Sam I am

Cool time lapse of A320 Recovery

2010-02-08T08:44:00.000-05:00

Cool time-lapse video of the A320 recovery in the Hudson:

Posted on Kontain.com - [Flight 1549] from David Martin on Vimeo.

[Link via User Friendly.]

Today I am 36!

2010-01-07T12:29:00.000-05:00

36 is a perfect square
The sum of its digits is also a perfect square.
Wikipedia also has good information about 36.

Tim Bray on creating a website about yourself

2010-01-02T00:10:00.000-05:00

Tim Bray wrote some good advice for someone who wants or needs a website for either personal or professional reasons: After Branding. I agree with all of the points he makes, and websites that don't follow his advice tend to frustrate me.

Snow!

2009-12-31T10:22:00.002-05:00

Unfortunately, it's already starting to turn to rain....

Fire trucks on 27th Street

2009-12-24T15:09:00.000-05:00

There's six fire trucks on 2th Street off of Lex across the street i Trulli. Apparently some smoke was spotted at the back of the building.

i Trulli on Good Day New York

2009-12-24T09:46:00.002-05:00

This morning, Patti Jackson and the Marzovilla family were on Good Day New York on Fox 5. They made cavatelli with broccoli rabe. Four segments were shot; Dora was shown with the grandkids making the pasta and then Patti prepared the dish with the anchor. I'll post a link to video later.

Update: You can see the video of Patti making cavatelli with broccoli rabe at i Trulli at the Good Day site, or see it below.

Patti Jackson on Good Day New York

2009-12-24T09:07:00.001-05:00

This morning, Patti and the Marzovilla family were on Good Day New York on Fox 5. Here they are filming this morning at 9....

Surprise: alcohol kills bacteria

2009-12-21T23:32:00.000-05:00

Many friends have expressed concern that my homemade aged eggnog may not be the safest brew. Yet my feeling has always been at approximately 60 proof, there is no way that it would prove a hospitable environment for bacteria.

And now there is some backing from science! The good folks at Science Friday spoke with some microbiologists.

Time flies when you're having fun...

2009-12-08T16:10:00.001-05:00

Today is my one year anniversary as a Software Engineer at Google.

Patti's cake

2009-11-25T12:50:00.001-05:00

My friend Patti Jackson is the Executive Chef at i Trulli. Last weekend was the birthday of Nicola Marzovilla, the restaurant's owner. Nicola's wife Astrid planned a large surprise party, and Patti made a cake. Patti worked and trained as a pastry chef for a long time, and a few months ago she made a wine bottle cake for our friend Peter.

Patti constructed the cake in the i Trulli kitchen with the help of her friend Christine Lau. The top of the cake has not been finished; you can also see the inspiration for the design: Nicola's new wine from Italy called Massoferrato

Patti rolled out a final piece of fondant.

The i Trulli kitchen is in the basement of the restaurant. The cake was carefully carried upstairs and left of the bar while we waited for the van. One of the trickiest parts of the evening was making sure that Nicola didn't come into the restaurant and see the cake. The managers had to reassure him many times that everything was going smoothly that night, and that there was no reason to come in.

The cake was loaded into a van. Here you can see why Patti left the cake unfinished--she needed to be able to keep the cake steady as we drove from the restaurant to the party location. In the background is Christine.

Patti finished the cake by applying the previously prepared fondant to the neck of the wine bottle cake.

I helped Patti carry the cake into the venue through the kitchen.

Not only was Nicola surprised by the party, but also the cake was totally unexpected.

Dora Marzovilla, Nicola's mother, prepares the fresh pastas at i Trulli.

Later in the evening, candles were added to the cake.

After delivering the cake, Patti headed back to the restaurant to change. When she came back, she lent a hand in the kitchen giving directions on how to disassemble and cut the cake.

The serving of the cake went quickly; servers flew out of the kitchen with trays of cake.

The cake was stacks of rounds held together using dowels. The construction was similar to the construction of a traditional wedding cake.

Yum. Cake

Manhattan Bridge Fireworks

2009-11-25T12:27:00.000-05:00

In early October, I looked out my window to see fireworks exploding on the skyline. It was the 100th birthday of the Manhattan Bridge. Interestingly, the fireworks were south of the Brooklyn Bridge. I was okay with that since it gave me a better view.

Healthcare

2009-11-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

Over the past few months, there has been a lot of debate about health care in the United States. Here are a couple of pieces I found interesting. I certainly didn't agree with what everyone wrote below, but I found the pieces thought-provoking.

2009 Failed States Index - Interactive Map and Rankings | Foreign Policy

2009-11-22T18:00:00.003-05:00

Foreign Policy posted an interactive map to failed states in June. Even though it's a quite a few months later, it makes for interesting reading. You can check it out at 2009 Failed States Index - Interactive Map and Rankings | Foreign Policy

Project BLT @ One Hungry Chef

2009-11-22T18:00:00.002-05:00

Early this past summer, Michael Ruhlman issued a challenge to have chefs create a BLT from scratch. Many people responded, but a great entry came from an an American chef in Australia, . One of the most interesting parts of what he did was to create a terrific web info-graphic detailing his work: Project BLT @ One Hungry Chef.

BLT. Yum.

Patti Jackson in the media

2009-11-21T19:48:00.000-05:00

My friend Patti has been in the media recently.

This past summer, she was featured on the Food Network on the "Best Thing I Ever Ate":

The rabbit is a standard item on the menu at I Trulli.

