Honshu, and then took a sleeper car over to Hokkaido. The below sight from a shinkansen platform thus became pretty familiar. Since every train was different though and since our connection were less than 20 minutes on average, we were not really bored at any point in time.

Well that's all for now, I'll try to post once more before heading back to Tokyo.

The tourism begins.

2008-06-23T17:54:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was the first full-fledged day of tourism. We hit up a huge castle (Nijo-jo) and temple (Kiyomizu-dera). The castle s in the middle of Kyoto and served as the residence of several Tukagawa shogun around the 17th century. The Buddhist temple is much older (but rebuilt in parts in the 17th century) and is one of the bigger ones in Kyoto.

The Nijo-jo. The castle was wonderfully empty. Photography inside was prohibited. This is a view from one of the guard towers at the corner of the moat surrounding the castle. The overcast weather was status-quo most of the day.

A view of Kiyomizu-dera main hall and pagoda from a path next to the temple. The photo below is the view of Kyoto from the temple overlook platform.

I tried to take a couple of self-portrain shots (not an easy task with the 10D) for my parents. So here is my goofy squinting face at each of the locations:

Castle Gate

Temple overlook.

Ok short post today as there is much more to write about that I can possibly fit. That, and it's time to make breakfast. We're eating things we bought at a grocery store today, since the hotel breakfast, which included both Japanese and Western style food didn't really get either one quite right.

On being a gaijin

2008-06-22T16:08:00.005-05:00

Gajin is the term used in Japan for a non-Japanese person. Being 185 cm tall, from the States, and decidedly white, I tend to be a perfect example. Being a giant in the land of the petite has its pros and cons. I have to be more careful when entering any sort of doorway, as they're usually about half a foot shorter than my head, but on the other hand I have a clear view when I have to take photos on the street, with everyone's head being much below my eye level. I barely fit in the shower (Japanese hotel bathrooms tend to be elevated, with the result of being about 4 inches shorter than the room ceiling), or in a narrow store isle, but I can carry two suitcases, when every cabbie so far had trouble with even one.

By definition, when travelling to a foreign country, the first impressions of a tourist are usually decided by the service personell - waiters, cabbies, hotel clerks, cashiers, conductors. For me Japan has been no different. Te service industry in Japan is impeccable. The Japanese themselves have very high expectations when using any type of public or private service and so the bar for service satisfaction is set extremely high. Compared to the US, and other countries I've been to, my interactions over the past few days have been nothing short of fantastic. It could be that I get an extral leg up, since my travel buddy is a native speaker and smoothes out any details of procurring, receiving and setteling for any services, but I get the impression that even if I was going at it alone with a mix of broken Japanese and English, everyone would have been just as gracious.

I'm still saving the detailed first impressions for later, but I'd like to tell you about the closest I've come to talking casually to a Japanese person (who wasn't a member of my friend's family) so far. Yesterday we visited the Horino Memorial Sake Distilery Museum (click on the virtual tour link on the bottom), which is an old sake distillery, one of the few that survived the move of all the sake distillers to Tokyo when the capital was changed in the 19th century. We paid $3 for admission, expecting to be able to walk around a few old rooms of the distillery, with examples of old sake-making equipment and some hstorical documents on the history of the company. Instead what we got was a guided private tour by an old Japanese man, who is now a brewer at the brewery located there (they no longer make sake on location). He could only speak Japanese, but through my friend's translation he was very eager to make sure I understand everything he said as we toured the different rooms. Although the "tour" was short it was much more than we expected, and we ended up buying a lot of sake, somewhat as a thank you for his troubles (and because, hey, it's booze!). Often he made the effort to translate a particular word, asking my friend, when he couldn't find the exact meaning he was looking for. I asked questions, also of course through the help of my friend, and he answered them eagerly. Although we couldn't speak to each other person to person, I felt very much like I spent a half an hour with a funny old man excited about the history and tradition of this house of sake, and not simply a tour guide.

Below is a photo of the man (whose name I totally forgot to ask!) explaning a layout of one of the rooms. Below that is the well that is now used to make beer at this location (we got to try the water) and the tasting room (that used to be the brewery) for sake made by the company that was founded here. And yes, we got to try the sake! Not the cheap stuff either.

