Black Coffee (Deprecated)

Photo side-project

During this trip I've shot many rolls of film with my EOS3 and EOS1 cameras, but lugging around, literally, 40lbs of camera gear gets really uncomfortable. Plus, there are plenty of shots that don't deserve recording on an expensive piece of Provia. Thus, in my breast pocket I've been carrying around my old Casio Exilim digital camera, roughly the dimension of a business-card holder.

The photos are generally mediocre, but they're not meant to be art. I disable the vicious little beast of a flash, so often the shots are taken at slow shutter speeds (1/10, 1/20, 1/30) read that: BLURRY.

I figured I might as well post these to the web, so I downloaded the latest version of Jalbum and used a heavily-customizable skin, "ExhibitPlus" (Sorry, Stas, I know you'll hate it, but it's easy to use immediately). The result: Tokyo 2004 Snapshots.

Are the Yomiuri Giants finally getting their comeuppance?

The Hiroshima Carp are staging a comeback and first half of the eigth inning the game is 4-3 Giants, but the Carp are putting up serious pressure. Go Carp!

Roppongi

When you're in the mountains or the outback and your destination turns out to be a shitty one, it's one, two, maybe three days down the drain. In Tokyo you'll lose an hour. That's why I can't be too upset over our trip to Roppongi today.

Our agenda including trying the (apparently) famous Trung Nguyen Vietnamese Coffee, going to the top of the Ark Mori building to see the Tokyo Metropolis, and visiting the Mori Art Museum.

Trung Nguyen Vietnamese Coffee
I was grouchy without coffee, so we went to Trung Nguyen first. I ordered "Culi Special" blend for Ling and "Arabica Special" for myself. They were served in the style of vietnamese coffee: dripper basket leaking into a cup of condensed milk.

How was it? It was infused with an overwhleming chocolate/mocha-like aroma. There was nothing subtle about it. Comparing Ling's coffee with mine, it had the same punishing chocolate taint. The overall roast seemed "higher pitched" than mine, but otherwise it was the same.

In a last ditch effort to experience something nice, I tried the "Legendee" blend. The package is labelled, "Weasel." Why? Because for this grade, legendarily, the beans are supposedly first fed to some sort of weasel creature, which then shits them out, the beans are re-collected and processed. Result? Same as the other two blends but perhaps even "higher pitched."

(On further study, I find that the beans are NOT given this treatment. Oh well. Still doesn't mean they were nice.)

Bottles of raw beans for purchase are on display. On inspection, I found the beans were 20% coated in some revolting pitch-like substance. Oily beans are good. Pitch-soaked beans are...... ?

Verdict? If it's really as popular as people say, then it's just a fad, because this coffee is nothing special. It's so overpoweringly sweet I could never imagine drinking even one a day. As well, only a fool would open a franchise in Singapore, where any and ever market stall serves a sickly-sweet black coffee essentially identical to this stuff, except it costs $0.40USD instead of $4.00USD.

Onward to Roppongi Hills
I can make this short... They tried to charge the ripoff price of $15USD/person to catch a ride to the buildings observation deck. Fuck that. They tried to charge the ripoff price of $15USD/person to see a silly "Dots Obsession" exhibit. Fuck that. We browsed the overpriced art store where they had "art books" like one which seemed to involve nothing but drawings of a young girl with her hands and feet chopped off, bound with a chain around her neck, Roots-style. Fuck that.

Then we left.

Birthday
On the way back we stopped at Isetan in Shinjuku to find a birthday cake for me. I found probably the most attractive cake I've ever seen on display. Knowing nothing else about it, but hoping it tasted as good as it looked, we bought a slice. (The whole cake was $70USD). We just came back from a very nice, simple dinner at noodle restaurant called Yoroiya and sat down for our miniature birthday celebration.

You're all wondering, "so how was the cake?"

The black dots in the picture are not, unfortunately chocolate chips. They're black sesame seeds. Even the black smears on the icing are some form of sesame particulate. There isn't a drop of chocolate or caramel on this cake. To boot, the yellow cake itself wasn't that great. Oh well, it will be one of my more memorable birthday cakes, though certainly not the tastiest.

My most seductive birthday cake in thirty-two years

Low-key day

Today we tranferred from our business hotel in Akasaka to our Ryokan hotel in Asakusa, the Asakusa Ryokan Shigetsu.

As I mentioned earlier, it's a 'tatami mat' hotel. What's that mean? A tiny room, 15' by 15' for the main living area. The floor is covered with a thin rice mat, and then two futon-like pads with bedding on the floor. A minimalist shelf with a hot water pot, a tiny tv, and clock is all that's left. There is a tiny narrow foyer where we dumped our luggage, and a small bathroom. Humorously, the tub's biggest dimension seems to be its depth. It's something like crawling into a largish washing machine drum -- 30"x30"x45".

In case you think we're slumming it, we're not. Having our own attached bath is a premium amenity. The room is more than $155USD/night, scarcely less expensive than the place we just left.

Just nearby is Sensoji Temple, Tokyo's oldest temple. Curiosly, the temple was founded for Kannon, Goddess of Mercy, who, by another name is worshipped by many of my wife's relatives.

After an afternoon's kicking around the temple and shops we came back for a soak in the Ryokan's public bath. It's pretty nice -- a set of three small washing stations plus a hot white cedar hot tub. Ling was short-changed -- the women's bath is smaller than the men's.

Finally it was time for dinner. While I was passed out on the tatami mat, Ling did some research and found a well-regarded Tempura restaurant in a very suburban/working-class region of Tokyo. "Iseya" lived up to it's billing. We waited for nearly an hour to be seated in the tiny restaurant, but the wait was worth it. It serves the vulgar, "dark" tempura despised by "effete" diners of Kyoto and the more high class areas of Tokyo. The color of the batter was much closer to that of a hash brown or french fry than yellowish-white porcelain of high class tempura. But wow, it was good. It was mostly seafood, less vegetable. Rinsed down with a nice Kirin, we finished up the night.

