While many people are familiar with Sam Adams’ Black Lager, they don’t realize what style the beer is and that the true German examples are very good (better than Sam’s, which is a good take on the style). I don’t drink a lot of lagers, but tonight’s beer was one I could drink and drink and drink. It was Mönchshof Schwarzbier, a German Schwarzbier “brewed according to the German Purity Laws of 1516″ (that’s what it says on the bottle). Since I don’t drink a ton of lagers, the only other beer in this style that I’ve had is the Black Lager from Sam Adams.
Anyway, this beer poured a creamy dark brown color with a creamy 1.5 finger head that left a lot of lacing as the beer was drunk. The beer smelled of sweet chocolate and caramel. The taste was awesome. Milk chocolate, caramel, and roasted malts all mixed in to give it a nice round smooth flavor. If I didn’t know what this was, I would’ve thought it was a stout. The beer is very smooth and creamy. It’s a very drinkable beer and a good introduction different styles for people used to drinking Guinness. I wish I had more of it as I could easily drink this all night. It was better than the Sam Adams, but I’m not knocking the same version of this style as it’s also a good one (though not quite as creamy).
While reading a friend’s blog, I came across this video created by The Meth Minute 39. It’s basically all the internet memes of the past 7 years or so (it doesn’t have anything pre-2000 that I noticed). It’s pretty fun and great for reminiscing about all those fun times spent watching stupid internet stuff.
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Published on
November 13, 2007 in
Meta.
I know my tagline includes music and there aren’t a whole lot of posts other than those about RIAA trials. I used to listen to a lot of music (and still do), but money has been tight lately. I haven’t been able to get out to see as many live bands as I would like. That will hopefully change starting after the holidays are over. In addition to being able to check out more bands, I’ll also be continuing to increase my CD collection, which is still increasing, though slowly (I’m awaiting the new Phish, Live in Las Vegas album, including the bonus DVD and CD, which should arrive by the end of the month, after which I will post a review, as objective as it may be).
As for the urbanism posts, they tend to relate strictly to Providence and things have quieted down here a bit lately. I’ll be trying to get at least one post every couple weeks related to urban issues.
And regardless of what the tagline says, those are my main interests. Everything else falls under “life…”. 
I’ve now been using the Apple for a whole week. I’ve spent as little time on my Windows box at home as possible (basically I’ve only been using it first thing in the morning and last thing before bed because it’s always on and I have to pack my laptop for work). I’ve been trying to get used to the Apple as much as possible and have found it to be a great little computer. There are still some nuances that I will have a hard time getting use to.
I mentioned before that I use Alt-Tab in Windows a lot. It’s great because it rotates through all the open windows. The Command (the key with the apple on it) Tab on the Apple only switches between open applications. I learned yesterday that you can switch between open windows within an application by hitting Alt-Tilda. However, that application has to be the active one in order to use that feature. It’s quite annoying. I would prefer to just “Alt-Tab” between windows.
Another thing about this particular laptop (and probably all 15″ MacBook Pros) that I find annoying is the ambient light sensor. While I like the feature as it saves my eyes and battery life, it also has an annoying habit of adjusting the brightness on the fly. It’s very sensitive. I noticed that there’s a sensor in each speaker that both have to adjust together to work. I noticed this by putting my hands on one speaker and see nothing happen (tried with the other speaker as well). I got it to work by covering both speakers, which are located on either side of the keyboard. The sensor is nice except that being on either side of the keyboard, it notices shadows from my hands when using the keyboard and dims and brightens while I’m typing (it’s done it about 10-15 times now while writing this). I imagine that’s just the way it is and not something that can be fixed (it’s not annoying enough to have me send the thing back to Apple).
I started using Spaces. I love it (though I have used virtual desktops in the past both in various window managers and desktop environments in Linux and with certain NVidia drivers in Windows. The nice thing about Spaces is that it makes it easy to assign certain programs to certain virtual desktops. It keeps my space less cluttered. The only thing I have an issue with is when switching to Firefox from another application using the Dock (I keep Firefox open all the time), it switches to the proper desktop, but does not switch focus to the active Firefox window (though it does make Firefox the active Application in the menu bar). It works properly for all other applications, just not Firefox. I’m hoping that either 10.5.1 or Firefox 2.0.0.10 (or 2.0.1 or whatever is the next version of Firefox) fixes this little bug.
The only other issue I have with OS X is that when a window is not active, I can’t click on something in that window and both have that action happen and the window become active. For example, in Windows, I can click on a link in a Firefox window that’s not active and have that link open along with Firefox becoming the active window. Here I have to click once to bring Firefox to focus and a second time to click the link.
So once again, it sounds like I hate this computer. That is not the truth at all. I really like it, but there are some things that will take a lot of getting used to.
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