Cascadian Dark Ale aka Black IPA

As part of my New Year’s traditions, and in an effort to get back in shape after the holidays, I forgo alcohol consumption during the month of January. This year was the first year I was able to actually make it the entire month without cheating. It was especially challenging this year considering I had 4 homebrews nearing completion during this time and would be unable to taste them.

Yesterday I finally got to try one of my brews, a Black IPA that I made back in December and bottled in early January. This has to be one of my favorite brews so far. It has absolutely incredible malty undertones with a strong hoppy finish. Later that night I went to one of my favorite Brewpubs in the area, Hopworks, who had a Black IPA on tap as on of their current seasonal selections. Naturally I had to try this just for the comparison alone. Surprisingly the two brews compared almost identically. The subtle difference was that mine has more of a hoppy flavor as I’m a big hop head.

I’ve made a lot of beers so far but haven’t had anything to compare them to until now. I am really excited that I’ve managed to make something comparable to large brewery. I haven’t made the same beer twice yet but this one might be the first I do that with. You can find the recipe I used to make my brew below. I’d like to give many thanks to the guys at Main Brew for this and all their help.

9.5 lbs. Light Malt extract

5 oz. 55L English Crystal Malt

3 oz. 120L Crystal Malt

6 oz. Carafa Malt

2 oz. Raost Barley

1.0 oz. Zeus Hops for entire 60 min boil.

1.0 oz. Zeus Hops added at last 20 min of boil.

0.5 oz Citra Hops added to last 15 min of boil.

0.5 oz Citra Hops added to last 10 min of boil.

0.5 oz Citra Hops added to last 5 min of boil.

0.5 oz Citra Hops dry-hopped.

SafAle US-05 Yeast.

Let sit in the secondary for 2.5 weeks, 3 weeks in the bottle.

2009 Results

I decided to do this a bit early with the holidays and the end of the year only a few days away I figure I should be pretty safe.

Before 2009 kicked off, I predicted that:

1. Economy will turn around.
2.Circuit City, Linen’s and Things would not be missed.
3. Netbook sales will increase, but Q4 09 would should gains for notebooks.
4. Obama will have low approval ratings.
5. House prices will continue to decline throughout 2009.
6. Blu-Ray players will drop below $150 and disc prices will drop. Digital downloads of movies will also jump.
7. WiMax will continue to struggle.
8. Flickr will be sold off from  Yahoo!
9. iPhone rev 3 will be unimpressive.
10. I will break my 250gb limit from Comcast.

My results:

1. Third quarter GDP growth was 2.9%, so yes we’re seeing some improvement. +1
2. The big stores aren’t missed, I do miss Joe’s though. +1
3. Netbook shipments are up. Small growth in notebooks. Desktops are flat. +1
4. Obama has an approval rating of 50% at time of this writing. I’ll give this a half point. +.5
5. Housing prices went down all year. However, during last few months we have seen a slight uptick in prices (.2%). +.75
6. Big drop in these. Can pick some up for around $100. Disc prices remain high but most of the time they have them on sale for as cheap as the DVD version. +1.
7. Yup, continues to struggle. +1
8. Nope. +0
9.  3Gs was successful and market share is up. +0
10. Came close, but no. I also switched to high speed fiber half way through the year. +0

6.25 / 10

I’ll try to do better next year.

WiMax: My love hate relationship

This past weekend I was given a chance to test out the new WiMax service offered by Clear. I’ve been a big supporter of WiMax ever since I heard of it way back in 2005, before the first towers even went up, so I was pretty excited to give the service a chance. So I was happy to carve out a little bit of time to do some testing.

I did the majority of my testing on tried and true T42 Thinkpad.

Setup/Install:

Setting up the USB WiMax dongle was a piece of cake. I ran the install CD (1 minute) and then plugged in the dongle. Almost instantly I was connected to the web. I was impressed, this was actually easier and faster than connecting to a wireless access point.

Speed Test:

Immediately I decided to run WiMax through speedtest.net. I ran this test while sitting at my desk out near the Streets of Tanasbourne in Hillsboro. Here are the results:

1.12Mb/s

Not bad but not broadband. Lets see how my iPhone does:

Did not see that one coming

I ran it a couple of times using the Speed Test App and my ping scores were all over the place but my up and downs held steady.

So according to speed test my 3G Iphone is indeed faster than WiMax from this site. However, one thing that did seem snappier was loading websites on my T42 vs the iPhone. Processing power does play a significant role it would seem.

