Recently in Entertainment Category

I was hoping that this book, like the Brother Cadfael books the premise so resembles, would be a good bedtime book. Enjoyable, engaging, but not so much that I would stay up all night reading it.

Sadly, no.

I could never find myself caring about any of the characters, and the action was too slow to keep me engaged.

The writing was fine, not earth shattering, but appropriate for the genre (historical fiction/mystery). The story just bored me, though, and, half way through, I stopped trying any more.

I've had a Sony MP3 player for sometime that I've really enjoyed, but recently, I got gifted an iPod Shuffle, so I'm going to try it out to see how it compares to the Sony.

My needs are a little different from a typical MP3 player user. I mostly use it to listen to audio books while I ride the train back and forth to work. So, shuffle mode is out. Luckily you can use the Shuffle in non-shuffle mode.

Running into some serious issues with AMM. It seems like only one blog entry works at a time. I guess I need to update, huh?

I used Tunebite this weekend to convert a nearly 12 hour long audiotbook from a DRM'd file to an MP3. It worked like a charm. To further clean things up, I split the 12 hour file up into a little over 250 small MP3 files, since nothing sucks worse than trying to find your place in a 12 hour audio file.

Now if I could just automate all this stuff ....

I went to see the newest installment of the Star Wars series at the Metreon 9am on Thursday. Good flick. Probably my favorite since "The Empire Strikes Back". Understanding the story so far really helps a lot, though. Several of the people I saw it with were confused as to who was who and why they were acting certain ways.

I went to see the Berkeley Rep's play "For Better of Worse" last night.

Well, it didn't suck, but it wasn't great either. The production, as always at the Berkeley Rep, was fantastic. Great sets, great sound, great lighting. The acting was quite good, especially Geoff Hoyle (Geoff is best known as a frequent partner with Bill Irwin, and as a founding member of the Pickle Family Circus). The play itself, though, lacked. There were moments where it was actually quite funny, but they were few and far between. I wouldn't recommend this play to people that aren't hardcore drama geeks.

Sitting dow for drinks at Downtown was the highlight of the night for all of us, I think.

Back in college I brewed a lot of beer. My roommates and I brewed not just because it was the only way to get really good beer in the early 80's, but also for the enjoyment of it. It's kind of like a cross between chemistry and baking. We had a great time doing it, and only once did we get a batch of vinegar. That same batch was the only time we had a bottle burst.

Anyway, as I get older, I fondly remember that time, and and since my garage is a perfect place to brew beer during the summer. (it's slightly underground, so the temperature remains cool, but warm enough for brewing beer), I decided I was going to start brewing beer again. Unfortunately, summer passed away and I never got around to brewing.

However, this weekend I finally did it. With my supplies provided from Oak Barrel Winecraft in Berkeley, I brewed up a batch of English style porter. It's in the primary fermenter now and should be ready to be bottled on Saturday.

BTW, Oak Barrel Winecraft is a great store, probably the best home brew supply store I have ever seen. Their website doesn't do them justice. Go in. Meet the people that work there. They are passionate about brewing and wine making. They do demonstrations and classes as well.