Three Lefts

All evidence is anecdotal.

So, four years ago or so, this callow youth of forty or so marches into a spiffy shop and asks for a Martini shaker and some glasses. Oh, why be coy… it was me. The shop only has this one model of shaker, but it looks fine, and only this one size glass: eight ounces. The salesperson sends a subtle signal: “These are large glasses. Do you like large Martinis?”

Callow youth that I am, I think for a second or two (I don’t know if I like them large or small; I’ve only had one Martini ever before in my life, and it tasted like bug spray… but I have a feeling that I’ve got a window of opportunity here, a chance to acquire an acquired taste), and say “Sure!” More is more, after all. The salesperson says, “My boss likes large Martinis too.” A truly deft and nuanced reply. She lets me feel OK about my purchase and judgment, and distances herself from them at the same time. I go home with a pair of these glasses.

I start mixing and exerimenting and drinking, and find that yes, I am in a window: I like Martinis. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat. This is the era of Plymouth & Olives.

And then I break one.

So I go look for replacements, and find a really nice pair of glasses. They’re made by Waterford, but look like classic Martini glasses, rather than the heavy Waterford cut crystal. And they’re soooo nice. The glass isn’t wobbly when you look through it, like those other ones, and they have a nice thin edge, which really makes to whole experience, I dunno, classier. And they have a subtle “ledge” where the stem joins the bowl. You can easily hold one propped on your finger. And they’re only six ounces. This really makes a difference. I realize that I’ve been drinking a fair amount of lukewarm gin and vermouth, and that this smaller size is better.

And then I break one.

So I go look for replacements (we’re in the era of Beefeater & Twists now), and this time decide to spring for some Riedel glasses (the Vinum series). They’re a bit expensive, but my experience with their single malt whiskey glasses forces me to be open minded. Again, an elegantly thin edge, and again, a slight ledge where the stem joins the bowl. And – a very nice touch – the base is not all that wide (it’s visually harmonious with the bowl), but it’s rather thick. Its weight makes the drink balance comfortably in the hand. And it’s smaller still. 130 ccm, or four and half ounces. I was worried at first: they looked dangerously delicate, but it turns out they’re not.

I used to use three jiggers of gin per Martini, lest my glass look chintzy and bereft. Three jiggers of gin and one pony of vermouth, for a four-and-a-half to one ratio. Four and a half ounces of gin packs a significant whollop, and one Martini just won’t do, which compounds the problem. Now, I use two jiggers, and apply a little “Kentucky windage” when pouring the vermouth… shooting for a five-to-one ratio, I go for “a little less than two thirds of a pony.” And I find that I can pace myself through the evening, and enjoy it, and not be miserable the next day.

Sometimes, less really is more. And this is one of those times… but I’m also at a bit of a loss here. My experience definitely goes beyond a clinical description along the lines of “because the glass is smaller, the drink stays cold during the time it takes to imbibe,” or “because the drink is smaller, you can enjoy more of them during an evening.”

Now, when I look at that survivor of the first pair of glasses, I think, “Conan. If Conan the Barbarian somehow, somewhere asked for a Martini, this is the glass you’d serve it to him in.” The surviving Waterford, which I once loved so, and which I still keep in the freezer, just in case and just because, strikes me as totally outre. If the Rodney Daingerfield character in [i]Caddyshack[/i] ordered a Martini, you’d do well to serve it up in one of these.

Call me a…. I don’t know… position me somewhere along the spectrum that runs between “nerd” and “aficianado.” I get into this stuff. I get it when I read about Mencken calling the Martini “the only American invention as perfect as a sonnet.” I relish the phrase (I think it was in Conrad’s book) about a Martini glass being “as poised as a ballerina on point.” And the glass makes all the difference.

These glasses weren’t cheap, as glasses go. $16.95 apiece, I think they were. But I gotta say… I think they’re a bargain. If I dropped two hundred large on a Ferrari or something, I’d feel like one very suave dude when I, ah, made a run to the grocery for beer and bread, or idled and cussed in traffic on my way to work. But you know what? I feel like one very suave dude when I get home and mix my evening Martini in one of these. I really think it’s almost exactly the same feeling. And I got it for $33.90 instead of 200K.