Afterwards Ling popped on the TV and lo there was game two of the Giants/Swallows series. From what I could tell, the Swallows put up a better performance yesterday! The score was already 12-2 in the seventh and as Ling put it "the Giants ran again" so the score was at least 13-2 by the end. Ouch.

It's still a bit early, so I spent a very civilized forty minutes in the public bath again, soaking and reading another Haruki Murakami novel. It was extremely relaxing, but I am glad I finished chapter five when I did, because as I was packing up, a big, fat, old white guy came in. Would have totally broken the mood.

Not going to stay up too late -- another 3am morning tomorrow as we return to the Tsukiji fish market for another round of photography.

Losing carrier?

Moving over to the next hotel, a 'ryokan'. It's a 'tatami mat' room. Very doubtful I'll have internet access and Tokyo doesn't really have internet cafes. So... back when I'm back.

Yomiuri Giants 11, Yakult Swallows 2

Ling's new crush, Inagarishi

This afternoon Ling and I went to the Meiji-Jingu stadium and bought good tickets (front row, halfway past first base) to tonight's Yomirui Giants, Yakult Swallows game. Everyone loves the Giants, so we picked the Yakult Swallows as our team.

Things started out well, with the Swallows ahead 1-0, but several innings later, the Giants were ahead by five and the Swallows hadn't even accumulated another hit.

But anyway, it was still a fun time. Ling had never been to a baseball game at all, and I hadn't been to one since 1995 when I saw a miserable Kansas City Royals game. Once the sun went down the temperature dropped to a very chilly 50 degrees, I passed the time watching the relief pitchers (the Giants chewed through seemingly a dozen different Yakult pitchers) warming up, literally, 10 feet from me, while I drank Kirin beer and ate edamame (salted, boiled soya beans).

I have to compliment the local fans -- they are definitely not 'fair weather fans' -- 90% of them stayed through to the end of the trouncing. The only booing and cursing of the Giants came from me.

We even came home with souveniers. Ling bought an Inagarishi "handphone chain" (no obvious purpose). I bought a nice Yakult Swallows meshback trucker hat. Ling kept insisting that I not get the redneck model I chose ("YS" logo) and instead get the model that simply said, in cursive, "Swallows" on the front.

I'm sorry. I may be straight. I may be married. But I just can't wear a cap that says nothing but "Swallows" on it, I just don't have the patience to deflect the endless "Spits" jokes that would ensue.

Body and Soul

You're the set designer for the latest Robert DeNiro movie. He regularly hangs at a tiny jazz club. What's that place look like? Probably a lot like 'Body and Soul' does, where we enjoyed a piano/drums/bass trio this evening.

It was almost stereotypical, yet it was real, thus terribly cool. A below-ground-floor room, perhaps a 100-feet square, with elevated seating around half the perimeter of the room, and a cozy piano/bass/drums duo nestled on the main floor along with several diners sitting at cafe-sized tables. The lighting was red and sultry.

They'd reserved a table for Ling and I where I (if I was an underworld figure) would have been receiving callers all evening long, seeking my audience, delivering me notes, and whispering messages. Probably a lot of bitches and whiskey, too.

Alas, I'm not associated with the underworld, so I ended up drinking a sickly-sweet Heineken (I've been totally spoiled by all the nice dry Asahi's and Kirin's I've been taking with almost all my meals) with simply my kind wife to keep me company. Instead of receiving callers from the Chiba organ farms and the Kanda-Jimbocho forgery studios, we listened to the unnamed trio of Shigeo Fukuda (piano) Shin Kamimura (bass) and Junji Hirose (drums)

The music was good and the ambience was rich. If someone understood very low-light studio photography, he could take a seriously cool photograph of that place during a performance. (I am not that person).

I guess one of the few things I dislike more than a drum solo is a music critic, especially a jazz critic, so I'll keep my summary short: I enjoyed the range of songs they played -- a good, varied menu. Each performer definitely had his 'chops' moments.

Complaints? Only that I was mistaken yesterday when I claimed, "nobody likes a drum solo, even drummers don't like drum solos."

Junji Hirose must like them, because he would break into one at the slightest provocation. He plays well, but hard, and loud. The trio might do well to more finely balance the three instruments and not play in a such a round-robin style. Their best moments where when all three were sharing the stage.

Like Siskel and Ebert, Blutig and Lim continue to disagree -- I liked the lively stuff most, and she enjoyed the more languid numbers.

Haven't planned our next club trip. Would like to find some trumpet-based jazz, but that may be a bit harder to find.

(republished) Afternoon in Restaurant Kitchen Town (Kappabashi)

If you started at one end of the five-block Kappabashi district of Tokyo with a big bag of cash and an empty truck, by the time you'd reached the end of it, you could have bought every single item you'd need to open up any sort of Japanese restaurant you could think of. It's not an exageration -- everything from monster cookware (man-sized pots and ladles) to fine china to disposable bento boxes to enormous taffy-torquing machines are for sale.

We kicked around lots of shops and came home with a host of goodies... nice china coffee cups (no more heavy ceramic beasts with non-ergonomic handles), tiny juice-size beer glasses (no more fizzed-out, warmed-up beer), and a decorative curtain to hang across the kitchen door's threshold.

Amusingly, we also found what can only be described as the Tokyo Branch of Charlie Glenn's General Store. Let's say that the shop was so crowded and overstuffed with crap that only Ling could spelunk her way in. But it was worth it. The store sells old restaurant equipment. We came away with some great bento boxes and a set of monster-sized Kirin beer mugs that once served in one of the tens of thousands of restaurants in Tokyo.

