.:c-lo.net:.

with that in mind, I’m giving up on using Wordpress, and updating this blog. I’ve started a new blog using Tumbler, which you can find at blog.c-lo.net. If you read in a browser, change your bookmarks. If you read through RSS, you might want to change your subscription to the flashy new RSS feed.

All this old content will stay here, mostly so people can laugh at stuff I wrote five years ago. See you around.

A pretty decent German pilsner, perhaps looking to cash in on its organic cachet. I sort of think making a big deal about an organic German beer is a bit dubious, as the Reinheitsgebot, or German beer purity law, generally ensures that decent beers there aren’t full of stuff beyond water, barley and hops (excepting, of course, weizens, etc.). I realize that beers can adhere to the purity law and not be organic, but it seems like little more than an attention-grabbing ploy.

Anyhow. This beer’s unfiltered, so it’s got a hazy appearance. It seems fairly malty to me, with a crisp hoppy finish. It’s certainly very drinkable, but keep in mind this isn’t a lager, it’s a pilsner, so it’s a little meatier. It’s worth trying, far from the best pilsner I’ve ever had, but still quite tasty.

You wouldn’t expect to have a nice weizen beer from Japan, so the Hitachino Nest Weizen from the Kiuchi Brewery is probably a bit surprising. In all fairness, it’s better than some German weizens that I’ve had. Crisp with a good nose, nicely balanced wheat and hops, it drinks well. I’m not sure what kind of yeast they use, but it doesn’t have the banana and clove feeling that many German hefe-weizens have. The only drawback is its $4 per bottle price in the store, meaning I probably won’t pick it up all that often, especially when Trader Joe’s Bavarian Hefe is on sale for $5 per six-pack.

I’ve said my piece on the state of journalism, so no need to revisit it. But two things I’ve seen today made me think about it a little more.

First, the Page One feature in today’s Wall Street Journal is about the decline of hurling in America. (That would be hurling, the Gaelic sport) It’s a decently written story, but I find it an incredibly bizarre one for the WSJ to play up on its front page. I know the history and thinking of their feature stories, and that they’re not always straight-up business or political pieces, but this seems like it’s way out in left field, even for the slow July news days.

The WSJ, in my opinion, remains a credible and significant news source, but it’s gotten markedly worse over the past year. All the superfluous stuff they’ve added online, like all the videos and extra columns and “lifestyle” pieces, doesn’t seem to have helped things. I wonder if this piece on hurling is part of a conspiracy to make the paper crappy, so Rupert Murdoch won’t want to buy it. (As an aside, the dithering by the Bancroft family, and the fervor with which the WSJ is reporting this $5 billion takeover — small by normal coverage standards — merely highlights the fact that it’s a paper rooted in the past, in spite of all the embedded video on its site.)

Second was this fairly horrific piece from The Independent in London about “the end of e-mail”. At first glance, it’s an unremarkable example of the sort of trite reporting about technology and the internet that gets published in papers around the world all the time. But down towards the end, it’s got a quote from my Techdirt colleague Dennis Yang. Only thing is, Dennis never talked to this reporter.

The guy apparently took an anecdote about Dennis working from his grandma’s living room from a Boston Globe story last October, then took a post Dennis wrote on Techdirt — in 2002 — and turned it into a quote. (As the aside for this anecdote, the Globe piece also had my picture in it, sort of.)

One of the charges often leveled at bloggers by traditional journalists is that they do shoddy work and are lazy reporters. Takes one to know one, I guess.

inzaghi’s arm strikes
referee whistles early
yet another dream deferred

A replay of two years ago, only with a slightly different result.

I’ve never liked Pippo Inzaghi. Guess that was just a solid premonition. Congrats to Milan, etc etc. But runners-up in Europe I guess isn’t so bad for what’s really a slightly above mediocre team. But, if Benitez could actually put together a world-class side, Liverpool would be scary.

If only there’d been some magic whiskey left. If only.

Fresh on the heels of the first LTD series beer from Full Sail, Whole Foods now has the LTD No. 02. It’s a lot lighter than No. 01, more of what you’d expect from a beer called a lager. Full Sail still lists No. 2 as “coming soon”, so I’m not sure of the stats or recipe, but it’s crisp with a good hop flavor (I was gonna say that I thought it would be higher on the IBU scale than the No. 01, but I’ll probably just embarrass myself).

Not much else to say (perhaps ’cause I drank too much of it last night), but it’s another good one, so if you can find some, pick it up. I wonder how many of these they’re going to make — 21, since they’re commemorating their 21st anniversary perhaps?

Update: I discovered that on the bottom of the six-pack, they print a rough recipe so you can attempt to recreate the beer. Says it’s 32 IBUs — which is higher than the LTD No. 01, from Stryian Goldings hops. 6.4% ABV, too.

Full Sail Brewing, out of Hood River, Oregon, makes some pretty stellar beers. Their pale ale is one of my favorites and Wassail, their holiday beer, is usually pretty great, while the Session lager in the stubby bottles is always a good choice too. While I’m not nearly as spoiled for beer selection out here in Vegas as I was in Austin (ie no bars even close to the Ginger Man, nor anywhere with the selection of Central Market), the nearby Whole Foods is pretty decent in that regard. They do have a new Full Sail beer, their LTD No. 01, the first in a line of limited-edition beers they’re making.

They call them a line of lagers, made in celebration of their 21st birthday. This first one is pretty malty for a lager — to me it tastes more like a Marzen, thanks to the caramel and chocolate malts, and it’s got a good hop balance (at 26 IBUs, high for a typical lager). But, lager, marzen, amber or whatever, it’s pretty great. This is why I like Full Sail, and it’s my favorite craft brewery, as opposed to somebody like Dogfish Head. Their beers are beers — they’re drinkable, they’re creative but within the confines of relative normality. They don’t screw things up with all kinds of adjuncts. It’s just water, malt, and hops.

Not really. But, in case you haven’t heard, Alex and I now live in Las Vegas. She got a great job out here at the Las Vegas Museum of Art, so here we are. We left Austin a few weeks ago, and here’s the requisite attempt at a moving photo encapsulating the experience of leaving a place so dearly loved:

While it was really quite sad to leave behind a place I really liked and so many great people, the change of scenery and new opportunities that await are pretty exciting.

Alex and I have started a new blog to document our experiences out there so you can follow along, and of course, I’ll keep things irregularly updated here. In the meantime, if you’re out this way, give us a holler. And bring some barbecue.

I went to Whole Foods yesterday morning to wait for Alex to run by in the Austin Marathon (at which she kicked ass, by the way). I had some work and general online farting around to do, so I took my laptop and used their free hotspot, provided and managed by “DeepCoolClear Wireless” (hey, I don’t come up with the names). All was well until this morning, when I noticed none of my RSS feeds had updated overnight, which was a bit odd.

After trying to figure out the problem for a few minutes, I discovered that the hotspot, which redirects you to a stupid portal page when you first access it, had rewritten the URL of all 300 or so of my RSS feeds to that portal page. So I’m now spending my Monday morning going through them all, by hand, and finding the correct URL, which is, needless to say, an awesomely fun experience.

So, beware this hotspot, particularly if you’re on a Mac and use NetNewsWire for RSS. I’ve emailed the company and copied Whole Foods, so we’ll see what they have to say.