Leaving Tokyo town.

2008-06-22T06:02:00.007-05:00

This morning (Saturday night for most of you readers) I got up ast 6 AM to head out to Kyoto, Japan's cultural captial, for a 3 day stay there. It was my first ever trip on the shinkansen (bullet train) and it was definitely the fastest train I've ever been on. Instead of the 300 seriest Hikari, we ended up on the 700 series, so the photo you might have seen in my earlier post no longer applies. I managed to catch the tail end of the train in a photo, as it was leaving Kyoto Station, right after we exited. It was by far the best train ride I've ever been on. The leg room was generous, the on-board coffee not half-bad, and the views were awe-insipiring, even with the rain.

We covered the 300+ miles in around 2.75 hours, with 4 stops in between, so we made it to Kyoto way before check-in and could explore on foot. The major attractions of the day were - the stroll along Kachigawara street, prouduce maket at Nishiky-koji, and a short tour (and sampling)of an old sake distillery, which now only makes beer. I also had a pretty traditional Japanese lunch, compete with ban paste and greet -tea ice cream. Below is one of the many appetizing features you an find in Kyoto.

Although it was raining all day, it was also really hot and humid, and towards the end of the day, I felt it's taking a toll on me. I did manage to finish off a 1 GB CF card, and spend about a $100 on souvenirs though, and that's just from 2 days.

Anyways, tomorrow will be more Kyoto sightseeing, so I leave you with this view of South Kyoto and head off to bed. Have a good night!

First impressions

2008-06-21T08:26:00.006-05:00

The hotel has free internet. There. Japan, you won me over already. Taking advantage I'd like to share some of my first impressions, before I collapse from a combination of jet lag and exhaustion.

The first truly Japanese thing I was confronted with, that I could take a photo of, was the bathroom at Nartia airport. So I did. The bathrooms that I've encountered so far (3) have been the most crowded (in terms of technology) rooms in the building, and it takes a few visit to figure out all the buttons. It might be cliche, but the bathroom is really the first thing that pops out as being "foreign," probably because we all take the way we go to the bathroom for granted.

In the photo, note all the buttons, extra levers and 4 extra toilet paper rolls. This is an airport bathroom! Bathrooms in a private house have additional features to a simple bidet and dry, including automatically lifting the toilet seat, and seat pre-warming so you never sit on a cold seat.

The big accomplishment for today was getting all the Japan Rail registration. We have a total of 10 trains that require reservations, and taking care of booking them was perhaps the mot painless and hassle-free process of the trip so far (even beating going to the bathroom). I'm excited to take the trains, and even bought a little booklet to "collect" stamps, which are availible at all the train station locations. Collecting stamps at locations s a very ppular Japanese tourism activity, and when it comes to trains, I plan to endorse it wholeheartedly.

Although I didn't get to travel around the city too much, I did get to enjoy a hearty Korean BBQ dinner with the family of my travel mate. Although I've had Korean BBQ in NYC, complete with soju and kim chi, it's the little things that once again made it a uniquely Japanese experience. For example my place mat for the drink clearly labeled is as an "Alcoholic beverage, there were warm towels before the meal, and the waitress used a sort of PDA to take our orders. Add to that the hospitality and warmth of the hosts, and you get an international dinner that's hard to beat - complete with good food, good drinks, and good converstation.

Tomorrow we head out on out on our own though, to Kyoto. Check back for more updates and photos. But for now, here are 3 more photos from today's sauntering.

View out of back window on the way from Narita airport.

At a book store in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

Warning in the hotel room at the Shinjuku Washingon Hotel.

Gearing up for my first JR adventure

2008-06-20T18:58:00.002-05:00

So I'm in Tokyo. Yep, feels a little weird to be on the other side of the world. However I don't feel like I'm too far away. I have a cell phone, email and was able to get in touch with my parents within 3 hours of landing. In this day and age the internet makes it hard to truly be away. You have to work at it.

I stayed my first night with my friend's gracious parents, at their house right on the Western outskirts of Tokyo. It's a delightful example of Japanese urban living. Small, comfortable, and packed full of cultural curiosities. I'm grateful to them that I have a place to help me ease into the culture-shock. It's definitely helpful to learn how to use the toilet within a friendly environment before trying it out in the "real world."

