After arriving in Lincoln, Maggie met me at the airport and we headed not for the Haymarket, but for the new second location of The Oven, at 70th and Pioneers, in the same center as Venue. It's a nice room with high ceilings, modern decor, and halogen track lighting. I ordered my favorite herb-crusted lamb shank with vindaloo cream, which was delicious, and we drank a 2004 Seghesio "Old Vines" zinfandel. (The Oven East is still building its wine list, and didn't have our favorite Stag's Leap petite sirah, but the Seghesio zin was very nice with the lamb and Maggie's chicken tikka korma.) And before leaving Lincoln we managed to get to BBQ4U, which has turned into Lincoln's consistently best barbecue.

I managed to score us first class award seats from Chicago to London and back on United, which entitled us to the very nicely stocked International First Class lounge at O'Hare, with a decent bar, good beverage selection, and some tasty food, including a cold pate en croute with pistachios, a ham and cheese roll-up, various nuts and cheeses, and good coffee.

We boarded on time and were escorted to our "suites" on the Boeing 777. There are only 10 seats in F on United 777s, and each is a mini-suite that converts to a lie-flat bed, and has plenty of storage space, an IFE screen, laptop power outlet, satphone, and comfy pillows and a blanket. The seats are angled and we each had 3 windows to look out of. Service was very gracious and the seats were very comfortable.

Dinner service began with a cucumber salad and a combo of short rib wontons with thai barbecue sauce and sauteed shrimp, probably the best starter I've had on an aircraft. I ordered the filet mignon for a main course, but alas, it arrived burnt due to an oven problem in the galley; profuse apologies ensued and it was replaced with a fillet of salmon with spinach, which was fine. I was nearly full by the time the cheese course came by, but managed to enjoy some gorgonzola, parmesan, and a bit of chevre, with Sandeman's Reserve port.

After a fitful night (I still can't sleep on airplanes, even in a mini-bed) we were greeted with a breakfast of an omelette, tomato, ham, and assorted fruit. After landing at Heathrow and clearing immigration we repaired to the United's Arrivals suite for showers, coffee, and wi-fi, and then faced the trip into town.

I'd originally planned to stay in familiar territory -- the West End, South Kensington, maybe Camden or Islington, but after consulting several holiday flat rental sites and going down a couple of blind alleys, the best choice available turned out to be a new development called Maltings Place, on Tower Bridge Rd., SE1, in Bermondsey. It's a conversion of a former brewery, along with some new construction. Our apartment was in the old brewery, and the main room looked out on a small lane with mews houses, while the bedrooms overlooked a second-floor glass walkway to a set of offices. I admired the concept of the place, but the execution was somewhat odd -- in the en-suite bath off the first bedroom, it was almost impossible to stand at the sink without brushing one's shoulders against the shower and wall, and it was literally impossible to turn around in the shower.

The location, though, was exceptional -- all of Bermondsey seemed to be in the process of renovation and gentrification, and what had been run-down riverfront warehouses and abandoned buildings only a few years ago were smart offices and blocks of flats, along with a good measure of pubs and restaurants. And since the arrival of the Jubilee Line extension -- no doubt a prime mover in the district's recovery -- it was a quick trip into the heart of London.

But -- on to the food. One of Bermondsey's best points is its proximity to the fabulous Borough Market, London's largest and most famous wholesale and retail food market. While we weren't able to visit the market this trip, we were able to enjoy one of its major local effects, which is a wealth of restaurants orbiting its perimeter on Stoney St., Southwark St., and Rochester Walk. One that we had in mind was Roast, to which we had been directed by Maggie's mother, who found a review of it on the NPR web site. Alas, they were fully booked, but immediately next door was a very stylish and informal steak house, Black and Blue, in a space neatly carved into an arch-roofed former warehouse under an railroad overpass, and full to overflowing with smart young Londoners. Black and Blue is part of Britain's post-BSE beef revival and is known for its huge cuts of sustainably-farmed beef, cooked rare. After a stint in the bar waiting for a table and appetizing on paté and tortilla chips with guacamole, we shared an enormous côte de boeuf (bone-in rib steak), and didn't finish it!