Browsing this district took us the better part of three hours. Having been up since 3am, we were quite bushed by late afternoon. A 'Mr. Donut' (*)coffee and donut indistingushiable from the wax food displays we saw in Kappabashi did little to perk me up. We ran home to shower, drop off for development all the film I've shot, and then catch dinner before we went to tonight's Jazz feature.

The weather today was abysmal. 25mph winds, intermittent rain, reasonably chilly. Heavy rain stranded us near the Pro Create film lab in Shibuya. Instead of looking far afield for dinner, we just dashed next door to a tall, narrow stairway with the sign "Oden Bar."

I've read about Oden, and I saw plenty of Oden tools in Kappabashi, but beside what Ling has made, I've never eaten it anywhere else. Ling's Oden is a big bowl of a very flavorful dashi-based broth that has long-simmered with corn, carrots, and daikon radish. 'Real' Oden is something more like a lipped plate with a pile of daikon, fishcake, and tofu-based derivatives splashed with the broth they've been boiling in all day. There's really no 'soup' aspect to it by the time dinner comes. There's a typically-awful mustard to go along that's a cross between wasabi and english mustard (the most-hated of all condiments).

The Oden Bar had a heavy, rustic, dark toned feel. It was basically a couple long picnic-like tables, and a nice japanese bar. Oden strikes me as being an excuse to pick at a few things while drinking whiskey, sake, and beer. It doesn't strike me as a very compelling meal on its own. I'm glad we found out what 'real' Oden is like, but I think we'll stick to Ling's Oden broth.

Dessert in Shibuya near the statue of Hachiko.

We had a quick dessert and then grabbed a train to the day's final event, jazz music at "Body and Soul."

---

* Mr. Donut was bizarre... It was just like one you'd find in the US. I don't mean in terms of donut selection and coffee, I mean in the shifty, weird clientele. Everyone there is slightly disturbed-looking. A big, fat businessman snoring in his sleep as he sits wedged, erect in a booth. The creepy trenchcoat man smoking and staring and smoking and staring and smoking and staring. The troubled assistant manager who looks terribly harried, but not getting an awful lot done. The donut sucked totally, too.

(Early) Morning at Tsujiki

6AM sushi and Asahi at Daiwa

Dragged Ling out of bed this morning at 3am, showered, and grabbed a taxi to Tsukiji fish market. It's the giant wholesale fishmarket I visited last July. It was as frenetic as last time. Took a lot of photos. We'll see how they turn out -- very low light and serious color skew conditions. A few things I've learned/done differently this time.

• Started out at the far left end of the market, where the tuna commerce occurs. By 5am the inspection period is nearly over and the auctions occur. The auctions take, max, twenty minutes. Snooze and lose.
• Ignore the "Entry by Authorized Permission Only" signs -- just go right in the door into the fresh tuna section. No one protests.
• I pushed my Provia 100 to 200. Wondering if I should have pushed it to 400. It probably it would have worked.
• There are stairs and fire escapes all over the place -- they turn out to be great vantage points as well as refuges to reload film.

Afterwards we went to Daiw Sushi, as recommended by Roger. Daiwa is along one of the middle rows of small shop houses closer to the main road than the tuna market, nearer the side where all the styrofoam cartons are being recycled. Before you go, look at this photo of the store, transcribe the two-character title, so then you can show it if you really have a problem finding it.

The photo shows a huge queue outside. We went at 0615 and there were a few free seats. The sushi was as good as promised. What did we have?

• Fatty Tuna (toro)
• "Semi-Fatty" Tuna (chuu-toro)
• Yellowtail (buri)
• Horse Mackerel (*)
• Sardine (*)
• Salmon Roe

* The horse mackerel and sardine, not normally considered excellent sushi, were in fact excellent. They were served with some finely sliced chives and ginger. The garnish was a nice flavor enhancer and I presume hid any of fishy smell (there was none).

The premium cuts were excellent, of course, and huge. Not suprising, they come from giant tuna pulled from the sea not 200m away. A 500ml Asahi was unusually refreshing considering it was 0630.

Tokyo Hands

Today's highlight was Tokyu Hands: The Creative Life Store in Shibuya. Farrago is the ideal term for describing their product mix.

On one floor I can choose from a selection of nicely-tailored tyvek cleansuits and full-face gas-masks. Across the room is the plywood and lumber display. Just upstairs, fourteen year-old girls are choosing colored beads and sequins to make decorative bracelets. Elsewhere twenty-something salari-men and salari-women are choosing face creams, eye creams, and skin creams. On the top floor, university guys are buying replacement Shimano hubs and brake cables for their bikes and admiring the wooden bicycle on display.

We browsed every row of every floor and had a lot of fun doing it. We did buy some goodies.. a bronze scrub brush for my new espresso machine, a coffee filter basket for our next outback camping trip in August, some buckles and webbing to sew onto my khakis, parts to make a clock, pedal clips, nice notebooks, printing tapes for our Tecra label maker, and on and on.

Despite how it sounds, we were considerably reserved when buying things. Normally we take vacations in third world countries where everything is infinitely cheap. In Tokyo everything is expensive -- nothing is cheap. Thus we had to suspend the "this is neat; let's buy it" mentality we normally have and try to buy only the really strange-availability things. (Plus, we're going to a large wholesale housewares market on friday, where we'll probably buy another heap of rubbish)

We spent the bulk of the day browsing the Shibuya/Ebisu/Daikanyama areas. Tomorrow we're getting up at 3am to head to the Tsukiji Fish Market to take photos and have fine sushi for breakfast. (Any recommendations for which restaurant to go to ?) Then tomorrow night we're going to Body and Soul, another jazz club, to see a pianist named Shigeo Fukuda. I was supposed to go to a big Go club tonight, but we got distracted in Shibuya with a nice yakitori dinner, so we never made it. I'll try again later in the week.