I encourage everyone to give them a try. If you want to preview, check http://www.riedel.com. (You have to navigate through several frames, alas.) (NB: Evidently, Riedel recently got a new domain name. Google and the other search engines have them at www.riedelcrystal.com, but that gets you nowhere. Drop the “crystal”.)

via Photo Matt: I just love this kinda site: practical and accessible documentation on a subject that needs documentation, but isn’t worth going out an buying a book on (even if you could).

If you need to tie a tie, or care to see a nicely done single-topic site, visit Caspar at Tie-a-Tie.net.

Having set myself up as a Martini aficianado with The Martini FAQ, I think it would be well if I put my cards on the table and gave the recipe for the Three Lefts Martini (i.e., the one that gets consumed around here).

3 Jiggers Beefeater gin (4.5 oz)
1 Pony Stock extra dry white vermouth (1 oz.)
1 lemon twist

Prepare the twist. Fill a Boston shaker 1/2 full with good ice. Add the vermouth, coating the ice. Add the gin. Mentally hum the first first 16 measures of The Black Hawk Waltz, by Mary E. Walsh; shake the Martini in time (approx. 15 seconds). Strain into a frosted 6 oz Martini glass. Hold the twist, yellow “out” side downward, approx. one inch over the surface of the drink and gently but firmly squeeze along its length. Shape the twist into a fetching helix shape, and gently drop into the drink. Serve immediately. Repeat. Repeat.

I just posted version 0.8 (draft) of The Martini FAQ on this site. Comments, suggestions, and corrections are welcome.

Scriptygoddess points us to a complete, cross-referenced layout of the WP source code. UsuallyI use plain ol’ grep to find stuff in the PHP scripts… But, that really only works when I have a good idea what I’m looking for. This looks like it would be better way to explore the source than plowing through the files in vi.

Three Lefts, long in mothballs, is undergoing a facelift and reconceptualization.

Currently we’re experimenting with WordPress as an alternative to MovableType.

Gotta say… not crazy about this font. First task: find that in css and fiddle.

Christopher Lydon recently posted a discussion of the reasons he thinks a case can be made for Ralph Waldo Emerson as A God for Bloggers.

I enjoyed this post a great deal, and it sparked or re-sparked some notions I had been wanting to explore on my own. They’re not the kind of notions one can just fire off in a few minutes from work, however. I’ll need to hit the books again and mull some.

No telling when that will get done, though, so for now the best thing is probably just to check out Lydon’s post and see if it sparks or re-sparks notions for you as well.

Thanks to Ron at o.t.p. for pointing out this post.

I believe I just witnessed a webhack in progress.

ActiveState makes good, free Windows ports of perl, python, php, etc., and sells IDEs and other development tools to go with them. I was Putzing with Perl last night (good name for an O’Reilly book, I’d say), and decided I’d go take a look at ActiveState’s Komodo IDE … I had downloaded it once before, but this was a newly post-beta version that struck me as kinda rough, so I didn’t use it. But, I wanted to see how it is these days…. Since it’s a big download, I decided to wait and do it from work, since the connection is faster.

A little while ago (like 20 minutes), I went to www.activestate.com, and looked at their offerings, visiting maybe 15 different pages, and then decided to download the trial version of Komodo, as I’d planned. I finished page one of the form you fill in to download, and then clicked on the “Next” button…. and got a banner for the University of Chicago, with 404 File Not Found below that. The URL was still that for a form page on www.activestate.com. I backed up, tried again, went to other pages on the site, etc. Pages that I had visited scant moments ago were disappearing… In their place was the UC banner and 404 File Not Found, and the home www.activestate.com page now takes you to the UC home page.

You hear about this sort of thing all the time; this is the first time I’ve actually seen it happening.

A small entry on Boing Boing has a short entry on phonecam blogging. It’s a must-read simply because of the great name Xeni Jardin proposes for mobile phonecam blogs. Go see!

“Dad, can you die from a wedgie?” – Will Gadberry

The O’Reilly Network currently features a discussion of CSS 3 Selectors.