Further Testing

I really would have liked to show off ample test results on online gaming, P2P service, and HD Video streaming. Unfortunately I was unable to get the dongle to work with my desktop PC and I discovered that the USB dongle is not supported by Vista 64bit. This took quite a bit of research to find out.

All of that would have been moot anyways since from my place, in the heart of NW Portland, I was unable to get a signal to connect to the service. I had to walk out to the street and stand on my sidewalk to get it to work. Apparently penetration through buildings built in the 30′s isn’t very good. I had the same issue with my 3G iPhone when I first got it, but as soon as they updated the firmware, all of my issues disappeared. I wonder if they can do the same with this? I was still surprised that while being right in downtown I had connection issues.

Outside of my home it worked much better. I was able to surf the net, watch youtube, and access my work email relatively fast. There was some additional delay but nothing that was totally unreasonable. Whenever I moved inside was when I had issues, it would seem that sitting next to a window helped as it did not lose the signal from outside. I cannot confirm this 100%.

My Thoughts and the future

I really want this technology to be successful. Currently I can see this service having the most benefit for business people who are out and about all day long. Anyone in sales or management would have a significant leg up over their competition. Take a real estate agent for instance. Imagine being able to pull up listings anywhere you are rather than having to decide upon ahead of time? Like a neighborhood you’re in? Pull up a list of all the other houses for sale and see them that day rather than having to reschedule.

From a consumer perspective I don’t think the need is there yet. If you are commuting via public transportation to work, it would be great to use this with your laptop. Beyond that I have a hard time justifying its service price when wifi hotspots are ample and mostly free. Realistically who lugs around a laptop everywhere they go beyond business people? Sure netbooks are getting smaller and more powerful, but they still don’t slip into my pocket like a 3G phone. I just cant justify spending $50 a month for your service when my phone does almost everything you offer and more.

Clear definitely has an uphill battle to get people to embrace this new tech. What they need to do is show off real world examples in their advertising rather than a stadium overflowing with beer. Show a real estate agent looking up houses on the go, have a photographer uploading wedding pictures immediately to a wedding site, or even show a guy riding the MAX watching Hulu or catching up on email. Show people how this tech will improve their business/life and make it something that they cant live without.

In this day and age internet access shouldn’t be a privilege but a right. Clear has the opportunity to bring internet to the masses, they just need to figure out their strategy a little bit.

Brew Time!

After a few weeks of delay I finally spent Sunday afternoon brewing my first batch of beer. I decided to go with an American IPA clone as my first attempt for 2 reasons: 1. I love IPA’s 2. I’m hoping that as hoppy as an IPA is it will mask any of my potential screw ups.

Overall the process is very straightforward. The biggest difficulty that I had was cooling the wort. Even with the addition of a gallon of frozen ice it still took quite a while to cool on its on. I spent a significant amount of time waiting on this before I was able to add the yeast. In the future I’m going to fill my sink with ice and cool the cooking pot directly to speed things up.

The crew at Main Street Homebrew Supply located in Hillsboro were very helpful in walking me through the process. I highly recommend them. Additionally their site is extremely helpful for the first timer and will walk you through the entire process.

I wish I had more photos of the process but over the whole hour, watching the pot is the most exciting part. Here is what I looked at for an hour:

In hindsight I probably shouldn’t have worn shorts around so much hot liquid.

Considering that my stove is from the Regan era I’m also surprised that it was able to heat up so much liquid and not break. There was quite a bit of “settling” noise when I put the pot on the stove.

The yeast is in and the fermentation is taking place now, I’ll post updates as the process progresses.

Abandonia

I stumbled across the site Abandonia after learning that the classic game Flashback had been released to the iPhone. This place is a treasure trove of classic games: Betrayal at Krondor, Blackthorne, MDK, Doom 2, just to name a few. The best thing is that all of these are the full games free for download!

Image via Abandonia.

According to the site:

“Since the software is no longer sold or supported, the copyright holders are not directly harmed in any way. This is why abandon-ware sites are, for the most part, ignored by the law.”

Very cool. This also explains why people are porting the games to the iPhone, as far as I can tell the game is essentially public domain and people are just repackaging it for the iPhone.  Not a bad money making idea.

When I have kids, before I let them ever touch an xbox1080, or whatever is out by then, they will play these games.  These are the classics, the ones that don’t get nearly enough credit for making the gaming industry what it is today. Glad to see someone is keeping them alive.

