For the Love of Geeks

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There has been a lot of buzz surrounding the upcoming release of Guitar Hero : World Tour.  Unfortunately for Activision, Harmonix will be releasing Rockband 2 first.  Frankly, it is a whole big plate of awesome, and is full of WIN.

Harmonix made the [ announcement ], but didn’t give a ton of details.. So IGN went the next step and interviewed the lead developer [ Dan Teasdale ].

The highlights?

• DLC (Downloaded Content) will be transferrable from RB1 to RB2 and any new RB2 DLC will be backwards compatible to RB1.   ROCK!

• New instruments will be quieter and more realistic, but old instruments will be usable.

• Band Tour will be improved.  This is cool too me since the random set list often had unrealistic expectations based on how long and what level people where playing at.   Enter Sandman in the 3rd set is just mean.. LOL

• Full Master recordings on the disk.

There is a ton more, so go read the article.

I am impressed at Harmonix.  I was very vry excited for the GH4 release, and quite frankly, Activision really missed the boat focusing thier energy releasing Aerosmith and the stupid DS version of GH.  They should have been pushing GH4 out for an early summer release because by the time Christmas rolls around RockBand 2 will already be p0wning GH4 before it is even released.

If you have ever driven a freeway in California, then you have likely been “driven” to the point of yelling out the window at some random driver who is talking on the phone, eating their breakfast, and reading the morning paper all while attempting to navigate the 405 at the same time.  On July 1st (tomorrow) we can at least count on one of those things actually being illegal.

On July 1st, 2008, the state of California will no longer allow drivers to use cell phones while they are driving unless they are using a hands free device of some sort.  If you get caught violating this law, the base fine for the FIRST offense is $20 and $50 for subsequent convictions. With the addition of penalty assessments, the fines can be more than triple the base fine amount. The violation is a reportable offense, however, DMV will not assign a violation point.  Drivers from outside California, who are driving within the state of California, will be held to this law as well.  Drivers will be allowed to dial, but are strongly urged not to.  Headsets can be used, but BOTH ears can not be covered.

The best part about this law, and when I say best part I mean the funniest, is that text messaging is still allowed.  REALLY?!? I can hold the phone to the side of my head, but I can type messages to my friends while I drive.. OK, well I digress.

So, since a headset will be required as of tomorrow, we will be showcasing some of the best that we here at For the Love of Geeks like.

First on the list is [ Cardo S-2 Bluetooth stereo headset ] is affordable and comfortable.

Pricing in at around 60 bucks, and compatible with any bluetooth phone that supports stereo bluetooth.   The downsides are that in noisy settings it doesn’t perform extremely well, and using these while driving would actually still be a violation of this law, since both ears would be covered.  I personally like these for the office, since I can rock out on my tunes, and use my phone.

Next is the [ Aliph Jawbone 2 ], which is quite possibly the most stylish bluetooth headset out there …

The upside to this, aside from helping you pick up the chicks in the car next to you, is that it has quite a few noise cancellation features, and also does a great job of enhancing the voice quality and I have found that it works well, even when driving in my jeep with the top down.  The downside is mostly just the price.  It is a bit expensive coming in at more then 100 bucks.

Lastly, for the iPhone users out there … sometimes old school is the best school.  I personally LOVE my OG cords that come with the iPhone.  They have the button to answer calls, and have great sound quality and allow full control of starting/stopping the iPod and moving to the next song.  Also, fairly cheap at 30 bucks.

You can pick these up at the [ Apple Store ].

So, all you Californian drivers, put the cell phone down and back slowly away.

If you have a favorite handsfree device for your phone.. let us know in the comments.

On June 9th, you likely remember the amazing day at WWDC 2008 where the iPhone 3G was announced. Buried in the cheering of the announcement was the less acclaimed announcement of Apple’s latest OS Snow Leopard. Just the name can tell you that this will not be a ground breaking OS, like all of its kitty predecessors.

Snow Leopards are just a different kind of Leopard, so it is safe to assume that the OS will be pretty similar to what we have with Leopard.

That brings me to a lot of the statements that I have been hearing on pod casts, and in blogs.

