“Kitty litter” is often found at the top of the cat lover’s shopping list. Sound like something weird to be concerned with? Not for cat owners that deal with the litter box twice per day!
However, today’s cat lover is not just concerned with absorbency, smell and ease of cleanup. Kitty litter has not escaped the “green” movement; more and more people are looking to go green by choosing eco-friendly litter for their kitty—and with good cause.
According to the ASPCA, the average owner of one cat will spend $165 per year on kitty litter. That amounts to each cat ultimately dumping 260-280 pounds of cat litter into landfills each year, plus a few gallons of cleaner and numerous plastic litter plan liners. Multiply that by the 33% of the U.S. population who own a cat and you can start to see the huge paw print kitty litter leaves on the environment.
So when faced with row after row of “all things litter” at the pet supply superstore—what’s the environmentally-conscious cat lover to choose? Let’s explore the history and the subsequent good, better and best of kitty litter—the doo’s (pun intended) and don'ts—in regard to how kitty litter impacts the environment.
Prior to World War II, most cats lived indoor/outdoor lives and their toileting areas were neighborhood backyards and gardens. For indoor needs, some families kept boxes of sand or ashes from the furnace for their cat’s use in the cellar. Housewives of the 1940s were none too enamored with cats tracking ashes or sand through their homes.
One day in 1947, an ex-sailor name Ed Lowe was approached by a neighbor who was tired of using ashes in her cat's box and dealing with sooty paw prints. She asked for some sand, and Ed suggested clay instead. Soon the neighbor would use nothing else, noting that the clay was much more absorbent than sand and didn't track all over the house. Ed had a hunch that other cat owners would love his new cat box filler and began selling the Kitty Litter Brand from the back of his 1943 Chevy Coupe. Cat owners all over America soon fell in love with this product's odor control and absorbency and in 1964, the kitty litter industry was born with Lowe’s Tidy Cat brand.
In the mid-1980s a particular type of clay—sodium bentonite —was introduced as clumping cat litter. Clay litter continues to be the dominant type of cat litter sold in the United States, largely based on its inexpensive price per pound, and more than 60 percent of clay litter is of the clumping variety. However clay-based litter, no matter if it is of the traditional or clumping variety, may be the most expensive in terms of its impact on the environment.
Clay, the main ingredient of traditional kitty litter, is obtained by a strip mining process, which destroys soil and vegetation, leaving the land virtually useless for future generations. The environmental impact of clay litter production, in addition to the mining itself, includes the transportation of the clay to the drying facility as well as the use of petroleum products to generate sufficient heat needed to dry the clay.
Of course, after it is used, kitty litter must be disposed of. Clay cat litter is sent to landfills where its sits for an eternity. The net result is that clay-based cat litter has a sizable environmental impact in both its manufacture and disposal. All in all, clay kitty litter is not helping go green, and doesn't seem to be very eco-friendly.
But do not despair. The shelves at local pet supply emporia also hold an array of kitty litters made from eco-friendly materials, including recycled newspaper, corn cobs, peanut shell meal, processed orange peel, wheat, beet-pulp, pine sawdust and shavings, and hardwood and cedar chips. All promise to be superior odor controllers, long lasting and earth-friendly.
Plant-based litter is probably the least environmentally offensive cat litter mainly because they are not mined, drilled or artificially produced. Products such as World’s Best Cat Litter is milled from renewable whole-kernel corn and it is 100% biodegradable. And because it disperses in water, it’s also septic-safe.
Swheat Scoop kitty litter is a safe clumping letter made from naturally processed wheat in which natural wheat enzymes work to neutralize litter box odor. Through the same process, natural wheat starches are exposed to form firm, solid chumps when they come in contact with moisture.
If you and your fur-bulous feline friend prefer that smell of the outdoors but don’t like the dust emissions of many wood-based litters, Feline Pine provides clumping and non-clumping litter options. Ranked number one for the least dust emissions by an independent research company, Feline Pine cat litter is made from kiln-dried shavings reclaimed from lumber production.
2012年4月19日星期四
2012年4月17日星期二
Real-time TOC tightens effluent control
A new continuous Total Organic Carbon (TOC) monitor has increased the capability of a food manufacturer to refine and improve its wastewater treatment process. As a result the plant is better able to quickly respond to changes in the influent.
The Greencore Foods site is operated on a continuous improvement basis with its own dedicated wastewater treatment plant to monitor and control effluent quality and minimise costly discharge fees. Its effluent can contain an array of inorganic salts and organic components which enter the waste stream in part from the intense wash down of processing tanks and lines during clean in place procedures for product changeover. Overload of organics on the effluent treatment plant will adversely affect the efficiency of the treatment process. If the waste is not treated to the required standard, the site would be unable to achieve the river discharge parameters set by the Environment Agency.
The effluent treatment plant at the facility is managed by a specialist team from Veolia Water Industrial Outsourcing. Raw feed water entering the facility, is analysed for TOC to control the strength of the feed transferred to the site effluent treatment plant.
Environment manager at Greencore, David Murtagh, takes up the story: “In the past samples were manually collected from the site drains pit and transported to the laboratory at a second location. Given the geographical distance between sites this led to significant waste, both in terms of time and resources. We had a small team in the laboratory who performed a number of analyses on the delivered samples, which was labour intensive and delayed results. Even state of the art laboratory techniques still took too long for pragmatic purposes, preventing prompt feedback on the process. It provided us with no direct information to control the effluent plant or provide an early warning of process issues. An alternative needed to be sought.
“A further key driver was the impending tightening of the consent to discharge to river by the Environment Agency. We needed more frequent, detailed, prompt, accurate and reliable influent TOC data to help manage the effluent treatment plant more efficiently and provide feedback on the process which is the source of the TOC. We were wary of on-line TOC instruments due to poor experiences in the past; while they worked well on cleaner, particulate-free effluent samples, the high solids, fats, oils and greases, and variable TOC loads coming from raw influent was a major issue for delicate fine capillary tubing and valves, which typically caused instrument seizure.”
Traditional methods for analysis of TOC/COD/BOD were developed as laboratory systems based on UV exposure, wet chemistry or more aggressive digestion by catalysed combustion. While these provide a good basis for spot sampling within the laboratory where sample pre-treatment is controllable, the systems do not often translate well in a real process environment.
Raw effluent presents a series of challenges. With UV based systems, high salt loads can cause scaling of the UV light column creating problems or organic recovery. In high temperature combustion systems, salt loads as low as 0.5% can inhibit the persulphate digestion mechanism and deteriorate the lifetime of the catalyst, demanding excessive maintenance by replacement of the column. Sample volume is commonly restricted to less than 10ul and sample pre-filtering is necessary to avoid particulate blockage of tubing and multi-port valves such that particle size is restricted to <200um. In a process environment, clogging of tubes with crystallised salts and particulates can demand instrument re-calibration every 2-3 days.
The Greencore Foods site is operated on a continuous improvement basis with its own dedicated wastewater treatment plant to monitor and control effluent quality and minimise costly discharge fees. Its effluent can contain an array of inorganic salts and organic components which enter the waste stream in part from the intense wash down of processing tanks and lines during clean in place procedures for product changeover. Overload of organics on the effluent treatment plant will adversely affect the efficiency of the treatment process. If the waste is not treated to the required standard, the site would be unable to achieve the river discharge parameters set by the Environment Agency.
The effluent treatment plant at the facility is managed by a specialist team from Veolia Water Industrial Outsourcing. Raw feed water entering the facility, is analysed for TOC to control the strength of the feed transferred to the site effluent treatment plant.
Environment manager at Greencore, David Murtagh, takes up the story: “In the past samples were manually collected from the site drains pit and transported to the laboratory at a second location. Given the geographical distance between sites this led to significant waste, both in terms of time and resources. We had a small team in the laboratory who performed a number of analyses on the delivered samples, which was labour intensive and delayed results. Even state of the art laboratory techniques still took too long for pragmatic purposes, preventing prompt feedback on the process. It provided us with no direct information to control the effluent plant or provide an early warning of process issues. An alternative needed to be sought.
“A further key driver was the impending tightening of the consent to discharge to river by the Environment Agency. We needed more frequent, detailed, prompt, accurate and reliable influent TOC data to help manage the effluent treatment plant more efficiently and provide feedback on the process which is the source of the TOC. We were wary of on-line TOC instruments due to poor experiences in the past; while they worked well on cleaner, particulate-free effluent samples, the high solids, fats, oils and greases, and variable TOC loads coming from raw influent was a major issue for delicate fine capillary tubing and valves, which typically caused instrument seizure.”
