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Carrie Newcomer

On Saturday we went to see folk singer/songwriter Carrie Newcomer, who was in town as artist-in-residence at Macalester, doing workshops at local colleges and playing a couple concerts. Saturday’s concert, a benefit for Open Arms, was her last appearance in town and drew a considerably larger audience than expected. It’s no wonder: she’s great! Seeing her live makes all the difference.

She introduced a few of her songs by talking about the characters in them, giving us back story and little glimpses into who they are: an elderly couple visiting a diner, the ritual banter between the old man and the waitress (“There are only three kinds of pie I like: cold, warm, and hot”), the fact that that man thinks he’s a big tipper because he leaves three quarters — and that his wife sneaks in another quarter and maybe a dime when he’s no looking. None of this comes up explicitly in the song, but it becomes clear that her thinking about these stories and aspects of character help fill out her sense of who she’s singing about. I see Kiara doing this with her writing, generating many more pages of material than she’ll ever use, developing the world she’s writing. What ends up making the cut in her final work end up being written with greater authority and clarity. It’s gratifying to hear a songwriter do the same.

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Hitchhikers Trailer

The trailer for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie is up on Amazon.com home page. Tiny, but soon it will be elsewhere, so that’s okay. I think it safe to say that I’m adequately excited about this movie.

Update: Unbelievably, this is now the first result in a Google search for “Hitchhikers Trailer.” So if, like me, you forgot the apostrophe, you’re here and disappointed in a dead end. But wait! You’re in luck! The trailer is now on the official movie site, so you can go there to see it.

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SHA-1 broken

A few months ago, collisions in MD5. And now, SHA-1 has been broken. Bruce Schneier: “Not a reduced-round version. Not a simplified version. The real thing.”

Hm. Looking forward to details.

This is what my life has become. I’m actually looking forward to details about hashing algorithms. :) Maybe I oughta get some sleep.

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Solaris 10 accessibility

Solaris 10 has been released, with the expected round of cool features. I normally think of Solaris as a server environment more than for daily desktop use, but as Peter Korn notes, Solaris now features oodles of accessibility features that make it so much more appealing as a desktop. Cool.

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Fiddler

If you are like me and use the Mozilla/Firefox LiveHTTPHeaders extension all the time, but are unlike me and instead want to do the same thing in Internet Explorer all the time, or maybe you’re like me and want to figure out just why the hell IE is behaving like it is, you will be pleased to know that there is Fiddler. Here’s the MSDN page on Fiddler.

OWASP‘s WebScarab is another useful HTTP Proxy.

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Thai Robusta

On my way to my mom’s house one Christmas, I stopped by Maravonda coffee shop in Minneapolis for a much-needed fortifying espresso. Jim O’Hura, roaster and owner, was working the shop, and we chatted awhile. On my way out, he passed me a bag of Thai robusta. “Tell me what you think,” he said.

There are a few species of coffee, but most often you’ll hear people talking about Coffea arabica and Coffea robusta (Coffea canephora). Arabica beans are what you’ll almost always find in specialty coffee shops, as their flavor is more refined and delicate. They are correspondingly difficult to grow, being sensitive to light, pests, and elevation. Robusta coffees, a hardier plant, are by far more widespread and are the primary component of your typical grocery store canned brands. Robustas taste harsh and rubbery, and have about twice the caffeine that arabicas do. In the world of specialty coffee, at least in the US, to even utter the “R” word is anathema.

Yet they have their uses. Italian roasters are known for including a small percentage of robustas in their espresso, perhaps 10%, to round out the flavor and to add body & mouthfeel that you just cannot get from arabicas alone. Maravonda espresso had a lingering roundness to the mouthfeel that I had tried unsuccessfully to duplicate or even approach in my own arabica-only blends. Someone once told me that Jim had been trained by an Italian roaster, so I had long suspected that he used robustas in his top-secret blend. His pushing a bag of it across the counter confirmed that suspicion for me. Then again, being a coffee roaster affords the opportunity to taste a wide variety of coffees just because you can, so there’s no saying that’s not why he had it on hand.

So what did it taste like? It was wild, harsh, a bit vegetal. Sure enough, it had the characteristic robusta fullness, but without the richness to fill it out that you’ll find in arabicas. The flavor just stopped dead at a certain point instead of fading out. It was like there was a hole dead center in the flavor profile, like a doughnut. Not a pleasant coffee to drink on its own, but it would add character to a blend. Say, an espresso.

All of which means nothing to you. How would I describe the flavor? My friend Adam put it best: “You know when you walk into a room where a lot of pot has just been smoked? You know that smell? That is what this coffee tastes like.”

Thus bringing it full circle for those of you who thought I meant something else entirely by “a bag of Thai robusta.”

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del.icio.us

I finally got the hang of del.icio.us and have been using it with a vengeance. Not too good at remember to tag entries, though. Now I can build that list of blogmarks, b-links, whatever you want to call it. I’m not sure whether I’ll create a separate list or build it into the day’s posting à la kottke, but either way it will be better than saving up a long list of quick links to post here, and much better than sending bookmarks back and forth between work and home.

And I still have too much to read.

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SpongeBob has a home in the UCC

SpongeBob welcomed by the UCC. Good for them.

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Owen discovers ska

It turns out that Owen likes ska. In particular, a local ska band, Umbrella Bed, which you used to see playing in places like the Turf Club (they may still play there, I don’t know — it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Turf Club). Once upon the time I knew the band’s French horn player. Somehow Owen managed to find one of their CDs, and it wasn’t long before he was dancing around. Which would be fun, if the music weren’t just a trifle repetitive.

I was a bit concerned when “King Harold” started playing. Oops. But from the refrain, “You fucking ruled, Harold!” he didn’t start repeating what I expected. Instead he asked, “Who is Harold?” A fine opportunity for a history lesson. I’d share the track with you, but iTunes freezes up when it plays the CD. I’ll take that as a sign.

That, and the fact that Owen’s been throwing up all day. But don’t take that as an editorial comment.

Poor kid.

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The Current

I know that Matt and thousands of other St. Olaf grads are probably angry about it, but let me just say that Minnesota Public Radio’s new station kicks ass. I don’t normally listen to music on the radio, but I’ve been listening to this station all week and loving it.

I imagine that the transition from the classical format went something like the first episode of WKRP: a loud screech as the DJ scrapes the needle over the record and screams into (gasp!) rock and roll. I’ve been playing that scene in my head over and over again, giggling like a madman.

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