In case you think I'm exagerating, here's a list of floors at Tokyu Hands:

• Electrical appliances, wiring equipment, electronic parts, audio & video supplies, telephone parts, security supplies
  
• Stationery, calendars, office supplies, store fittings, safes, leatherware, sign boards
  
• furniture, prefabricated parts
  
• Haircare, bodycare, facecare, fitness, weighing machiens, potpourries, incenses
  
• Travel accesores, suitcases, camping supplies, watches, lighters, ashtrays
  
• Sports bags, daypacks, leather bags, belts
  
• Materials, paints, adhesivfes, repair materials, packing supplies, chains, rope, carts, security locks
  
• Models, papercrafts
  
• Lighting, bulbs, flashlights
  
• Pocket notebooks, wedding supplies, writing paper, letter sets
  
• Storage units, umbrella stands, wall pockets, prop and propping shelves, coat-hanger stands
  
• Bathroom supplies, towels, toothbrushes, mirrors
  
• Cleaning supplies, laundry supplies, coat-hangers, dustbins
  
• Portable telephone accessories, clocks, wrapping supplies, greeting cards, candles
  
• Lumber, precious woods, plywoods
  

Sunday Night at the Blue Note Tokyo

Tonight Ling and I went to the "giant of Tokyo jazz clubs both in size and stature," the Blue Note Tokyo. Since it was Sunday, the evening was a billed "Sunday Special" featuring new Japanese talent. We went knowing nothing about the show, "Sunday Special vol. 18 akiko Mood Swings Acoustic Live with special guest Tatsuo Sunaga."

Getting there
I had enough sense to ask the hotel front desk to call the Blue Note first and find out what was going on tonight, if I could make reservations, and how to get there. The girl was very obliging and gave me directions.

It's quite direct from our hotel, three stops along the Ginza line to Omote-Sando station, and then an eight minute walk. But when we popped out, it was almost immediately obvious that the directions had a fundamental error early on. The problem was, there was no way to tell exactly what the correction was -- either north south or east at a key intersection.

We took a guess and walked on. A few blocks along we stopped and asked a twenty-something girl headed the other way if she knew where it was? She apologized that she did not. No problem, we kept on walking.

Maybe three or four blocks further a persistent tapping sound caught my attention. I turned around to find it the sound of the young girl's high heel shoes as she sprinted after us calling our attention. "Blue Noto! Blue Noto! Blue Noto! come with me!" she panted for breath.

This girl had apparently called her friend, found out where it was, and then ran us down. Then she walked us the three blocks back to the original confused intersection, and then the four or five further blocks to the Blue Note. For heaven's sake, in Singapore you can barely bother a sales clerk enough to help you find a product. This girl went out of her way a dozen blocks for two random tourists...

There is something about Japanese that make them shockingly helpful when you ask them for directions. Last time I was here an old guy spent ten minutes with us helping us find an obscure restaurant. It seems to give them such a heavy obligation that I should refrain from asking for help unless I really, really need it.

Arrived
Tickets weren't particularly cheap (6000JPY) and we were finally brought in after a thirty minute wait. It's a large, open, tiered dining room with moderate-sized stage along a long side of the rectangle. We had a decent seat along the wall with a good view of the stage. As the place filled up, a few loners were seated at our table, but they weren't creepy as far as we could tell.

The waiter-system was very efficient. Each party is given an id token. Waiters swarm about taking orders by typing them into their wireless handset that issues the orders to the bar and kitchen. Other dispatch waiters then bring the drinks and food as they're ready. When you leave, you bring your token to the cashier and pay your tab.

I don't recommend dining at the Blue Note. Half the appetitzers we ordered weren't available and the ones that did arrive were insanely, punishingly salty. My drink was my own fault, though. Even though I've never, ever, ever had one that tasted good, I once again ordered a Campari-based drink. In my experience, a "good" Campari-based drink is one that holds the bitter sting of the Campari at bay for a few seconds before it affronts you. Yuk.

The Show
We enjoyed the performance. It was nice and simple: Akiko the pretty female singer, a pianist, a bassist, and the drummer. All the music was American jazz. Akiko sings well. I think she sounds best when she is really blasting in an upbeat song. Some of the more Diane-Krall sort of sultry moments came out a bit too clenched. (Ling thought the exact opposite, so there you go...).

The pianist played added a lot of energy and excitement to the room. Some of his solos were the high points of the show.

Fortunately the drummer kept his drum solo short. Thank God. I really hate drum solos. In fact, I don't even think drummers like drum solos

The only thing I didn't like was when DJ Tatsuo Sunaga (he'd spun some OK warmup music before the show) "guested" with one song. Guesting involved playing a bunch of radio-type static with a few throwaway mysterious voices saying insipid things like "Belgrade" and "Forgotten." What was really annoying was that during the entire number this stupid radio static was polluting the audio. It ended up distracting me to irritation and I didn't enjoy the song.

I'll leave it at that -- it was fun to go to such a cool jazz club in a cool city and hear some solid music. Hopefully during our week here we'll be able to see a few other clubs. Tokyo is chock-a-block with jazz, so it should be fun.

Online from Tokyo!

Managed to get online from our hotel. It's by ethernet cable, not wireless, but at least it works and is apparently free.

There were a lot of wireless networks in the atmosphere, but I couldn't connect to any of them.

Thanks to stupid fucking ImageMagick I managed to destroy the best digital photo I took today with my little pocket camera. Stupid thing. All I wanted to do was scale down the size.

Nothing exciting to report except a couple good bowls of noodles and a nice bookstore. Sunday should be more action-packed.

Dear Leader narrowly escapes death

Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, returning from a friendship mission to China, narrowly missed assasination by the sinister forces of the United States and ultra-right conservative South Korea tonight.

Dark agents, personally trained and commanded by the Chief Criminal of the United States, George W. Bush, arranged to have a train explode near Dear Leader's train. Dear Leader's extremely fast reflexes allowed him a harrowing escape.

