GuysBlog

Maybe I can get around to posting again, here in 2007. But first, I had best see about customizing this blog more or less as I had the old one.

The Accidental Hedonist is a great food blog.  It has lots of interesting postings.  But today, it features a recipe for Guinness Ice Cream (from the Boston Globe).  Now, granted, Guinness is food, but …..

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"No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." 
                    Edmund Burke

"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be
trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a
great fear."
                    Bertrand Russell

I noticed a package of Rayovac IC3 rechargeable NiMH batteries (and charger) at Orchard Supply Hardware recently, and was intrigued by their claim of 15 minutes to recharge and a 1000-recharges lifetime on the batteries.  Somehow, these came out a couple years ago without my noticing. Getting curious about other brands and the claims, I turned to Google.  It turned up what appears to be a very good article comparing the NiMH with other rechargeables and discussing a few different brands, including a new "eneloop" model from Sanyo. Between my digital camera and new MP3 player, I think it’s time to get one of these puppies.

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According to Patricia Rains, the Vanilla Queen

At this moment, less than one percent of all the vanilla flavored and
scented products in the world contain pure vanilla. We are currently
balanced on the threshold of losing pure vanilla forever!

and

If you look at the ingredients on a container of many vanilla or
“vanilla bean” ice creams in the U.S., you will notice that it says
“natural flavor” on the package. While this may not sound suspicious,
“natural flavor” actually means vanillin made from plant substances
such as beets and paper pulp (conifers contain vanillin, which is why
Ponderosa pines smell somewhat vanilla-like). In fact, many premium ice
creams contain no pure vanilla at all. It is flavored with chemical
vanillin and has flecks of flavorless “exhausted” vanilla beans (left
over from the extraction process) added for appearance. For this, we’re
paying a premium price.

There was a shortage between 1999 and 2004, coupled with weather problems and political unrest in the areas from which we get vanilla.  It is not a domesticated crop, and is very labor-intensive to produce and harvest. Because of the shortage, companies found cheaper alternatives.  That drove the demand for pure vanilla lower, and now that some of the problems are behind us, the farmers cannot command the prices they were able to before 1999 and are abandoning the production of vanilla. 

At this time, tons of vanilla, worldwide, are going unsold. Why?
Because there isn’t a market for the beans. Historically, the frozen
dessert industry has been the largest buyer of vanilla. Because they
are now using synthetics, the pure vanilla is sitting in warehouses
around the world.

In 1998, 2300 metric tons of vanilla beans were used worldwide. In 2004, it was 1200 tons and dropping!

So, read your labels and at least shop intentionally.  Better yet, contact the manufacturers and push them for real vanilla.  Thanks to Accidental Hedonist for the tip.

My wife and two of her high school classmates decided in September that they need to orchestrate a 40-year reunion for the Covina High School class of 1968.  Their first step? A website.  But who gets to do that website?  hah.  So now, besides the websites for our church, my own graduating class, and my wife’s learning center, I have the new one to at least erect.  I find myself scanning almost 400 headshots from the yearbook. At least, I’m expanding my skills with CSS….

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.

[Not only journalism, but technical communication, I’d say.]

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for - in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.

Traditions are the guideposts driven deep in our subconscious minds. The most powerful ones are those we can’t even describe, aren’t even aware of.

Ellen Goodman
[brought to my attention through Quotes of the Day]

I have been getting at least one PayPal (or sometimes eBay) spoof/phish mail per day for some while.  I duly report them to spoof@<whichever>.com and always get a lengthy response assuring me that the mail was not from PayPal/eBay, and to be sure not to give out vital secrets. 

1. eBay/PayPal should offer an address to which to send these messages that accepts the info and pursues the senders, but does not give a mini-lecture in return.  It is a waste of electrons and bandwidth.
2. There should be a utility site to which one can forward such messages that will use the form and content to launch a massive load of phishy (invalid) responses to the site the phisherman wants us to trustingly populate with our passwords and account numbers. 

Today’s Quotes of the Day blog included this one:

Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach’s ‘St. Matthew’s Passion’ on a ukulele.

Ben Bagdikian is, among other things the former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. His newest publication seems to be The New Media Monopoly.

Google started making maps available at http://maps.google.com.  After a time, they added satellite images, enabling you to click a button to choose between a map or a satellite image of an area.  Just now, I happened to notice that they offer a third button: hybrid.  It superimposed names of streets, parks, and so forth on a satellite image.  Good Stuff!