That's it, its official! Charlie Sheen's out, Ashton Kutcher is in.
.....
Its a break from the norm, I know, but its all over the news!
Ashton Kutcher has like, a bajilion Twitter fans. I think the big thing producers from the Two and a Half Men sitcom are aiming for would be for him to be able draw in his large younger following to the series. Not to say its a great idea, but just how are they going to write him in?
I've never been a fan of the series, in fact I've only watched it on and off as it is. I never quite found it funny, then again I'm not a die hard Sheen fan as most of the hardcore viewers are (or were?).
What I'm sure of is that Charlie Sheen wouldn't be too happy to hear this. Ashton you've just made a new enemy, one with tiger blood and Adonis DNA.
Would be pretty good to see what goes on now online.
Dav out
Can you meet me halfway, right at the borderline That's where I'm gonna wait, for you I'll be lookin' out, night n'day Took my heart to the limit, and this is where I'll stay
Wine drinking, or "Boire du vin" in French! Part two of the last post on buying wine in bulk.
So the first wine bottle I bought was something I tasted, twice in fact!
Hey, it was free, and there wasn't anyone there, ok?
Its a Grand Sud Merlot (2009) produced by Grands Chais de France (red - Merlot, duh). I've not had all that many French wines lately, as its been Chillien or Aussie wines for a long time during dinners, and I must say, I was very, very impressed with this wine.
I'm going to try my best to explain the wine in my own words, pardon the wine-lingo.
The wine was dark red, close to purple, but I could not really say much more (legs etc) as it was served in a small sample cup. I found the wine sweet (but not cloyingly so) and in terms of taste, it was a medium body wine that stayed in the mouth for a while. The after taste would linger (but not for long, perhaps medium?) and over all it was fruity to me. Did I mention that it was sweet? I think (after the second go) it was a dry wine. Hey, I've not opened my bottle, so until I do so, we're sticking with dry!
I think the bottle looks pretty much what a wine bottle should look like, label is clear, though figuring out who makes the wine took a little work and unlike Aussie wines, there wasn't really a logo or an image on it.
Also, its a corked bottle. I'm pretty 50/50 on bottles with cork's or caps, though cap's make it much easier to just pick a bottle up and open. *shrug* The cork industry in Portugal needs the work I guess.
1 bottle down, 3 to go!
Dav out
Oh, it's the best thing that you've ever had The best thing that you've ever, ever had It's the best thing that you've ever had The best thing you've had has gone away
A friend invited me over to a wine sale in a local shopping mall over the weekend, and needless to say, I could not say no to the offer.
What I had in my head was an interesting afternoon, sampling wines and cheeses while acting all hoity-toity to the miscellaneous rabble along the shopping mall concourse. I eagerly brushed up on my wine lingo, ready to ever impress:
Palette
Roof
Bouquet
Body
Aroma
Legs
Breathing the wine
With my bag of word-tricks, I was off, credit card in hand, to meet my destiny.
Little did I know, things would change that day.....
Over the weekend, I caught a movie that I've been aching (really, aching) to watch, Avatar. Not to be confused with some air bending cartoon, this was the big release by James Cameron, a movie that took a long time to make and bring to the big screens.
Sure, there were financial issues, as well as technology ones as well. James Cameron being James Cameron, he just built new crazy hardware and came up with software to go with his vision (stereoscopic 3D and God only knows what else).
There's even a video game (for the PC, consol and maybe even the iPhone) but since I don't own either one of those (no gaming PC, sadly) lets not go there.
The movie was an amazing feat for the eyes. Seriously. Even if you're not a Sci Fi fan, this movie looks pretty as hell.
This is from the game, instead of the movie, but you get the idea.
On to plot and nit-picking!
The movie reminded me so much of the wild west. Cowboys ride into the new frontier, find gold, silver, diamonds what have you, and start to mine the hell out of the local geography. Just so happens that you've got a bunch of semi-peaceful, tree hugging religious indigenous people on the same plot of land. So what do you do? Pretty much blow them out of the sky.
Hey, come back here, we just want to be friends.
(I love the tech and weapon arsenal in the movie by the way, just love it!)
At one point, the humans even decide to use a space shuttle to act as a bomber. Why? Why? If you asked anyone to commit to using a vehicle that's specially designed to get off the planet safely, and probably costed a bajilion dollars as a simple bomber, you'd get laughed out of the military academy! Just stay back, and lob missiles in over and over, job done. Don't go in with ground troops, you don't want anything left alive, shot the jungle up first! Jebus, if I had to take over one more godforsaken jungle country . . . .