Traditional methods for analysis of TOC/COD/BOD were developed as laboratory systems based on UV exposure, wet chemistry or more aggressive digestion by catalysed combustion. While these provide a good basis for spot sampling within the laboratory where sample pre-treatment is controllable, the systems do not often translate well in a real process environment.
Raw effluent presents a series of challenges. With UV based systems, high salt loads can cause scaling of the UV light column creating problems or organic recovery. In high temperature combustion systems, salt loads as low as 0.5% can inhibit the persulphate digestion mechanism and deteriorate the lifetime of the catalyst, demanding excessive maintenance by replacement of the column. Sample volume is commonly restricted to less than 10ul and sample pre-filtering is necessary to avoid particulate blockage of tubing and multi-port valves such that particle size is restricted to <200um. In a process environment, clogging of tubes with crystallised salts and particulates can demand instrument re-calibration every 2-3 days.
2012年4月5日星期四
Top 5 Nostalgic Nights
What does midnight look like in the Paris of South America? For those of us cursed with a golden-age mentality, Buenos Aires can be a reprieve from all the baggage that comes with modern reality.
This city is captivated by nostalgia, and even if a venue wasn’t born decades ago, many owners pay close attention to details in the hope of capturing a little of the magic of bygone eras. The bar at the Sofitel hotel transports customers to Montmarte with themed evenings every Thursday, whilst Sunday strolls in San Telmo’s markets act as a gateway to the past.
But once all of yesteryear’s magic gets into your system, where does one go when the lights go down? And just where, prey tell, do you plan to wear that poodle skirt?
From the city’s shadowy jazz bars to sultry milonga halls to lively penas folkloricas, this week’s Top 5 brings you our pick of places to live out your dream era.
Legend has it that the 80s stunted the growth of Club 74. Born in 1958, the club progressed with the ages until deciding to remain in a disco time capsule a few decades ago. The white stucco walls match the white stucco couches, giving the whole place an igloo-like feel.
The Saturday night fever is still burning every weekend, with a DJ who pretends he’s never heard of Lady Gaga. A surprisingly mixed crowd boogies on the dance floor – some dancing to remember, and some channeling moves they’ve surely only seen on TV.
The club has a celebratory atmosphere – there are usually several birthday parties going on – and it’s a refreshing escape from the moody indie-rock scene of today.
Saturday is definitely the night to go, as it’s the only night of the week when the dance-floor lights up, in true retro fashion like a flashing Rubix cube. And really, what good are revolving mirror balls without the neon lights?
There’s more than one way to swing in Buenos Aires, and if you choose the kind on offer at San Nicolas’s quirky Teatro Mandril, cameras are even allowed.
A little alcohol helps to loosen up limbs as the crowd make eyes at each other around a dimly-lit, college fundraiser-style bar. Every brand of hipster seems to be gathered there on a Friday night; the retro hipster, the punk hipster, the popular girl-turned hipster, even the odd Dad hipster.
Around midnight everyone starts to gather in the back room, near the stage and dance floor. Drinks are abandoned and tables shuffled against walls to allow for the gyrations of 200 or so guests.
Guys and girls are split and line up facing each other as a male and female instructor teach the sexes their corresponding steps. After a few minutes of learning basic steps the couples grab a partner and the room transforms into a fire inspector’s nightmare. Patrons spill into every spare corner and the dance floor becomes a mere suggestion of where you should be. After about 10 minutes of practice, the sea of men and women splits again to learn more complex moves.
This city is captivated by nostalgia, and even if a venue wasn’t born decades ago, many owners pay close attention to details in the hope of capturing a little of the magic of bygone eras. The bar at the Sofitel hotel transports customers to Montmarte with themed evenings every Thursday, whilst Sunday strolls in San Telmo’s markets act as a gateway to the past.
But once all of yesteryear’s magic gets into your system, where does one go when the lights go down? And just where, prey tell, do you plan to wear that poodle skirt?
From the city’s shadowy jazz bars to sultry milonga halls to lively penas folkloricas, this week’s Top 5 brings you our pick of places to live out your dream era.
Legend has it that the 80s stunted the growth of Club 74. Born in 1958, the club progressed with the ages until deciding to remain in a disco time capsule a few decades ago. The white stucco walls match the white stucco couches, giving the whole place an igloo-like feel.
The Saturday night fever is still burning every weekend, with a DJ who pretends he’s never heard of Lady Gaga. A surprisingly mixed crowd boogies on the dance floor – some dancing to remember, and some channeling moves they’ve surely only seen on TV.
The club has a celebratory atmosphere – there are usually several birthday parties going on – and it’s a refreshing escape from the moody indie-rock scene of today.
Saturday is definitely the night to go, as it’s the only night of the week when the dance-floor lights up, in true retro fashion like a flashing Rubix cube. And really, what good are revolving mirror balls without the neon lights?
There’s more than one way to swing in Buenos Aires, and if you choose the kind on offer at San Nicolas’s quirky Teatro Mandril, cameras are even allowed.
A little alcohol helps to loosen up limbs as the crowd make eyes at each other around a dimly-lit, college fundraiser-style bar. Every brand of hipster seems to be gathered there on a Friday night; the retro hipster, the punk hipster, the popular girl-turned hipster, even the odd Dad hipster.
Around midnight everyone starts to gather in the back room, near the stage and dance floor. Drinks are abandoned and tables shuffled against walls to allow for the gyrations of 200 or so guests.
Guys and girls are split and line up facing each other as a male and female instructor teach the sexes their corresponding steps. After a few minutes of learning basic steps the couples grab a partner and the room transforms into a fire inspector’s nightmare. Patrons spill into every spare corner and the dance floor becomes a mere suggestion of where you should be. After about 10 minutes of practice, the sea of men and women splits again to learn more complex moves.
2012年2月22日星期三
Studio Ghibli’s 'The Secret World of Arrietty' Reminds Us
Despite the odds, two-dimensional drawings of cute little critters scampering across a movie screen are not a dead art form. They’re just not a very American one anymore.
Back in 1995, there was a lot of hand-wringing over the future of cel animation—Pixar’s Toy Story had brought computer animation to feature-length cartoons so suddenly and so perfectly that most everyone feared for traditional hand-drawn art. And, sure enough, with the scent of new fortunes to be made, every Hollywood studio jumped onto the computer-animation bandwagon. The result was DreamWorks’ Antz and then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner firing his company’s longtime animation crew in favor of hiring CGI programmers. Despite those ignoble acts, is it really any wonder that computer animation overtook hand-drawn animation? It reinvigorated the entire industry.
After Disney’s apex of success with The Lion King in 1994, the studio churned out mediocre efforts like Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Hercules, and then deservedly forgotten epics like The Emperor’s New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Other studios couldn’t even muster that much creativity. Frankly, the future of animated features as a whole was in far more danger from its own lack of inspired storytelling and artwork than from impertinent computer jockeys. Pixar reminded everyone, even its own corporate benefactor Disney, that stories matter first and foremost. Since that tide turned, we haven’t seen many hand-drawn features from Hollywood, but we haven’t missed them much, either.
In Japan, however, cel animation is still a thriving art form—principally because its industry happens to be led by a genius animator named Hayao Miyazaki whose company, Studio Ghibli, creates cinematic magic. Its latest effort to be released in the U.S., The Secret World of Arrietty, may not benefit from Miyazaki’s personal direction, but it stands as yet more proof that good old-fashioned, hand-drawn “2D” animation is still every bit as viable a technique as computer graphics. Just as long as you have great artists behind it.
Arrietty is an adaptation of Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, and as such it’s more of a familiar tale than Ghibli’s typically unpredictable fantasies. Although the setting’s been moved to western Tokyo, the 60-year-old novel’s storyline is for the most part unchanged: A family of tiny people—Pod, his wife Homily, and their daughter Arrietty—live under the floorboards of a house owned by an elderly woman who is caring for her great nephew, who isn’t well. The boy accidentally sees Arrietty, and they form a friendship, but one that endangers the small family of “Borrowers.”
First-time director Hiromasa Yonebayashi imbues Arrietty with much of the painterly style that the studio is known for, using lush backgrounds of verdant countryside and allowing for quiet moments of natural beauty. Whereas American animated features are usually in a hurry to inundate their presumed young audiences with images of nonstop action lest they get bored, Arrietty and other Ghibli films go in nearly the opposite direction: They take their time to create characters and settings. Conflict—the raison d’être of any Hollywood production—wafts onto the scene only after we’ve been totally immersed into a fantastic new world. Likewise, Arrietty does not intend to wow us with an incredible battle between two worlds, big vs. small, as a more typical adaptation might have attempted; instead, it simply wants us to see our world from a different viewpoint.