“Why should I upgrade to Snow Leopard, if there isn’t a bunch of new features? ”

So here is why, beyond the obvious that Steve Jobs needs more money, and you have an obligation to give it to him.

• First, Snow Leopard is officially being billed as a Security and Stability upgrade. For years, Mac users have felt safe from the virus, and hacker attacks that plague windows users. Many, myself included, don’t even bother to run virus applications, and will click any website without fear. However, we have all only really been safe because of the small market share that Apple has been able to garner. Those days are ending. As the market share increases and more and more people begin to favor the mac, virus writers, and hackers will begin to explore a fairly new and uncharted land and will begin to attack macs as well. I believe that Apple is preparing for this with the next version of Snow Leopard. This alone, is reason enough to upgrade. The less up-to-date you are the less secure you are.

• Second, Snow Leopard is ditching its support for PowerPC. For all the PowerPC users out there, myself included, that kind of sucks, and we will be left on Leopard for the time being. However, for the Intel users, myself included, this means a sleeker more streamlined OS. One that focuses solely on a single architecture. This means a dramatically smaller OS.

- On that same line of thinking, the apps are getting smaller as well. Take a look at this chart from [ AppleInsider ]. This comes from a great article that describes in detail why the apps are shrinking. Read it.

• Lastly, we have to ask if the ceiling on features has been hit. For now, probably. We have seen that with Windows for years, but yet the throngs flock to each new version of Windows. So, will a feature lacking upgrade from Apple spurn the same response? It should, since the main feature being released is usability and efficiency.

I will upgrade, and will recommend to my clients that they upgrade as well. So I guess I am also recommending to my readers to upgrade, and to answer the initial question on what’s the point?

Three words : Efficiency, Security, Stability .

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The latest online craze is the social network, and Twitter is/was among the most popular of them all.  Twitter, for those you living in caves, is an online micro-blogging social network application that allows users to blast 140 character messages to the world.  You can follow other people’s “Tweets” and others can follow yours.

Recently, though, Twitter has become more famous for being unavailable then for the impact it has made on the social networking market.  The “Fail Whale” is quickly becoming an internet celebrity, and if you go to Twitter you are more likely to see him, then your tweets.

Online “celebrities”, such as Leo Laporte, and Kevin Rose have made a game out of seeing how many followers they can get, and who will have the most.  They are both well over 30,000 followers.  Politicians, most prominently Barack Obama, have been using twitter to be “more in touch” with the younger constituents.

Twitter, although having no real monetization plans, seems to continue to be valued at higher and higher dollar amounts, allowing them to continually receive funding.  In May, they received 15 milion dollars, based on a valuation of $80 million, and again just a few days ago, they received another round of funding.  This time Twitter referred to itself as a communications utility, and Spark Capital and Bezos Expeditions bought into it.  No one is saying how much, but it appears that it was more then the last round.

So, with all this support, and all this money being thrown at Twitter, why do we see the whale every day.  Just this morning I received the following messages via Plurk :

“Twitter is down again”
“Fail Whale for the Lose”
“Twitter = Epic Fail”
“I deleted my twitter account”
“I am so done with Twitter”
“Twitter is still down.. they might as well pull the plug and walk away.”

This is just this morning, and this is just from someone who has about 100 followers on Plurk.  That is a small cross section of the real social networking scene.

So, can Twitter survive when it is quickly getting a reputation for being a failure?  Will they be able to compete in a market that is quickly seeing better and more stable alternatives to Twitter?

While the twitter funding rolls in, the users are left to wonder what the money is being spent on.  Surely not hardware since they have continued to have more outages in the month of June.  Obviously not on staff members to improve scalability… since as I said, still having outages.

The Web 2.0 frontier is showing promise of being the dot com revolution that should have happened in the late 90’s, where internet companies are provided funding and actually make money, but when I see Twitter, I just seem to go back to the 90’s when people with good ideas got tons of money and then sat around wondering what they should do with it all…

For those of you tired of riding the Fail Whale, stop over to [ Plurk ] , it is more fun, more interactive, more stable, and simply more then Twitter.

iTunes 7.7 was seeded to developers last night, which means that the App Store is quickly on its way.  Along with that the iPhone SDK Beta 8 was also made available to developers.

