- originally posted at The Digital Tavern remotely on April 14, 2003 -
Sitting here in Vero Beach Florida. A poor dial up connection and five year old Toshiba laptop. Had an amazing bottle of 1994 Beringer Howell Mountain Bancroft Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon - huge black cherry flavors, very subtle notes of earth with hints of cedar. The wine was perfectly balanced, and amazing structure. A friend of mine stills swears that Beringer wines don't last. This wine at 9 years old (albeit young compared to Bordeaux standards) was youthful, bright and just amazing 95 points
I've received a number of emails from readers telling me that the Bloglet updates they are receiving have bad or broken links. This is because I've tried to recreate the past posts that have been lost somehwere in the Digital Tavern. I've actually located them and when back home in California my priority is to restore the old posts and get my blog back on track.
My sister-in-law is telling me that she had a terrible flight with my brother and two nieces in a puddle jumper plane from Reagan airport in DC to West Palm Beach. Why such a small plane?
The sounds of the birds here are peaceful. So it's time to shut down the dial up. More later.
12:50:14 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
- originally posted at The Digital Tavern on April 11, 2003 -
It's been a tough time blogging the last few weeks. Those regular readers who have followed my sage, journey and discovery I trust understand. I keep reminding myself that patience is truly an amazing and underrated human quality or characteristic.
I'll have stories, anecdotes and insight. But until then be sure to cruise to some of the Blogs in my blogroll in the left column. I choose my blogroll with discretion, contemplation and I read them every day. Please cruise. You'll see Flemming (aka Ming the Mechanic) has a piece on Edward de Bono and his Six Thinking Hats -- I used to require my employees (nicely, albeit) to read this book. We would play act or gestalt through scenarios. Great stuff.
Thanks for YOUR patience while I get this blog thing resolved and restored and on track again.
12:48:36 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
- originally posted at The Digital Tavern on April 11, 2003 -
I'm not one get to angry. Frustrated? Yes. Angry? Seldom. But the solution to the equation is: what happens if or when Allan get's both angry and frustrated? Well, I've toyed around with the idea of taking this Apple Macintosh B/W G3 400 Mhz machine with a 40GB drive, 512mb RAM to the back of my car and cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway tooting my horn. But this isn't practical nor would it solve anything than give me the false sense of some odd vengeance against a machine. Though, many of us Mac fans tend to personify our "machines". Still, this is no solution.
I've had a hell of a time with this computer. And when I get frustrated my natural tendency is to dampen my frustration by solving, fixing or otherwise addressing the source of my frustration with zeal and tenacity. But after a while this energy can wane. Soon frustration turns to anger. Then anger to disgust. Then disgust to complacency.
Such is the story of my computer. And while I've come close to The Digital Tavern the last several weeks. Even stopping in for a quick one. Even managing to finish one. But for the most part, I've left disgusted. Swearing I'll never come back. Not to the tavern, per se. Simply to this B/W G3. Silly me. Waiting for a computer this is simply a mirage. A fantasy. I'll never see it. -- Now doesn't this monologue all sound unlike me -- the Allan Karl that you swear was the most positive, upbeat and congenial dude around. This is not like me.
But after writing three or four essays where I seethed my soul, poured my passion and cleansed my conscience only to find them to disappear, vanish or otherwise poof into cyberspace as the result of an Apple OS X kernel panic -- OS X (actually it's roots lie in UNIX or Linux) politically correct substitute phrase for crash, system error or -- dare I? -- blue screen.
Oh please read on. This is going to be long. But trust me, worth it. You'll get to laugh, perhaps even feel sorry. But nothing will come close to the angst the I've been subjected to. In short, this is easy compared to what I've been through.
So as you know I've been trying to rely on an alternative to a web browser to write and post my weblog entries for the last month or so. I love NetNewsWire. I've ponied up my license fee and have tried to be a loyal user. Typically, I have used BBEdit to write my entries, then paste the final into Radio Userland's web-based interface and then post to The Digital Tavern -- for the sake of clarity. This has worked for me for nearly a year. But it's not the most productive, nor is it much fun. BBEdit is great for programming. A writer's tool, it's not.