The only grainy screenshot from the actual movie, ha ha!
Minor gripe, if you log off your Avatar, and it goes 'dead' like that, how does it stay alive? What keeps the Avatar unit biologics going? Sure, Autonomic nervous systems can keep it breathing, but what about nourishment etc? Huh? Riddle me that Mr Science Space guys!
Edit: Found a good gameplay video on YouTube, just thought it would be great to share it out.
But I jest. The movie was great. A little long, but an amazing movie nevertheless.
Six thumbs up (watch the movie, some animals have 6 legs).
I don't drink premium coffee. I try to stay away from coffee in general, but this post isn't about me being a tea person, its about premium coffee lids / covers.
That's right! Lids and covers. Someone bought me some coffee, and it was nice, yeah sure. Except I found out the hard way that when your coffee sloshes around the top, it seals off the two holes punctured in the top.
What then occurs is that no matter how much you sip from that small opening in the lid, nothing comes out. I call it 'coffee negative gravity'. You can call it varying pressure (outside the cup and inside the cup) or a vacuum forming, that's OK with me. I'm not biased. Not by much.
The instructables hack? Poke more holes, or clear out the existing holes to balance out the pressure.
What does it say about you when you end up spending 20 minutes reviewing a coffee lid and then blogging about it?
I love using Google Analytics to keep tabs on what's going on with the blog. Once the realm of hardcore network people / webadmins, this site now allows anyone who owns a website to track and gather info on visitors.
Recently looking at the results, I noticed a spike in page views:
Looking at the pageviews closer, I notice something odd, as there's a huge jump in views for a page that I've posted a while back. Its common for the latest few posts on a blog to get higher page views, but this post was from way back in 2007.
Someone, or something (guessing Google here) has started to link back to the original Photo Blog post and if you do a quick search using the phrase "worlds largest carrot" you'll see the same results. Apparently its showing up as # 1 on Google Image search and something like #4 or so on Google Search.
Here's a shot of the image that seems to be the search result of a few searches.
Using dark powers and spells (read: medication and throat gargle chemicals), I managed to beat the vile sore throat (oh its still there, its foul cold fingers clenched around the insides of my throat - but it will soon be gone).
Onwards to the Oktoberfest!
First off, as usual, they had an offer of 1 bottle of Warsteiner beer at RM1 (2 RM0.50 coins). What was not expected however, was the time change from the usual start of 5pm to 7pm. Yes, I am sorry for making the people that came with me wait around the mall for 7pm. My bad.
This year, only 1000 bottles were put on offer for the RM1 redemption, but in another twist, the happy hour timeslot started at 5pm to 7pm. So if someone was there earlier, they could just sit right on down and start drinking. I didn't. I'm cheap.
A shot of the area at 5pm. Notice that there are quite a few people around already, most of them wondering where the hell were the RM1 beers.
See the guys looking at the tent? There are crates of beer behind there.
Ok so here is a shot of the redemption area, before anyone else got in line. I was in the pre-line, to the redemption area actual line. Sort of a line before a line. Its an Asian thing.
I'm in line, and there's no one behind me. Here's a view of the whole boulevard that ends with a stage. Last year, there was an actual German band, playing some folk music and traditional musical instruments. Someone forgot to invite them, so I had to put up with some local rock band.
Here's the same shot, 10 minutes later.
So we finally get in line, and you see another shot here, now closer to the redemption tent and the icy cold beers. German beers!
Here I have my ticket (Number 0022!) and my 2 RM0.50 coins. Its not a clear shot, but hey, I've been in line for almost 40 minutes.
BEER! Here's a shot of the beer I've waited in line for. This will be the ONLY photo of the beer from here on. Why? I'm busy getting in line for another beer.
After 2 beers, we hit the sausages and meat on the grill. As usual, each plate is priced at RM15 (steep) but damn do they taste good. Each plate comes with a helping of mash potatoes and sauerkraut.
Also a nice addition was French mustard and something that looked like honey mustard. Tasted like wasabi though.
Here's a shot from the 'Beer Hall' if you may. By now, I've had a few beers and meat. I'm a happy man.
All in all, I felt that there were a few shortcomings this year around.
There were too few chairs and tables when compared to the past 3 years I've attended the Oktoberfest, and too few RM1 beers. Oh, and the music, got to have the German music guys.