She is also featured in this week's New York Magazine for her crabapple mostarda. A photographer visited her at I Trulli to take a photo of her hands as she made the dish; to the left is the artist's rendition from the magazine.

Golden Gate Bridge

2009-11-21T19:29:00.000-05:00

I posted some panoramas of the Golden Gate Bridge in the summer, but I never got around to posting these as well.

Me at the Golden Gate Bridge

Patti and I at the Golden Gate Bridge

Muir Woods

2009-11-21T19:26:00.001-05:00

Midsummer, Patti and I visited the San Francisco Bay area. We had a great time. I've been a bit delinquent in posting photos, but better late than never.

We drove up US 1 from Monterey to San Francisco and caught the sunset.

The next day, we drove up to Muir Woods, a national park just over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Parts of the woods were filled with spiders; others had no wildlife whatsoever.

As we walked through the woods, we heard a knocking sound. After searching around, Patti saw this woodpecker. When we got back to the entry of the park, we used the books there to identify it as a Hairy Woodpecker.

Muir Woods is a vacation spot for ladybugs. These two were having a grand old time.

There was a sign less than five feed away stating, "Don't feed the chipmunks."

I used my Google phone as a GPS to map our trip with the MyTracks application. I forgot to start the app when we started our hike, we really started where the track ends.

View Muir Woods in a larger map

Moserware: A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

2009-11-21T19:19:00.000-05:00

A while back, I found a neat description of AES: Moserware: A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)

Ride in New York Harbor

2009-10-08T18:00:00.001-04:00

Last month I took a trip on the Clipper City. It was a beautiful day.

My friend Peter helped work the ship lines. In addition to being fun, it also earned him a free drink.

For the anniversary of Henry Hudson coming into New York Harbor, many replica ships were sailing around the harbor.

Monterey, California

2009-10-08T08:00:00.004-04:00

My vacation to California took me to Monterey, where my friends Barbara and Raj got married. Monterey is beautiful and the weather was nice and cool. There are wild animals throughout the bay.

Cormorants, sea lions, and sea otters

The day after the wedding, everyone was invited to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Black Sea Nettle

Decorator crab

Sea anemone

Warty sea cucumber

The Aquarium also hosts shorebirds that are being rehabilitated.

There was a special exhibit of seahorses

What aquarium would be complete without penguins?

Cool space photos

2009-10-08T08:00:00.003-04:00

It's a little out of date, but there were some amazing photos taken when the Space Shuttle repaired the Hubble Space Telescope. The Sacremento Bee compiled some of great photos of the repair mission, but I think the photos by Thierry Legault of Atlantis moving in front of the sun were the best.

San Francisco

2009-10-08T01:27:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I went to San Francisco for vacation. I posted a few photos from my cell phone, but I also took my hefty, large camera. Well, not so hefty and not so large, but small enough to fit in my pocket.

We start out our vacation by walking over to Fisherman's Wharf. Sea lions are all around the wharf, but a ton of them congregate at Pier 39. They are a lot of fun to watch, but they smell quite bad.

You can see Alcatraz from Fisherman's Wharf. We saw neither Sean Connery nor Nicholas Cage.

After seeing the Sea Lions, my friend Patti and I walked up a long staircase to Coit Tower. Patti held the tower up.

We were visiting San Francisco to see my friends Barbara and Raj get married. It was a fun wedding in Monterey, California. Congratulations Barbara and Raj!

[More photos to come later....]

Richard Feynman

2009-10-08T00:55:00.000-04:00

I'm a huge fan of Richard Feynman; as a kid, his auto-biographies were inspirational. If you haven't read them, I recommend picking them up: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?. If you haven't heard of Richard Feynman before, you can read a nice vignette about him by W. Daniel Hillis titled Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine.

Rhode Island

2009-10-07T08:00:00.014-04:00

Earlier this summer I went up to Rhode Island for a weekend.

My friend Patti drove us up to Charlestown, Rhode Island. She was coming from Pennsylvania, and we met for lunch in Beacon, NY at a restaurant called Homespun Foods. We ate a few sandwiches and picked up some food for later.

There had been a couple of large storms a few days earlier, and the normally calm shores had waves of well over six feet.

The shorebirds and gulls didn't seem to mind. Whenever a large swell hit the tidal pools they dashed away.

The snails also seemed very happy.

Seaweed makes a great wig.

Charlestown has a large briny bay with fish and cormorants.

Do print magazines and newspapers have a future?

2009-10-06T15:20:00.000-04:00

In the past couple of days, Condé Nast has announced that they are closing four magazines, including the 68-year old Gourmet. I've written about the number of ad pages in a newspaper section before, and Condé's latest actions remind me of Time Inc. (In fact, the parallels are a bit creepy: both Time Inc. and Condé Nast used the same consulting firm, McKinsey, to determine how to cut their budget.) There have been many reports of lower profits in publishing divisions this year.

These closures remind me of a couple of pieces I've read on the web recently, including an essay by Clay Shirky, Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable and a piece on Slate regarding Warren Buffet's views on newspapers. I think the quote at the end of the Buffet story is right on the money:

Simply put, if cable and satellite broadcasting, as well as the internet, had come along first, newspapers as we know them probably would never have existed.

I think the same could be said for many news magazines as well.

I have a lot of friends who work in or with the magazine industry. But I think that it would be unwise to believe that industry will be anything but a boutique industry ten years from now.