Month: August 2003

fX’s New Reality Show “Masterplan”

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

Via MediaBistro’s mailing list, I heard about this article on Boston.com about fX’s new reality show “Masterplan”. Basically, a guy is filmed 24 hours a day and the viewers get to vote on his life decisions:

Imported from Portugal, where it is known as &l.dquo;Masterplan,” the series will follow an individual — 24 hours a day, seven days a week — who has agreed to turn over his life decisions to the viewers, who vote via phone and the Internet after each episode. FX will begin running seven one-hour episodes in its “Friday Night Fix” programming in October. […]

It reminds me in some ways of an IRL version of those Choose Your Own Adventure books. And I suppose I’m most curious about what type of decisions the viewers would get to vote on. In any case, it seems interesting.

An Editor’s Take on Personals

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I was amused by this recent Salon article about an editor whose friends keep asking her to help edit their personal ads. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I suppose it’s much in the same way that doctors are always getting asked for medical advice or how IT guys are often asked to help with their friends’ PCs.

Editing is subjective. One editor’s treasure is another’s trash. Under the “Five things I can't live without” section I can’t delete intangibles like “laughter” and “the ability to dream” fast enough. Or, under “Things you’ll find in my bedroom,” “bare walls,” “piles of paper” and “free stuff I get from work” says little. “Less Ikea furniture than before,” tells me more (you’re creative and upwardly mobile). […]

Thread Adapters for Nikon Coolpix 5xxx

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I discovered through a thread on the DPReview Forums (about wishful features for the Coolpix 5700) that you can get a thread adapter for Coolpix 5xxx series cameras to allow filter attachments.

It’s just some guy out of Canada that machined (?) some thread adapters on his own. And, they're available for the Coolpix 5000, 5400 and 5700 in several sizes (46mm, 49mm, 52mm, and others).

I wanted to get one, but at first I wasn’t sure which adapter size would be best. Apparently, 52mm adn 58mm are two of the most common sizes for filters, so that narrowed it down. And, I was concerned that a 58mm filter might get in the way of the built-in popup flash, so I went with the 52mm.

I also picked up an Excellent-rated used Tiffen circular polarizer from KEH to go with it. If you’re not familiar with polarizers, they’re most commonly used to enhance blue skies and, as a rule of thumb, autofocus cameras need circular polarizers (as opposed to a linear polarizers).

Low Carb Snacks

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I setup a Google News Alert for “Atkins” and I discovered this Time magazine article on low carb snacks. I’m not on Atkins, as I find The Zone to be more well-rounded, but I’m still interested in upcoming lower-carb snacks.

Catering to adherents of the high-protein, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet, foodmakers are filling out the $40 billion diet industry with alternative versions of their favorite sins, from marshmallows and margarita mix to biscotti and beer. And thanks to increasingly successful formulations of sugar substitutes, many members of this new generation of munchie killers are downright delicious. […]

The second page from the article also lists several low carbs products and how they comapre to their high-carb couterparts. For instance, Michelob Ultra has 2.6g carbs (compared with 13.3g in regular Michelob). But, Michelob Ultra isn't the tastiest of beers, either (it’s at the 0.1 percentile at RateBeer.com).

Roger’s Birthday at Texas Roadhouse

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

We celebrated Roger’s birthday at Texas Roadhouse last night. Interestingly enough, the chain is actually based in Indiana and only came to Texas relatively recently.

Since they have their menu right on their site, I checked that out beforehand. Before looking, I already had a fillet in mind, and they had two to offer (6 oz & 8 oz). At first, I wasn’t sure whether I should go for the 6 or 8 oz, but I quickly realized that it’s not every day that I have fillet (8 oz it is!).

And that wasn’t the only decision. Each entree also comes with two sides (cup of chili, baked potato, sweet potato, steak fries, green beans&hellip). So, I had more decisions. But, I quickly narrowed that down since they included house and cesar salads among their sides. And, since I wanted a salad anyway, I could just include my salad as a side and not have to order it separately.

I could have ordered a baked potato as my other side (you can’t go wrong there), but I figured that I’d have plenty of carbs from various birthday goodies. So, I just selected the vegetables as my other side.

The food arrived relatively quickly and it looked great. I wasn’t sure what to expect of the vegetables, but the vegetable side had broccoli, cauliflower and carrots (a reasonable combination). Before tasting anything else, I cut right into the fillet to check its done-ness — it seems that some steakhouses don’t account for meat’s tendancy to continue cooking after it’s removed from heat. But, it was pleasantly pink — a perfect “medium”.

The meat looked good, but how did it taste? Fantastic. It was warm and very tender — I really cherished each bite. Maybe it wasn’t the best fillet I’ve ever had, but I’d be hard-pressed to come up with which ones were better.

For birthday merriment, Leia and Ru made some double-chocolate cupcakes earlier in the day. As I understand it, Ru helped mix the batter while Leia baked and iced the cupcakes. They brought them along to Texas Roadhouse for dessert.

As cupcakes go, these were possibly thesecond best from-a-mix cupcakes that I’ve had. I’m also a chocolate fiend and the double-chocolate nature was an added bonus. Leia even adorned them with sprinkles/jimmes.

As it turns out, these cupcakes featured the dot-type sprinkes. The dot-type sprinkle adds a pleasant color to the cupcakes but they can be rather crunchy — somewhat like adding sugar-flavored sand to a cupcake. Don’t get me wrong — I like dot-type sprinkles as much as the next guy — but perhaps the cylindar-type (softer) sprinkles could have been even better.

I’m not one to turn down a steakhouse, but I was a bit skeptical about Texas Roadhouse. After all, could a good steakhouse really come out of Indiana? In the end, it worked out great and I’d go back to Texas Roadhouse anytime.