Several sources have reported that version 7.7 of iTunes will provide quite a bit of tasty goodness, such as the obvious :

Use iTunes 7.7 to sync music, video, and more with iPhone 3G, and download applications from the iTunes Store exclusively designed for iPhone and iPod touch with software version 2.0 or later

Less obvious, and a little more exciting …

Also use the new Remote application for iPhone or iPod touch to control iTunes playback from anywhere in your home — a free download from the App Store.

I am almost as excited for the App Store, and the version 2 upgrade of the iPhone as I am for the new iPhone 3G release.  So, Steve Jobs, get it out to us!

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One thing that is standard about geeks, is that they are pretty sure they can do anything better then it is currently being done.  For me personally, I try to bring that level of confidence, or arrogance depending on who you talk to, to most activities I get involved in.

One thing I have never tampered with is Beer.   Beer is very special to me, and I treat it like many people treat wine.  I am a beer snob, I don’t drink cheap beer (cheap in quality that is) and refuse to touch a Coors or Budweiser.   I have toured breweries in England, and the US and can tell you the best beers to drink with various foods and what type of glass you should be drinking your beer from.  I have always wanted to make beer, but have always been afraid to try, because I think that skunking a batch of beer would make me die a little inside.

So, when a buddy of mine told me that we had the opportunity to learn brewing from a brew master, I was excited to say the least.

The day began at 8 AM, which was good due to the recent heat wave in Southern California.  We were basically going to be spending the day in a garage boiling 15 gallons of Beer on the top of big propane burners, so getting started before the heat got too intense was pretty important.

We were brewing an Irish Stout, and there are a few different types of Irish Stout, so specifically we were going for a Beamish Irish Stout.

All the pics where taken with my iPhone, in a less then photogenic environment, so I apologize for the bad quality.

First, meet our Master Brewer, Shawn Olsson.

Shawn has been brewing for 14 years, and has been a part of several home brew organization and groups, and is actually looking to start a SoCal group.  Shawn was nice enough to have a bunch of us, myself being a complete stranger, in his home to share his knowledge of the brew.

Now, getting into the brew process.  It is important to know a few terms.

Fermentation - The total conversion of malt sugars to beer, defined here as three parts, adaptation, primary, and secondary.

Hops - Hop vines are grown in cool climates and brewers make use of the cone-like flowers. The dried cones are available in pellets, plugs, or whole.

Pitching - Term for adding the yeast to the fermenter.

Wort (wart or wert) - The malt-sugar solution that is boiled prior to fermentation.

Mash - The hot water steeping process that promotes enzymatic breakdown of the grist into soluble, fermentable sugars.

pH - A negative logarithmic scale (1-14) that measures the degree of acidity or alkalinity of a solution for which a value of 7 represents neutrality. A value of 1 is most acidic, a value of 14 is most alkaline.

Gravity - Like density, gravity describes the concentration of malt sugar in the wort. The specific gravity of water is 1.000 at 59F. Typical beer worts range from 1.035 - 1.055 before fermentation (Original Gravity).

Cold Break - Proteins that coagulate and fall out of solution when the wort is rapidly cooled prior to pitching the yeast.

Alpha Acid Units (AAU) - A home brewing measurement of hops. Equal to the weight in ounces multiplied by the percent of alpha acids.

These were terms that I heard Shawn mention during the process, and I am sure that missed a few, since we were also sampling beers while brewing beers.  Having taken note of these terms, I went and looked them up so I could get a better understanding of what was being talked about.

When we arrived, Shawn had already began the process of heating the water.  Now, I have always made the assumption that the water you should brew with should be as distilled and purified as possible.  This is not actually true.  The first thing we learned, is that water, and the minerals in the water, have a huge impact on the flavor and quality of the beer.  Minerals in the water in London, for instance, are what make an English brew taste like an English brew.

