Yet Another Google Tool

Google continues to quietly roll out their versions of everyone else's applications. And while their product names aren't very imaginative, they do usually get the point across. Today's example is Google Shared Stuff. It's more or less a dumbed-down version of del.icio.us: at the moment, all it allows you to do is create your page of "shared stuff" -- basically, links.

It doesn't do much yet: it doesn't even appear to have tags, which I think of as the most primitive feature of such systems. OTOH, it *does* have social networking right out of the gate -- it shows you the Shared Stuff of people you know. That, in turn, is rather interesting: my best guess is that "people you know" means your address book, which implies that they are mining the address book for social-networking purposes. Also, they provide a front end for the other major link-sharing services, as well as making it easy to mail links to friends on Google. And I assume that, in usual Google fashion, they will gradually add more features to the thing until it actually becomes useful.

Anyway, I've put in one link, just to try it out (the tutorial for the Oz language, since I had the page sitting around). I encourage friends to play with it, so I can see what it is like to see other peoples' Stuff...

Yet Another Google Tool

Google continues to quietly roll out their versions of everyone else's applications. And while their product names aren't very imaginative, they do usually get the point across. Today's example is Google Shared Stuff. It's more or less a dumbed-down version of del.icio.us: at the moment, all it allows you to do is create your page of "shared stuff" -- basically, links.

It doesn't do much yet: it doesn't even appear to have tags, which I think of as the most primitive feature of such systems. OTOH, it *does* have social networking right out of the gate -- it shows you the Shared Stuff of people you know. That, in turn, is rather interesting: my best guess is that "people you know" means your address book, which implies that they are mining the address book for social-networking purposes. Also, they provide a front end for the other major link-sharing services, as well as making it easy to mail links to friends on Google. And I assume that, in usual Google fashion, they will gradually add more features to the thing until it actually becomes useful.

Anyway, I've put in one link, just to try it out (the tutorial for the Oz language, since I had the page sitting around). I encourage friends to play with it, so I can see what it is like to see other peoples' Stuff...

Thinking out loud about laptops...

For a couple of months now, I've been musing about what my next machine might be. My old laptop, while always serviceable, had begun to get just a little flaky, so I've known that I might have to replace it. Problem is, my dislike of Vista as a power-user operating system is pretty intense, so my usual assumption of buying a PC doesn't necessarily hold. (I actually have a fair amount of respect for many aspects of Vista, and I might well upgrade my mother to it: it's unusually safe, and reasonably stable. But that safety comes at the price of being a real pain in the ass if you know what you're doing. And *boy*, is it a CPU hog.)

Anyway, the problem is getting less hypothetical. My laptop has started to show a disturbing tendency to spontaneously reboot for no obvious reason. Could be the disk, could be the power supply, could be memory, could be heat contributing to any of the above -- I don't know. It's probably related to the fact that the internal clock seems to be failing (it keeps going back to 2004), which probably indicates some sort of power-supply issue. I'm not totally surprised -- it was a cheap machine to begin with, and it's getting on three years old -- but it's probably appropriate to consider replacing it ASAP. The question is, with what? Let's muse on this...

On the one hand, I don't love Vista. OTOH, the machines are plentiful and inexpensive, and I can get more or less exactly the ergonomics I want with no difficulty at all. That selection, plus the ever-present software issue, keeps it under consideration. (I *could* buy a machine and retrofit it with XP, but I really don't like that idea: installing a Windows OS other than preinstall is always a bit fraught.)

I could go for an Ubuntu box -- either self-built, or bought from Dell, or possibly from a smaller player. That's not a trivial option, given that *most* of what I use the machine for is Web, and I suspect a Linux machine will serve that purpose at least as well as anything else. Problem is, I do sometimes want access to other software, most often Windows software, so I need to decide how much I care about that, and what my solution is.

I could go for a Mac: heaven knows, a bunch of my friends are pushing me in that direction. The problem there is mainly ergonomics. It looks like, to get a keyboard I can stand, I would need to get a MacBook Pro, and those are *pricey* -- over twice the price of the PC laptops I'm considering. I can afford it if I decide it's the right thing to do, but even I can't spend two grand on a laptop without pausing and thinking about it carefully.

If I go for either the Linux or Mac options, I need to answer the Windows question: how do I deal with my need to occasionally pop over to Windows? In the Mac case, it looks like Parallels is a good option: it appears to be powerful and easy to use, and claims to make it very easy to replicate my existing machine in the virtualized environment. (A major plus -- I am clearly their target market.) If I went for Linux, I'd probably need to get a dual-boot box, which isn't a trivial problem: it can be done, but I don't know of any major players selling such a thing. And I'm not enough of a systems hacker to love the idea of building it myself. (I could probably do it, but it would annoy me: I'm an applications engineer by instinct, not an IT guy.)

