Archive for December, 2008
December 30, 2008 at 3:22 pm · Filed under Lifestyle, beer
Mark your calendar, Tivo, or torrent tracker. The new season of No Reservations is set to air on January 5th on the Travel Channel. Be there or be square.
I’m contemplating installing Ubuntu on my school laptop. This would blow the Korean’s minds as Windows and IE dominate this market. It pains me to know that students are learning how to design horrendous web pages that only render in IE. A couple students recommended that I should upgrade to Vista. Yeah. I’ll upgrade you when my Ubuntu OS slaps you in the face.
Here’s a really sweet (NSFW) body tattoo.
Winter vacation has officially begun. We have a month off, but I’ll be teaching 2 weeks of English conversation classes. I have no real plans for vacation. I have things I can or should do, but I’m sure the time will pass, school will start again, and I’ll wonder what happened to the time. I’m a hermit in the hermit kingdom. That should be the title of my Korean blog.
Many of the University professors, near me, have families here in Korea or they’ve already fled the country to more tropical settings. I’ll just put a tropical wallpaper on my computer desktop.
I suppose I don’t give the beer selection at E-Mart the credit that it deserves. They do have a decent selection, but I think I just enjoy the allure of craft beers more. E-Mart has many worldly beverages that derive from the inBev distribution circle. They have a lot of beers that I’ve never tried. Today, I purchased an Asashi Black and Oettinger. One of these days I’ll get to the bottom of why the Japanese beer Sapporo is so expensive. Why is it more than a Guinness? It must be due to a high import tax and the “love” between Japan and Korea.
Recently, I downloaded a live acoustic concert by QOTSA. It’s from 2007 and contains the song, Christian Brother by Elliot Smith. I can’t get enough of this QOTSA version. The ‘Scabdates‘ album by The Mars Volta has, also, been on my repetitious song rotation.
December 24, 2008 at 6:07 pm · Filed under Lifestyle
Have a Smurfy Christmas!
Love Korea! Where our Christmas’s come before yours and with Smurf-tac-ular hats!
December 22, 2008 at 9:26 am · Filed under Little Things, Take a Lap
Why? Because, the internet becomes a ghost town.
Everything on broadcast television has wrapped up, so there is nothing to look forward to downloading each week. It will be late January or February before the new seasons begin. The same applies to all IPTV networks and news sites. Everyone is on holiday break. My RSS reader has already dropped by 2/3s of the posts. Everyone stops blogging or posting well thought articles.
Hello! I’m still here. I’m reading. Keep it coming. *le sigh*
I’m working on downloading Seasons 1,2,3 of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. It’s slow going. That’ll get me through a couple of weeks. I should probably get ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, too. I got Beedle the Bard, which isn’t very big. And I’ll be watching my beer ferment. It’s like watching paint dry, rainbow sherbert sparkled paint. I’ve got to give it hugs and nurture it.
December 20, 2008 at 6:11 pm · Filed under beer
Project Homebrewing is underway. I ordered a homebrewing kit and Morgan’s Yukon Brown Smoked Ale. In preparation, I used the ‘How to Brew’ book by John Palmer, and the directions from the extract to dictate my steps. Overall, it was not a complicated process, but there were still hiccups.
Part of my preparations were to mix all the extracts in a massive pot and cook it for a bit. The directions on the extract don’t call for this. (Hops are included in the blend, BTW) So, I needed a bigger cooking pot. I went shopping for the pot, but after checking out prices, I thought “No. I’ll just mix them in the fermentation bucket. It’ll be quick and painless.”
My second modification/mistake was not buying a can opener. I couldn’t find a can opener at E-Mart, so I settled upon that triangular hole puncher. The problem with that was that I gravely misjudged the viscosity of the syrup. I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t expect it to be as thick as molasses. Therefore, emptying the can took about 20 minutes. Much longer than desirable.
Due to that, I’m sure that I improperly prepared the yeast. I was going to “boost” the yeast, which involved pre-mixing it before hand. The directions inform you that “It is important that the yeast is added as soon as the brew is mixed.” Aaaaaannd, because of the length of mixing the extracts, I took a little longer than “soon”.
=[
As of now, the brew is sitting on my desk at 23-24C. I’m waiting for some bubbling action from the air lock to confirm that fermentation has begun. That’s my main concern right now. Hopefully, the yeast isn’t dead. Show me some happy yeasts!
December 10, 2008 at 9:58 am · Filed under Lifestyle, Little Things
I don’t know how this Miyazaki movie slipped through the cracks. Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. I had to read about its release on a Korean English news site. Why didn’t I hear about this anywhere?
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (崖の上のポニョ, Gake no Ue no Ponyo?) is a 2008 animated film by the Japanese anime studio Studio Ghibli, written and directed by famed anime filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. It is Miyazaki’s ninth film for Ghibli. The plot centers on a baby fish/mermaid in the sea named Ponyo who becomes a human girl. In pursuing her goal, she befriends a five-year-old human boy, Sōsuke.
Thank goodness for bittorrent.
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