Silver Case

Published in the Straits Times

This chart muffles the information on turns almost as effectively as the fonts cigarette makers use to smother the Surgeon General’s warnings.

The Colors convey no information. The rectangles convey no information. You must read all the squares of numbers before you understand anything about the speed and cornering of the map. It’s scarcely better than a table of numbers. At least a table wouldn’t have skipped some of the turns for space reasons.

You could come up with a dozen better ways to present the data. For instance the examples below, of turns 2 and 3. One is a mild turn at high speed, and the second is a sharp turn at modest speed. The super-imposed numbers are almost an uncessary afterthought. Now you can quickly see the sharpest corners, the fastest corners, maximum RPM corners, etc. All the context is in a single cell itself. You don’t need to have scanned all the turns and identify max/min of gearings, g-force, and speed to understand the context of an individual cell.

Fastest corner on the track

Most punishing corner on the track

Jason, my espresso machine connection, zipped over today and replace the seized water pump. $350 parts, and a $50 for an hour’s time. Massively cheaper than finding a new espresso machine.

Not clear why the thing started leaking and seized. Bearing seal failed, and then having a chance to sit for 10 days let it rust up enough to be permanently frozen?

The old pump is a nice piece of brass paper-weight.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Just returned from Tokyo. Starting off the week with a public holiday.

It would be nicer if I didn’t have to go into the office to catch up, and moreover, if my espresso machine wasn’t broken.  I brought back a kilogram of  Espresso Paladino from Zoka in Akasaka Mitsuke.  This morning I was disgusted to find that my machine wasn’t generating enough (any?) pressure.  The boiler was working and was at 1.2atm, but the grouphead pump isn’t making pressure.  I think the motor is shot.  I took the case off and gave it a few taps my micro-persuader, but that didn’t liberate it.  Looks like I’ll have to try to get it serviced.

The Nuova Simonelli Mac 2000 is a deprecated model.  What will I do if the machine is hard or too expensive to repair?  I’ll buy something else. The ideal would be a Synesso Cyncra.  Of course, that might be idiotically expensive. I’ll have to find out.

On returning from Tokyo, my mail stack had an important package — a collection of Alton Brown Good Eats CDs from my darkNet connection in the high desert of the American Southwest.  Just watched the episode on making apple pies.  Of course he had new-and-improved twists that I am looking forward to try.

Bought Luke a neat toy called Quadrilla.   He loves to play these at toy stores, so I bought him one of the sets. He’s still a bit young to assemble them himself, but he loves to feed them with marbles, and already is recognizing what some of the pipes and holes do.

His by-himself school starts Wednesday.  Ling drops him off for, I think, three hours  three days a week.  Hopefully this helps to kick-start his mandarin, which is still quite wanting.

Oh hell. It’s already 10am. I guess I better get dressed and take care of the day’s work/admin rubbish sooner-than-later.  I told Luke we’d go driving this afternoon.

Kyle Smith eviscerates Barbara Walter’s biography in today’s Asian Wall Street Journal. Had me laughing out loud as I ate my salaryman dinner downstairs of the hotel.

Who is Barbara Walters? She is a journalist who cannot write (”Just before the ax fell, lightning struck and my life changed, never to be the same again”). She is the veteran of a major TV network’s news division who once wedged a piece on her own apartment into a prime-time broadcast. She is a celebrity who is most famous for her orbital relationship with other celebrities. Immensely rich and familiar to all, she has been around forever without anyone quite knowing why. And now she is a memoirist.

Behold history according to Barbara. “President Kennedy was lying in state in the rotunda. My job was to report on both the dignitaries and the long lines of everyday people arriving to pay their last respects. I found an old film clip from that day. I’m wearing a black coat. I have long dark hair.” On Indira Gandhi: “She and I had the same complaints. I also didn’t much like my kitchen.” After a couple of dutiful pages on 1973’s Yom Kippur War in the Mideast, she segues with: “In 1975 morning television was having its own little war.” Accompanying Nixon in China: “We also had big roomy bathtubs, no showers — and unexpected luxuries. One-day laundry service and one-hour pressing.”

“Audition” might have been 50 pages of cute stories about the great, the terrible and Monica Lewinsky, but Ms. Walters apparently felt the need to bulk things up, forcing the book covers ever wider to produce an epic of self-absorption unleavened by self-awareness.

We learn that Ms. Walters periodically went out with lawyer Roy Cohn in the 1960s — she didn’t know he was gay and though she found his role in McCarthyism “despicable,” she once considered marrying him (!) because he “bought a large town house,” one big enough to accommodate her parents and sister as well.

Have been in Tokyo on business all week. Back this weekend.

Did a batch of cooking today. Varying levels of success.

Spinach Jam Sort of a spinach/olive tapenade with coriander, garlic, and quite a few spices.   This tasted quite nice and I ate all of what I thought would be a two-day batch.

Rice Pudding  Rice pudding made with plenty of lemon and lime zest.  I  like these horrendously heavy Eisenhower desserts.  The rest of my family is considerably les adoption.

Moroccan Flat Bread   Yes, this is certainly flat.  I eventually got a rise from it during baking.  It’s cooling off now; I’ll eat it tomorrow.  It seems to make the necessary hollow sound when I whack on the crust. Hopefully it’s ok.  I didn’t give it enough yeast.  That was a problem.

Vegetable Paella   I sort of freestyled a recipe.  But I flinched during the cooking, not giving it enough stock in the first place and then adding extras in dribs/drabs near the end. The result?  Top rice undercooked,  middle rice horrendously water-logged and gross, and the bottom charred, not browned.  The vegetables were so overcooked they seemed practically liquidfied.  Heat was too high and I didn’t start with enough stock.  Tasted dreadful.  I ordered that it be binned after dinner.

Cranberry/Orange Muffins With Strudel Topping    These look fantastic.  They’re colling downstairs. I’m looking forward to try them tomorrow morning.

Today Luke got behind the wheel of my car and took it for some parking lot rally driving.