Alaskan King Crab at Sun Sui Wah

It’s that time of year again, when the Alaskan King Crab turns up at the Sun Sui Wah Restaurant on Main Street. It’s a combination of spectacle and cuisine that only lasts for a few weeks. This year, we got together with a bunch of friends and had one.

I got my turn holding him. I have to admit that for a moment it did remind me of one of the creatures from Alien. I always wonder who was the first person to try eating what looks like an enormous insect. Never mind, as you can see, all’s well that ends well (in our stomachs, that is):

Thanks to Irma Cho for these fun photos.

It’s all a Blur

First, some Fun Geekery
Before the ‘official’ start of this post, here’s a neat picture of what this blog looks like if you bring it up in the iPhone’s Safari browser:

Thanks to John Biehler for this screenshot from his iPhone. I got the plugin for WordPress that formats the postings properly for the device, and I have to say it looks like it works really well. Lets hope that I’ll be looking at a similar view soon (more about my imminent iPhone in Canada as it gets closer to a reality).

Recent Past and Near Future
The days really do seem to be going by with increasing speed, with Pam’s departure for the ‘Great White South’ coming sooner with each passing day. She leaves for Seattle, flies to Los Angeles, Santiago and Ushuaia (Tierra Del Fuego, Argentina) and then boards the ship with the Antarctic Peninsula as it’s destination the second week of February. Tomorrow, being the first day of February, really does feel a whole lot closer to the start of that journey for both of us (and she had a big grin on her face this morning as she went through many of her clothes and other equipment that she’ll be taking with her, as well as counting Chilean and Argentinean Pesos for her brief stops in those countries).

I’m also busy with many activities besides work. In fact, the past 2 weeks have had me out in the evenings several times, including attending the Launch Party 3 at the Lamplighter for Strutta, Sun, Techvibes, and Layer7 the first Blogger Meetup of the new Year (See Jan Karlsbjerg’s excellent write-up), as well as some dinners out with Pam at some restaurants that we’re trying out because of Dine Out Vancouver, including ( Aqua Riva by the Coal Harbour Waterfront, Bistro Pastis in Kitsilano, and tomorrow night, the Goldfish Pacific Kitchen in Yaletown) which goes on for a few more days). In addition, the holiday gift that Pam had gotten me, an XO OLPC (One Laptop Per Child Laptop) arrived, and I’ve been playing with this toy a bit as well - indeed the photo with me in the Blogger Meetup shows it off. I hope to be able to use it when the weather gets a bit better, as a way to connect to our Internet router from the park nearby our building to surf the net and post to this blog in the open air, a sort of hi-tech+nature goal I’ve had for some time. I’ll try and post the pictures from the unboxing of this charming piece of technology soon.

Before Pam leaves, it looks like I’ll be doing another one of those working weekends at IBM. Well, at least this time it won’t be during a bad snowstorm. Or it shouldn’t, despite the fact that we’ve been getting an awful lot of snow lately for this area (including enough to force many to work remotely earlier this week). While she’s gone, I’ll be attending my third Northern Voice, which will keep me busy enough while she’s exploring the Antarctic ice floes…

Post MacWorld Reckoning

Now that we’re back, unpacked, and somewhat caught up on email, laundry, grocery shopping, and all of those other chores that await when you return home, I can write a little about the past week.

Macworld is still fun, but its even more fun when Pam comes along, because it really just turns into a mini-vacation for both of us with Mac nerd activities thrown in. We got there on Monday night, only a little late. Our hotel was the whimsical and friendly Triton Hotel, a boutique inn on Grant Street, right by the gate to Chinatown. Besides the decidedly off-the-wall decor, they had a free wine and beer happy hour every day, and the young and hip staff frequently hit the switch to open the front doors for us so we often felt like we were making grand entrances (and exits). While the room was small, it was certainly usable, and the free wi fi Internet in every room wasn’t too shabby either.

Rather than get up at 3:00 AM to get in line for the Keynote (like some people I know) we arose at a decent hour and spent most of Tuesday at the two show floors, seeing new products and occasionally bumping into old friends. We had a great dinner at the nearby organic foodie restaurant ‘Roots’ (no relation to the Canadian clothing chain), including a Duck confit salad and an exceptionally delicious ‘Dungeness Crab/Mac & Cheese’ dish that I think should become a classic.