So about two weeks ago my woes started. And had they not, you would have read my excellent (ok, humor me, I thought it was that good) essay and review on Joi Ito's famously favorite writing and info aggregator tool, NoteTaker(I'm using it and absolutely love it, though I haven't taken it to the next level yet -- it is amazing). You might have enjoyed my marketing analysis of The Richards Group innovative brand building campaign for Dr. Pepper's new dairy-based drink Raging Cow which used a weblog (it has changed dramatically and now is blatantly commercial). I drew extensively on Filchy Boys excellent investigative work to draw conclusions and other things on the wall of the Digital Tavern. You would have also read about my fun bon voyage party I attended to see Enrique, one of my favorite employees at Wirestone. He embarked to Treviso Italy last week to become part of an elite group selected by Benetton to intern at Fabrica. Fabrica is Benetton's communication research centre, the group responsible for innovative multimedia communications, social awareness work and other technological experimental media and communications. Enrique has a blog which I hope is updated more often in the future so we can all follow his year long journey in Italy. Another post you would have read discussed yet another take on the war. This one on the massive amounts of independent journalists and crews in Iraq. But in the end, there's too much on the war and I'm glad this post went poof. There were other short little blurbs.
Why didn't you get to read these? As noted earlier, I've had a series of kernel panics the plagued me till I withdrew. Sometimes it happened when I saved the post as a draft in NetNewsWire's weblog editor. Other times simply when I pushed the "post" button. Even when I tried to save a draft, after reloading everything after the panic, my entry was gone -- never saved. After one or two of these incidents I was like the rider thrown from his horse. Eager to get back on, i forged forward with more writing and great insight to inform and entertain my readers -- and myself. But after the 4th or 5th time, I felt like terminal cancer patient subjected myself to more and more radiation with no real results -- feeling the best thing to do is forgo the pain and suffering and simply enjoy life.
But here I am again. And after much surgery and treatments, I think I'm back. That is, until I have to re-do everything again when my new 17" PowerBook arrives at my doorstep. In short order, here's what happened:
The war is officially commenced. And after an increasing number of kernel panics daily, I finally diagnose a progressive hardware failure
Determine that it's the 40GB IBM *star ATA hard drive
As a result of diagnostic process, I have to reinstall OS X on that drive 7 times
I have to install OS X on 2 of the 4 large firewire drives I have for video and back up purposes
I have to find and load Mac OS 9.2.2. This requires installing 9.1 then a number of updaters that all have to be downloaded.
In the meantime, the IBM drive gets worse. It now won't boot in OS X
I boot in OS 9.x and begin to copy files and applications to a reserve drive
Every time I try to copy, I get an error and the IBM drive begins to tap out a noisy rhythm. This is not pretty music
I then start copying files from the IBM drive one folder at a time. This goes surprisingly smooth.
I'm nearly 80% complete with safe copies when it comes time to copy my Radio Userland folder -- the application and files that make up this weblog (The Digital Tavern)
Upon trying to copy the Radio folder the drive starts its rhythmic clicking, the old stopwatch that I was so happy to be rid of after a successful OS X migration sat there and haunted me like a bad memory.
I realize that the Radio Folder must reside on bad sectors of the drive, so I then go inside the Radio folder and begin copying its contents one folder at a time
50% of the folders go surprisingly smooth and fast
When I try to copy the www folder (this is the folder that contains the files that are up-streamed to my radio weblog 0108247 every time I post something new. It is like a watched folder that when something new appears Radio automatically upstreams it to my account and space that serves this weblog from Radio's hosting machines.
I have to go into the www file and copy files one at a time. There are plenty.
I finally nail it losing only approximately a dozen files. It was these files that caused my pain.
I migrate all old files to a new Samsung 120GB drive now installed as the master drive in the B/W G3
I leave for a trip to Napa Valley
I return and write this blog
I've written and nearly posted and no kernel panic.
I smile again. You read again. We all breathe easy. The war is still on.
