Tweet Up with Jon Gordon, Happy Gnome, 5pm+, June 9 2008

Jon Gordon from APM’s Future Tense will be in the Twin Cities for a few days next week.

If you want to say ‘Hi’ and your golf game isn’t what it could be, come by the Happy Gnome sometime after 5pm on Monday June 9 and grab a pint of Bender or Bubble Jack.

Should be easy to spot a gaggle of geeks.

UPDATE MOMENTS LATER:
I was going to add this to Facebook, but they want 23 fields filled out for the 1 line I needed and I didn’t know how to categorize, “stop by and say ‘hi’, maybe grab a drink.” If you’re so inclined, go for it.

Fermenting: Lefse Blonde

I bottled up the Hefeweisen on Saturday, and after cleaning everything up, the carboy looked so empty and alone. So, Sunday night, I brewed up a batch of Northern Brewer‘s Lefse Blonde (equiv. to a Belgian Abbey Blonde Ale yummmm).

Watching the fermenters boil (6lbs of Bliess Pilsen malt extract and 1lb of soft Blond candi sugar) was the most entrancing thing I’ve seen since iTunes introduced visualizations.



Everything went according to the instructions, down to cutting the heat to prevent a boil over when I threw in the ounce and a half of hops. Gradually bringing the heat back while stirring comfortingly brought everything under control.

I’m already enjoying this batch more than the Hefeweizen, just look at how rich the color and density of this fermentation.

Update July 18, 2008
I popped open the first bottle of the Lefse Blonde tonight. It was very close to exactly what I was hoping for. I would like it to be just a bit crisper. That may mean more hops next time around. Either way, this one was far more enjoyable and ‘on style’ than the Hefe Weizen.

Podcasting is My Co-Pilot

I’ve been making regular trips across the metro lately, the time in the car and all the road construction detours are perfect for podcast listening. Via a recommendation from Dean Allen, I grabbed Stephen Fry’s Podgrams. I quite enjoy all Fry’s work, from Jeeves & Wooster though to his appearances on Bones1. His podgrams are on the whole, too English for me. I’ve skipped the first and second more than a couple times, but his third, ‘Wallpaper’ sucked me in. In it, he transported me from I-94 West-bound to 5th St. in NYC watching Empire State Building rise from the review window of a taxi.

Today, on the way home from a cancelled meeting, I listened to Dave Slusher’s May 31, 2008 Clambake. In addition to re-inspiring me to hit the record button, it was nice to catch up with Dave. If you need an example of how a podcast can deliver a person to you, listen to this one. By his closing song, I swore Dave was sitting in my passenger seat.

1. Anyone else notice the intro riff of Bones’ theme song used to be the intro riff of Numb3rs? Everytime I hear it, I think, “We all use bones everyday.”

Project Launch: Sun Support Center

I just got word the new Sun Support Center launched. This was one of the first information architecture projects I worked on after returning from leave earlier this year. A couple of things I like about how it turned out:

  1. It brings /support inline with the templates used for /products, /services, and /solutions.
  2. There’s a clear indicator differentiating free and for-fee areas of the site.
  3. Community-support; forums, open-source, etc is prominent – though it didn’t make the crop 😉

Thanks and congrats to everyone on the team. It’s always great to see a project launch.

Long Term Assumptions

I’m fortunate to be regularly exposed to a number of crazy project ideas. Each of the ideas I vet through a number assumptions:

  1. We all will be regularly, publicly, independently, publishing via the internet1. This is consistent with Fred Wilson’s views2.
  2. Publishing via the internet complies with both Moore’s and Sturgeon’s Law.
  3. Our peers are the most relevant news source.
  4. Information is presentation independent.
  5. Proper nouns are indistinguishable from advertisements.
  6. The smaller the scope, the more quickly sustainable success is reached.
  7. There are no users.

1. Regularly = at any frequency, Publicly = any definition you like.

2.

“Honestly I am not envisioning anything other than this; every single human being posting their thoughts and experiences in any number of ways to the Internet..Many people will say that’s a ridiculous notion…To which I say bullshit. I believe that we are headed to a world which everyone will share their lives with the rest of the world via the Internet. That is social media.”- Fred Wilson, A VC

A Good Beer Year?

Due to a number of factors: drought, increased corn production, increased demand – there’s a serious hops shortage going on.

If you’re unfamiliar with hops, it’s overly-pronounced flavor in Imperial IPAs like Surly’s Furious, Bell’s HopSlam.

The most approachable and comprehensive article I’ve found on the subject is from Chris Colby’s “The Bitter End: The Great 2008 Hop Shortage.”

NPR covered the story last November[1] and the Chao Xiong re-wrote the story MadLibs style (swapped in MN breweries) for the Star Tribune today[2].

Thankfully, Xiong also covered the market equilibrium aspect of the story: brewers (and conceivably drinkers) want to keep the same recipe, so they pay more for less of the same agricultural product. Thus increased prices at the check out as they pick up what hops they can and explore modifications to recipes.

Tim would know better, but I suspect this type of crisis rarely happens in the wine world. Why? One word: vintages.

As in, “1974 was a very good year for Bordeau.”

Inconsistency is baked into the expectation.

Same is true in the extra-specialty coffee world. Beans age (Aged Sumatra) from the moment they’re processed.

Whether grapes, coffee, hops, or barley, agricultural conditions change harvest to harvest, place to place.

Terrior

Consistency is rare in nature. Even rarer in people.

Seems odd that beer should taste exactly the same year over year when everything around it changes, especially for beers that don’t age well (almost all of them).

What if we, as beer drinkers, expected greater variations in the year over year recipes of a given brew while the general feel remained consistent.

Or, I could be completely under-appreciating hops. I do that.

1. Hops Shortage Likely to Boost Price of Beer
2. That cold one is going to cost you more (If you’re looking for a reason to pull commenting from your blog, read the comments on this article).

I’m Covering Nat’l Conf. for MEdia Reform 2008

The 2008 National Conference for Media Reform will be held here in Minneapolis a weekend from now June 6-8.

I’m excited to have a press pass to the conference.

These 3 sessions that jumped out to me immediately:

These look interesting as well:

FailBox: The Broken State of Email Clients – Part 3

“Last week a friend send me an email, while I was traveling. So he got my ‘out of office reply’.”- Wolfgang Luenenbuerger

Wolfgang goes on to describe how – in an age of instant messaging, mobile devices, and wifi – the ‘out of office’ reply is as anachronistic as the busy signal.

Both signals assume synchronicity and place are more valuable than the communication itself.

It’s rare that either are.

FailBox: The Broken State of Email Clients – Part 2

I realized I had completely taken for granted the life-changing innovation that is near-infinite email storage when I received the following message

Your mailbox has exceeded one or more size limits set by your administrator.
Your mailbox size is 75286 KB.

Mailbox size limits:
You will receive a warning when your mailbox reaches 75000 KB. You may not be able to send or receive new mail until you reduce your mailbox size.

Items in all of your mailbox folders including the Deleted Items and Sent Items folders count against your size limit.

First, I have no idea how I accumulated 75 Gig of email in a few weeks on one of my lowest volume accounts, but let’s say I did.

Second, this system has the power to halt business (no sending or receiving of email), WTF? This is like the mail boy striking because people aren’t throwing the messages away fast enough. What qualifies the messenger the arbiter of value? Baffling.

Third, this is a business account, and I’m guessing lawyers would say it’s a good idea to save all professional correspondence. I know librarians in universities do.

On top of all this, I couldn’t actually take the action requested – the interface didn’t have a ‘Deleted Items’ or ‘Sent Items’ folder in it. Remarkable.