Brain food

Our whole neighbourhood smells of charcoal due to a neighbour having a barbecue. Tanja's always a bit sickened by the smell due to too many charcoal chicken shops nearby to where she lived when she was younger. It raised a question in my mind, though. Why is the smell of charcoal/roasting things so arresting, even if we're not hungry?

Is it

a) the smell of charcoal and roasting brings to mind happy memories of eating, family, satisfaction, etc, so our brain jumps the queue and goes "charcoal=happy"?

or

b) the smell of cooked-down wood on fire breaks right through all the rational memory and hits our reptilian/Australopithecus centre of the brain and goes "Smell of smoke=fire=potentially dead=BE CAREFUL DUMBASS".

I lean towards the latter. In either case, the reaction is the same: nostrils flare, heads up, looking around. Evolved, ain't we?

Also, apropos of nothing, I want to post this bit from Warren Ellis & Ben Templesmith's Fell (all ownership theirs, fair use, etc etc, this is educational):

Ted, you need to make this at Mars Hill.

Why I Hate Firefox

It's very simple. It will occasionally, for no reason at all, without warning, not work. I'll load up Firefox, click on a link from my favourite toolbar, or type something into Google, or whatever, and I'll get this response:

Not just once, not twice, but three times I have to reclick the link (refreshing just reloads the error page). Then it remembers that, oh right, it's meant to be a web browser and yes, these are websites, so I'd better let Lucas browse them.

This has shown up in the last 3 revisions, and each time I hope they'll fix it. They don't. And worse, it won't happen all the time. Just every 6th or 7th link, and it brings my experience grinding and crashing to a halt.

I want to support open source developers and all that but god DAMN this is such a basic thing.

Further anger? MOV files. They look great playing at 720p on the Quicktime player, but no video editor I can find, including Windows Movie Maker, Adobe Premiere Pro, or any of the free things I find can edit the suckers. The minute you try to speed up or slow them down, the framerate goes to hell and the video gets choppy. Any converter you get lowers the framerate. Argh.

Technology, why must it be two steps forward and one step back?

PS and by the by: Anamanaguchi's Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game soundtrack makes even the crappiest typing seem like epic haxxoring. Here are some snippets in this trailer:

So tech guy came out.

Called twice, once from his office, once from exchange. Signs were leading towards faulty modem. He gets here. Runs a reset, no joy. He checks the line on his modem, gets full signal. Looks like faulty modem. He's just packing up when he looks at the splitter by the modem. He notices the splitter is closer to the modem than it is to the wall. He reads the writing.

"Hmmm," he says. "looks like your splitter is backwards."

I tell him it's always been like that, and it worked until last week. He flips it. Resets again.

It fuckin' works.

Apparently the backwards splitter meant I couldn't get line sync after a reset. Problem solved.

So. Wasn't the modem.

I'm happy the Net's back. What i'm NOT happy with is thus:

Why the bollocks couldn't PHONE tech support ask a few questions?!? Like "have you reset the modem?" Or ANYTHING?!?!?

Short Fuse Misfire

Reposted from the TikiBar Forums:
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So I had my first Short Fuse at the bar on Friday and loved it. I the bought the ingredients this weekend to make it at home.

And I did.

And I hated it. Sickly-sweet, verging to sour instead of clean toffee flavours.

What could have made the difference? Well, there are a few things:
1) The bar had no Cherry brandy, so we used Strawberry Schnapps instead.
2) The beer used was Coopers Sparkling Ale at home, Tooheys New lager at the bar.
3) I used Pepsi Max at home, and Coke (full strength) at the bar.

I'm going to try it again tonight without the Cherry Brandy, just to see, but ugh. What a letdown.

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(About an hour and a half later)
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Success! Go the scientific method!

So, deciding that the only way of controlling the circumstances would be to control the variables, I set out to the bottle shop. I got a stubby of Toohey's New lager and a can of Coke. Once home, I recreated the Short Fuse with the steely calm of a scientician. A third of a shot of cherry brandy was the third change made. Created the Kahlua and amaretto shot (even layered it perfectly), and dropped it in.

Heaven.

The sweeter Coopers ale and sugary Pepsi Max combined with the Cherry Brandy was just too much for my palate. The dry and more structured Tooheys New controlled the flavour of the drink.

Phew! I thought I'd bought Cherry Brandy, Amaretto and Kahlua for nothing (although, admittedly, I would have gotten rid of them somehow)!

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Update. Post. Thing.

They just proved on Mythbusters that if you're under 6 feet of water, your enemies can fire a .50 cal at you and you won't get hit. The speed decrease actually causes the bullet to disintergrate from the pressure. Good to know. I have a lot of enemies.

Tanja and I were walking in the city, and Tanja spotted a woman who was... gifted. In the chest area. And her comment to me?

"Goddang, you see the size of them things?"

THAT'S my girl.

Oh, and the Magic Dirt concert went great. I learned a new band (the Fuzz), and confirmed that I liked two bands (Magic Dirt and the Spazzys), and Tanja survived a great deal of noise. Good for her. and she even admitted to liking the music. I'll corrupt her yet.

Halloween was fun. You know, except that only ONE Borders person turned up. Out of the TWENTY I invited. Craig, Ted and Catherine showed up, all costumed (Ted and Meg as the White Stripes, opposite genders I.E. Ted was Meg and Catherine was Jack. Fun freakin' times). We watched Army of Darkness, Shaun of the Dead and The Mummy (at Tanja insistence). We didn't go out to the bars, but fun nevertheless. Pictures forthcoming.