2014 in review - computer says ........

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.



Here's an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 31,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 11 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Beer - the elusive post

I've been a bit slower in posting things about beer, but that's mostly bad timing and planning.

My compulsion to have things neat and orderly means that I want to post in drinking order, and couple of things got in the way.

(1) What was I supposed to to do to mark 500 beers?

(2) Wasn't timing everything?

[caption id="attachment_10050" align="alignright" width="224"] Spiegelau stout[/caption]

Couple of things happened. Christmas came a wandering up and so some of the the #500 was about having the right tools. And I'd peaked too early, I was way too soon to #500 and not being able to pair it to another  arbitrary significant day seems to have stopped me in a stupor.

So timing, I wanted to be some kind of pretentious self-important blogger that made it more significant than it was I guess, I don't like odd numbers and I like balance and in Pdubyah-world everyone is waiting on #500, yes they are.

Anyway. A significant part then became the wait and gap  in having the right tools, in this case the  Spiegelau stout  glasses. These are wider in the bowl and foot then the IPA glasses and having these was/is important to the timeline and planning.

I love the IPA glasses and really would recommend you get some because drinking out of fine glass is a bit of a thrill.

Let me tell you that I brought these in NZ as a pair for NZ$30. I've seen them singularly for $20 each, and I've seen them at as much as NZ$55.00 a pair.  Madness.

But I got my desire and christmas for NZ$30 seems like a bit of a score.

Secondly, it was important for me to me #500 and for it to be a bit of a thing, in and of itself, and I wanted to get there with a hiss and a roar and do something that was a bit off the wall, even for me.

[caption id="attachment_10051" align="alignleft" width="224"] One of these is not like the other[/caption]

At the risk of being a bit pratish and wanky I've chosen to do something that even for me is a bit naff. Group eye-roll and sigh.

I have two bottles, 750ml of a beer from Epic - their Epic Epicurean Coffee & Fig Oatmeal Stout, an  annual beer.

Annual beer.

I've had the 2013.

I have the 2014.

It's not a guessing game as to what the plan might be, a side by side tasting,

What could possibly go wrong, what might I have not factored in, what was I thinking, just what?

This is a lot of beer for one night in and so I might even have to plan the music accordingly.

Of course I could always phone a friend and make it big night in.

Stand by,

As a spoiler I can tell you that in the background if you've been following me in untappd you might have notice that I'm up to about beer #512, and I have beer from Tahiti to drink, I don't even know where Tahiti is!, and a Rogue and Moa Festive beer, so I've kept busy and am being busy.  But OCD me wants to do this in sequence and logical, and what you'll see next is the 12 (or more)  days of christmas beers, except it's not strictly chronologically correct, in sense, although numerically they are, it's just that I might have had them last week, but it'll all work out.

4:08 am and the clock goes tick-tick-tick Musings

Putting aside the question of mass then, bear with me it's important or not,

There was I thinking

"What if you could shrink yourself"

This lead me to thinking about falling through the gaps between the threads in the sheet of the bed and falling to the floor. Size is relevant here, that would be a terribly long drop.

So stand on the ground floor and do it then. Well and good,

You want to keep shrinking though, smaller and smaller.

You'd fall between the gaps of the molecules wouldn't you?, What if you keep striking so you could see individual atoms? What if you kept shrinking and could see the gaps? Down to Atom level?

Atoms are the smallest unit that defines the chemical elements and their isotopes. Every substance, be it solid, liquid, or gas is made up of atoms. Atoms are tiny. The size of atoms is measured in picometers (trillionths of a meter). A single strand of human hair is about one million carbon atoms wide.

Every atom is composed of a nucleus made of protons and neutrons (hydrogen-1 has no neutrons). The nucleus is surrounded by a cloud of electrons. The electrons in an atom are bound to the atom by the electromagnetic force.

What if you got to be so small you could see the gaps between the protons and neutrons? What would that look like?

What would happen if you could push one electron out of the cloud surrounding the nucleus? Like actually literally push it out?

Then of course I thought why not just build a microscope and be done with the question of retention of mass?

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4:07 am and the clock goes tick-tick-tick Musings on JFK

[caption id="attachment_9986" align="alignright" width="300"] famous image (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

For no reason at all I've found myself watching youtube clips of varying length, quality and content with regard to the well documented assassination of a John F. Kennedy, President.

Some of it I enjoyed, some shocked me, some surprised me, and some made me laugh.

Some of the things I learnt though;

• There were 4 shots.


• There were 5 shots.


• There were 6 shots.


• There were 7 shots.


• There were 8 shots.


• There were 10-13 shots


• There was a lone gunman.


• There was a second sniper at the other end of the  Texas School Book Depository.


• There were two snipers on the grassy knoll.


• There were three snipers on the grass knoll.


• There were four gunmen and thirteen shots. Six of the shots hit either Kennedy or Connally, and the remaining seven shots were designed "distraction" shots used to mislead the police and to panic bystanders.


• There were snipers everywhere


• The snipers have names like
  
  
  
  • Black Dog Man
  
  
  • Badge Man
  
  
  • Umbrella Man
  
  
  
  


• There was a back-up sniper by the underpass.


• The assassins include
  
  
  
  • Frenchmen.
  
  
  • Italians.
  
  
  • Americans, including one Charles Voyde Harrelson, father of Woody.
  
  
  
  


• There are 3 tramps.


• Lee Oswald had a doppleganger.


• George HW Bush was the mastermind.


• LBJ did it.


• Nixon too, he did it.


• The CIA did it.


• The Mafia did it.


• The KGB did it.


• Castro did it.


• Nazi Illuminati, of course, did it.


• International bankers did it.