On Wednesday, I managed to make it to several Conference sessions. The one on using the new Finder in OSX Leopard turned out to be far too basic for me, so I left early and dropped into a nearby session on using the iWork applications (and got some very good tips on Numbers, the spreadsheet package in iWork). I also went to a session on iLife which was heavily weighted toward using iPhoto, although I did get a better feel for how to edit in the new version of iMovie. I guess you could say that it was a highly ‘i-centric’ day. In the evening Pam and I decided to go out for some lighter fare, and ended up in a small Thai restaurant that oddly enough was the very same site (a 1938 diner that has seen countless restaurants) where I had first discovered fusion cuisine in Barbara Tropp’s now long-gone China Moon Café of the mid 1990’s. It was sad to think that restaurants, like the people who run them, are all too mortal.

On Thursday I caught a few more sessions, but I really wanted to spend a bit more time at some key booths (Parallels, Microsoft, Filemaker, and El Gato were all on my list), as well as make a short trip to the Apple Store to get…(drum roll, please) an iPhone. Now, with the swiftly shifting sands of the jailbreaking of Firmware update 1.1.2, the new 1.1.3 Firmware update that adds new functionality, and the soon-to-be released Developer SDK next month, I’m frankly a bit torn as to how to Unlock this phone. While hardware solutions might be the the most effective, I really would like to be able to update the phone like everybody else, especially to add the whole new raft of 3rd party applications due to hit in the coming months. So, I’m going to have to go slowly and carefully, with the goal of getting my iPhone working in the least invasive and destructive way (hopefully without sawing off pieces of my SIM, or doing some other destruction). It would have helped if Rogers would finally offer the iPhone, but if Telus rolls out GSM and offers it first, I’ll switch carriers before you can say “Ring”. Hear that Rogers? You’ve kept me (and thousands like me) waiting long enough, so I’ve got zero loyalty to you.

On Thursday evening we, we met with an old friend of mine for dinner (at a nearby bistro - Steak with Bordelaise sauce, Frites and Leeks Vinaigrette - Oh yeah!), and then took a taxi to Davies Hall, where we heard the San Francisco Philharmonic. They gave a concert of Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2 (with the flute soloist being Timothy Day, an old friend of my parents who even performed a piece of mine years ago), Xenakis’s surprisingly beautiful and affecting L’Ile de Gorée for harpsichord and large ensemble, and Schubert’s 9th (’The Great’) Symphony in C Major. I hadn’t heard Michael Tilson Thomas conduct since I briefly met him many years ago in London, so it was great to see how he had matured as a conductor. The orchestra was first-rate and played everything beautifully, and I had to admit that I was probably grinning for nearly all of the Schubert —it’s a fun piece, full of good ideas, great tunes and rich colours, but I also know it really well. I could have almost sung along for the whole performance (but I didn’t, thank goodness for Pam and all the rest of the people sitting around me).

Friday morning, after a light breakfast (incredibly buttery croissants from the Café de la Presse next door), we headed on to the airport, and caught the Qantus 747 home. By 3:30, we were back, which takes me to the chores I mentioned at the beginning of this post. Now it’s late Sunday night, and having gone through my mail for work, I see that I have a busy week ahead of me. Oh well. The iVacation is definitely over.

Back from Baltimore, and a Dubious Honour

Welcome to 2008!

We’re back from an extended Holiday Season visit to my brother and his family, my parents, and some social calls on both sides of the continent. Highlights included seeing my niece dance in the Seattle Ballet’s Nutcracker for the second year, and a Roast Goose New Year’s Day dinner with my parents in Baltimore (including Spaetzle, Green Beans, and Red Cabbage - the theme was clearly German Cuisine). I’d not had roast goose before, and it is a treat, particularly if you like ‘dark’ meat. Even the breast meat on this bird is dark!

Pam was able to swing north to Massachusetts for a few days to visit with her brother and his family, while I helped my Dad upgrade to Leopard. A good thing, too, as his upgrade was just as difficult as mine (once again taking 3 attempts, and ending up with a call that went to 2 Apple Tech Support Reps and ultimately required a clean install, as well as us manually installing all applications and moving all of his email accounts, documents, calendars and address book entries - just as I had to).