The pleasures of Arrietty arrive in the precise observations made by its expert animators: the way a single drop of rain hits a dry piece of concrete, how a cat expresses disdainful acceptance with its eyes, the shimmer of sunlight over a meadow . But those are only the familiar sights that we may already have in our memories, beautifully brought to life onscreen. The true immersion here lies in how the animators conceived of the ordinary world as seen by 2-inch-tall people. Like mice, they live in the spaces between walls and floors that we never see. To get by, the Borrowers do just that—taking small bits of things from the “human beans’” household, like fibers from a piece of tissue or sugar from a cube. Outside the house is a vast jungle, its thick vegetation hiding places unknown.
While those used to Western movie standards of fast action may find Arrietty lacking in high stakes, fans of Hayao Miyazaki may miss his unique vision. In watching films like Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, or My Neighbor Totoro, you feel as if you have truly entered a different world, one that hasn’t already been thoroughly explored in other stories or other movies. These are places where unpredictable things can happen. The Secret World of Arrietty does not quite attain that sense of adventure, but it is nevertheless a lovely place to visit—one that may offer Hollywood executives a few reminders of a lost art.
Back in 1995, there was a lot of hand-wringing over the future of cel animation—Pixar’s Toy Story had brought computer animation to feature-length cartoons so suddenly and so perfectly that most everyone feared for traditional hand-drawn art. And, sure enough, with the scent of new fortunes to be made, every Hollywood studio jumped onto the computer-animation bandwagon. The result was DreamWorks’ Antz and then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner firing his company’s longtime animation crew in favor of hiring CGI programmers. Despite those ignoble acts, is it really any wonder that computer animation overtook hand-drawn animation? It reinvigorated the entire industry.
After Disney’s apex of success with The Lion King in 1994, the studio churned out mediocre efforts like Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Hercules, and then deservedly forgotten epics like The Emperor’s New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Other studios couldn’t even muster that much creativity. Frankly, the future of animated features as a whole was in far more danger from its own lack of inspired storytelling and artwork than from impertinent computer jockeys. Pixar reminded everyone, even its own corporate benefactor Disney, that stories matter first and foremost. Since that tide turned, we haven’t seen many hand-drawn features from Hollywood, but we haven’t missed them much, either.
In Japan, however, cel animation is still a thriving art form—principally because its industry happens to be led by a genius animator named Hayao Miyazaki whose company, Studio Ghibli, creates cinematic magic. Its latest effort to be released in the U.S., The Secret World of Arrietty, may not benefit from Miyazaki’s personal direction, but it stands as yet more proof that good old-fashioned, hand-drawn “2D” animation is still every bit as viable a technique as computer graphics. Just as long as you have great artists behind it.
Arrietty is an adaptation of Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, and as such it’s more of a familiar tale than Ghibli’s typically unpredictable fantasies. Although the setting’s been moved to western Tokyo, the 60-year-old novel’s storyline is for the most part unchanged: A family of tiny people—Pod, his wife Homily, and their daughter Arrietty—live under the floorboards of a house owned by an elderly woman who is caring for her great nephew, who isn’t well. The boy accidentally sees Arrietty, and they form a friendship, but one that endangers the small family of “Borrowers.”
First-time director Hiromasa Yonebayashi imbues Arrietty with much of the painterly style that the studio is known for, using lush backgrounds of verdant countryside and allowing for quiet moments of natural beauty. Whereas American animated features are usually in a hurry to inundate their presumed young audiences with images of nonstop action lest they get bored, Arrietty and other Ghibli films go in nearly the opposite direction: They take their time to create characters and settings. Conflict—the raison d’être of any Hollywood production—wafts onto the scene only after we’ve been totally immersed into a fantastic new world. Likewise, Arrietty does not intend to wow us with an incredible battle between two worlds, big vs. small, as a more typical adaptation might have attempted; instead, it simply wants us to see our world from a different viewpoint.
The pleasures of Arrietty arrive in the precise observations made by its expert animators: the way a single drop of rain hits a dry piece of concrete, how a cat expresses disdainful acceptance with its eyes, the shimmer of sunlight over a meadow . But those are only the familiar sights that we may already have in our memories, beautifully brought to life onscreen. The true immersion here lies in how the animators conceived of the ordinary world as seen by 2-inch-tall people. Like mice, they live in the spaces between walls and floors that we never see. To get by, the Borrowers do just that—taking small bits of things from the “human beans’” household, like fibers from a piece of tissue or sugar from a cube. Outside the house is a vast jungle, its thick vegetation hiding places unknown.
While those used to Western movie standards of fast action may find Arrietty lacking in high stakes, fans of Hayao Miyazaki may miss his unique vision. In watching films like Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, or My Neighbor Totoro, you feel as if you have truly entered a different world, one that hasn’t already been thoroughly explored in other stories or other movies. These are places where unpredictable things can happen. The Secret World of Arrietty does not quite attain that sense of adventure, but it is nevertheless a lovely place to visit—one that may offer Hollywood executives a few reminders of a lost art.
2012年2月7日星期二
Inside Next El Bulli | The Drinks
With the first official Next El Bulli dinner service merely days away, sommelier Joe Catterson is looking at the full menu on paper, tilting his head from one side to the other while his eyes dart up and down over the wine pairings. “This is just the first stab,” he says. “Almost everything here will change.”
Catterson has that freedom. And not only does he have the power to change the pairings as he sees fit, but he also has the power to walk back into the kitchen and tell chefs Grant Achatz and Dave Beran that their menu needs to be changed. “He came to us and said instead of doing it in the order we originally had it, he wanted us to drop the gorgonzola globe down later in the meal and move some stuff up,” says Beran. “He basically did his Joe Catterson magic.”
“Which he does often,” Achatz chimes in. “We’re trying to craft the best possible experience and if he says ‘look, this clashes with this wine so if we move it down it’ll be more fluid’ then I just go ‘okay.’ I think I’ve only told him no, like, twice…but Joe knows his stuff.”
While the chefs are in the kitchen executing the very precise El Bulli path, Catterson is working in an open field, with the option to go in nearly any direction that feels right. That's because El Bulli does not do wine pairings. Instead, meals start with cava, the bottle often left on the table to take diners through a few courses. When sherry arrives, guests have the option of sipping it through a few more courses, the glass refilled as it gets low. Ditto for white or red or whatever the diner feels like drinking that night. “I’ve never had a chance to talk to anybody from there and I’m curious, because I’ve never gotten to go there myself,” Catterson says. “But from what I’ve been able to read it’s not that pairings isn’t something they specifically didn’t want to do but it was more ‘let’s pick something that’s refreshing and diverting and you drink something you like.’ One of the quotes from Juli Soler [El Bulli’s maitre d’] was ‘Well, we’re dictating what you eat so you might as well just pick something that you like to drink.’"
That doesn’t work so well for Catterson. His job is to give you what you’ll like to drink, even if you don’t know it yet. So for Next El Bulli he took a similar approach to Next Thailand by creating a pairing menu that mixes things up with wine, beer, sake and two different sherries, not to mention a shapeshifting cava cocktail. For the beer, Catterson collaborated with Half Acre to brew an ale accented with beets and oranges dubbed Sanguine and intended to pair with either a rabbit course or a concoction of bone marrow, smoked eel and nasturtium. “It should go well with those,” Catterson says. “But we’ll see.”
Characteristically casual about getting down to the wire for the first night of service, Catterson is still playing around with many of the pairings, making most of his changes after sitting down for the full meal at Saturday’s friends-and-family night. “Last night I tasted through a half-dozen sakes with that cuttlefish ravioli and found the one that’s just right, a junmai gingo from Kaetsu,” he says. “But what I’m really excited about is the cava cocktail.”
For that, diners are given an unaltered glass of cava just after the frozen caipirinha (the very first thing presented), the cava intended for sipping throughout the opening salvo of snacks: a tempura pocket of trout roe, the famous olive sphere, toast topped simply with avocado and anchovy, crackery bread ensconced in silky jamon Iberico. As the cava in the glass gets low, servers refill to just about two-thirds full while presenting a small vial of Pineau des Charentes (French fortified wine served as an aperitif) with a little bit of farigoule (Provencal thyme liqueur), which they instruct the diners to dump into the glass. After guests have slipped themselves the mickey, the golden egg course arrives, ideal with this new DIY cava cocktail. Then, as the cava gets low once again, servers return to refill. This time they present another vial of the same mix but also an eyedropper of Molaga muscatel (Spanish fortified wine) and Regan’s orange bitters. A few drops later and the resulting cocktail is the perfect pair for both the smoked foam and carrot air hot on its heels.