So no wonder it has been so hard to blog the last several weeks. I first thought it was the war and its gremlins. Then I thought it was just further punishment while I waited for my new PowerBook. I even thought that someone was telling me that I was spending too much time on the computer. But the irony is that the essence and source of the problem lied in where the files that make up this weblog were stored. Any post was set for failure -- doomed.
Now that we've solved this problem. Let's move on. We've got a lot to discuss, talk about and visualize... come on......
12:45:35 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
- originally posted at The Digital Tavern on April 10, 2003 -
I became a believer several years ago. That is that the type of stemware makes a dramatic difference in the taste of good wine. I used to laugh at those folks who would drag a bag of their favorite Riedel glasses into a fine dining restaurant. But since meeting Georg Riedel many years ago at a "glass tasting" in Northern California, I became a believer. My Riedel stemware collection includes Bordeaux, Chardonnay, Syrah, Port, Champagne and Burgundy. These are from his Vinum line. These glasses have stems so delicate that when washing them I've had them break in my hands. You've got to be real careful to say the least. But for the most part, the Bordeaux glass is a perfect all around stem.
Not only do I have these Vinum glasses, I also have both a Bordeaux and Grand Cru Burgundy stem from Riedel's impressive (but expensive) Sommelier hand blown crystal line. If you just sneeze in the direction of these big sommelier glasses they'll likely break. to look at this glass you'd swear it could hold a whole bottle of wine. Of course, this is not the point. in fact most of the time I barely pour 2-3 ounces in any of these glasses. It's all about the shape that enhances the wine's aromatics and how it falls on your tongue and coats your mouth as you taste.
You think I'm crazy? Try a Riedel glass. Then try one of those cheesy wine glasses you typically are served in a restaurant. They either look like fish bowls that do no good to leverage the beautiful aromas of a wine, or they have beaded edges and extra thick glass you'd think you were putting a large thermometer in your mouth -- not a fine glass of wine. There are knock-offs too. Is A Man Is Only Good As His Glass? Or, Time To Dispel Myths: Size Matters
Spiegelau has done a good job at pirating Riedel's design. So close, yet so different. In taste tastes, I still prefer the Riedel but at $10 versus almost $20 -- Spiegelau is a good value.
Still thinking' I'm nuts, right? Try it.
-- click image to view larger photo --
Well, if you think I'm nuts wait till you get a load of this. I got an email from a fellow wine lover and friend on the east coast. He send me pictures of his latest "toy". A new and very rare hand made special edition Riedel glass that is ungodly expensive and equally as huge. The glass dwarfs the Sommelier glass which is nearly 11 inches and holds 30 oz of wine. it makes the "generic" Riedel Vinum which is almost 9 inches tall and holds 21 ounces of wine (these are the Bordeaux shape).
As my friend Brian commented, "Pete looks like the incredible shrinking man." in these photos. And look a the three glasses lined up on the table? The photo can't do it justice. When you think about it that's a 750ml standard bottle of wine. No you've got some scale to consider.
Does size matter? I'd like to see this glass -- but behind glass. I'd hate to be the one to sneeze or simply fumble after just one glass too many only to find the floor carpeted with hand blown pieces of Riedel Crystal.
ps- the bottle of wine that Pete might be tasting here could be the 1994 Gallo Sonoma Frei Ranch Cabernet Sauvignon. You're thinking Gallo, yeah right. Right? Truly, this is one of the most phenomenal Cabs made in Sonoma and on release about 6 years ago this wine retailed for $14. I've put this wine in a brown bag and had even the most sophisticated palates stumped. Many thinking French. Others suggesting some of California's top producers -- from Napa.
12:44:47 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
- originally posted at The Digital Tavern on April 9, 2003 -
Unfortunately due to the multiple levels of migration I've put myself through and the bad sectors on the old hard drive, I've lost about a dozen or so posts here in the Digital Tavern. And while I have backups of the rendered XML files, I have yet to figure out how to repost them back to my weblog to appear on the actual date I originally posted them. Contributing to my frustration is the fact I lost some great comments from you. To be sure, the comments are stored on the HaloScan comment server, I'm not sure that when I repost the old entries if they'll have the same "post ID" and therefore those comments may not get relinked. If this is the case, I'll see what it takes to manually transfer the old comments to the new HaloScan "post ID". All this is to say, I'm working on it. Really working on it.