This page assumes a fair amount of previous CSS knowledge, but it’s a useful and very up-to-date snapshot of this one particular aspect of CSS.

William Gibson recently posted George Orwell’s “Six Rules” on his blog. They are worth the outright cut ‘n paste theft that follows:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

“If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless
phrase…into the dustbin where it belongs.”

Kelley chronicles the trials, tribs, and triumphs of her rock band on Suburban Blight. Check it out!

Anders Jacobsen hilites a product the world badly needs: Bullfighter, a ‘jargon fighter’ recently released by Deloitte Consulting. It’s fun and it’s well presented!

I really miss my camera. It was a Nikon FE2, and it was a fine machine. Evidently I had good taste… Looking for a replacement on Ebay, I find that they cost more used now than they did when I bought mine new, way back when.

But, the Nikon went to feed the family in tough times.

I miss it. (I know, I said that already.)

In a discursive entry discussing issues that come into view as she goes about setting up a community weblog, Shelley at Burningbird touches on an issue that has interested me for a while now: the need for non-coding bloggers to have a reasonable way to get necessary technical information under their belts.

My interest in this topic predates my own blog… I had helped others set up their blogs before I set up my own. IRL, I have taught a number of IT classes, in both university and corporate environments (mostly networking and operating system courses). Before I taught those classes, I had to learn the material myself. My own experience and that of my students constantly reinforces my belief that specific how-to information is of limited use until one has “the big picture”… Until, that is, one has a context for the information, and can intelligently determine what questions to ask, what areas merit further study, and how to apply specific how-to instructions to one’s own situation, which is never exactly the situation the writers of the help docs, manuals, and textbooks have in mind.

A little over a week ago, I began work on a collection of web pages entitled Anatomy of a Blog… a streamlined introduction to the tools, systems, and network infrastructure at work when one creates, maintains, or views a weblog. As the intro says, “Rather than explaining how to create, maintain, and modify a blog, it explains what you need to know in order to be able to learn these things for yourself.” My hope was to make it truly generic, of equal use to all bloggers regardless of platform. As I get into the nitty-gritty, that’s looking less feasible. I believe I will first need to do a version targeted toward my own platform (MovableType hosted on a Linux server), adding sections for other platforms when possible.

Anyway, you can help! Any suggestions about (1) the kinds of issues that most vexed you as you learned how to use your own blog, (2) resources you have found that have proved helpful, and (3) ideas or types of ideas that you have been able to identify as intrinsically slippery, especially to those new to web development… any suggestions along these lines will be greatly appreciated.

I can’t call this a Request For Comments yet, as there is nothing yet visible beyond my own monitor for people to comment upon. Perhaps I could call it an RFS (Request For Suggestions): an open invitation for anyone reading this entry to provide input on what should go into an accessible discussion of how blogs work. Email and comments are equally welcome.

Anyone who has spent an appreciable amount of time around computers is probably familiar with Moore’s Law. Familiarity, it turns out, isn’t the same thing as a clear understanding. Michael Kanellos has put together an accessible and useful discussion of Moore’s Law, complete with a bit of myth debunking.

The Guest Blog spot at Many-to-Many: Social Software currently features a rich essay on some of the mores and folkways of the weblogging community, by Shelley Powers, creator and maintainor of Burningbird.

I believe this to be a significant topic, the import of which which goes far beyond netiquette and flame wars. I hope that at some point I’ll manage to articulate the reasons for that belief in some detail.

In the meantime, I would add one observation or assertion to the discussion.
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I hereby decree a new word:

all·one·word (’ol-w&n-w&rd) adj : used to indicate that the words in a preceding phrase should be spelled without intervening spaces <you can learn more about the seamonkey menace on the World Wide Web, at www dot seamonkeyterrorists, alloneword, dot org> (American neologism, 2003)

While one can and in many cases should use three perfectly good old words (specifically “all,” “one,” and “word") to convey the same meaning, this neologism has a certain elegance and utility. It is, we might say, an instance of “visual onomatopoeia.” Onomatopoetic words such as “buzz,” “hiss,” and “susurrus” sound like what they mean. “Alloneword” looks like what it means.