• More then 74 people have been murdered to stop them blabbing


• The final shot(s) was from in-front and to the right, from the knoll.


• The final shot came from within the car!


• The final shot came from within a storm drain the curb!


• Shots hit the curb, the grass, bystanders, street signs and didn't I see a documentary recently where  one also hit some traffic lights.


• There are some very good quality video clips.


• The Zapruder film that you see today on the Internet is not the original film.


• There are vide clips that have gunshot sounds in them, which is kind of weird since that's all you hear and no other background noises.


• There are some shocking autopsy photographs, variously in black and white and in colour.


• There are some strange people on the internets


• There are some sensible people on the internets who've put together some good work

After watching some of the clips and listening to some of the theories it would be easy to buy into the shot from in-front and from the right (the knoll).

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="350" class="zemanta-img"] Photo of Dealey Plaza (annotated), from Warren Commission report. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

From many years ago  I remember reading a book "Mortal Error"  (1992) that claimed the final shot came from a secret service agent, George Hickey, in a car travelling behind, by accident as he turned in reaction to a shot from the TSBD building (Oswald), squeezed the trigger on his service rifle by mistake and well that ended badly.

I like that theory, it seemed poetic in a weird way.

It is clear that there was a lot of confusion at the time, and that just gets worse over time.

It's also clear that this is a fantastic playground for the conspiracy theorists, and it doesn't include aliens, ufo's, or area 51.

I'll get to them later.

In the meantime : I watched the documentary "Oswald's Ghost" which is very good at playing it straight up the middle. in summary though, Oswald was not a simple man, and had the drive and passion to do something grand, Ruby was opportunistic, and everything else is wishful thinking.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY93Y2ryqcc

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• JFK's Secret Killer?

Beer - #499 - Rogue - Double Chocolate Stout

A beer I've been looking forward to so much, it's been in the  fridge ages, this is  the Rogue - Double Chocolate Stout. Beer #499. So Great beer, Great Music, Great scores and Great Nights out.

Double Chocolate Stout is an evolution of Rogue Chocolate Stout. 

"Double the legend."

This is Brewed by Rogue Ales in the style that is an  Imperial Stout and they are Newport, Oregon  USA

The big red painted bottle could have beer that is  50, 68 or 72 IBU, depending where you read, I can affirm the bottle I have is 50*, and at the 750ml in size, the bottle, containing beer that is 9% ABV,  is 271 calories a serve, and 5.33 standard drink units. A big night in! *50 IBU things is high for a Stout, and it's less than a low IPA.

[caption id="attachment_9941" align="alignleft" width="300"] Big and Red and #499 !!![/caption]

Double Chocolate Stout is an evolution of Rogue Chocolate Stout, which is flavored with imported Dutch bittersweet chocolate.

The winner of three World Beer Championships Gold Medals.

In 2010, Double Chocolate Stour received a Gold Medal at the World Beer Championships. 

That was then, this is now, what could possibly go wrong!

A beer that appears to be liked by a wide range of people, it rates 100/99 on Ratebeer and has 4 stars on Untappd where people are harsher because it's easier to mark from 5 than to mark 5 categories for an overall score I think.

Bitter bitter chocolate on opening, and it sounded well carbonated, The aroma is like a bar of dark dark chocolate, if you like that sort of thing this is the thing!

That is a thick pour, and it develops a fantastic foamy and thick head that is chocolate tan colour. Followed by a party going on in my mouth!

Delightfully but not overly sweet, which is nice balance to the underlying bitterness with each mouthful, the chocolate aroma moves to more of those raisin type sugar things, and in turn they begin to show through as this warms in the glass.

I would like though for this to have more body, more punch in the middle, and I do think that it finishes towards a slight sourness that I found distracting.

Second pour was just as much fun as the first, it has a thickness of pour and delivered up the same decent head. I'm now getting a bit of palate fatigue though, the finish is moving from sour to dry, the chocolate aroma has also tailed off.

The pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 8.5 of its unknowable things from the thing. I wanted something thick, punchy, but soft, and full in the mouth, and with a sweetish finish. I got most of them. I could be being picky, as I wanted this to be the home-run the out-of-the-park experience. Be careful for what you wish.

This has been in my fridge for a while and I have been building towards my own exciting and self imposed 500 celebration that is just another number, and I'm glad this was the beer that gets me to the brink, as it were. Thanks the nice people at Liquorland Forrest Hill @LiquorlandFH and those clever people at @RogueAles.

The double dip review

1. Am I enjoying it? It's like I'm not but after I got over that let-down feeling I actually am enjoying it, although differently to what I wanted or expected to.


2. Would I have another? I might, I built up my hopes for this, and I might have made a rod for my own back.


3. Would I share with a friend on a porch and set the world to rights? Yes of course, this has some real experience and engagement going on, but it's also a beer that you can have and not be distracted by it that it becomes intrusive in your thinking.

I'm listening to what is a very good album of music that surprised me with the way that I engaged with with, the band Mono Town, this track "Peacemaker" from the Album "In the eye of the storm." Mono Town is an Icelandic musical band from Reykjavík  with alternative pop and ambient influences formed in 2012 by brothers Börkur and Daði Birgisson (earlier from the Icelandic funk band Jagúar) and singer/guitarist Bjarki Sigurdsson on lead vocals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxUjQRoE0aQ

They're on Spotify, Pandora, iTunes and all the usual places probably.

IMPERIAL STOUT

Imperial stouts are usually extremely dark brown to black in color with flavors that are intensely malty, deeply roasted and sometimes with accents of dark fruit (raisin, fig) or milk sourness. The bitterness is typically medium and often the low sie of that. Imperial stouts are strong and often exceed 8% by volume.

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