Depending on the “hardness” or “softness” of the water, that will help you decide the best brew you can make from your straight water.  As an example, the Czech Republic has very soft water, which is used for pilsner.  For the process of home brew, you can actually do an RO treatment on the water removing everything you can, then you actually add to the water, Gypsum, Salt, Chalk, and other naturally occurring minerals to make the water be the same as water found in the part of the world that you want the beer to emulate.

One very important element to remove is Chlorine. Most drinking water has been treated with chlorine using either gas or a hypo-chlorite solution similar to laundry bleach. In either case, the purpose is to prevent the growth of bacteria in the public water system. Unfortunately, chlorine can produce some undesirable effects in beer. For one, it can jack up the growth of yeast. It also creates unpleasant flavor compounds known as chloro phenolic. This adds a flavor of burning electrical wire. Not a good thing to include in your beer.

How much, and which minerals to add to your water will depend on what your brewing and what the current levels are in the water you are using.

Next he showed us the Barley Malt.  Here is an image of Barley I pulled off the “How Stuff Works” site.

Since we were going to be brewing a darker beer, we had a variety of Barley Malt.  Understand that barley is to beer as grapes are to wine.  Aside from the water, this is what is making up the beer.  Our barley had a combination of brown and black (roasted colors) barley.  It was very tasty.  It tasted like grape nuts, and I think I could have just sat and munched on it all day as a snack.

The barley was run through a mill to grind the barely for boiling. The crushed grain is called grist.  You crush it to aid in the starch to sugar conversion process.  You want to allow as much surface area as possible for the enzymes to attack the starch.

The barley is put into the water and the process of mashing is started.  The mash will contain wort which  is the sugars that are taken from the barley and that will eventually be fermented and create the beer.  Mashing is a controlled process of time, heat, and water.  Shawn recommended a temperature of 160 degrees.  I wasn’t sure if that was for all brewing, or if it was specific to the beer that we were brewing.

During the mashing process, we took the time to sanitize all the other components of the brewing process.   Not enough stress can be put on the sanitation process.  Even a small amount of bacteria will completely destroy your beer during the fermenting process.  There are, of course, many different ways to sanitize including the use of bleach.  If you choose to use bleach, know that you will need to rinse the hell out of the containers and parts so that you do not get the chlorine flavor in the beer.  Shawn recommended the use of [ Star San ].  It is widely used by commercial breweries and does an excellent cleansing job, while being very easy to rinse and clear away.

Once the Mash was complete, we began the process of Sparging.  Sparging is the process of rinsing the wort and getting as much of the sugars away from the barley husks and into the brewing kettle.  This process consists of another huge kettle of temprature controlled water (in our case 160 degrees) being slowly run through the mash.

The fresh water is in the top kettle and the mash is in the middle. Then it is run into a whole other container, which would be used to do the boil.    All together, once the mash and the fresh water was filtered together we had more then 12 gallons to do the boil with.

The very first thing added was hops.  Hops are added in three different stages of the boil.  Initially it is added, before the sparging, and those hops look like little rabbit pellets.  Then in intervals during the boil, Hop leaves are added.

Hops are delicate (usually referred to as a flower) and they provide the bitterness that balances out the sweetness of the malt.  The malt, immediately after the sparge tastes AMAZING, it is like a super sweet cup of coffee, but better.

The amount of hops used, and they type of hop, depends on the type of beer that you will be brewing.  It is important to remember that your ingredients are going to play a major factor in how your brew comes out, so use the best possible ingredients.

The boil time is also something that seems to be different depending on who is brewing, and what they are brewing.  We took the time during the boil to drink more beer, and have some lunch.

After the boil, and the transfer, you are left with this at the bottom.  It is a collection of the hops added during the boil… looks kind of gross, but you know it did it’s job.

After the boil, you have to get the beer into the fermentation containers, while dropping the temp as quickly as possible.  For this process, we had about 40 pounds of ice, a large cooler, and a device called a Counter Flow Chillers.  The counter flow chiller is a tube with a tube inside.  The beer travels through the inner tube while freezing cold water travels through the outer tube.   This takes the temperature of the beer from over 200 degrees to 50 degrees in the time it takes to travel through the tube.  The helps to prevent the culturing of bacteria by keeping the beer outside the bacteria comfort zone.  The counter flow chiller is next to the green cooler in the picture below.