Non-drinkers get to play too, their cava cocktail replaced by a sparkling lychee-coconut soda that later is doctored with saffron and celery to rev up complexity. Server Bobby Murphy has taken ownership of the non-alcoholic pairings, intent on giving them equal attention so that passing on booze doesn’t mean feeling left out of the experience. For this menu, he’s come up with a roasted-golden-beet-and-apple-juice infused with carrot and black mustard seed, as well as a combination of rose tea, rosemary honey and peach juice, a drink derived from an El Bulli recipe. While Murphy works in the beverage station tweaking and tasting, John Schafer is intently trying to perfect tiny jelled booze cubes of Pedro Ximenez and aejo tequila, an idea of Catterson’s intended to mimic a sugar cube, to arrive with the meal-ending cortado with instructions to drop and drink. “We have some perfecting to do but we’ll see if we can’t get it right before Wednesday,” Catterson says. “And if we don’t, we do something else. It’s different in the kitchen but as far as beverage pairings, we can chuck anything at any moment, and then? Well, then we start all over again.”
Catterson has that freedom. And not only does he have the power to change the pairings as he sees fit, but he also has the power to walk back into the kitchen and tell chefs Grant Achatz and Dave Beran that their menu needs to be changed. “He came to us and said instead of doing it in the order we originally had it, he wanted us to drop the gorgonzola globe down later in the meal and move some stuff up,” says Beran. “He basically did his Joe Catterson magic.”
“Which he does often,” Achatz chimes in. “We’re trying to craft the best possible experience and if he says ‘look, this clashes with this wine so if we move it down it’ll be more fluid’ then I just go ‘okay.’ I think I’ve only told him no, like, twice…but Joe knows his stuff.”
While the chefs are in the kitchen executing the very precise El Bulli path, Catterson is working in an open field, with the option to go in nearly any direction that feels right. That's because El Bulli does not do wine pairings. Instead, meals start with cava, the bottle often left on the table to take diners through a few courses. When sherry arrives, guests have the option of sipping it through a few more courses, the glass refilled as it gets low. Ditto for white or red or whatever the diner feels like drinking that night. “I’ve never had a chance to talk to anybody from there and I’m curious, because I’ve never gotten to go there myself,” Catterson says. “But from what I’ve been able to read it’s not that pairings isn’t something they specifically didn’t want to do but it was more ‘let’s pick something that’s refreshing and diverting and you drink something you like.’ One of the quotes from Juli Soler [El Bulli’s maitre d’] was ‘Well, we’re dictating what you eat so you might as well just pick something that you like to drink.’"
That doesn’t work so well for Catterson. His job is to give you what you’ll like to drink, even if you don’t know it yet. So for Next El Bulli he took a similar approach to Next Thailand by creating a pairing menu that mixes things up with wine, beer, sake and two different sherries, not to mention a shapeshifting cava cocktail. For the beer, Catterson collaborated with Half Acre to brew an ale accented with beets and oranges dubbed Sanguine and intended to pair with either a rabbit course or a concoction of bone marrow, smoked eel and nasturtium. “It should go well with those,” Catterson says. “But we’ll see.”
Characteristically casual about getting down to the wire for the first night of service, Catterson is still playing around with many of the pairings, making most of his changes after sitting down for the full meal at Saturday’s friends-and-family night. “Last night I tasted through a half-dozen sakes with that cuttlefish ravioli and found the one that’s just right, a junmai gingo from Kaetsu,” he says. “But what I’m really excited about is the cava cocktail.”
For that, diners are given an unaltered glass of cava just after the frozen caipirinha (the very first thing presented), the cava intended for sipping throughout the opening salvo of snacks: a tempura pocket of trout roe, the famous olive sphere, toast topped simply with avocado and anchovy, crackery bread ensconced in silky jamon Iberico. As the cava in the glass gets low, servers refill to just about two-thirds full while presenting a small vial of Pineau des Charentes (French fortified wine served as an aperitif) with a little bit of farigoule (Provencal thyme liqueur), which they instruct the diners to dump into the glass. After guests have slipped themselves the mickey, the golden egg course arrives, ideal with this new DIY cava cocktail. Then, as the cava gets low once again, servers return to refill. This time they present another vial of the same mix but also an eyedropper of Molaga muscatel (Spanish fortified wine) and Regan’s orange bitters. A few drops later and the resulting cocktail is the perfect pair for both the smoked foam and carrot air hot on its heels.
Non-drinkers get to play too, their cava cocktail replaced by a sparkling lychee-coconut soda that later is doctored with saffron and celery to rev up complexity. Server Bobby Murphy has taken ownership of the non-alcoholic pairings, intent on giving them equal attention so that passing on booze doesn’t mean feeling left out of the experience. For this menu, he’s come up with a roasted-golden-beet-and-apple-juice infused with carrot and black mustard seed, as well as a combination of rose tea, rosemary honey and peach juice, a drink derived from an El Bulli recipe. While Murphy works in the beverage station tweaking and tasting, John Schafer is intently trying to perfect tiny jelled booze cubes of Pedro Ximenez and aejo tequila, an idea of Catterson’s intended to mimic a sugar cube, to arrive with the meal-ending cortado with instructions to drop and drink. “We have some perfecting to do but we’ll see if we can’t get it right before Wednesday,” Catterson says. “And if we don’t, we do something else. It’s different in the kitchen but as far as beverage pairings, we can chuck anything at any moment, and then? Well, then we start all over again.”
2012年2月1日星期三
Past Ellerslie winners design gardens for the future
Four past gold medal winners at the Ellerslie International Flower Show return to this year's show to create an inner city courtyard or rooftop garden for Christchurch of the future.
Aucklanders Xanthe White and Tim Feather, Wellington's Ben Hoyle and the Canterbury Horticultural Society will each design a City in a Garden, a new look for the city as it rebuilds following the devastating earthquakes.
Xanthe, who has won two sliver gilt awards at the world's prestigious Chelsea Flower Show and several medals at Ellerslie, says her 2012 garden has two sides. "The garden has duality, embracing Christchurch's heritage through stone work and classicism, while looking to the future with a contemporary courtyard where diversity in planting gives the garden complexity."
She says the garden retains the most beautiful aspects of the city's heritage in a lush planted green garden, complete with water feature, transitioning into a dry, arid garden featuring a marble Tim Royall sculpture.
Xanthe's garden, sponsored by Daltons, will also aim for sustainability through its design, bringing heating and cooling elements into the garden, the plant material being a mix of native plants and flowers.
"The garden will be about aspiration with a balance of architecture and the magic of plants. It will be beautiful with a fresh city edge for the future."
Ben Hoyle's She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not garden is "a little bit out there" and captures Cantabrians love/hate relationship with their ever changing environment as a result of what has happened in the city.
In essence, his courtyard will be a giant water lily, about seven meters wide and two metres tall, floating in the middle of a still pond. Giant petals will spread out across the water, with two or three broken and floating in the pond.
"What I am creating is a garden in the water. Normally, it is the other way round - you punctuate a landscape with a water element. This provides an opportunity to mentally and physically float away from the ground as the garden is insulated by water which acts as something of a shock absorber. Demolition material such as bricks and broken concrete from the city will be used to form gabion walls around the garden in a symbolic process of the historic past providing the core of a solid foundation for the future.
Ben was only 21 when he took part in his first Ellerslie Show - that was in 1998 when he won silver. Fourteen years on, he has now competed at eight Ellerslie shows and has a fistful of gold medals to his credit, including more recently taking out Gold and the Supreme Peace Award in 2010 while representing New Zealand at the Gardening World Cup in Japan.
Christchurch's Tony Milne is designing the garden on behalf of the Canterbury Horticultural Garden, which won gold at the 2009 Show with its A Taste of Tomorrow garden designed by Rob Watson.
Tony says Love (in) Your Garden is a play on the Society's new slogan designed to inspire a new generation of gardeners.
His garden is a sculptural rooftop garden that tells a love story combining aspects of romance, fertility and resilience. The story is told through a sculptural display of abstracted flower anatomy, drawing inspiration from the older love gods.
"A grove of 12 stamens dance around the pistil in a display of affection that will ultimately regenerate new life, reminding us of the resilience of the flowering plant life cycle to survive even in the most damaged environment."
Tony says the top of the stamens, the anther will be filled with a number of items that we need to survive in the event of a disaster, symbolic of the sustenance required to be self-sustaining and resilient.
The garden will also allude to alternative energy sources, feature drifts of wildflowers blooming among crushed rubble and the garden walls will feature William Morris prints, peppered with an abstraction of words from Shakespeare and love stories.
Tim Feather's A Moveable Feast garden is a selection of four whimsical pop-up and portable courtyard gardens inspired by the recent earthquakes in Christchurch, creating to help meet the challenges the city faces in designing the gardens of the future.