Today I'll be moving to the hotel within Tokyo. Specifically Shinjuku, which is as downtown as downtown gets. If you've ever seen the Tokyo Subway map you can imagine how intimidating of a task that is, luckily, this will be straightforward trip as you can see below.

Wish me luck!
View Larger Map

Losing 24 hours

2008-06-19T01:13:00.003-05:00

In about 12 hours I will be sitting on NWA flight 25 en route to Narita Airport in Tokyo, Japan. Here are some of the highlights I can look forward to in the next 24 hours.

1. Duty-free shop browsing
2. Traditional airport McDonalds lunch with my travel companion.
3. Asian overload as I fly in a plane packed mostly with non-Japanese Asians (en route to China or Korea).
4. Reading "Japanese Popular Culture," a books of translated post-war cultural studies within Japan.
5. Using up my iPod battery
6. Adding a stamp to my passport.
7. Taking my first photo on the other side of the Pacific.
8. Getting my nifty Jap rental phone.
9. Standing in rush-hour Tokyo traffic.
10. Meeting the famous Cocoa-chan.
11. Going to sleep at what amounts to 8 AM E.S.T.

It's going to be a fun 24 hours. As to the title of this post, since Japan is 13 hours ahead in time, and since the flight there takes approximately 11 hours, just the flight alone sets you back 24 hours, erasing a whole day as if by magic. It's going to rock living in the future. I hope everyone wears jumpsuits!

Bike Lane

2008-06-16T22:09:00.003-05:00

This is a test post from the Asus EeePC. Hopefully this little guy will allow for frequent updates of the blog and tumblr with travel progress reports.

And here's a photo from behind BSRS bulding on the Medical Campus.

Bullet Train Lineup.

2008-06-15T21:20:00.003-05:00

As a follow up to my previous post, here are the different bullet trains I will likely get to ride if we stick to the planned itinerary. The fastest train in Japan, the Nozomi express does not accept the Rail pass, so I will have to settle for the second place - Hayate. Any of these in my opinion are going to rock so much more than the NJ Transit trains of the Eastern Corridor, which ran at a racy maximum of 60 mph.

Tokaido Shinkansen
300 Series Hikari
from Tokyo - > Kytoto, and back.

in service since 1992
max speed 168 mph
acceleration 1.6 km/h/s
made by Sharyo, Hitachi, Kawasaki

Tohoku Shinkansen
Yamabiko E2
Tokyo -> Nikko

Second fastest train on the Tohoku line.

Tohoku Shinkansen
Hayate E2
Sendai -> Hachinohe

top speed 170 mph
running since 2002

Bullet Train Preview

2008-06-14T22:12:00.006-05:00

I haven't posted recently as most of my free time on the nets has been spent planning my upcoming trip to Japan. As some of you know my travel style usually involves trying to cram in the maximum number of things seen and experiences in the time allowed. Luckily Japan's excellent rail network makes this a breeze. Below is a map of the bullet train routes that will transport me between the planned destinations with the use of the 2-week Japan Rail Pass.

The itinerary starts in Tokyo, from where I'll head out to Kyoto, and then back through Tokyo towards Nikko. From there it's a short trip to Sendai and Matsushima. After that it's a trek up to Hokkaido. Unfortunately the bullet trains run only to Hachihone, from where the local trains will whisk me up to Sapporo, my final destination. From Sapporo it's a 10 hour train ride back to Tokyo via combination of local and bullet (shinkansen) trains.

Those of you who have followed the news in the past few days will of course recognize the red star on the map as the location of the recent 7.0 mag earthquake in the Miyagi prefecture. Although train service through the area was suspended for several days, it's due to resume within the next day or so. It's not yet clear whether the quake will influence the trip itinerary, but it's certainly a sobering reminder of the volatile nature of the Japanese archipelago.

Stay tuned for more details on the trip, as well as photo and otherwise blogging during the trip itself!

Storm Brewing

2008-06-09T09:09:00.003-05:00

I snapped this yesterday while standing at a stop sign on Ann Arbor-Saline. This was the Western edge of the severe but slim front that passed almost all of the northern mid-west yesterday.