After a pleasant day touring the Southwark waterfront the next day, the highlight of which was a tour of the World War II cruiser HMS Belfast, Maggie suggested we try Roast again, and this time we were successful. It's a beautiful room, one story above the street (in fact, it overlooks Black and Blue). We started with the pressed rabbit with scrumpy apple chutney, and scallops with garlic and cobb nuts, accompanied by Audoin champagne, and we both opted for the roast leg of lamb with slow-cooked shoulder, greens, jus, and garlic creme as a main course. Both the leg and shoulder were amazingly tender and flavorful and the greens gave the dish a little bit of bitter contrast to the velvety meat juices. With the lamb we had a Trinity Hill 2002 Hawkes Bay "Trinity" red blend from New Zealand.

Unlike the starters and mains, which were exceptional, something was a bit off with the cheese course. Roast features a set of artisanal British cheeses, including Montgomery's Cheddar from Somerset, Isle of Wight Blue, and Flower Marie, a sheep's milk cheese from East Sussex. The cheddar was delighful, but something had happened to the Flower Marie, giving it an unpalatable barnyard taste (really, you don't want to know) which carried over to the Blue, either due to contact in the kitchen or storage, or perhaps via the serving knife. As all three cheeses are still on Roast's menu, it must have been a one-time incident. (I dearly love strong-flavored ripe cheeses, but something had clearly gone wrong here.)

On the way to the West End the next day, we lunched at The Bridge Lounge, a delightful pub on Tooley St., just west of the south end of the Tower Bridge. In an upmarket spin on bangers and mash, I had pork and leek sausages with onion, mashed potatoes, and a wine reduction sauce. Then we headed to the V&A; and the London Eye, and from there to dinner at an old favorite, Porter's English Restaurant in Covent Garden. Porter's serves the traditional classics of English cooking -- shepherd's pie, bubble and squeak, steak and kidney pudding, spotted dick -- all the things that every American kid thinks that Londoners eat every day. We started with dressed Norfolk crab (a spicy crab salad) and we both had excellent fish and chips -- beer-battered cod with malt vinegar.

Our last full day in London was spent mostly at the British Museum, then back home to our neighborhood to a lovely dinner at a Bermondsey gastro-pub, The Garrison Public House. We started with mussels in white wine and cream sauce, and for mains we both had roast organic pork belly with new potatoes, bacon, and thyme jus, a nice filling meal for a chilly autumn night. We drank a 2004 Spanish crianza from Castillo de Chiva.

And with that our London visit came to a close -- the next day there was just time for coffee and a shortbread cookie before packing up and heading to Waterloo Station and the Eurostar... next stop, Paris!]]> Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:00:25 http://www.berchonfood.com/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2007/10/29#071029 Berch on Food spent most of the last half of September and the first half of October in Europe, and of course there's plenty to be said about that, but in the meantime please check out Eating in Pleasanton, which I fired up in order to cover some local food and drink topics as well as play around with the Wordpress platform, which I hope to move Berch on Food to in the future. (Blosxom is a nice package, but somewhat limited in layout ability and automated functions.)

(Credit to the hopefully-to-be-revived Eatin' in Lincoln for the name, and to the amazingly energetic Eater SF for the inspiration.)]]> Thu, 22 Nov 2007 02:37:57 http://www.well.com/conf/pre.vue/topics/46/What-s-going-on-around-The-Well-page07.html#post172
--------------> Publicly-viewable conferences --------------------------->

<inkwell.vue.311> Lauren Kessler, "Dancing with Rose" Currently in the Inkwell, author Lauren Kessler is here to share how her mother's battle with Alzheimer's led her to take a job as a caregiver in a dementia facility, and what it's really like for staff and residents there.

--------------> Featured conferences ------------------------------------>

<media.2484> Chinese Central Television A place to discuss Chinese broadcast news.

<genx.1916> Post Here If You Have a Job, Again! How long have you been at your current job? Is frequent switching cool with employers, now, or frowned upon? Do you want to change jobs more or less frequently?

<investment.180> Plunging U.S. Dollar It wasn't enough for the U.S. dollar to sink below the Canadian one - now interest rates are on the way back down, which is good news for borrowers but could be terrible news for everyone else.

<parenting.1331> First date Dealing with your child's first date.

<macintosh.1692.239-> OS X Leopard The latest version of Apple's operating system for the Mac has arrived - how does it measure up?

<writers.2157> The Writer as Podcaster When writers podcast.

<pets.714> Hog Wild Over Guinea Pigs! Always an amusing read, this topic has added juice now that we have a new convert to The Guinea Pig Way.

<homeowners.393> A cabin in the woods I have been learning a few things about contractor negotiation by reading a Well user's updates on his house-building project. Fascinating stuff for this new homeowner.

<spirituality.286> Spiritual Teachers A topic to share your experiences with Spiritual Teachers.