He says the garden, sponsored by Bay Audiology, allows the homeowner to select a courtyard that reflects their mood and to change or reconfigure elements to enhance their enjoyment. "There is a lot of humour is the garden which I think visitors to the Show will enjoy; everyone should have a bit of a chuckle."
Frayed nerves can be soothed in the Easy Listening Courtyard where you sit on cube seats around a water feature listening to background sounds and enjoy the visual feast of a pop-up planter. The Disco Courtyard turns the back lawn into disco heaven where the homeowner can boogie on down; while in the Seismic Shuffle Courtyard you are able to rearrange the decking segments to create a different look every day. The Liquefaction Blues Courtyard is a place to sit, relax and kick sand in the face of life. It has a pool, deck chairs and beach balls leading through to an overgrown garden with vegetables and fruit trees.
Aucklanders Xanthe White and Tim Feather, Wellington's Ben Hoyle and the Canterbury Horticultural Society will each design a City in a Garden, a new look for the city as it rebuilds following the devastating earthquakes.
Xanthe, who has won two sliver gilt awards at the world's prestigious Chelsea Flower Show and several medals at Ellerslie, says her 2012 garden has two sides. "The garden has duality, embracing Christchurch's heritage through stone work and classicism, while looking to the future with a contemporary courtyard where diversity in planting gives the garden complexity."
She says the garden retains the most beautiful aspects of the city's heritage in a lush planted green garden, complete with water feature, transitioning into a dry, arid garden featuring a marble Tim Royall sculpture.
Xanthe's garden, sponsored by Daltons, will also aim for sustainability through its design, bringing heating and cooling elements into the garden, the plant material being a mix of native plants and flowers.
"The garden will be about aspiration with a balance of architecture and the magic of plants. It will be beautiful with a fresh city edge for the future."
Ben Hoyle's She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not garden is "a little bit out there" and captures Cantabrians love/hate relationship with their ever changing environment as a result of what has happened in the city.
In essence, his courtyard will be a giant water lily, about seven meters wide and two metres tall, floating in the middle of a still pond. Giant petals will spread out across the water, with two or three broken and floating in the pond.
"What I am creating is a garden in the water. Normally, it is the other way round - you punctuate a landscape with a water element. This provides an opportunity to mentally and physically float away from the ground as the garden is insulated by water which acts as something of a shock absorber. Demolition material such as bricks and broken concrete from the city will be used to form gabion walls around the garden in a symbolic process of the historic past providing the core of a solid foundation for the future.
Ben was only 21 when he took part in his first Ellerslie Show - that was in 1998 when he won silver. Fourteen years on, he has now competed at eight Ellerslie shows and has a fistful of gold medals to his credit, including more recently taking out Gold and the Supreme Peace Award in 2010 while representing New Zealand at the Gardening World Cup in Japan.
Christchurch's Tony Milne is designing the garden on behalf of the Canterbury Horticultural Garden, which won gold at the 2009 Show with its A Taste of Tomorrow garden designed by Rob Watson.
Tony says Love (in) Your Garden is a play on the Society's new slogan designed to inspire a new generation of gardeners.
His garden is a sculptural rooftop garden that tells a love story combining aspects of romance, fertility and resilience. The story is told through a sculptural display of abstracted flower anatomy, drawing inspiration from the older love gods.
"A grove of 12 stamens dance around the pistil in a display of affection that will ultimately regenerate new life, reminding us of the resilience of the flowering plant life cycle to survive even in the most damaged environment."
Tony says the top of the stamens, the anther will be filled with a number of items that we need to survive in the event of a disaster, symbolic of the sustenance required to be self-sustaining and resilient.
The garden will also allude to alternative energy sources, feature drifts of wildflowers blooming among crushed rubble and the garden walls will feature William Morris prints, peppered with an abstraction of words from Shakespeare and love stories.
Tim Feather's A Moveable Feast garden is a selection of four whimsical pop-up and portable courtyard gardens inspired by the recent earthquakes in Christchurch, creating to help meet the challenges the city faces in designing the gardens of the future.
He says the garden, sponsored by Bay Audiology, allows the homeowner to select a courtyard that reflects their mood and to change or reconfigure elements to enhance their enjoyment. "There is a lot of humour is the garden which I think visitors to the Show will enjoy; everyone should have a bit of a chuckle."
Frayed nerves can be soothed in the Easy Listening Courtyard where you sit on cube seats around a water feature listening to background sounds and enjoy the visual feast of a pop-up planter. The Disco Courtyard turns the back lawn into disco heaven where the homeowner can boogie on down; while in the Seismic Shuffle Courtyard you are able to rearrange the decking segments to create a different look every day. The Liquefaction Blues Courtyard is a place to sit, relax and kick sand in the face of life. It has a pool, deck chairs and beach balls leading through to an overgrown garden with vegetables and fruit trees.
2012年1月12日星期四
Apple iPhone Battery Case With Infrared Keyboard
CES is not only about smartphones, Ultrabooks and tablets (although all those are what attract us), but also about a lot of upcoming accessories. The Celluon Prodigy is a new battery case for the iPhone 4 and 4S with an intriguing concept.
Obviously, the first thing to say about the Prodigy is that it can be used to charge your iPhone. What sets this new case apart from all the other iPhone battery cases is that the Prodigy can project an interactive infrared keyboard onto any flat surface.
You will be able to type emails and messages on the infrared keyboard, provided your iPhone is propped up stably on a table or desk. It’s that simple. Although you might be managing to type fast on a virtual keyboard, the Prodigy might help you do it better. Or will it?
The prototype that is being shown off at CES has a lot of work to be done on it. First of all, the Prodigy’s infrared projector and attached camera (for detecting where your finger is when it cuts through the infrared beam and what key you are hitting) make it slightly longer. Although you can adjust with that, you might not tolerate the bigger problem.
Our guys at CES found out that the Prodigy was not good at telling what key was being hit. For example, just imagine you typing the word Duck and it ending up as something else, if you know what I mean.
Although the company’s reps said that it’s just a matter of getting used to the new keyboard, they also seemed to be finding it difficult to type. And it’s not because it’s a prototype, as their Magic Cube does the same thing for the iPad and we can’t say its better.
They will be releasing the case in the coming months with a price tag close to $189.95. About $100 more than most battery cases out there. Interested?
The concept is cool and might be paving the way for something awesome for the future. But for now, we recommend you to stick to the touchscreen. Check out Prodigy’s predecessor, the Magic Cube in the video below.
Obviously, the first thing to say about the Prodigy is that it can be used to charge your iPhone. What sets this new case apart from all the other iPhone battery cases is that the Prodigy can project an interactive infrared keyboard onto any flat surface.
You will be able to type emails and messages on the infrared keyboard, provided your iPhone is propped up stably on a table or desk. It’s that simple. Although you might be managing to type fast on a virtual keyboard, the Prodigy might help you do it better. Or will it?
The prototype that is being shown off at CES has a lot of work to be done on it. First of all, the Prodigy’s infrared projector and attached camera (for detecting where your finger is when it cuts through the infrared beam and what key you are hitting) make it slightly longer. Although you can adjust with that, you might not tolerate the bigger problem.
Our guys at CES found out that the Prodigy was not good at telling what key was being hit. For example, just imagine you typing the word Duck and it ending up as something else, if you know what I mean.
Although the company’s reps said that it’s just a matter of getting used to the new keyboard, they also seemed to be finding it difficult to type. And it’s not because it’s a prototype, as their Magic Cube does the same thing for the iPad and we can’t say its better.
They will be releasing the case in the coming months with a price tag close to $189.95. About $100 more than most battery cases out there. Interested?
The concept is cool and might be paving the way for something awesome for the future. But for now, we recommend you to stick to the touchscreen. Check out Prodigy’s predecessor, the Magic Cube in the video below.
2011年12月7日星期三
Dudes and chicks for fun
I would not be blogging about the various and amusing differences between dudes and chicks for fun and profit if it were not for a boss who dressed like she was ready to hit a late-’90s girl power soft rock music festival at a moment’s notice.
When I moved to New York 15 years ago, I was lucky to find any work. I had no connections, no money, and no marketable skills. I had a degree in playwriting which qualified me to brood. I was too sweaty to wait tables, too goofy to work in sales, and when the temp agency put me in front of a computer, I looked like a monkey with a Rubik’s cube. I tied my only tie with all of the grace of a hangman. That tie was baboon ass red.
Those are what I call my “Dickensian” years. My daily budget was a series of stacked quarters on the desk of the room I was renting in a hotel where I shared a bathroom with an entire floor of junkies, shut-ins, and frail old women who managed to cram their lives into one small room. Cell phones were extravagances in 1996, and I would spend half my quarters cold calling temp agencies and setting up appointments that felt like tribunals where my value as a human being was accessed. My other quarters went to hot dogs. After weeks of fruitless hustling, my funds were fumes. I was forced to consider the inconsiderable, a fate worse than failure. A move back to Texas.
