Year: 2006

Hold Off From Upgrading To iTunes 7 If You Use Juice

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

Apple released iTunes 7 about a fortnight ago with, among other features, support for movies from the iTunes Store (née iTunes Music Store). Reaction to its interface updates have been mixed, but I rather like the tweaks to the interface.

Having said that, if you use iTunes alongside the podcast-subscription tool Juice, you should probably hold off on the upgrade since there have been reports of incompatibilities between iTunes 7 and Juice. Basically, Juice is still able to download podcasts, but it’s unable to automatically add them to your iTunes library (as it normally would).

Of course, these incompatibilities pertain to iTunes version 7.00 and Juice version 2.2 (the current versions as I write this). If you’ve come across this entry and it’s hypothetically December 2006, the now-current versions of those apps may very well have solved those issues.

iTunes 7-based niggles aside, Juice still works very well with iTunes 6.x (to which I plan on downgrading this evening). In case you’re not familiar with the app, Juice is an open source “cross-platform podcast receiver” for Windows, OS X and Linux. While iTunes has built-in podcast support these days, I still prefer Juice for the extra features that it offers, including (optional) auto-expiration (delete episodes of Podcast XYZ after ## days), and (optional) genre-forcing (such as forcing all podcasts to the “Podcast” genre). Oh, and it also has a customizable scheduler, so that you can have it check for new podcasts at an interval which you specify (rather than the arbitrary interval defined in iTunes).

Sirius Adds 10 More Channels. Woo?

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Sirius is announcing that they’re adding ten more channels today with the headline “Sirius debuts 10 new channels to bring you more of what you want”. That sounds reasonable enough on the face of it, but I wasn’t aware that “more of what I want” encompassed:

  • A NASCAR channel,
  • A Catholic channel,
  • CNN in Spanish,
  • Not one but two French-language news channels,
  • … and a Canadian soft rock channel

Don’t get me wrong — I totally dig Sirius — but I’m not exactly thrilled out of my gourd at the news of these new channels. Well, ya win some, ya lose some. C’est la vie.

Beer Ratings and Reviews at RateBeer.com

Ashley Bischoff9 Comments

Some friends of mine think of me as a loony beer purist. And, I’m ok with that ;). Labels aside, I figure that if I’m going to invest the calories in a beverage, it may as well taste good (after all, there isn’t yet Splenda Beer — nor do I hope that one ever exists). Fortunately, if you’re looking into broadening your beer palette, there're many drinkable beers available these days.

One of the sites that I often visit for beer ratings & reviews is RateBeer.com. While the site may seem overwhelming at first, the most pertinent section for most people is probably the beer ratings part of the site. If you’re ready to dive in, you could select a Beer Style or Country (from along the left side of the page) to see the best beers in that style or from that country, respectively. Or, for a healthy dose of schadenfreude, their list of the worst beers is usually good for a laugh. (Apparently, Bud Light scored even lower than Beast Light. Who knew? )

In any case, for a quick list of beers that taste good which you actually have a chance of finding in your local store, I’d recommend RateBeer’s list of Top Widely Distributed Beers (which also sometimes refer to as their list of “Top Accessible” beers). As I understand it, a given beer needs several hundred ratings to make it onto the list — that conveniently excludes, say, beers from Tom’s Nanobrewery in Somecity USA which you wouldn’t have a chance of finding locally.

Having said that, there’s no inherent downside to a beer just because it’s widely available. For instance, my favorite porter, Fullers London Porter, is there at #14 and it’s “only” among the 99th percentile of beers reviewed on the site ;). Porters are good — you could think of them as a notch down from a stout, if you haven’t tried one — but they’re less than ideal for patio-sipping. They’re generally hearty enough that they need a food accompaniment to balance out their oomph.

Probably my favorite style of beer, though, are abbey tripels. The style is classically Belgian, but that’s not to say that only Belgians make a good tripel. And, sure enough, some respectable tripels make the list as well. Chimay Blanche (White) pulls in at #33 and La Fin Du Monde is shortly after that at #37. And, while stouts aren’t personally my cup of tea, they make a strong showing on the list as well (just after a duo of two abt/quadrupel beers in 1st & 2nd place, stouts take on 3rd, 4th and 5th place).

If all these beer styles are greek to you, don’t worry — just try printing out their list of Top Widely Distributed Beers the next time you need beer and you’re headed to the store. Then just glance over what’s on the shelf and see if some of them are on the list. To be sure, even the “lowest rated” beer among their Widely-Distributed list, Sierra Nevada Porter is in the 90th percentile among beers — not too shabby. Any of the beers on the list would make for a formidable alternative to garden-variety American-macrobrews (which is to say, Budweiser, Coors and Miller).

Possible E. Coli in Bagged Spinach

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Just in case you have any bagged spinach at home, you may not want to eat that. The FDA is warning that some cases of E. Coli have been linked with this leafy goodness (well, “non-goodness” for the time being).

The Food and Drug Administration is warning people not to eat bagged spinach after an outbreak of E. Coli bacteria killed one person and sickened at least 50 others in eight states.

The FDA issued the warning Thursday night, just one day after receiving information about the growing number of E. Coli cases, which began in mid-August and stretched from Connecticut to Oregon. […]

The article went on to say that “the elderly, the young and those with weak immune systems are most likely to be at risk”. So, if you’re in good health, you probably wouldn’t die; still, there’s no need to tempt fate, eh?

“Make No Mistake” is a Mistake

Ashley Bischoff5 Comments

Like fashion, some phrases come along and — like capris pants or tribal tattoos — it suddenly seems like everyone is making use of them. One recent occurrence is “make no mistake” which, near as I can understand it, is a speaker’s attempt at emphasizing a point. However, whenever I’ve heard it, it’s come off condescendingly (and maybe that’s part of the idea, for all I know).

I knew that I couldn't be alone is my distaste for the phrase, but it was only recently that I came across some prose expressing as much. Writing for Slate Magazine, Timothy Noah is no fan of “make no mistake” (or, as he half-jokingly calls it, MNM) either:

[… ] “Read my lips” is funny—unless, of course, it’s spoken to a deaf person—and swagger always comes across better when it's leavened with humor. “Make no mistake,” on the other hand, are the words not merely of a bully, but of a bully who lacks panache. It practically begs for a defiant response. Listen, buddy, I’ll make a mistake whenever I goddamn well feel like it.

I think Noah was able to capture my feelings on this one. At first, when trying to figure out my distaste for the phrase, I thought that maybe it was because the speaker was being redundant (after all, who intentionally makes mistakes?). Thinking further, and looking at it from the perspective that Noah offers, I think he’s right — by chiding the listener not to make mistakes, the speaker is implying that the listener is prone to making them. Well, that’s not very hospitable, now is it?

I suppose that I can only count down this phrase’s fifteen minutes. With any luck, it’s merely a passing fad of the pretentiarati.