Storm Brewing
Originally uploaded by Khaz

Тест: "Знаете ли вы русский язык?"

2008-06-04T09:48:00.000-05:00

Я проверил свои знания русского языка и получил пятерку.

Сходи, проверься?

8 из 8 - Поздравляем, вы - вымирающий вид россиянина, отлично знающего свой родной русский язык. Вы один из немногих носителей элитарного знания, доступного в наше время единицам (4% от общего числа опрошенных). Второй вариант: вы - выпускник, которого хорошо натаскали на сдачу экзамена по русскому языку. Третий вариант: вы – репетитор. Или просто закончили филологический факультет и пошли работать не по специальности.*

NJ Transit... it was OK, while it lasted.

2008-05-29T21:29:00.002-05:00

Over the past year I have commuted to my job in New York, from my home in New Jersey. The commute was approximately 2 hours long door-to-door each way, and ensured that I have plenty of time to get intimately familiar with the transit systems which I was using. While there isn't much that hasn't been said about the NYC Subways, the NJ Transit system (much like the LIRR) remains an exotic beast to all but those who have learned to see her simpler and softer side.
Here's my little tribute to the Northeast Corridor, a 40 km stretch of rail that I spent ~ 20 days worth of time physically present on (which constituted only half of what I spent on my total commute during the ~ 45 weeks of working days).

One of the first things in the morning that I would see, besides my cup of coffee, was Tracks 1 and 2 at Metropark station. Sometimes they would be basked in sun, while others shrouded in fog.

the old platform

the new platform.

the now-no-longer-there platform

The views on the way were often spectacular, with vast highways of the Meadowlands, graffiti of Newark and peaks of Manhattan's towers peeking above Hoboken. There was a myriad of different ways the light could fall on these repeating landscapes and make me believe I was seeing each one for the first time in my life. These photos do not do it justice.

The approach to Newark.

Empire state building peeking through the clouds.

Sunrise over Hoboken.

The views inside the train were a little less amazing. However, the morning rush hour commute was one of the only times you could guarantee peace and quiet on the train. No tourists, no drunken people going home, and no kids, just a train full of people who like you, had to wake up at the crack of dawn and now just want to enjoy the last tranquil minutes of peace and quiet before plunging into the bustling subway at Penn Station, New York.

Having spent the day in New York, the long trek home began. The evening rush hour is brutal at Metropark and thousands of Indians (and you) try to make the express train that cuts out as many of the intermediate stops as possible. That's a useless affair in itself as you will spend any time you saved standing in traffic outside the train station, but let me clarify one detail. I'm not being racist here, it's a hard fact that over 80% of the commuters at Metropark are in fact of some sort of Indian decent. It it no surprise then that as you wait in line to step off the platform, you're greeted by cheerful and well-targeted advertisements, that most likely leave you un-inspired to try the product (unless of course you're a big fan of the Indian version of "Dancing with the Stars.")

The line to exit the platform

The platform exit.

For all its delays, downfalls, and dirtiness, New Jersey Transit is a train company, and there are still few things in this world that are cooler than trains. From the dingy old workhorses, to the new shiny double-deckers, to the speedy Amtrack Acela, they're amazingly impressive in size, strength and elegance. I won't miss the 4 hours of commute, but I have a feeling that some mornings I'll wake up and miss that earthy smell of rock, oil and steel of the tracks, and the whistle, clank and hiss of the train car that used to accompany me every morning and afternoon.

See ya New Jersey Transit. It was OK, while it lasted.

Epistaxis Comics - Dinosaur Comics Edition

2008-05-29T10:09:00.003-05:00

T-rex gets a sudden nosebleed...in bed.

From his description, it sounds like it was a moderately long nosebleed, but as no treatment was required to stop it, T-rex shows no indication of a hemostatic disorder. However, if he does proceed to bleed on the patio furniture, the frequency of his nosebleeds would have increased, and I would suggest getting medical attention.

Also, T-rex, what's your email so I can give you the Bleeding History Survey once it's complete?

Thanks.