The trip to the States was not without some culture shock (it always hits me, despite my best efforts to prepare for the differences). On our flights there, my seat companions were constantly reading Bibles. On the way back (with a stop in Cincinnati, where I was able to get some Cincinnati Chili at the food court, a delicacy of my undergrad years), we were amazed at the throngs of soldiers everywhere, with make-shift lounges set up in all of the airports we were in. Religion and the Military: not a great combination for me.

I’m still recovering from a nasty cold that I caught while away (which unfortunately, my father also caught and in his case it has since turned into Flu). Work starts up, but for me it’s just a week as the following week I’ll be in San Francisco for MacWorld Expo.

Speaking of things in Tech, my brother alerted me to a somewhat puzzling honour for our family:

Drucker : next gen Windows Mobile smartphone from Palm
January 6, 2008 – 11:22 am

Now that all of Palm’s flagship Treo 750 smartphones have been upgraded to Windows Mobile 6, it’s now time to look forward to 6.1. Engadget reports that the next high end Windows Mobile phone from Palm is code-named “Drucker”. Here’s what we know so far about Drucker:

• GSM/EDGE/HSDPA
• runs Windows Mobile 6.1
• 2 Megapixel camera
• 1500mAh battery
• 320×320 screen
• Bluetooth

Drucker, which will be a replacement for the Treo 750v, will be the first smartphone from Palm that supports WiFi. It’s also the first to match current Palm OS-based smartphones in terms of screen resolution. Drucker is expected to have a retail price of £270 (about US$534), and will probably be available first for Vodafone.

I have nothing to do with this phone, and frankly, I’d probably never buy a phone using Windows Mobile. I wish they had at least code-named the Palm OS phone with our last name, but then again, these days, if it’s not an iPhone, I’m not all that interested. I’m less and less satisfied with my frequently-crashing Treo, and I doubt if a new one is in my future. I’ve been a Palm user for perhaps 12-15 years but it’s clearly time to move on if the best they can do is to use Windows and code-name the device after our clan. (Heh).

Winter Coping

Even though it isn’t officially Winter, the rain, early darkness and damp chill definitely arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Nevertheless, there are ways of dealing with the (not entirely expected) inclement weather. I’ve often written about Vancouver’s dual personality, and fortunately, there is plenty of the ‘city of the mind’ these days:

Two weeks ago, Bill Moggeridge, the founder of IDEO (one of the world’s foremost Industrial Design companies), and the designer of one of the first laptop computers gave a public talk, at the Emily Carr Institute because he is joining the school’s Design Department as an Honorary Professor. His talk was mostly material from his recent book, Designing Interactions which is available, chapter by chapter, on the web site. Nevertheless, I enjoyed his talk, which was to an absolutely packed hall (about 80% ECI Students, who were fun to watch as well - quite a few of them obsessively scribbling and sketching or playing with their Macbooks as we waited for him to begin). The only downside to the evening was missing the Blogger Meetup, which was going on at the same time. Sometimes there are too many of these winter events to cram into too few days and nights.

Today, we got a little break from the gloom, and Pam and I took part in another Winter event, the Eastside Culture Crawl. For about 3 days, artists and craftspeople in the neighborhoods of East Vancouver all open their studios (and homes), so that the rest of us go can visit and talk, admire sometimes buy art, pottery, furniture and fashions. It was a beautiful day, and we wandered around, taking photos of some of the art and the neighborhood, which was almost glowing in the sun.

Another way of coping with the Winter gloom is food (of course). But rather than just the usual comfort food, we capped the day with one of my favourite yearly indulgences, Cassoulet. The Oyama Sausage Company on Granville Island has an annual Cassoulet festival, and you have to get your order in early. We topped ours off with Toulouse Duck Sausages and some herbed Duck Confit. Some good red wine and a salad, and we were good to go. Oh, and not to mention, for dessert, a little ‘Juliet’ Goat (Camembert style) from Salt Spring Island (the other food festival at Granville Island this weekend was for Cheese).

And then there are the evening events: Next week is another DemoCamp, one of the recent spate of entrepreneurial coming-out parties for local startups and techies. I’m glad that I got into it, as I was unable to get into next week’s Third Tuesday, the local monthly get-together for online marketing, public relations and social networks. As I said, too many events, too few days and nights.

But it sure beats getting bummed by the weather!