<misc.1748> The nice thing I did today Create some good karma.

<byline.501> Possible Book Ideas A place to brainstorm.

<tv.1544.412-> news about the television industry What will the writers' strike mean for TV and film?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------> [Read entire topic]]]> Sat, 03 Nov 2007 18:45:00 http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007488.html Sat, 27 Oct 2007 00:08:48 http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007487.html Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:58:35 http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.com/2007/10/oh-for-fucks-sake-thats-it.html Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:09:00 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/RhodeIslandWebLog/~3/175552583/halloween-happenings.html Fri, 26 Oct 2007 21:16:57 http://www.arachna.com/roller/page/spidaman/20071026#memcached_hacks I needed to clear a cache entry from a memcached cluster of 5 instances. Since I didn't know which one the client had put it in, I concocted a command line cache entry purger. netcat AKA nc(1) is my friend.

Let's say the cache key is "shard:7517" and the memcached instances are running on hosts ghcache01, ghcache02, ghcache03, ghcache04 and ghcache05 on port 11111 the incantation to spray them all with a delete command is

$ for i in 1 2 3 4 5
> do echo $i && echo -e "delete shard:7517\r\nquit\r\n" | nc -i1 ghcache0$i 11111
> done

1
NOT_FOUND
2
DELETED
3
NOT_FOUND
4
NOT_FOUND
5
NOT_FOUND

For more information on the memcached protocol, see the docs under source control.

memcached   hacks   netcat  

A small oddity of history: on October 24, 1593, a young soldier in uniform of the Philippine regiment was found wandering dazed in the Plaza Mayor in Mexico City. On being told where he was, he insisted that he had just been on sentry duty in the governor’s palace in Manila — and offered the news that the governor, Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, had just been murdered. He was confused about the date; he said it was the 25th.

Gil was arrested for desertion and on suspicion of witchcraft, but cleared a few months later when a ship arrived from the Philippines, and one of the passengers testified that he knew Gil and had seen him on duty in Manila on the night of the October 25th.

The earliest records of this are from the 1600’s, and no primary evidence — prison or trial documents — exist.

It just smells like a ripping good story to me — with a little elaboration, of course. But then I remembered that I am never going to write a historical novel again. Even if it does have a great title.

So what am I up to? Deep thinking and preliminary noodling on Plain Kate, in response to my agent’s astute comments. Children of Peace is appealing to me — a sequence set in a suburb that’s been abandoned for 400 years particularly so. Bathtub tiles and fire hydrants, drifts of aluminum siding, white-rusted with rain. Haven’t touched Otter since I accidentally created fruit. Poetry has deserted me. I write about Vivian and sleep a lot.

"How long have the planets been circling the sun? Are they getting anywhere, and do they go faster and faster in order to arrive? How often has the spring returned to the earth? Does it come faster and faster every year, to be sure to be better than last spring and to hurry on its way to the spring that shall outspring all springs?"

~Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

Special wishes to brave journalist Larry Himmel.

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article on California's fire, and why they've been burning hotter. California's Age of Megafires

]]> Wed, 24 Oct 2007 00:54:35 http://www.masson.us/blog/?p=2544 Wed, 24 Oct 2007 00:37:07 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/LAVoiceorg/~3/174046499/index.php Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:48:30 http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007465.html Tue, 23 Oct 2007 22:31:27 http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007464.html Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:51:02 http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007451.html Tue, 23 Oct 2007 21:36:41 http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.com/2007/10/p-is-for-patriarchy-pornstitution-and.html Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:33:00 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheKlezmershack/~3/173892854/005924.html Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:38:54 http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheKlezmershack/~3/173892855/005923.html Tue, 23 Oct 2007 17:33:55 http://xianlandia.com/te-amo/2007/10/23/enumerating_social_media_patterns_a_work_in_progress.html

At BarCamp Block earlier this year I led a discussion of social media design patterns. The slides I posted were really more just about patterns and how we deal with them at Yahoo! But the group exercise was to brainstorm a huge list of social media and social networking activities that could be described and documented as patterns.

These are not the patterns themselves, but at least one pattern could probably be written around each of these gestures. We found it easiest in the brainstorm to just rattle off a list of gerunds (“adding, blocking, friending,” etc.).

The list we came up is also not exhaustive or definitive. It’s one group’s idea of the various patterns that a social system could support. The initial list was posted at the BarCamp Block wiki. Then Kent Bye, one of the participants, took a stab at re-sorting it a bit and created a visualization. He also then hand-copied it into an outline format and sent me his “version two” of the list.