Music: Firewater's new album - less depressing, just as trippy

2008-05-24T10:57:00.006-05:00

For the past couple of years, I've been flying quite frequently, and have logged a lot of miles listening to my iPod on those flights. Whenever the plane is waiting for takeoff on the runway, and the stewardesses (and stewards) have settled in for takeoff, it has become a habit of mine to break FAA rules and regulation by powering up my iPod and playing "Black Box Recording" by Firewater during the takeoff. The song, describing plane crash in somewhat slow-motion, manages to strike an amazing balance between morbidness and tranquility, through all of which the voice of Tod A. shines with faint optimism. Although I'm not afraid of flying, the song somehow sets a chill mood for the rest of the flight.

My friend (who happens to be a pretty funny guy) turned me on to Firewater around 2002, a year after Psychopharmacology, the band's junior record, and perhaps the most well known one, came out. At the beginning of this month they came out with their newest album The Golden Hour. I just got the album from eMusic and I recommended to everyone, especially if you have never heard Firewater. Fans of Psychopharmacology, like myself might be thrown off by the sudden latin, dub, banghra, and circus? motifs throughout the album, but even they will warm up to the way the band lets the new themes enhance their style rather than masking it.

Give it a listen here, here or here.

Oh, and the lyrics to Black Box Recording are as follows:

Slung from the hoary heavens
With disbelief suspended
On a shining pendulum of faith

Hanging half awake and dreaming
Of burning cities gleaming
Beneath a sky of ash and slate

And as the fuselage goes dark
You're thinking ain't it funny
Still owe some people money

It's hard to keep from laughing
No smoking sign is flashing
Your mask descends without a sound

Your starboard hope receding
Even the sky is bleeding
You sure could use a smoke right now

And all the people wave their arms
But you can't hear them screaming
You're floating through the ceiling

There's no gravity that can bring you down again
It's almost over now
And you hope they don't wake you up

Now the sun is shining
Somewhere the sun is shining
But it sure ain't shining on you now

So overall grade for Golden Hour : A-

Hello Kitteh replaces the Pregnant Autopsy, um, I mean Virgin Mother

2008-05-21T21:32:00.006-05:00

The previous statue by Damien Hirst titled Virgin Mother in the courtyard of this Park Ave building was replaced by this Hello Kitty statue by Tom Sachs.

Which one would you rather walk by every day on your way to work?

These are my photos from a year ago and a couple of weeks ago. I don't get to walk down Park Ave a lot, so this was quite a pleasant surprise. I hated that other statue, as pretty much everyone I asked who had to walk by it.

The Whitney 2008 Biennial

2008-05-11T13:36:00.004-05:00

Every two years the Whitney Museum of American art holds a Biennial exhibition of the up-and-coming American artists in "contemporary" art. By definition "contemporary" art is something that has not yet faced the excellent quality control procedure that is "time." So if you're interested in a raw, unfiltered, and sometimes plain unpalatable taste of the State of the Art (with full pun intended), you should make your way over to the Upper East side sometime in the next 3 weeks.

Overall it almost evokes a sense of pity to see such a large group of people (80+) artists struggle to come up with novel and meaningful ways to create something aesthetic without resorting to actually creating something visually pleasing, to make a statement about anti-establishment that the minimalists and avant-garde haven't made before, and to show museum visitors something they haven't seen in the reality of their own lives, already overflowing with audio-visual stimuli. Out of the 80+ perhaps only half a dozen manage to accomplish all three. Most of the time this success comes from doing less, not doing more.

Walead Beshty intrigued me with his simple and ingenious ways to capture the fleeting impacts of travel and movement through an increasingly connected world. Jedediah Caesar found beauty in refuse by slicing through blocks of resin embedded with trash, a process that seems like the complete inverse opposite of the Visible Human project in both purpose and execution. Omar Fast made me think and laugh at the same time with his clever 4-channel video collage accompanied by a meticulously spliced narrative combined from two stories told by one man, one about a fatal shooting during an incident in the Iraqi war, and another about a short-lived tryst with a German fetishist.

So if you're at all curious about what modern art has (and will) become I highly recommend a visit to the Whitney 2008 Biennial. But don't blame me if you walk away less than impressed. Art after all, is in the eye of the beholder.

And if you're more interested amateur attempts at interesting photography by yours truly, check out some photos of stickers, firetrucks, gates, breakfast, and subways, all taken during this Saturday in New York.