Three thousand revolutionary brothers, not having the speed or strength of Dear Leader, were roasted alive by the flames unleashed by the criminal regimes of the militaristic South Korean reactionaries.

In other news, Paek Nam Sun, minister of Foreign Affairs, sent a message of greetings to Hor Nam Hon, Cambodian minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

Need Tokyo Travel Advice

Late Friday night Mrs. Blutig and I head to Tokyo for nine days' stay. Looking for a bit of travel advice...

Food

One of Ling's friends was trying to convince her to get her hair cut in Tokyo. "A once in a lifetime experience! So thorough! so professional!" How much? $400SGD ($280USD) Our thought was that money was much better spent on more, better food, than a new 'do.

What' I'm looking for is some sort of detailed glossary/translation guide for all the different cuisines. I don't mean something superficial like a Lonely Planet glossary. (I know what the hell Vegetable Tempura is). What I mean is a very specialized glossary/guide that addresses the subtle differences and cuisines. We want to be able to go into tiny restaurants that don't cater to westerners, don't have the big menu-full-of-pictures. Ones that focus on some tiny, speciality cuisine. We need to have a modicum of communication and an idea what we should be asking for, looking for. The idea is to find fine food outside the scope of what Japanese food normally can get in Singapore, and to be able to understand and appreciate what we're getting.

Cafe life

Whether I'm in Kyrgyzstan, the Outback, Laos, or India, when I'm on vacation I like to: read, write, and drink coffee. I need to find some great cafes in Tokyo to experience. That means: great espresso drinks and a cool atmosphere, preferably nice art or photography. I don't mind taking a longer trip for a great cafe.

I also would like to see some decent photography exhibits.

For half our stay we're at the Akasaka Excel Hotel Tokyu in Chiyoda-ku, and for the second half, at the Ryokan Asakusa Shigetsu in Asakusa.

Clubs

Would like to go out and see the Tokyo clubbing scene and hear some decent music at least once while we're there. I'm looking for a place like Zouk in Singapore or Spundae in San Francisco or the former Twilo in NY. I like DJs like Carl Cox, Valentino Kanzyani, and Sven Vath. Any recommendations? I found an outdated guide to clubbing in Tokyo that referred to a club 'Womb.' I see that Paul Oakenfold is playing there next Thursday. I guess worst case, I could try that. Any more interesting recommendations?

Oh... a few other things...

Where is a good place to develop slide film while I'm there?

Penalty Minutes about to stack up in a big way

Dominant Top or Submissive Bottom?

Beware of gadget-loving colleagues with digital cameras

Novice Monks in Luang Prabang

At 0630 daily hundreds of monks from all the temples in Luang Prabang walk a circuit through the streets begging for their 'alms'. Devoted Buddhists meet them outside and give each one a scoop of glutinous rice (a sticky rice) into the large bucket(?) they carry with them. A few offer other food items, but mostly it's rice. Women are not allowed to touch the monks and must keep their heads lower than the monks'. It's all done in silence and mostly they're in bare feet. Later in the morning you see at least some of the younger monks headed to their school classes outside the temple.

A Southern Companion to Your Scotch Egg

Sauce:
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons flour
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon chopped parsley
• 1 to 1 1/4 cups half-and-half
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, melt butter. Whisk in flour; cook for about 1 minute, whisking constantly, until smooth and bubbling. Add seasonings, then add 1 cup of half-and-half a little at a time. Continue whisking until thickened; add more half-and-half until desired consistency is reached. Whisk in mustard; serve over Scotch eggs.
Makes 1 to 1 1/2 cups.

Meme of the Day?

Supposedly all blogers are doing this today.

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open the book to page 23.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions:

Turns out the nearest book is the book I just finished (re)reading five minutes ago, "The Golden Mean: In which the extraordinary correspondence of Griffin and Sabine Concludes."

He may call himself a "scientific journalist" but I think he's a freak hunter.

The book is pretty neat -- it's a "popup" book for adults. Amazing graphic art and the first time I read the story (4+ years ago) it was vaguely spooky. It wasn't this time, but I enjoyed lavishing in the fine detail of the artwork. I think there is a sequel set of volumes, but I've not read them yet.

As a creepier side note, what was the book immediately beside the Griffin and Sabine series on my bookshelf? Silence of the Lambs. No one would have believed me that it was at hand, though, anyway.

GMail is not WebMail

As I predicted, lots of punditry fuming about the privacy issues of Gmail. Now everyone is blogging about their sneak peeks of the Gmail UI. DiveIntoMark spent a couple pages savaging it:

Gmail is the least web-like web application I have ever seen.

I hope he is right, because if anything sucks, it's a web application, and the worst web apps of all are webmail systems. It's always such a joy to have a page load failure or accidentally hit the 'back' button and find that I've lost the body of the message I was composing.

Mark's point is that Gmail is mostly designed to work with Internet Explorer using Javascript. Ok, Lynx isn't going to work, third party applications inside Mozilla won't work, blind users cannot use it, there are a lot of special accessibility functions where it will fail. But on the other hand, for the Pareto's Rule set of browser environments it will work, and it will work a lot better than its loathesome alternatives.

Additionally I'd suggest that Google knows how to do things right. I'm sure further along in their development plans they have alternatives planned for the non-common usage modes not presently addressed in the beta.

AOL Contest... Imminent PR Nightmare?

AOL is giving away to a random customer a Porsche it confiscated from a spammer who'd blasted AOL users. It's AOL's attempt to get some good, cheap publicity. Participants submit their AOL UserID. Next week AOL will announce to the world the winning 'screen name.'

It will be hilarious to see how the AOL PR department copes when a AOL (also known as Gay OL) user named 'BigFatHairyCockSucker' or 'TenInchUncut' or 'FistPuppy' wins the car and AOL has to issue its congratulatory press release.