So my likely options seem to be:

• Get an inexpensive Windows machine, and deal with Vista;


• Get an inexpensive Linux box and figure out how to dual-boot it;


• Get an expensive but powerful MacBook Pro plus Parallels, and move my XP license over to that.

I'm mildly attracted to the latter choice, but at more than double the price of the others, it's not something to casually jump into...

Thinking out loud about laptops...

For a couple of months now, I've been musing about what my next machine might be. My old laptop, while always serviceable, had begun to get just a little flaky, so I've known that I might have to replace it. Problem is, my dislike of Vista as a power-user operating system is pretty intense, so my usual assumption of buying a PC doesn't necessarily hold. (I actually have a fair amount of respect for many aspects of Vista, and I might well upgrade my mother to it: it's unusually safe, and reasonably stable. But that safety comes at the price of being a real pain in the ass if you know what you're doing. And *boy*, is it a CPU hog.)

Anyway, the problem is getting less hypothetical. My laptop has started to show a disturbing tendency to spontaneously reboot for no obvious reason. Could be the disk, could be the power supply, could be memory, could be heat contributing to any of the above -- I don't know. It's probably related to the fact that the internal clock seems to be failing (it keeps going back to 2004), which probably indicates some sort of power-supply issue. I'm not totally surprised -- it was a cheap machine to begin with, and it's getting on three years old -- but it's probably appropriate to consider replacing it ASAP. The question is, with what? Let's muse on this...

On the one hand, I don't love Vista. OTOH, the machines are plentiful and inexpensive, and I can get more or less exactly the ergonomics I want with no difficulty at all. That selection, plus the ever-present software issue, keeps it under consideration. (I *could* buy a machine and retrofit it with XP, but I really don't like that idea: installing a Windows OS other than preinstall is always a bit fraught.)

I could go for an Ubuntu box -- either self-built, or bought from Dell, or possibly from a smaller player. That's not a trivial option, given that *most* of what I use the machine for is Web, and I suspect a Linux machine will serve that purpose at least as well as anything else. Problem is, I do sometimes want access to other software, most often Windows software, so I need to decide how much I care about that, and what my solution is.

I could go for a Mac: heaven knows, a bunch of my friends are pushing me in that direction. The problem there is mainly ergonomics. It looks like, to get a keyboard I can stand, I would need to get a MacBook Pro, and those are *pricey* -- over twice the price of the PC laptops I'm considering. I can afford it if I decide it's the right thing to do, but even I can't spend two grand on a laptop without pausing and thinking about it carefully.

If I go for either the Linux or Mac options, I need to answer the Windows question: how do I deal with my need to occasionally pop over to Windows? In the Mac case, it looks like Parallels is a good option: it appears to be powerful and easy to use, and claims to make it very easy to replicate my existing machine in the virtualized environment. (A major plus -- I am clearly their target market.) If I went for Linux, I'd probably need to get a dual-boot box, which isn't a trivial problem: it can be done, but I don't know of any major players selling such a thing. And I'm not enough of a systems hacker to love the idea of building it myself. (I could probably do it, but it would annoy me: I'm an applications engineer by instinct, not an IT guy.)

So my likely options seem to be:

• Get an inexpensive Windows machine, and deal with Vista;


• Get an inexpensive Linux box and figure out how to dual-boot it;


• Get an expensive but powerful MacBook Pro plus Parallels, and move my XP license over to that.

I'm mildly attracted to the latter choice, but at more than double the price of the others, it's not something to casually jump into...

Restaurant Reviews: Ponzu

There's really only one thing I miss about living in Waltham, and that's Moody Street. This one stretch is the center of good restaurants in the western Boston suburbs -- indeed, perhaps the best place to eat in the entire region. And new places are always opening. Tonight, on a whim, we decided to try one of those: Ponzu, which opened up in the corpse of the dessert shop. (You know -- the one that used to sell really fabulous cannoli until they lost their minds and turned into a low-grade coffee shop.)

Anyway, Ponzu turns out to be fabulous. They're best described as "eclectic Asian", with a mix of conventional and invented dishes from Japan and China. They run tapas-style, with your choice of "big dishes" and "small dishes" (which they explicitly describe as Tapas). We went for a mix of sushi plates and tapas -- we ordered seven plates, which was probably one more than we should have, but we find it hard to regret.