The temp jobs I went to were thoroughly unimpressed with me. The fashion designer showroom didn’t like my clothes folding skills. I operated a freight elevator clumsily. I was a terrible telemarketer. First of all, the scripts they provided when I would cold call people I picked from a random page ripped from the phone book lacked a little pizazz. Pizazz is not an asset in telemarketing. Also: when the annoyed person whose dinner I was interrupting would say “No thank you,” I was too quick to apologize over and over again.
Money, connections, and skills are valuable. But it’s not like I didn’t have any talents. Other 23-year-olds I would meet in those years had trust funds, or Ivy League pedigree, or degrees in finance or marketing. I had faith. The kind of faith reserved for drunks and children and sailors in tiny boats lost in violent seas. I meet kids who’ve just moved to this ridiculous concrete carousel all the time. Many of them are smarter than I ever was, and they are so tightly wound that their inevitable unspooling will be some therapist’s profit. Some people get all the breaks, and the rest just get broke. I also meet plenty of men and women 10 or more years my junior who are all fear and hunger and faith. A few will bail after toiling for months or years. But then there are the sweet and savage knuckleheads who head-butt doors until they crash open. I root for you.
I root for you because I know, from years of playing video games, all you really have to do is keep pressing buttons, keep shooting laser bursts and punching stuff, until the tips of your fingers hurt, and eventually you’ll unlock a hidden door or discover a bag of magic. You’ll get lucky. If I can get lucky, you can get lucky. Slog forth, brothers and sisters.
I caught a break first because a very nice woman at a temp agency briefly treated me like a human being and suggested that I might make an excellent receptionist. She made this suggestion because a recent employer had complained to her that I was “talkative.” Being a receptionist fit my skillsets: I could answer phones. I could smile. I could answer phones. She tried me out as a receptionist at a couple of companies. Granted, those employers were a little shocked to see Oliver Twist answering phone calls, but eventually, my mix of desperate-to-please charm and ability to arrive at work on time won over. She sent me to work at a small publishing company that produced magazines about the brave new world of laptop computing and “networks.”
Seeing as I wanted to be a writer, I figured that being close to writing, any writing, was a pretty good gig. I hate to brag, but I was an amazing receptionist. My fingers were fast. I was a Southerner born and bred, so I had manners beaten into me. I was friendly, and since I was making hundreds of dollars a week, my stomach wasn’t constantly trying to eat itself. I had one tie, sure. My two dress shirts were always wrinkled, I admit this. I was a reception prodigy, but I still looked like a corporate hobo.
Karen was just a few years older than me. She was the office manager. Her hair was short, she wore flowery hippie dresses, and her breasts were perfect. I was terrified to even glance at them, though. It would have been inappropriate. She was my superior. My first boss in the big city. A real live making it in New York person who offered me, free of charge, her respect and I returned it as often as I could.
Karen was bright and chirpy. She joked with me, taught me some computer programs, and had the nicest way of telling me I was screwing up. Her training mantra was “this isn’t really hard.” After a while, I believed her. Her easy confidence and mellow demeanor was a revelation. Everything had been hard since I had arrived in New York on a fall day when 1,000 other ne’er-do-wells probably showed up with post-college delusions of grandeur. Karen talked to me like a peer, while at the same time, wearing her authority the way she wore her assortment of skirts with little bells on them.
When I moved to New York 15 years ago, I was lucky to find any work. I had no connections, no money, and no marketable skills. I had a degree in playwriting which qualified me to brood. I was too sweaty to wait tables, too goofy to work in sales, and when the temp agency put me in front of a computer, I looked like a monkey with a Rubik’s cube. I tied my only tie with all of the grace of a hangman. That tie was baboon ass red.
Those are what I call my “Dickensian” years. My daily budget was a series of stacked quarters on the desk of the room I was renting in a hotel where I shared a bathroom with an entire floor of junkies, shut-ins, and frail old women who managed to cram their lives into one small room. Cell phones were extravagances in 1996, and I would spend half my quarters cold calling temp agencies and setting up appointments that felt like tribunals where my value as a human being was accessed. My other quarters went to hot dogs. After weeks of fruitless hustling, my funds were fumes. I was forced to consider the inconsiderable, a fate worse than failure. A move back to Texas.
The temp jobs I went to were thoroughly unimpressed with me. The fashion designer showroom didn’t like my clothes folding skills. I operated a freight elevator clumsily. I was a terrible telemarketer. First of all, the scripts they provided when I would cold call people I picked from a random page ripped from the phone book lacked a little pizazz. Pizazz is not an asset in telemarketing. Also: when the annoyed person whose dinner I was interrupting would say “No thank you,” I was too quick to apologize over and over again.
Money, connections, and skills are valuable. But it’s not like I didn’t have any talents. Other 23-year-olds I would meet in those years had trust funds, or Ivy League pedigree, or degrees in finance or marketing. I had faith. The kind of faith reserved for drunks and children and sailors in tiny boats lost in violent seas. I meet kids who’ve just moved to this ridiculous concrete carousel all the time. Many of them are smarter than I ever was, and they are so tightly wound that their inevitable unspooling will be some therapist’s profit. Some people get all the breaks, and the rest just get broke. I also meet plenty of men and women 10 or more years my junior who are all fear and hunger and faith. A few will bail after toiling for months or years. But then there are the sweet and savage knuckleheads who head-butt doors until they crash open. I root for you.
I root for you because I know, from years of playing video games, all you really have to do is keep pressing buttons, keep shooting laser bursts and punching stuff, until the tips of your fingers hurt, and eventually you’ll unlock a hidden door or discover a bag of magic. You’ll get lucky. If I can get lucky, you can get lucky. Slog forth, brothers and sisters.
I caught a break first because a very nice woman at a temp agency briefly treated me like a human being and suggested that I might make an excellent receptionist. She made this suggestion because a recent employer had complained to her that I was “talkative.” Being a receptionist fit my skillsets: I could answer phones. I could smile. I could answer phones. She tried me out as a receptionist at a couple of companies. Granted, those employers were a little shocked to see Oliver Twist answering phone calls, but eventually, my mix of desperate-to-please charm and ability to arrive at work on time won over. She sent me to work at a small publishing company that produced magazines about the brave new world of laptop computing and “networks.”
Seeing as I wanted to be a writer, I figured that being close to writing, any writing, was a pretty good gig. I hate to brag, but I was an amazing receptionist. My fingers were fast. I was a Southerner born and bred, so I had manners beaten into me. I was friendly, and since I was making hundreds of dollars a week, my stomach wasn’t constantly trying to eat itself. I had one tie, sure. My two dress shirts were always wrinkled, I admit this. I was a reception prodigy, but I still looked like a corporate hobo.
Karen was just a few years older than me. She was the office manager. Her hair was short, she wore flowery hippie dresses, and her breasts were perfect. I was terrified to even glance at them, though. It would have been inappropriate. She was my superior. My first boss in the big city. A real live making it in New York person who offered me, free of charge, her respect and I returned it as often as I could.
Karen was bright and chirpy. She joked with me, taught me some computer programs, and had the nicest way of telling me I was screwing up. Her training mantra was “this isn’t really hard.” After a while, I believed her. Her easy confidence and mellow demeanor was a revelation. Everything had been hard since I had arrived in New York on a fall day when 1,000 other ne’er-do-wells probably showed up with post-college delusions of grandeur. Karen talked to me like a peer, while at the same time, wearing her authority the way she wore her assortment of skirts with little bells on them.
2011年10月20日星期四
The Magic Cube: Will Your Next Keyboard be Virtual?
Given the rate of change with computers over the years, what's with the lack of change in keyboards?
Our computers have decreased in size 99% over the last 10 years, but keyboards? They're still the same. We still accumulate years’ worth of lint, dust, and potato chip crumbs. Heaven forbid we want to use our computers while eating a cheeseburger or the keys will be greasy for the next 3-6 months. Do we really need all those keys? Why do they keep adding more functions to the function keys?
So far the best anyone's been able to do is give us canned air or a keyboard cover.
Our frustrations with keyboards appear to be never ending, but maybe we shouldn't speak so soon.
Though it may not win any awards for product title originality, the magic cube is a portable device that projects a laser keyboard onto any flat surface. You can't get food stuck in it, spill a super-size ultra-hot coffee on it or dislodge any of the keys from gaming too hard.
And the best part: it's compatible with iPhone, Android, iPad and any Bluetooth enabled device. We have enough to worry about between running down our smart phone batteries with hours of web surfing, tweeting or Facebook stalking that we can barely have time to read through our text messages for any wayward autocorrect fixes.
