iChindogu

“So this expensive gadget doesn’t solve your real problems, but look how user-friendly it is” – bad_user

“Chindōgu is the Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. However, chindōgu has a distinctive feature: anyone actually attempting to use one of these inventions would find that it causes so many new problems, or such significant social embarrassment, that effectively it has no utility whatsoever”

Suddenly, I’m reminded of so many Kickstarter projects.

Towards a New Beer City

“I think it’s very real, it’s here to stay. We’re on the cusp of a movement here and I think we’ll probably replicate what Portland or Denver have in terms of 80 or 90 craft breweries.” – Peter Remes, president First & First.

Last week Tom Elko and I went to Stouts Pub for beers. We did a tasting tour of Minnesota craft breweries:

Congrats to Minneapolis and Minnesota for having a so many delicious beer options that aren’t Summit – or even Surly. What a difference a few years and a few legislative changes can make.

371t3 Journalism

Want to see the future of investigative journalism in a decentralized, global, marketplace? Here it is:

“But just like hacking websites, exposing Chinese frauds has become cliché, if not outright boring. Accordingly, we have turned our attention to several Western companies that may be surprised to find themselves in our crosshairs. We expect to release our first such report by year-end. In the interim, there is still more work to be done in China.…Sometimes, all it takes to delist a multi-billion dollar company is a right-click of the mouse.” [pdf]

The Road to Beer Judging Certification: Light Hybrid, Amber Hybrid, German Wheat & Rye

This week we worked our way through Light Hybrid (6A. Cream Ale, 6B. Blonde Ale, 6C. Kölsch, 6D. American Wheat or Rye), Amber Hybrid (7A. Norther German Alt, 7B. California Common, 7C. Düsseldorf Alt) and German Wheat and Rye (15A. Weizen, 5B. Dunkelweizen, 5C. Weizenbock, 5D. Roggenbier).

The hybrid categories are that blurry line between lagers and ales. The subcategories are either ales fermented with lager yeast (California Common) or lagers fermented with ale yeast (Cream Ale) or some similar jostling. The German Wheat and Rye styles were included to conveniently compare the wheat presentation against that within the American Wheat or Rye and Blonde Ale styles.

This was the most difficult class so far. The vast majority of the beers had significant faults, from minor things (stale) to more significant things (nowhere near the declared style). Adding to judging difficulty, the ranges of these styles is significant. As was the selection: 21 beers across 11 substyles.

Cumulative Statistics:
IBU: 8 – 50
SRM: 2 – 25 (straw to dark brown)
OG: 1.038 – 1.090
FG: 1.007 – 1.022
ABV: 3.8 – 8%

On the plus side, a distinctive hop presence in flavor and bitterness is starting to become much more prominent. On the downside, it’s still mostly inappropriate.

Tonight’s Ranking (using BJCP’s 0-50 scale)

  1. 49 – St. Blasius Weizenbock (Weizenbock, great example of the style and delicious: malty with deep plum and rum notes and pineapple sweetnees. You must find this beer.)
  2. 48 – Flensberg Weizen (Weizen)
  3. 47 – Ayinger Ur Weisse (Dunkelweiss)
  4. 47 – Flying Dog Amber Lager (California Common)
  5. 45 – Anchor Steam (California Common, considered the classic example of the style)
  6. 44 – Franiskaner Dunkelweisse (Dunkelweiss)
  7. 40 – Lake Superior Kayak (Kölsch)
  8. 36 – Genesee Cream Ale (Cream Ale, considered the classic example of the style)
  9. 34 – Bell’s Oberon (American Wheat or Rye)
  10. 32 – Weihenstephan Hefeweisbier (Weizen)
  11. 31 – Innstadt Weizenbock (Weizenbock)
  12. 28 – Uerig Sticke (Düsseldorf Alt)
  13. 28 – Pyramid Curve Ball (Blonde ale, to timid for the style)
  14. 28 – Widmer Bros Citra Blond (Blonde ale, way too big and hoppy for style)
  15. 28 – Alaskan Amber (Northern German Altbier)
  16. 24 – Schlägl Roggen Gold (Roggenbier, though it had nothing in common with the style)
  17. 20 – Schell Deer Brand (Cream Ale)
  18. 20 – Mankato Original (Kölsch)
  19. 20 – Anchor Summer (American Wheat or Rye)
  20. 18 – Pinkers Munster Alt Organic (Northern German Altbier)
  21. 18 – Mankato Stickem (Düsseldorf Alt)

The iPad Mini is about Killing the iPod Touch

The iPod touch has always been Apple’s odd model out. More than an iPod yet significantly less than than an iPhone.

Three years ago, I bought an iPod touch because I wanted the iOS experience without being tied to AT&T. These days the iPhone is available on multiple carriers and the iPod touch finally has a camera.

In between times, Apple didn’t know if the iPod touch was “training wheels for the iPhone” a competitor to the Sony Playstation Portable or just a colorful camera that can play music.

Hardly compelling compared to the iPad’s positioning of transformative convenience.

Hell, this isn’t even compelling against multi-touch iPod nano that’s half the size and half the price.

Apple’s ~8″ iPad mini debuted at $30 more than the 4″ iPod touch. Twice the screen size and half the storage space for just over the $300 price point. For an additional charge, a persistent cellular broadband connection is available through AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon.

No such broadband option exists for the iPod touch. Making the iPod touch once again the odd model out.

Historically, Apple’s responses to competitors has always been strategic – not direct and obvious. Additionally, they’ve always been comfortable killing off popular products for the sake of an easy-to-understand product line. For all these reasons, the iPad mini isn’t about competing directly with the Kindle Fire or Nexus 7 – it’s about quietly killing off the albatross of the iOS family – the iPod touch.

This time next year, the iPod nano will have a camera and the iPod touch won’t exist.

How to Run a Rake Task via Cron Under RVM

Cron needs to be explicitly told which RVM to use, the easiest way to do that is to pretend to open up a bash shell (as all the pre-reqs are loaded by default).

Save your afternoon and reuse the following in your crontab:

/bin/bash -l -c 'cd PATH/TO/RAILS/APP && $HOME/.rvm/gems/THE_RVM_RUBY_TO_USE/bin/rake RAILS_ENV=production THE_TAKS:TO_RUN --trace'

for me, it looks like this:

*/5 * * * * /bin/bash -l -c 'cd /srv/www/app/ && /home/garrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p370@global/bin/rake RAILS_ENV=production cron:parse --trace'

huge thanks to Edgar Gonzalez, Hector Castro, Murtada Shah