Online from the new house

Thanks to careful logistic scheduling by Dragon Lady, after work as soon as I stepped into our new house, I was able to open my dsl internet connection.

Ah... bootstrapping.

Too much bad news.... where's the good?

Everything's going to hell.... Google reading your mail, Marines murdering Fallujan chestnut roasters, Dean Catan getting toooootally shit-faced after the DSquared show in Milan last week...

I think everyone needs a pick-me-up:

Who's up for a Scotch Egg!?!?!
Scotch Eggs

(4 servings)

1 pound bulk pork sausage

1 tablespoon fresh parsley -- chopped

1 tablespoon grated onion

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

4 hard-cooked eggs -- shelled

1/2 cup fine dry breadcrumbs

Combine sausage, parsley, onion, cinnamon and nutmeg; mix well. Divide sausage mixture into 4 portions; shape into patties. Place one egg atop each patty, shaping the sausage mixture around egg till completely covered. Roll each sausage-covered egg in breadcrumbs. Bake in a preheated 350 degree F. oven for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

Posted by Nils Blutig at 01:27 AM | TrackBack

Headlines of Tomorrow: Massacre at Fallujah! Pomegranate vendor shot!

Every two days, the Blogerati move onto a new topic. Gmail and Mercenaries are very three-days ago now. Here's my forecast of this weekend's Topic of Outrage:

Massacre at Fallujah: Marines fire indiscriminately on militamen and civilians using heavy weapons, even Apache Gunships

This will be after things are secured, a few journalists skulk into town and start making stupid comparisons between Fallujah, and say, Ramallah, after the latest Israeli infantry/dozer incursion.

It'll be pretty easy to get source material.... The Marines will have been too busy fighting for their lives to entertain pink journalists and all the crypto-Baathists and Islamic nuts will come out and generate reams of bullshit about how they're all just helpless pomegranate vendors who the Marines shot at with .50 caliber machineguns, etc. etc.

Milan Winter Fashion Week Roundup

Showy knits and cool dudes in sleek leather seem to be the essence of Italian style. In the movies or the streets and especially on the fashion runways, knits and leather are fixtures.

Taking the look forward for next season were Missoni and Bottega Veneta while Roberto Cavalli stayed with his favorite embellished leather, making it a master class in workmanship. Graphic and diamond patterns contrasted with sweet, soft, pink, mauve and gray colors at Missoni. The look was young and fresh, with zippered jackets, long student scarves, jaunty caps, narrow pants and an air of casual chic.

Tweed suits and tailored jackets trimmed with leather proved that Tomas Maier is steering Bottega Veneta from leather accessories in earth colors toward urban style and secret luxury. Wool and leather of a husky kind was the theme at the Dsquared show on Tuesday. Dean and Dan Caten, the twins behind the label, took a trip ''home'' - to the white world of their native Canada, whose snowy mountains and pine trees created a frozen North backdrop. It was all good fun, but in taking their work more seriously, Dsquared is diluting the camp element that was wittier on the soundtrack than on the runway.

Roberto Cavalli was also in snow and ski mode - or any other activity that belonged to the jet set when St. Moritz was the hottest fashion haunt. Ritzy sweaters embedded with jewels may never see the ski slopes, but as the models turned their backs to the runway, their blouson jackets were imprinted with figures whizzing down the piste.

Alessandro dell'Acqua is king of the sweaters and his collection was full of fine pieces - especially the jacquard knits that made eye-popping patterns when a vest was worn over a striped shirt and a striking side-zippered sweater.

Mercenaries in Iraq... oooooooh! what a SUPRISE!

Now that Gmail is passe, the latest hot topic in BlogWorld is "The Coalition is employing mercenaries in Iraq." Leading this """revelation""" is some silly, hippy-hangover woman who writes long articles tracking down obscure references in connections between various security firms, the government, and no-gooder's around the world.

Well, I've got news for everyone -- that mercenaries are in Iraq was obvious months ago. Same goes for Afghanistan -- they're crawling around there, too. It takes about two seconds of thinking realize this fact. How?

When these guys get killed, they're almost never named, let alone become a human interest piece about all the loved-ones they left stateside.

It's that simple. HippyChick writes as if she is Erin Brockovich or as influential as Locke and Demosthenes but really this could/should have been picked up by the press weeks ago.

Of course the press probably didn't have time to worry about this story because they were busy filing their self-serving retrospectives to run during the Rwandan Genocide anniversary. To a man, everyone interviewed about it spins it in a way that "I knew it was horrible, but I was powerless to stop it; I was a lone voice calling into /dev/null". Oh fuck off.

Every diplomat and every journalist in Africa is complicit in this. Journalists aren't Captain Kirk with a duty to The Federation not to interfere with alien lifeforms. Nor are they doctors with a Hippocratic obligation to their trade (writing their crummy articles) that supercedes duty all else, including the 800,000 people being clubbed and hacked to death nearby.

The most telling thing is that you hear no small stories of triumph -- small groups rescued or led to safety by others. Why? because utterly no one lifted a hand. These meally-mouthed retrospectives are nauseating.

Counter-Barrage

So to some success I've installed Google Adsense on my site. Around 10:10 or so, I published an article on the Park Tools PK-57 toolkit. (Ignore the stated publish date 9:29... that's when I started the article). Just a few minutes later I was skimming my server logs and saw this entry:

crawler3.googlebot.com 
Url: /blogs/black-coffee/archive/001434.html 
Http Code : 200  
Date: Apr 04 07:17:38 Http 
Version: HTTP/1.0" Size in Bytes: 13330 
Referer: - 

So basically as soon as Google became aware of this new page, it dispatched a scanning bot to index the page! Curiously, though, it doesn't seem to be serving context-specific ads for the page yet.... still just charity ads.