Yelp Extortion

After reading the first article that had been forward on to me, I was slightly upset with Yelp and almost ready to cancel my account and delete all my reviews. On some level I always assumed that they did this but choose to ignore it. I did this because I found Yelp to be helpful and had provided me with ideas of new places to try. I decided to stay with Yelp because of the new and interesting people that I’ve met by attending some of the Yelp sponsored and unofficial events. Some of them very cool, some of them completely out there and I would be afraid knowing if they were anywhere near my home. I imagine its about the same mix of people that you find on Amazon who review products. With Yelp it is nice to put a face to the reviewer.

With the second article I started to think less about Yelp and more about the businesses. Yes, Yelp does ask restaurants/bars/etc to host “Elite” events for their top reviewers where the booze and food is free. I’m not 100% sure but I don’t believe that Yelp pays a dime for this, the host place picks up the tab. In turn the Elite usually will give good reviews, nothing shocking really anything free will usually get a positive reaction from Yelpers. I can’t say that I’ve ever been back to any of the hosted sites or recommended them for that matter outside of Yelp. For the unofficial places I typically attend multiple times and will recommend. Why? Cheap drinks and lots of seating. Spend your marketing dollars elsewhere. Chances of Elites (at least in my area) coming back and or spreading the word about your place outside of Yelp are slim. You will probably be remembered for a few minutes until the next place comes along. Think longer term.

Businesses need to realize 4 things about Yelp:

1. People will always complain on the internet, get used to it. You dot have to be in person to do it and can say pretty much whatever you want, even if it isn’t true. I have to admit that there have been times where I have had an awful experience all the while thinking that I cant wait to get home and share this on Yelp – sad but true, I know. If anything you can take from negative reviews are ways to improve your business and future customer visits.

2. Don’t feed the trolls. I actually look for a few negative reviews before visiting a place, if its too perfect then I usually assume something is up.  Don’t go after them and attack them at all. From personal experience, my fiancee gave a bad review to a local place and got hounded by the owner to the point she just gave up on Yelp. Good for the business owner right? Not so much since she told everyone she knows how rude the owner was to her and that she would never ever go there again. Word of mouth is much more damaging than Yelp could ever be.

3. Word of mouth is still more powerful. Yelp will never replace friends, family, or co-workers. Even as an active user I still ask friends before doing a Yelp search. I trust them way over Yelp and most of my co-workers have never even heard of Yelp yet.

4. Run your business and treat your customers like you would want to be treated and you wont have to worry about Yelp reviews. Simple I know but its the little things that matter the most, good customer service is key. Almost annoying that I need to state this.

Yelp has huge potential to change the way we browse for a bar, restaurant, doctor, etc. Businesses who focus on their business performance/service and staying on top of things shouldn’t even have to worry about Yelp. They will be the ones getting the 5 stars anyways.

Sponsors of Tomorrow

*Update* Now with commercial action! – Thanks Ken (btw its Adam, not Rich )

Almost forgot to mention the big news that Intel launched the “Sponsors of Tomorrow” campaign today. NYT has a great writeup.

Loads of work went into this and its really great to see the final product. I’m looking forward to seeing what gets released over the coming months.

The tag-line reminds me of Futurama and when Fry is unfrozen and the first words he hears are “Welcome to the world of tomorrow!”

Kindle 2/DX

While I’m glad to see that we are finally moving to a paperless world, we are still have a long way to go. I applaud Amazon’s efforts but there still are 2 shortcomings that bother me.

1. Price
No way I’m paying $500 just to be able to read something on the go. I already pay enough for iPhone and that lets me do a lot more than read just books. They need to figure out how to subsidize this thing with a subscription or something. Either that offer an “All You Can Download” monthly plan ala Zune. If they did that $500 would totally be worth it.

2. Physical Asset
Living in Portland I get the fantastic benefit of having the original Amazon.com (before they started selling everything) just a few blocks away from my house. Powell’s books off Burnside lets me access more books than I can possibly imagine at prices better than Amazon often times. Additionally I can let my friends borrow the books or sell them back to Powell’s for cash/credit. The Kindle locks me down. Kind of like buying mp3′s. While you might own the file you can never resell them like a CD. But hey that business model is working incredibly well for Apple so who knows.

It takes a while for everything to take off, somehow I bet this device isn’t going away anytime soon. I also don’t anticipate this signaling the beginning of the end for the traditional book. I’m a lot less concerned with spilling a drink on my book than I am a piece of expensive hardware.

Finally!

I really hope that this passes. I was about to write a ballot measure for the next election to deal with this issue.

Sam Adams

I am willing to bet that mayor Sam Adams will resign tomorrow. Quite a shame since he did have some great ideas for the city.