Gone are the days of touchtone keys, out-of-this-world typos, hitting the return key by accident on the iPhone or wishing your thumbs weren't so big. The magic cube is super portable, has mouse capabilities, and handwriting recognition software.
The possibilities are nearly endless. For those of us who spend the better part of everyday texting, we can now do so with increased speed and agility. Are you a student? Set up on your desktop. The professor will never know what you're doing. Texting at work? Never easier.
Our computers have decreased in size 99% over the last 10 years, but keyboards? They're still the same. We still accumulate years’ worth of lint, dust, and potato chip crumbs. Heaven forbid we want to use our computers while eating a cheeseburger or the keys will be greasy for the next 3-6 months. Do we really need all those keys? Why do they keep adding more functions to the function keys?
So far the best anyone's been able to do is give us canned air or a keyboard cover.
Our frustrations with keyboards appear to be never ending, but maybe we shouldn't speak so soon.
Though it may not win any awards for product title originality, the magic cube is a portable device that projects a laser keyboard onto any flat surface. You can't get food stuck in it, spill a super-size ultra-hot coffee on it or dislodge any of the keys from gaming too hard.
And the best part: it's compatible with iPhone, Android, iPad and any Bluetooth enabled device. We have enough to worry about between running down our smart phone batteries with hours of web surfing, tweeting or Facebook stalking that we can barely have time to read through our text messages for any wayward autocorrect fixes.
Gone are the days of touchtone keys, out-of-this-world typos, hitting the return key by accident on the iPhone or wishing your thumbs weren't so big. The magic cube is super portable, has mouse capabilities, and handwriting recognition software.
The possibilities are nearly endless. For those of us who spend the better part of everyday texting, we can now do so with increased speed and agility. Are you a student? Set up on your desktop. The professor will never know what you're doing. Texting at work? Never easier.
2011年7月21日星期四
Film Review: Captain America (3 stars)
And to think that Quentin Tarantino was accused of rewriting the history of the Second World War. In the latest cinematic tale from the Marvel universe, Adolf Hitler is a minor threat compared with Johann Schmidt, a rogue Nazi officer heading up his own terror group bent on world domination.
The organization even has a catchphrase, carefully chosen to avoid copyReich infringement: “Hail HYDRA!” Hitler must have been Führious.
In one of the film’s first scenes, Schmidt invades an ancient castle in Norway, making off with a mysterious glowing cube and neatly tying together plot elements from Captain America, Thor and even Raiders of the Lost Ark. Hats off to screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (the Narnia movies) for crafting this jigsaw puzzle, whose pieces also include Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), Iron Man’s dad.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. While Schmidt is busy tearing up northern Europe, 98-pound weakling Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, digitally condensed) is trying to join the U.S. Army. No luck. You must be at least this tall to enlist, he’s told. It doesn’t help his morale that his good friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan) is about to ship out.
Rogers catches a break when a kindly German scientist decides he’d make the perfect test subject for a super-serum that will amplify his everything. “Good becomes great,” the scientist tells him. “Bad becomes worse.” (No word on what happens to average.)
The scientist is played by New Yorker Stanley Tucci as part of a free-for-all in non-Germanic casting. Toby Jones of Oxford, England, plays a Nazi physicist, while Australia’s Hugo Weaving gets the juicy role of Schmidt, a.k.a. Red Skull, who once took a dose of a super-serum prototype and now resembles a cross between Nick Cage’s Hellrider and a bowl of raspberry Jell-O.
Adding compliment to injury, Weaving based Red Skull’s voice in part on German filmmaker Werner Herzog, with the result that some of his lines sound like they’ve been lifted from a Herzog documentary. “Great power has always baffled primitive man,” he says Teutonically.
Rogers is super-serumed and vita-rayed from good to great, and immediately puts his powers to the test in a car chase in which he doesn’t have a car. The scene also puts the comic in comic book when the old superhero roulette game of save-the-innocent-kid-or-capture-the-bad-guy gets an unexpected twist.
Director Joe Johnston keeps a firm hand on the tiller and manages to balance the film’s giggles and gravitas. He’s had some flops of late (Hidalgo, The Wolfman), but calls on his period-piece expertise (October Sky, The Rocketeer) to infuse this one with the perfect tone of mid-century gee-whizardry.
Red Skull’s absurdly stretched automobile (complete with serpentine hood ornament), digital countdown timers and closed-circuit TV cameras represent the height of bad-guy technology. Rogers gets a special shield made of “vibranium,” and comes up with so many uses for it, the Swiss Army is probably thinking of marketing a version.
The shield has a patriotic star-and-stripes pattern, but Captain America manages to dial back the flag-waving to an acceptably low flutter. It helps that Evans’ character is mostly referred to as Captain Rogers and not Captain America – at least, he is after he breaks out of a demeaning USO song-and-dance tour and starts engaging in real, Nazi-kicking heroics.
Rogers also gets a multi-national team of commandos, played by Neal McDonough, Kenneth Choi and others. Comic fans may know them as Dum Dum Dugan, Jim Morita, etc., but I found it easier to remember them by their headgear. “Beret, Bolwer; you’re with me. Cap will lay down covering fire. Helmet, keep a lookout.”
Good acting in such minor roles helps anchor the story. Tommy Lee Jones plays a cranky Colonel (when typecasting goes right), while Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter mostly looks nice in snug military garb while undressing Rogers with her eyes. She also gets to fire a gun several times, at good guys and bad guys.
The result is fun and refreshingly retro. It’s nice to see superheroes (as in the recent, 1960s-set X-Men: First Class) battling evil without all that post-9/11 angst. Captain America might be just a touch too long at 125 minutes (one attack montage too many, perhaps) but there’s a lot of ground to cover, not least explaining how a 1940s war hero will re-emerge in the here-and-now to star in next May’s sequel/spinoff, The Avengers. It’s the final piece of the puzzle, deftly handled.
The organization even has a catchphrase, carefully chosen to avoid copyReich infringement: “Hail HYDRA!” Hitler must have been Führious.
In one of the film’s first scenes, Schmidt invades an ancient castle in Norway, making off with a mysterious glowing cube and neatly tying together plot elements from Captain America, Thor and even Raiders of the Lost Ark. Hats off to screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (the Narnia movies) for crafting this jigsaw puzzle, whose pieces also include Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), Iron Man’s dad.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. While Schmidt is busy tearing up northern Europe, 98-pound weakling Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, digitally condensed) is trying to join the U.S. Army. No luck. You must be at least this tall to enlist, he’s told. It doesn’t help his morale that his good friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan) is about to ship out.
Rogers catches a break when a kindly German scientist decides he’d make the perfect test subject for a super-serum that will amplify his everything. “Good becomes great,” the scientist tells him. “Bad becomes worse.” (No word on what happens to average.)
The scientist is played by New Yorker Stanley Tucci as part of a free-for-all in non-Germanic casting. Toby Jones of Oxford, England, plays a Nazi physicist, while Australia’s Hugo Weaving gets the juicy role of Schmidt, a.k.a. Red Skull, who once took a dose of a super-serum prototype and now resembles a cross between Nick Cage’s Hellrider and a bowl of raspberry Jell-O.
Adding compliment to injury, Weaving based Red Skull’s voice in part on German filmmaker Werner Herzog, with the result that some of his lines sound like they’ve been lifted from a Herzog documentary. “Great power has always baffled primitive man,” he says Teutonically.
Rogers is super-serumed and vita-rayed from good to great, and immediately puts his powers to the test in a car chase in which he doesn’t have a car. The scene also puts the comic in comic book when the old superhero roulette game of save-the-innocent-kid-or-capture-the-bad-guy gets an unexpected twist.
Director Joe Johnston keeps a firm hand on the tiller and manages to balance the film’s giggles and gravitas. He’s had some flops of late (Hidalgo, The Wolfman), but calls on his period-piece expertise (October Sky, The Rocketeer) to infuse this one with the perfect tone of mid-century gee-whizardry.
Red Skull’s absurdly stretched automobile (complete with serpentine hood ornament), digital countdown timers and closed-circuit TV cameras represent the height of bad-guy technology. Rogers gets a special shield made of “vibranium,” and comes up with so many uses for it, the Swiss Army is probably thinking of marketing a version.
The shield has a patriotic star-and-stripes pattern, but Captain America manages to dial back the flag-waving to an acceptably low flutter. It helps that Evans’ character is mostly referred to as Captain Rogers and not Captain America – at least, he is after he breaks out of a demeaning USO song-and-dance tour and starts engaging in real, Nazi-kicking heroics.