Park Tools PK-57

By the end of the week I'll be moved into my new house. High points include living one hundred feet away from primary jungle and having enough space to do proper maintenance on my Trek Liquid Twenty mountain bikes. My collection of bike tools isn't much more than the typical emergency repair gear. For anything more complex, I don't have the tools. It's not something that can be kludged, either -- right tool for the right job -- these bikes are too sensitive otherwise. I've had my eye on the Park Tools PK-57 tool set. Park enticingly describes it:

The PK-57 Professional Tool Kit is designed as a "do it all" kit for the home mechanic or as a solid starter kit for the professional shop mechanic, the PK-57 is a very special 57-piece collection of our very finest shop tools. While it includes the tools needed to perform almost any basic repair or adjustment on the bike, the PK-57 also includes the specialty tools to perform many advanced repair tasks

."

Priced around $700USD, I calculated how good a deal it is.

Sum of its parts?

First I used Froogle and found the lowest reputable price I could identify for each part. Although I might not have found the absolute lowest price for some parts, I believe I found the minimum price from stores that looked reasonably reputable and seemed to have a majority of the components in the PK-57 collection. The most-cited stores were Colorado Cyclist and Alred E Bike. I didn't consider taxes or handling charges.

Results? The by-component price

PART	PRICE
Axle Vise AV-1	   10
Cartridge Bottom Bracket Tool for Shimano BBT-2	     12
Bottom Bracket/ Cassette Lockring Tool for CampagnoloBBT-5	7
Chainring Lockring/ Bottom Bracket Tool BBT-8	      20
Fourth Hand Brake Tool BT-2	                         30
Chain Checker Chain Wear Indicator CC-2      	21
Crank Puller (square spindle type) CCP-2	         12
Crank Puller (ISIS Drive? and Shimano? Octalink type CCP-4	12
Crank Wrench CCW-14R	8
Cyclone Chain Scrubber CM-5	20
Professional Cable Cutter CN-10	24
Chainring Nut Wrench CNW-1	3
8 and 10mm Open End Wrench CBW-1	8
9 and 11mm Open End Wrench CBW-4	8
Crown Race Setting System CRS-1	56
Professional Screw Type Chain Tool CT-3	24
Derailleur Alignment Gauge DAG-1	47
Cassette Lockring Tool for Shimano? FR-5	5
GearClean Brush GSC-1	4
Pre-Glued Patch Kit GP-2	3
36mm Box-End and Bottom Bracket Pin Spanner HCW-4	14
Double-Sided Bottom Bracket Lockring Tool HCW-5	12
32 and 36mm Laser Cut Headset Wrench HCW-15	12
32mm and 36mm Professional Headset Locknut Wrench HW-2	30
Bearing Cup Press HHP-1	115
PolyLube 1000 Grease (tub) PPL-2	10
P-Handled Hex Wrench Set w/ Holder (7 Piece Set) PH-1 	33
Professional Pedal Wrench PW-4	25
Headset Cup Remover RT-1	27
Heavy Duty Shop Apron SA-3	27
Spoke, Bearing, and Cotter Gauge SBC-1	7
13mm through 19mm Professional Shop Cone Wrench Set SCW-SET	34
Threadless Saw Guide SG-6 	26
Professional Sprocket Remover SR-2	28
Professional Spoke Wrench SW-0	7
Professional Spoke Wrench SW-1	7
Professional Spoke Wrench SW-2	7
3mm x 0.5 Tap For Rear Wheel Dropout Alignment Screws TAP-7	8
5mm x .8 Tap For Water Bottle, Toe Clip, Fender, and Rack Bosses TAP-8	8
6mm x 1.0mm Tap For Cantilever Brake Bosses TAP-9	8
10mm x 1.0mm Tap for Derailleur Hanger TAP-10	10
Tire Boot TB-1	3
Tire Levers TL-1	3
Shop Tire Lever TL-10	22
Threadless Nut Setter TNS-1	16
Wheel Alignment Gauge (Dishing Tool) WAG-3	19

The total value of these components? $852USD

There are a few generalizations. I am assuming the set includes the one-pound version of grease, that the patch kit is the small $3 set, not the $75 set, and that the HHP-1 (which has been superceded by the HHP-2) is approximately worth as much.

A normal, good price for the PK-57 seems to be around $700USD, so this is this is a savings of around $150USD.

Looking deeper into the $150 savings
This sounds like a decent value if my alternative is actually buying all the parts. But realistically I wouldn't buy all the components in this set. In one short list I identified all the parts that I definitely had no need for -- they were either stupid or I already owned an acceptable substitute:

PART	PRICE
Cyclone Chain Scrubber CM-5	                       20
GearClean Brush GSC-1	                       4
Pre-Glued Patch Kit GP-2                     	       3
PolyLube 1000 Grease (tub) PPL-2	      10
Heavy Duty Shop Apron SA-3	                       27
3mm x 0.5 Tap For Rear Wheel Dropout Alignment Screws TAP-7	                8
5mm x .8 Tap For Water Bottle, Toe Clip, Fender, and Rack Bosses TAP-8	8
6mm x 1.0mm Tap For Cantilever Brake Bosses TAP-9	                                8
10mm x 1.0mm Tap for Derailleur Hanger TAP-10	                                              10
Tire Levers TL-1	                                                                                                3
Shop Tire Lever TL-10	                                                                               22

All these components sum up to $123USD. Ouch. That's basically all the savings I get from buying the PK-57 and not the individual components.

Futhermore, a finer analysis would consider the selection of tools. I'm not buying this kit so that I can be the neighborhood bike mechanic. I'm buying tools so that I can repair and rebuild any part of my Trek Liquid 20. Therefore some parts of the PK-57 which didn't show up on the "totally uncessary" list might in fact be "fairly uncessary to a Trek Liquid 20." This would include things like two of the three spoke wrenches, certain crank pullers, etc. Conversely, some tools that the Trek Liquid 20 requires are not included in the kit. I spoke to Park Tools and found the following items are probably necessary but not included:

TM-1 Spoke Tension Meter			50
FRW-1 Freewheel Remover Wrench			36
HTR-1 Head Tube Reaming and Facing Set	370   (I guess i can live without this....)			