To give or not to give? With Burma, it's not even a question.

2008-05-07T07:36:00.007-05:00

I have an issue with donating money to help causes that from the onset are plagued with deeper problems than money. In the wake (pun intended) of the Burma cyclone disaster, myriads of charities and individuals are asking for money or action to help the people affected. They're not getting any of mine.

It might seem callous or selfish that I wouldn't spare a part of my obviously-disposable income to help a fellow human in need, but in this case, the issue is not money. Some days on my walk to work, I see a (probably) homeless lady sitting on a subway grate next to the subway station entrance with a paper cup. She has a cardboard sign above it that says something about helping the coalition of homeless in font far to small to read, and then in large letters spells out "DONATIONS OK!" Well gee lady, thanks, cause I was really worried for a second there that if I gave you my spare change I'd be violating some sort of homeless honor-code etiquette that prevents you from taking my money. In my opinion anyone with a world view that's twisted enough to write something like that would also have some twisted ideas about spending the money that give, and this applies not only to strange homeless ladies, but to countries as well.

In the case of Burma, it seems that even if I were to give them money (through any charitable organization) they would only accept is hesitantly. Again, if I'm going to donate to a cause I don't want to feel like the cause is doing me a favor by taking my money. It's not satisfying, and most importantly, it's not helpful! While I don't feel like I need to be begged for charity, any country (or the government thereof) that is skeptical about accepting aid obviously has something to prove, and whatever hidden agenda for that skepticism is, it will also have a large effect on how that country (or the government thereof) will spend that money. If Burma wants to prove something, far be it from me to meddle in its paradoxical policy.

On a related note, I also have an issue with giving money to causes that already have large philanthropic support. In 1997 I bought a SideWinder Force Feeback Pro Joystick from Microsoft for $140. While a cool piece of technology at the time, it certainly didn't cost $140 to make, and had a pretty high profit margin for its manufacturer - Microsoft. Several years late I purchased an optical mouse for $60, also from Microsoft, and last year my spending on the Xbox and related games and accessories exceeded $600. You can imagine the profit Microsoft made on the games alone. So now when the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation gives $42 million to develop drought resistant corn for African farmers, I feel much better knowing that a least a good percent of my $800+ dollars is that what allowed Bill to establish the foundation and finance this grant. Until I'm rich enough to give away amounts of money that actually make a difference, I think I'll take that $20/month that I can use to save a Darfur(ian?) child and put it into a high interest saving account.

Double Tractor Vision

2008-05-06T19:55:00.004-05:00

I missed yesterday's photo, so today I put up TWO.
Both of these are from my NJ Transit commute. The first is the two CAT machines that are taking apart the old inbound platform to make room for a new one. The second is a macro of the one-way ticket waiting to be picked up by the conductor.

Loose Screws

2008-05-04T22:14:00.003-05:00

I like taking stuff apart. These screws are from an old Sony camcorder, whose lens casing I took apart while I was bored of watching the Ax Men. That show seriously makes me want to never have to print anything ever again. Also no hardwood floors for me. Stupid History Channel.

Triple redundant grafitti

2008-05-03T22:07:00.003-05:00

The taggers of this abandoned building on 1st ave (and around 60th st) apparently started out their work on the lower levels and gained more confidence as they made their way up. Still though, it would be nice to see some variety, and perhaps even some color!

Passive Agressive Repo

2008-05-02T21:18:00.009-05:00

A-photo-a-day is back for the month of May! Now with text!

A couple of months ago I let an anonymous co-worker borrow my (actually my mom's) copy of a Java Servlets book. Today while pacing around the lab I noticed that he was using the book as a phone rest. To anyone out there who ever borrows books. That's an ass thing to do! I reclaimed the book this afternoon with a slick, "I see you're done using that book, I'll take it back then. My mom needs it." She doesn't. But apparently neither does he (or she?).

Also, check out a few photos from my trip to Boston on the flickr photostream. I'll do more of a write up on it this weekend. I promise.

Steak-umm - made of 100% all alien beef.

2008-04-24T12:46:00.003-05:00

Apparently the chefs who make the pre-sliced Steak-umm steak meat have figured out how to synthesize 100% beef from some sort of alien matter. According to their FAQ their products contain absolutely NO ENZYMES. Seeing as all organic matter contains enzymes (even if they are de-activated by cooking), I find this claim a little hard to swallow.

