Just a brief note to announce that I posted a minor update of my android app SFD Mobile to the Android Marketplace. Version 1.1 updates the fire stations listing and fixes a minor display bug [which I blame on Socrata, but who knows?].
Search the Marketplace for SFD to find it.
Q: How much coconut is in a package of Coconut M&Ms?
A: Would you believe, none?
That’s right, none. Zero. Zilch. The ingredient that the product is named after does not exist in the product.
I found this rather shocking. After all, peanut M&Ms contain peanuts. Almond M&Ms contain almonds. Peanut-butter M&Ms contain peanut-butter. So I got a little teed-off when the ingredients list on coconut M&Ms did not list coconut.
Here is the actual list of ingredients as printed on the package:
Ingredients: milk chocolate (sugar, chocolate, skim milk, cocoa butter, lactose, milkfat, soy lecithin, salt, artificial flavors), sugar, cornstarch, less than 1% - corn syrup, dextrin, coloring (includes yellow 5 lake, red 40 l ake, blue 2 lake, yellow 6 lake, yellow 5, blue 1, red 40, yellow 6, blue 1 lake, blue 2), artificial flavor, gum acacia.
Screwing up my eyes and looking closer at the front of the package, I saw the fine print: Artificial Flavor.
Is coconut really so prohibitively expensive that Mars Inc. can’t afford to put even 1 percent coconut into their coconut flavored product? Or does including actual coconut do strange things to M&Ms, like make them melt prematurely or mottle their pretty shell colors?
Only their kitchen and/or lab knows for sure. Me, I’m never buying coconut M&Ms again.
Mingling within the crushing yet friendly crowds of San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass concert in Golden Gate Park the weekend before last, I managed to see a baker’s dozen of bands. I could have seen more given stricter organization, a keener sense of direction, and less sleep. However I can still claim to have had a great time.
Watched over by pines of loving grace
For those keeping score, the acts I saw in chronological order were: John Prine, The Band of Heathens, Ruthie Foster, Kris Kristofferson & Merle Haggard, Irma Thomas, Buckethead, Conspiracy of Beards, Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, Bela Fleck w Zakir Hussain & Edgar Meyer, Bob Mould, Ollabelle, Justin Townes Earle, and last but not least The Jayhawks.
Heathens
Approximately half of those bands were new to me. The quality was overall outstanding, although there were pros and cons, likes and dislikes.
Nazi tarp plan
Best Overall Transcendent Music award goes to Bela Fleck Zakir Hussain & Edgar Meyer. Best Hitherto Unknown Band award [aka Frog’s Latest Discovery] goes to The Band of Heathens. Most Robotic Metal award goes to Buckethead [although the wafting strains from Broken Social Scene while I was at an adjacent stage were quite intriguing]. Most Fearless Performer award goes to battle-worn Bob Mould who performed solo without backup. Most Interesting Arrangements award goes to Ollabelle. Best GD Cover award goes to Band of Heathens’ rendition of Broke-Down Palace.
L-R: mystery Indian flute playe, Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer, and Zakir Hussain
I had been looking forward to seeing The Jayhawks, my only familiarity being the occasional broadcasts of homie radio station KEXP. They could be described as roots-rock, alternative country, somewhat REM-influenced. With doses of god, which turned little old atheist me off.
My biggest regret was missing the Punch Brothers. Maybe they’ll schedule a gig in the PNW?
Finally, a big shout out of appreciation to fellow travelers Sandy, Peter, Nancy and Bob for all they did to make our SF weekend a great time!
printf("Goodbye, Dennis\n");
I updated sqlver [downloadable from the Bamboo utilities page]. It now detects and reports Sql Server 2008 R2 SP1. Woo-hoo!
I picked up a copy of Nick Lowe’s 2001 CD The Convincer in the used bin at Everyday Music the other day. I had high hopes, since I was a big fan of Pure Pop for Now, People and Rockpile back in the day.
Well, I am very disappointed. Let this be a warning to anyone who’s wondering how NL’s doing these days. Some nice titles, a couple of covers, but on the whole pretty lame I’m sad to report. Save your money for something better.
From the you learn something new every day department:
I wasted all kinds of time this morning fruitlessly searching my computer’s registry for the subkey my app was creating. Long story short: win32 API RegCreateKeyEx() behaves differently when running on a 64-bit OS. Specifically, it locates your specified subkey under a Wow6432Node subkey under the standard toplevel subkeys [SOFTWARE etc].
For instance, code which specifies:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\ACME\myApp
when run on 64-bit Windows would end up with the subkey:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\ACME\myApp
[wow indeed] Guess I’ve got a little research ahead of me.
Janice Kim (3P) presented this interesting configuration during one of her recent lectures at last week’s 2011 US Go Congress. According to Kim, most typical go games can be simplified to this basic division of the board into quadrants. She then uses this snapshot of the game to illustrate what happens when one player approaches on the second line towards the opponent’s territory, and the opponent blocks. Repeated four times, the player who initiates the approach moves takes the lead by 4. However, if the opponent does not blindly follow by responding to each move but instead takes a move of his own, the game remains even.
Nice illustration Janice!
As a guitar player, I use my fingernails as little string pickers (I finger pick rather than strum with a plastic pick). So when I split my right thumbnail going through airport security, the result was that I couldn’t use my thumb for playing guitar. This is a major problem if I want to play.
I mentioned my torn thumbnail to my guitar teacher in an email, and he replied:
‘You can just cut up a tea bag and place it over the crack as a patch and then super glue on top.’
Long story short: I tried it and voila — it works! I just played a little Bach using all my picking fingers. Cool tip, thanks to JW.
I keep notes in text files on computers. Lots of them. Since I will be taking my android phone with me to Europe tomorrow, I copied my travel notes file to my phone and then realized there was no built-in text file reader.
I searched the market for ‘text reader’ and found an app called CoolReader which listed tons of ebook formats as well as good old text. I downloaded and installed it, browsed to the folder with my file, and CoolReader displayed zero files in that folder. Zero, zip, nada, none. Perhaps files need special name formats for this brain-dead app. I don’t want apps to dictate what to name my files.
Uninstall and back to the market.
Next I found an app called ‘Text Edit’. This was less ambitious, it didn’t claim to read every ebook format under the sun but was intended for simple text files, which was just what I needed. As a bonus it lets you edit as well. Download, install. Browse to folder, click my file, open. I can scroll through the whole file instantly. Nirvana. I review my file several times during the course of the day, and it makes me smile.
The next day, I checked out the configurable settings for Text Edit. There’s one that enables auto-recognition of urls and phone numbers that sounded useful, so I checked it and returned to my open file. Strangely, the app hung and I had to force it closed. I relaunched it and it hung immediately. I rebooted my phone, relaunched and it hung again.
Looks like a bug in the app. Sometimes I would report this to the author and try to work with him/her to fix it. But I’m leaving the country tomorrow so no time for that. Uninstall.
Browsing the market I found an app called Jota Text Editor. It claims to support large files. Download, install, launch. Browse to folder, open file, looks good. I’m not messing with the settings (Jota calls them ‘Preferences’) until after my trip — better safe than sorry!
So for now, Jota is my text edit app. Time to get packing!
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