We transferred ours into 2 6 gallon glass containers.  The glass containers MUST be completely covered in a black garbage bag, as the beer can not be subjected to direct sun light at this point to prevent skunking it.

Once the glass containers are filled, then you have to add the vital component.  Yeast.  Now, you can not just dump some yeast into the mix and move on.  Yeast is a delicate beast, and the process of fermentation will stress the yeast out considerably, and could even kill it, which means that your beer will not be properly fermentated.  Several days before Shawn had prepared two yeast starters for our brew day, so I was not there for that process.  The following comes from [ breworganic.com ] :

MAKING A YEAST STARTER:

This is usually done the day before you brew. A yeast starter will start the fermentation of you beer more rapidly.

Equipment needed:

Starter vessel: quart size or larger jar (juice jars work well), a large beer bottle, or an Erlenmeyer flask

Stopper & Airlock*

Measuring cups, measuring spoons

Rubbing alcohol & cotton balls or swabs

*If you do not have a stopper that fits your chosen starter vessel, you may cover the container with a clean cloth that has been sanitized: boil the cloth for 10 minutes, and then soak it in a sanitizing solution. If using cheesecloth, or other loosely woven cloth, use 2- 4 layers so dust and bacteria are effectively trapped.

The starter should be at least 2 cups in size. Before making the starter, if using liquid yeast, follow the instructions above for starting the yeast growth.

To make a starter medium, use malt extract, dried malt extract, or some unfermented wort from a previous batch. It is important to use malt based sugars, as other sugars do not have sufficient nutrients for healthy yeast growth. Add water to the extract or gyle- the best specific gravity range for making a yeast starter is between 1.030- 1.040. Here are some guidelines for making starters with organic malt extract:

Boil the starter solution for 15- 20 minutes, allow to cool to 70 ^oF, and pour it into your sanitized yeast starter vessel. Add the yeast from the pouch, or the dry yeast. Shake well to add oxygen and cover or seal with an airlock. Add the starter to you unfermented beer as soon as it has cooled to 70 ^oF Before pouring the yeast from the starter container, swab the lip of the container with alcohol to kill bacteria living there. If you wish, you can save a small portion of the starter (1/4 cup is adequate) to reactivate for a later batch. The saved starter can be stored in the refrigerator with an airlock (a cloth cover is not recommended for long term storage!) on it for up to 1 month. To save your yeast for a longer period of time, make a new starter from the old one. When pitching stored yeast into your beer, you should also make a new starter.

Once the starter yeast has been added, the beer is moved into a temperature controlled environment, where the yeast can work its magic.  Shawn uses a temp controlled freezer chest, and you can see our two small children snuggled tightly in for their 2 to 3 week sleep and fermentation process.

So after the cleanup, our brew day had come to an end, and it was a blast.  I am sure that I  forgot a couple of things, since this was blogged from memory, so this should not be considered a step by step guide to home brewing, but rather the account of a very happy geek who got to make some beer. It was really exciting to be a part of the process that I enjoy the fruits of so much, and it took a lot of the FUD away from thinking about brewing myself, so a huge thanks to Shawn for having us and providing a great experience.

So, in true geek fashion, I have now subscribed to three different home brew podcasts and am looking at various supplies that I can get to begin doing some home brew myself.  Shawn has a pretty sweet setup, but it is not for the beginner.  He has been doing this for quite awhile.  For the beginner, you can get stuff that will allow you to do the whole process in your kitchen, and make 5 gallon quantities.   Shawn also has a very impressive excel spreadsheet that gives him the pH levels and starting gravities based on the water, hops and barely quantities, as well as the various minerals that he puts in.   As a beginner, that is probably bit much to try and wrap your head, but eventually if you stick with it, you will end up there as well.

Required reading, according to Shawn, is [ How to Brew ] by John J Palmer.

So, go forth and brew, and when bottling day arrives, don’t forget your favorite geek blogger.

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