12:42:52 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
- originally posted at The Digital Tavern on April 8, 2003 -
Well it's about time Martin got his blog up and running. Looks like he's using Moveable Type and running on Enrique's server. Martin's blog borrows its name from his Hungarian heritage "Magyar Blog". He is a musical mandrax of sorts and will open doors to new sounds, bands and more. Of course, it wouldn't be Martin's blog without a little political colour thrown in for good measure. check it out.
12:40:53 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
- originally posted at The Digital Tavern on April 7, 2003 -
Ok. Today the price of admission just lowered for me. To be sure, I'm not talking about total "dollars" as cost. Instead, I refer to technology integration. It may be common knowledge, but in case you don't know -- I don't own a television set. That's right. Me, the techno-marketing, multimedia guy doesn't own a television set. There are certainly plenty of them available for my use if I so desire. Like at my dry cleaner. Here, while I drop of my clothes, pick up what's clean I can get my dose of CNN, Asian soap operas and even a brief glimpse of QVC. Then there's my favorite wine bar and restaurant, Flemings. Here I can check how my alma mater is doing in the NCAA finals, see Tiger Woods break more records or even catch the latest Xtreme sports competition on ESPN2. While visiting my friend recently I got a total dose of war footage where I was able to compare FOX, CNN and MSNBC among others.
Although today I just got closer to replacing that television I used to have. Keep in mind I'm a very early adopter to NetFlix -- the must have DVD rental service, and while on that subject I'd have to confess I think that Blockbuster as a collection warrant on me for a DVD I returned two hours late back in 2001. I probably should stop in and pay my $3.50. But who has the time. If you don't get NetFlix, move now. It's hot.
But today, I'm just about ready. I've long been a proponent of TiVO and have even blogged about it in the past. My brother has one. My high school buddy Ken has had one forever. And Chuck Bruno my favorite historian and collector of trivia supreme and a self-admitted techno-phobe even has one. Why haven't I purchased a TiVO box? Quite simply because I just couldn't justify spending that much time with a remote control connected to a high-frequency pitched television CRT.
Yet today, I'm seconds from doing my duty and contributing to continued growth of e-commerce and buying a TiVO box. Why? Two reasons. First is TiVO's "Home Media Option[dot accent]". At a one time fee of $99 I can:
Today, TiVO makes this happen. And makes it interesting for me. Because the second thing that TiVO brings to the party is integrating it's service and massive hard disk digital video recorder with my wireless computer network. And it's leveraging Apple's innovative Rendezvous technology. How dos it work?
I simply purchase an SMC wireless USB network adapter and my computer network is connected to my television. You might ask, "Why would you want that?" For me, it just makes sense. I'm a lean forward kinda guy - an active thinker computer user. Television for the most part is for lean back kinda guys -- passive observer television users. What excites me is not the limited scope of the TV integrated home network of today, but the fully integrated home entertainment and multimedia creation opportunities of tomorrow.
Today. I just might order a TiVO, television, USB network adapter and TiVO's "Home Media Option". And after I do that, I just need to search Google for "more time" to take advantage of what this wacky digital lifestyle offers.
12:39:37 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
- originally posted at The Digital Tavern on April 6, 2003 -
At NAB today Apple released amazing updates to Final Cut Pro (4.0) and DVD Studio Pro (2.0) and introduced an updated version of high end video compositing software Shake (3.0). These announcement show that Apple is serious about digital media. I've already pre-ordered my upgrades to Final Cut and DVD Studio - due in June and August respectively.
Most interesting is Apple appears to have dropped the price of DVD Studio Pro to$500 to only $499 and the application is completely redesigned making the user interface much more Mac like and offering better integration with Final Cut.
12:31:52 AM permalink | | trackback disabled due to spam
I'll have stories, anecdotes and insight. But until then be sure to cruise to some of the Blogs in my blogroll in the left column. I choose my blogroll with discretion, contemplation and I read them every day. Please cruise. You'll see 
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