Getting the weaker part out of the way first: the ordinary sushi (from the main Maki menu) is merely good. We had an order of spicy salmon maki, and a caterpillar roll -- both were perfectly fine, but undistinguished. msmemory tried the White Tiger Maki, which was truly beautiful (they wrap it in an exotic white nori, producing the striped white effect of the name) but not remarkable in terms of flavor. None of it was *bad*, mind you, but it was no better than what we normally get over at Sato.

OTOH, the tapas plates were magnificent. The Ponzu Hot Ribs were little pork ribs in a sweet spicy glaze, perfectly balanced and ideal for an opener. (They served all of the food gradually, giving each of us a new plate as we finished the last.) The Stuffed Fried Tofu Skin wrapped around a maki-sized roll of spicy crabmeat and rice, with a drizzle of spicy mayo to offset the flavors. The Sashimi Roses were rosettes, one each of tuna, salmon and yellowtail, each marinated differently so they each had a distinctive undertone. And the winner of the bunch was the "Ponzu marinated tuna with edamame puree on wonton crisp" -- exactly what it sounds like, four little wonton platters worthy of serving as hors d'ouvres at the best reception.

Service was perfect: crisply efficient without ever being pushy, but constantly around to make sure everything was going smoothly. (One got the impression that the 50-year-old maitre d' owns the place, and demands perfection of her staff.) Prices were a tad higher than average, but quite reasonable given the quality of the meal: we paid about $95 before tax and tip, including a really lovely little $25 bottle of sake. (It says something about the place that they serve a dozen different cool sakes, with the only heated sake relegated to its own dog pen further down on the menu.)

Excellent meal -- when the worst I can say about it is that some of the dishes were *only* quite good, it speaks well to the quality. I'll pay it the highest compliment I have in my arsenal: I have to take my Dad here, the next time he's in town...

Restaurant Reviews: Ponzu

There's really only one thing I miss about living in Waltham, and that's Moody Street. This one stretch is the center of good restaurants in the western Boston suburbs -- indeed, perhaps the best place to eat in the entire region. And new places are always opening. Tonight, on a whim, we decided to try one of those: Ponzu, which opened up in the corpse of the dessert shop. (You know -- the one that used to sell really fabulous cannoli until they lost their minds and turned into a low-grade coffee shop.)

Anyway, Ponzu turns out to be fabulous. They're best described as "eclectic Asian", with a mix of conventional and invented dishes from Japan and China. They run tapas-style, with your choice of "big dishes" and "small dishes" (which they explicitly describe as Tapas). We went for a mix of sushi plates and tapas -- we ordered seven plates, which was probably one more than we should have, but we find it hard to regret.

Getting the weaker part out of the way first: the ordinary sushi (from the main Maki menu) is merely good. We had an order of spicy salmon maki, and a caterpillar roll -- both were perfectly fine, but undistinguished. msmemory tried the White Tiger Maki, which was truly beautiful (they wrap it in an exotic white nori, producing the striped white effect of the name) but not remarkable in terms of flavor. None of it was *bad*, mind you, but it was no better than what we normally get over at Sato.

OTOH, the tapas plates were magnificent. The Ponzu Hot Ribs were little pork ribs in a sweet spicy glaze, perfectly balanced and ideal for an opener. (They served all of the food gradually, giving each of us a new plate as we finished the last.) The Stuffed Fried Tofu Skin wrapped around a maki-sized roll of spicy crabmeat and rice, with a drizzle of spicy mayo to offset the flavors. The Sashimi Roses were rosettes, one each of tuna, salmon and yellowtail, each marinated differently so they each had a distinctive undertone. And the winner of the bunch was the "Ponzu marinated tuna with edamame puree on wonton crisp" -- exactly what it sounds like, four little wonton platters worthy of serving as hors d'ouvres at the best reception.

Service was perfect: crisply efficient without ever being pushy, but constantly around to make sure everything was going smoothly. (One got the impression that the 50-year-old maitre d' owns the place, and demands perfection of her staff.) Prices were a tad higher than average, but quite reasonable given the quality of the meal: we paid about $95 before tax and tip, including a really lovely little $25 bottle of sake. (It says something about the place that they serve a dozen different cool sakes, with the only heated sake relegated to its own dog pen further down on the menu.)

Excellent meal -- when the worst I can say about it is that some of the dishes were *only* quite good, it speaks well to the quality. I'll pay it the highest compliment I have in my arsenal: I have to take my Dad here, the next time he's in town...