Rogers also gets a multi-national team of commandos, played by Neal McDonough, Kenneth Choi and others. Comic fans may know them as Dum Dum Dugan, Jim Morita, etc., but I found it easier to remember them by their headgear. “Beret, Bolwer; you’re with me. Cap will lay down covering fire. Helmet, keep a lookout.”
Good acting in such minor roles helps anchor the story. Tommy Lee Jones plays a cranky Colonel (when typecasting goes right), while Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter mostly looks nice in snug military garb while undressing Rogers with her eyes. She also gets to fire a gun several times, at good guys and bad guys.
The result is fun and refreshingly retro. It’s nice to see superheroes (as in the recent, 1960s-set X-Men: First Class) battling evil without all that post-9/11 angst. Captain America might be just a touch too long at 125 minutes (one attack montage too many, perhaps) but there’s a lot of ground to cover, not least explaining how a 1940s war hero will re-emerge in the here-and-now to star in next May’s sequel/spinoff, The Avengers. It’s the final piece of the puzzle, deftly handled.
2011年5月25日星期三
PowerPivot for the Data Analyst: Microsoft Excel 2010
PowerPivot is an exciting free add-in to Excel 2010 - is this the book you need to get you started with it?
Bill Jelen's Introduction starts with "I am a PowerPivot FanBoy" and he goes on to share the story of how he first heard about it and his enthusiasm for this add-in for that lets you work with far more data than in Excel.
Banner
This is a hands-on treatment of PowerPivot and to get the most out of it you do need to follow it step by step. Chapter 1 walks you through the preliminaries of using PowerPivot - and that's not as straightforward as you might imagine. First you need Excel 2010. This entails choosing between the 32-bit and 64-bit version so there's some advice about which to opt for. If you already use Excel 2010 you may be surprised that you haven't come across PowerPivot - but it's not on the Office DVD and you have to go to some effort to finding and installing it - which this chapter guides you through.
The benefit of PowerPivot is that it allows you to work with huge datasets. So the next problem is obtaining sample data - and this problem is solved in that data can be downloaded from the author's MrExcel.com website. Again this isn't entirely straightforward and involves importing data in CSV format from a text file. It may not be the easiest way to work with data but it is realistic and if you follow the steps by the end of the chapter you will have merged data from two sources to produce an asymmetric report that would not have been possible using pivot tables.
Chapter 3 looks at both the benefits and the drawbacks of PowerPivot. It starts with the plus points: creating a single Pivot Table from multiple sources, using massive amounts of data and fitting more data into memory, building asymmetric pivot tables and a list of more technical ones. It then sets out the downsides starting with losing Undo - which it explains is a disadvantage of add-ins in general. While Jelen has a long list of shortcomings on the whole he presents workarounds and so this chapter ends up being pretty positive.
Chapter 4 covers the various methods of getting data into PowerPivot. It looks at working with existing Excel data, SQL Server, and then goes back to importing from a text file - this time using filters to load a subset of the same data we encountered in Chapter 2. It then mentions working with data from ATOM Feeds which it points out are commonly encountered when working with SharePoint - and of course SharePoint has its own PowerPoint capability.
Chapter 5:Creating and Managing Relationships is where we come to the "massive benefit" of PowerPivot - being able to create pivot tables from multiple tables. It is also the first point at which we encounter PowerPivot's new formula language DAX which, as explained in Chapter 6 stands for Data Analysis expressions and handles various operators and 135 functions, some of which are similar to Excel functions while others are completely new. In Chapter 6, which is about adding calculated columns in the PowePivot data sheet, Jelen looks at 71 DAX functions while others are introduced in Chapter 10: Using DAX for Aggregate Functions and Chapter 11: Using DAX for Date Magic.
On the whole readers of this book are likely to have already worked with Excel's Pivot Tables and in this case they will find themselves on familar ground in the next two chapters: Chapter 7: Building Pivot Tables and Chapter 8: Cool Tricks Native to Pivot Tables which gives Jelen an opportunity to demonstrate some clever capabilities.
Then in Chapter 9: Cool Tricks New with PowerPivot he shows how to work with the multiple pivot table layouts that let you do things such as building a report with two pivot charts. This is followed up by the two chapters that introduce the "massively powerful" DAX measure you can add to pivot tables.
Chapter 12:Named Sets, GetPivotData and Cube Formuals returns to techniques that are available in Excel's Pivot Tables and again demonstrates some advanced features including some for report formatting. However, PowerPivot adds some powerful reporting structures and Chapter 13:Final Formatting: Making the Report Not Look Like Excel shows how to produce an impressive and informative report that looks like a dashboard.
Up till this point the book has covered the free Excel client-side add-in. Microsoft also has a server version and the final chapter briefly looks at the benefits of upgrading to it - mainly to access its Reports Gallery. The book concludes with an Appendix that lists some PowerPoint resources - including an add-in to this add-in!
This book it is fast-paced and is on a mission - to get those who are already Excel Power Users to adopt PowerPivot. This makes it a niche book - but one that will appeal to the right reader.
Bill Jelen's Introduction starts with "I am a PowerPivot FanBoy" and he goes on to share the story of how he first heard about it and his enthusiasm for this add-in for that lets you work with far more data than in Excel.
Banner
This is a hands-on treatment of PowerPivot and to get the most out of it you do need to follow it step by step. Chapter 1 walks you through the preliminaries of using PowerPivot - and that's not as straightforward as you might imagine. First you need Excel 2010. This entails choosing between the 32-bit and 64-bit version so there's some advice about which to opt for. If you already use Excel 2010 you may be surprised that you haven't come across PowerPivot - but it's not on the Office DVD and you have to go to some effort to finding and installing it - which this chapter guides you through.
The benefit of PowerPivot is that it allows you to work with huge datasets. So the next problem is obtaining sample data - and this problem is solved in that data can be downloaded from the author's MrExcel.com website. Again this isn't entirely straightforward and involves importing data in CSV format from a text file. It may not be the easiest way to work with data but it is realistic and if you follow the steps by the end of the chapter you will have merged data from two sources to produce an asymmetric report that would not have been possible using pivot tables.
Chapter 3 looks at both the benefits and the drawbacks of PowerPivot. It starts with the plus points: creating a single Pivot Table from multiple sources, using massive amounts of data and fitting more data into memory, building asymmetric pivot tables and a list of more technical ones. It then sets out the downsides starting with losing Undo - which it explains is a disadvantage of add-ins in general. While Jelen has a long list of shortcomings on the whole he presents workarounds and so this chapter ends up being pretty positive.
Chapter 4 covers the various methods of getting data into PowerPivot. It looks at working with existing Excel data, SQL Server, and then goes back to importing from a text file - this time using filters to load a subset of the same data we encountered in Chapter 2. It then mentions working with data from ATOM Feeds which it points out are commonly encountered when working with SharePoint - and of course SharePoint has its own PowerPoint capability.
Chapter 5:Creating and Managing Relationships is where we come to the "massive benefit" of PowerPivot - being able to create pivot tables from multiple tables. It is also the first point at which we encounter PowerPivot's new formula language DAX which, as explained in Chapter 6 stands for Data Analysis expressions and handles various operators and 135 functions, some of which are similar to Excel functions while others are completely new. In Chapter 6, which is about adding calculated columns in the PowePivot data sheet, Jelen looks at 71 DAX functions while others are introduced in Chapter 10: Using DAX for Aggregate Functions and Chapter 11: Using DAX for Date Magic.
On the whole readers of this book are likely to have already worked with Excel's Pivot Tables and in this case they will find themselves on familar ground in the next two chapters: Chapter 7: Building Pivot Tables and Chapter 8: Cool Tricks Native to Pivot Tables which gives Jelen an opportunity to demonstrate some clever capabilities.
Then in Chapter 9: Cool Tricks New with PowerPivot he shows how to work with the multiple pivot table layouts that let you do things such as building a report with two pivot charts. This is followed up by the two chapters that introduce the "massively powerful" DAX measure you can add to pivot tables.
Chapter 12:Named Sets, GetPivotData and Cube Formuals returns to techniques that are available in Excel's Pivot Tables and again demonstrates some advanced features including some for report formatting. However, PowerPivot adds some powerful reporting structures and Chapter 13:Final Formatting: Making the Report Not Look Like Excel shows how to produce an impressive and informative report that looks like a dashboard.
Up till this point the book has covered the free Excel client-side add-in. Microsoft also has a server version and the final chapter briefly looks at the benefits of upgrading to it - mainly to access its Reports Gallery. The book concludes with an Appendix that lists some PowerPoint resources - including an add-in to this add-in!
This book it is fast-paced and is on a mission - to get those who are already Excel Power Users to adopt PowerPivot. This makes it a niche book - but one that will appeal to the right reader.
订阅：
博文 (Atom)