Conclusion
So although it's not a bad value, it's not a shockingly great value, either. Before I commit to a set of tools, I'm going to approach this list from another angle... go through each component of the bike and figure out out all the tools necessary to conduct a rebuild or repair of that system. Park Tool has a good reference section that should help.

*side note.... man I wish there was a nice way to insert simple tables into blog items while inside SharpMT....

Scotch Eggs

This is simultaneously a revolting and mouth-watering recipe. I'm sure the first Scotch Egg tastes very good and the sixth tastes very bad.

6 hard-cooked eggs, well chilled 1 pound breakfast sausage 1/2 cup flour 2 eggs, beaten 3/4 cup fine bread crumbs Vegetable oil for frying

Peel eggs and set aside. Divide sausage into 6 portions. Roll each egg in flour and with hands press a portion of the sausage around each egg.

Dip sausage-wrapped eggs into beaten eggs and roll in bread crumbs. Heat vegetable oil to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cook each egg in oil about 4-5 minutes or until sausage is cooked and browned. Drain on paper toweling. Serve warm.

Today's Most Popular Blog Topic

So how long till Popdex ranks Google's announcement that Google is developing a free webmail system as the Blogging World's most talked-about page?

It's ironic that this announcement comes out just as I have spent a couple evenings setting up the Zoe email system. Zoe's tagline is 'Googling Your Email'. Google's mail ('Gmail') is not just another hotmail clone -- they are introducing invigorating ideas. (Some which Zoe figured out two years ago)

Thow out the stupid 'folders' approach to mail
Search, don't sort: Use Google search to find the exact message you want, no matter when it was sent or received. Keep it all in context: Each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed as a conversation.

Tossing out the stupid 'folders' structure of email is a great start to turning it into a useful corpus. The natural storage structure of an email is a conversation, not a folder. The default behavior of many email programs naturally breaks up conversations immediately, having two prime folders "sent mail" and "inbox." Split every conversation in half, and now there is no continuity. If you group messages by conversation and allow robust searching by terms (as Zoe does) suddenly you can retrieve and read emails in the same way you think about them.

• "What did mom tell me my sister's mailing address was?"
  
• "All the hilarious and provident messages Mark sent me, talking about his office, during a yearlong stint at a now-dead analog device startup company."
  
• "The six sites Roger suggested to download eBooks from"
  
• "The time Matt and I, over the course of twenty emails, led Stas to believe we were going to build a 3000lb autonomous pneumatic spider armoured in obsidian and capable of walking, trotting, cantering, and galloping."
  
• "How many nigerian spam mails have I recieved this year?"
  

Stronger Spam-Fighting Technology

Google is committed to keeping unwanted messages out of your inbox. Gmail includes a sophisticated spam filter that we're continuing to improve. The Report Spam link in Gmail is a way for users to help with this effort. It removes spam from the inbox and sends valuable data to the Gmail team working on spam blocking.

I would think a Google Spam filter could be a ferocious tool. Client-local spam solutions like SpamBayes are already 98% potent. But I can imagine Google, managing the spam for hundreds of thousands of accounts, could leverage that into uberSpamBayes, that enjoys the power of scale. For example, it might be able to dentify waves of shitFloods simultaneously striking many of its users and intercept them. It could easily build a MT-Blacklist-style blacklist, too.

Ha, if the thing is good enough, and they make it accessible with good APIs, you could even imagine them providing a SpamVetting service -- I ask it to filter all the mail that comes to my black-coffee2002@karavshin.org account, for example.

Something that will (irrationally) scare people: privacy

Google is going to make money from this service by embedding AdSense-style advertisements in the email reader. This is going to freak people out, because if the ad is 'in context,' it means someone has read my email (even if it is just a robot). Despite the privacy promises, and despite the fact that your email account on Hotmail is just as easily "read by the Man," I still think some people are going to wince at this.

Gimmick gigabyte of storage

Google is going to give every user a free Gigabyte of storage. It sounds like a huge deal. My guess is that it's not... Most people won't have anywhere near that much mail, for one thing, and secondly, most of it is text, which will compress to nothing. If the average user mailbox is bloated to 100MB I'd be astonished. And anyway, even if it does turn out to be a gigabyte, so what. Google has scale, and Google has plenty of experience in managing massive databases.

It will be fun to see in what ways people try to game Google into providing them terrabytes of illegitimate free storage.... Harvesting hundreds of accounts, writing scripts that can use the mailboxes as virtual filesystems, giant Warez distribution rings, etc.

Anyway, this is a good service for Google (even more visibility, more competitive advantage, more connection with its heretofor anonymous users), and maybe even a good thing for users ( a useful product hosted by a capable company).

---

Update April 2nd 2004

As expected the privacy concerns have erupted over Google's content-sensitive ads.

Drudge Reports runs:

Google's Gmail Raises Privacy Concern Fri Apr 02 2004 00:33:23 ET

Privacy advocates are concerned that there's one big flaw with Google Inc.'s free e-mail service: The company plans to read the messages.

Of course it fails to point out that email is no more 'private' on any other webmail system.

They do quote a shockingly silly statement from founder Larry Page, though...

The consternation caught Larry Page, Google's co-founder and president of products, off guard.

"I'm very surprised that there are these kinds of questions," he said Thursday.

Give me a fucking break. Maybe Larry likes to believe Google's goo-goo "we're not evil" shit, but no one else should. Thinking a company is special or different or enlightened is just asking to be burnt.

Update August 29, 2004
Like I hypothesized, someone has built a filesystem that uses Gmail as the storage device. The coolest thing about it is that it's abstracted into the linux file system, so any application can use it without problem.