Yearly Archives: 2012

Kiuchi Brewery’s Espresso Stout

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My first beer from Japan! This pours nice and thick. This Espresso Stout is black like my heart and is thick like the phrase “Guinness is a meal” would lead you to believe (rather than the sad reality that is Guinness these days).

While I can’t really detect the espresso in the smell of this one (although once it warmed up a bit I could), I can in the taste. Halfway through a mouthful you’re certainly going “mmm… espresso-y”.

This was quite enjoyable. I’m not sure if I could drink more than one (I probably couldn’t), and it doesn’t match the whatever it was I had through a coffee bean filled Randy at Mountain Goat a while ago, but it’s certainly nice.

Yes folks, there can be good beer come out of Japan.

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Barons Black Wattle

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In which I attempt to make beer photos more interesting by hipster-izing them as much as humanly possible without using Instagram.

This is Barons Black Wattle Original Ale. As far as anyone can work out, there isn’t much of this left. The Barons Brewing website is no more and it seems the company went away after not sticking to their core business – which was brewing beer.

It’s got Wattle in the name as the beer has roasted wattle seeds. The Wattle is an Australian native, that is – to me, this beer is distinctly Australian. It’s not a flavour you’d come up with elsewhere. While it is not my most favourite beer of all time, being something that you simply couldn’t really come up with anywhere else, I hold it in a special place.

Oh, and yes it is true that I’m attempting to bribe people at work (Percona) with offers of me sending them a bottle.

When we heard that the brewery was no more, we stockpiled. If you find any in a store, grab it – you probably won’t get another chance to try this brew.

It’s 5.8%, with a rich amber colour and a good rounding of malt flavours – you can certainly taste the Wattle and that’s what makes it distinctive. I’ve never found this a session beer, but I do enjoy a few of them.

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Harviestoun Old Engine Oil Porter

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This beer heralds from a craft brewery in Scotland. At 6% and with good strong flavours, it’s strong all around. A good solid porter with (again, as the bottle says) notes of chocolate and coffee (both in smell and taste) and a bittersweet aftertaste that is just perfect on a cold evening like this.

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Murray’s Punch and Judy’s Ale

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On the back it describes itself as a “New World Bitter” and the word bitter is certainly true – it’s not a floral hoppy flavour but rather a bitter that tastes like a bitter should. I could drink a few of these, although more than that could get overwhelming. Bottle conditioned, only 3.9% and quite pleasant.

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Waiting…

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If you’ve ever had the misfortune of breaking something that is part of yourself, you’ve probably spent a bunch of times in waiting rooms. Even though the waiting is annoying, when something isn’t going to immediately kill you, you can’t really get too frustrated at having to wait. Well, at least that’s my theory.

I’ve learned the lesson of bringing a tablet or laptop along for the up to an hour wait after the scheduled start of an appointment, although actually waiting in the consult room itself is a new one.

The exposed USB Ports to a computer that can access my medical records does raise a concern. I feel it sad that I now just assume that anybody who does want to read them could. I’ve started to think of possible ways to get anonymous health care. The doctor-patient confidentiality is something that is indispensable to a good health care system.

But here I am, waiting. Nothing interesting to note in this room with no windows (except that window into my medical records)

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More photos

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I’ve decided to try and take more photos and publish more of them. This means I have to look around for opportunities, including capturing some daily life.

This morning I’m off for hopefully my last appointment at the Alfred after a bike accident about six or seven weeks ago (injury photos posted previously). So, it means taking the train as driving with a brace on my arm doesn’t excite me.

The train is late, the 9:08 in the other direction is even later (twenty minutes). I just missed the previous one, so there I am looking at the mind the gap paint.

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Sessions at the Percona Live MySQL Conference that interest me

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For the past many years, there’s been a conference in April, at the Santa Clara Convention Centre where the topic has been MySQL and the surrounding ecosystem. The first year I went, I gave a talk on the new features in MySQL Cluster 5.1 to a overflowing room of attendees. For me, it’s an event that’s mixed with speaking about something I’ve been working on and talking to other attendees about everything from how a particular part of the server works to where we can escape to for nearby good vegan food.

So, I thought I’d share some of the sessions that I’m really looking forward to. My selection is probably atypical, but may be interesting to others. I’m not going to list the keynotes, although they are often of a lot of value. I’m also going to attempt to avoid listing a few really awesome well known speakers simply because there are other really interesting sessions that also need exposure!