Since then I’ve made a few more tweaks and have produced a version 3 outline. I’ve been working on visualizing it myself, so I turned the OPML into an OmniOutliner file and then imported that into OmniGraffle. The map is so tangled that Graffle had a hard time displaying it without crossing lines, so I spent some more time dragging the various nodes and clusters around until they were each separate. The end result is that it’s huge of course, and still by no means final or exhaustive or authoritative.

In fact, it’s decidedly not the taxonomy of social media patterns we’re working on internally at Yahoo! Think of it as an open source, collaborative work in progress. The thumbnail image above links to a full-sized PDF you should feel free to grab to get a better look at the current state of play of this idea, and if you’d like the OPML file or any other format, just drop me a note and I’ll send it to you.

When I get a moment, I’ll drop by the BarCamp Block wiki and upload the file there in several formats too, at least until someone provides a better place for hosting this project.

So what got me started on this rant? Yesterday, in one of my many wine-related emails was the announcement of the new "Mamietage Collection of Fine Wines." This collection of "fine wines" is named after screen legend and notorious blond bombshell Mamie Van Doren. Huh? I thought she was dead! I must have confused her with the other two blond "Bombshells" of the 50's. Okay, so how do I know about the "The Three M's — Mamie, Monroe and Mansfield?" Umm...my mother told me?

"Mamietage" is produced in 1.5 liter bottles featuring three images of Mamie. Two of the images are of Mamie as she is today, and the third image is from Mamie at the age of 21. The wine labels all feature nude poses of Mamie covered up by a top, clear "peel away" label that has stars strategically placed. Once you peel the label away - - a nude Mamie! The peel away portion is attached, and can be replaced to it's original form. How special - like paper dolls!

Last year I blogged "Porn Wine" regarding porn star Savanna Samson launching her own brand of Italian wine. Wine critic, Robert Parker gave the wine 90 points and claimed Samson’s wine to be "luscious and oppulent." Oh reee-ally Mr. Parker. "Luscious and oppulent," you say?

So, all of these celebrity wines got me to thinking - I need my own wine label. Hey! I’m a celebrity - a wine blogging celebrity - the Wild Walla Walla Wine Woman - a celebrity in my own mind! I could have peel away labels like paper dolls. Your choice of bare umm - - feet or Birkenstocks. Purple and red reading glasses or no eyeglasses. Fountain pen behind my ears or laptop computer. Toga with belly dancing scarves or Washington State University sweat shirt with Sponge Bob Squarepants sweat pants? Ain't she purty? My paperdoll image can be holding your choice of wine. Red or white, but never a glass of White Zin. Cheers!

hard frost --
I step around
the housefly

The other best part is that I’ve never been to Mexico before, and I’m excited and a little nervous (doing anything for the first time makes me feel that way) about it.

The other best part is that I’ll be disconnected from my electronic life. I won’t want to pay roaming minutes for phone or data so I’ll be just calling home once a day to check in with my sweetie, and checking voicemail intermittently. I may not bother looking at my email till I get back, October 28, and I’ll definitely not be blogging.

I always think it’s funny when people apologize for not blogging. “Sorry I haven’t been blogging lately - I’ve had a flare-up of sciatica,” or “Light blogging ahead - we’re planning to levitate the Pentagon,” or what have you. Isn’t even the briefest pause in blogging actually a bit of a gift to your audience, such as it is?

It’s not that I have any shortage of things to blog about. The Big Star show I saw this weekend illustrated with my blurry iPhone photos. That’d be good. Or a long screed about how you don’t design sites from the front to the back or the back to the front but from the middle (that is, the information architecture) both forward and back. Or my long-tortured draft about social web apps that don’t play well with email. How much I’ve been enjoying the Games for Windows the Official Magazine and Chowder Eating Society Radio Podcast show starring Jeff Green and his sycophants I mean friends I mean underlings.

No, but there will be plenty of time for that (except maybe the Alex Chilton post, which won’t be very current after a while).

I guess I did want to mention this brief hiatus though, hypocrite that I am, so everyone knows I did it on purpose, man! I meant to do that. I’m not losing my edge. Oh, no. (Though I did wake up this morning feeling pretty low and then forgot to pack my gym shorts before leaving the house - what do I do now? Ride the stationary bike in my jock? Wrap a towel around my waste like a Roman? Skip the workout? I really don’t want to. But that’s hardly enough material for yet another blog post.