Subject: Enzymes

Q: Are there enzymes in any of your products, and are they vegetable base or animal base?

A: No. Steak-umm® Sliced Steaks are made of 100% beef, and do not contain enzymes.

I wouldn't trust a company who doesn't know enough basic biology to make such a claim right out there on their website.

One more reason to hate Metropark

2008-04-23T05:49:00.006-05:00

Metropark employees obviously can't spell. Ok so my previous post contained like 15 spelling errors, BUT...there will be only be around 3 people who will ever read it, while this sign is supposed to be an official notice meant to be read by hundreds of people day passing through the Metropark train station. If I'm making a sign with only 3 word in size 1000 font on it, I would sure as hell make sure that I don't insert EXTRA apostrophes where they don't belong.

I doubt what they meant is that the Exit itself has departed and the poor taxis are now stuck in the station with no way to get out.

A Saturday in New York

2008-04-20T07:25:00.005-05:00

In a little over a month I'll be moving away from East coast to finish the rest of my term as an ~~indentured servant~~ graduate student at U of M, and I must say that I will in some respects truly miss being so near New York. Since I've worked in the City I haven't fully taken advantage of my time there, instead opting to go home early on most days and leaving the hustle and bustle that I associate with work behind. It's days like yesterday however, a random Saturday, that really make me realize just how incredible a big metropolis like this can be.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there must be less that a dozen places in the world where one can have a work meeting at a 6th top Hospital in the US (and up there in the world), then catch a glimpse of the Pope while munching on Dunkin Donuts, and finish off the afternoon with a performance by the Kirov ballet (itself as old as the City). Yep, to me that's a pretty neat day.

New York Presbyterian is right across the street from my workplace, and as I frequently work with doctors who are busy on all days but Saturday, I had to go there for a quick meeting. What surprised me most of all, except its size, is the fact that a lot of internal bookkeeping at the hospital is done via good 'ol Excel spreadsheets. Patients data don't go into this system, but as far as management of doctors themselves (who's covering what, who's out sick, etc) is summarized using a pre-fab Excel sheet with a bunch of macros that gets updated every day by the staff. I might be aging myself a bit with this, but to me this seemed like a nice low-tech solution, and I'm curious to know how many other huge medical institutions make do with MS Office for their infrastructure needs.

From the meeting I headed West towards City Center, where the ballet was going to be. I grabbed a DD lunch (I usually get a muffin (cranberry orange) instead of donuts) and made my way to Park East (5th ave). Now I knew the Pope was in town, but I wasn't sure where or when, so I was slightly surprised to see all of 5th ave blocked off and police checking handbags on every side street in order to get on to the viewing area on the sidewalks. I figured I might as well walk through the crowd, because where there are crowds in NY, interesting sights abound. I wasn't disappointed. Below are a couple of the bunch of photos I took while walking to midtown, all of people waiting, chanting, buying, praying and doing everything else one can do while waiting for his Holiness. I called my secretary and found out the Popemobile should be making its way down the street in 20 minuts, so I decided to ad "see the Pope" to my list of things to do in life, and stayed around to check it off while finishing my muffin. You can catch a glimpse of the Popemobile in this short clip, but I'll leave it up to you to track down and experience your own full-on Pope sighting (and yes, in the end it is pretty anticlimactic).

As for the Kirov. We pretty much didn't get to see any Vishneva in the all-Balanchine repertoire, but I wasn't disappointed, since I wasn't really looking for her until someone mentioned she wasn't in there (yes, not a very avid fan). The performance included Serenade, Ballet Imperial and Rubies, out of which Rubies was my favorite since Balanchine worked some really neato jazz-inspired moves into the choreography and it was exciting and pleasant to watch. Serenade was like a big etude. I wouldn't want to listen to a Bach etude at a classical performance, and I certainly don't want to watch what appears to be an extended and elaborate dance practice on stage. I know Serenade was made to look like that, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. Ballet Imperial was more of a classical piece, but the choreography was still very cool and there was a lot of clever multi-partner dancing going on, so I enjoyed it.

And that was my Daturday in New York.