  • Starring Sakila: Building Data Warehouses and BI solutions using MySQL and Pentaho
    I need to base decisions off data, not simply a gut feeling (I’m not Stephen Colbert after all). I ran into a bunch of stumbling blocks when trying to work with Pentaho a couple of weeks ago, and I’m really hoping that this session shines some light on how to use it to better and more easily make arguments based on evidence to others in the company.
  • Testing MySQL Databases: The State Of The Art
    I’ve worked with Patrick for several years now, and he’s currently a valuable member of my team at Percona. For those who are interested in the state of the art of open source database testing, this is the session to be in.
  • Getting InnoDB Compression Ready for Facebook Scale
    This session is on at the same time as I’m speaking, so I probably won’t be able to attend (people keep coming to my sessions so I usually can’t sneak out). I’m really interested in how they’ve modified the compression code to help with their (large) workload.
  • Backing Up Facebook
    I hear that Facebook has a couple of database servers, a few dozen users and a few floppy disks full of data. This should be a fun story :)
  • Introducing XtraBackup Manager
    Being responsible for XtraBackup development at Percona, the XtraBackup topics really interest me. Lachlan has been working on a simple backup manager for XtraBackup to help create something that is a more complete backup solution than a tool which simply creates a backup.
  • Extending Xtrabackup – A Point-In-Time System
    Another good case of using XtraBackup as part of a comprehensive backup strategy. I have to be honest, I’m looking for ways in which we can improve XtraBackup to better fit the needs of people. It may be that there are a few small things we can do to make it easier for people do deploy and use.
  • Getting Started with Drizzle 7.1
    We’re about to do the 7.1 release of Drizzle! If you’re interested in having a SQL database that is designed to be used in large scale web applications and cloud environments, come along to this talk.
  • MySQL Idiosyncrasies That Bite
    I have to admit, I’m interested in Ronalds talk here to basically ensure we didn’t miss fixing anything in Drizzle. I do promise not to at any point yell out “Fixed in Drizzle” though.

Go here to register: http://www.percona.com/live/mysql-conference-2012/ (early bird pricing and discounted hotel rooms end March 12th, so you want to register sooner rather than later).

Drizzle Day 2012

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Henrik has already posted it over on the Drizzle Blog, but I thought I’d give a shout out here too.

We’re holding a Drizzle Day right after the Percona Live MySQL Conference and Expo in April. So, since you’re all like me and don’t book your travel this far in advance, it’ll be easy to stay for the extra day and come and learn awesome things about Drizzle.

I’m also pretty glad that my employer, Percona is sponsoring the event.

MythRemote – a MythTV frontend remote

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So, neither being someone who has remotely recently written any bit of software involving a desktop GUI and really not being much of a Python hacker, the obvious solution to being annoyed by having to reach for the remote for MythTV when hacking in front of the TV was to grab Quickly, Python, Gtk and go for it.

So, here it is:

Maybe useful to (edit: the word “you” should go here, which I amazingly forgot to write before hitting publish).

TextSecure – secure SMS for Android

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So… having secure SMS really isn’t hard. Onec upon a time you may have been forgiven to think that your SMS messages weren’t recorded forever by telecommunications companies or various government agencies, but those times have long passed. At the very least you should be concerned about somebody getting hold of your phone and going through all your SMSs (phones no longer just store 20 messages).

TextSecure (Free and Open Source Software up on github) does both local encryption (messages are encrypted on your phone) and over the wire encryption. That’s right kids – you can send encrypted text messages to each other.

It’s a drop-in replacement for the built in Android text messages application, so it all “just works”.

Go install it now.

This is the app that Jacob Appelbaum mentioned in is Keynote at lca2012.

Cold Brew Coffee Experiment #3

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So, I did what I said I’d do – 1/3rd cup ground coffee + 2 cups water, overnight (about 18-20hrs) in fridge. Tasted really nice.

I think I’ve found the combination that works when I’m just making one.

Filtering out the grounds is certainly annoying… I guess this is what the Toddy is meant to solve…. because what I most certainly need is yet another way to make coffee.

Cold Brew Coffee Experiment #2

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Two things varied from my previous attempt:

  1. I kept it in the fridge instead of on the bench (it’s been really hot in Melbourne and the fridge is closer to “normal” temperature than outside)
  2. doubled the amount of water

The difference? It’s certainly cooler, and a weaker flavour. That being said,  I think you get more of the subtleties of the flavour rather than being a bit thwacked with it. I found my last experiment nice, but perhaps a bit sharp. This batch tastes very smooth and refreshing.

This batch also seemed to be less gritty, with me seeing fewer grounds in the filter. I wonder if that’s due to fridge, variance of grind or water quantity.

I think for my next go I’m going to try same amount of coffee, in the fridge, but 2 cups of water.

Cold Brew Coffee Experiment #1

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1/3rd cup ground coffee (ground approximately for what I’d use in a plunger) to 1.5cups water. Sit in airtight container on the bench overnight (about 18hrs actually) and then filtered through coffee filter paper into a mug.

It certainly is different, but still distinctly coffee. I’m not sure if I want to add more water too it or not… quite possibly – and this mixture would probably be total killer for iced coffee.

Basically, I’ve heard a million and one “one true ways” to make cold brew coffee, and this was my first go at it. Now just to try different variations until I find the one I like the most.